LAW OF DISPERSION BY REFRACTION. 391 



Germany, will not be surprized that similar lan- 

 guage is used by other writers of that nation. Thus 

 Schelling 15 says, "Newton's Opticks is the greatest 

 proof of a whole structure of fallacies, which, in all 

 its parts, is founded upon observation and experi- 

 ment." Gothe, however, does not concede even so 

 much to Newton's work. He goes over a large 

 portion of it, page by page, quarreling with the 

 experiments, diagrams, reasoning, and language, 

 without intermission; and holds that it is not recon- 

 cileable with the most simple facts. He declares 16 , 

 that the first time he looked through a prism, he 

 saw the white walls of the room still look white, 

 " and though alone, I pronounced, as by an instinct, 

 that the Newtonian doctrine is false." We need 

 not here point out how inconsistent with the New- 

 tonian doctrine it was, to expect, as Gothe ex- 

 pected, that the wall should be all over coloured 

 various colours. 



Gothe not only adopted and strenuously main- 

 tained the opinion that the Newtonian theory was 

 false, but he framed a system of his own to explain 

 the phenomena of colour. As a matter of curiosity, 

 it may be worth our while to state the nature of 

 this system ; although undoubtedly it forms no part 

 of the progress of physical science Gothe's views 

 are, in fact, little different from those of Aristotle 

 and Antonio de Dominis, though more completely 

 and systematically developed. Colours arise when 



" Vorlesungen, p. 270. " Farbenlefirc, vol. ii p. (>78. 



