The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Phenomena of the World of Color

[ 1 ] Goethe is continually stimulated by the feeling that "the high works of art are produced by men according to true and natural laws" to seek out these true and natural laws of artistic creation. He is convinced that the effect of a work of art must be based on the fact that a natural lawfulness shines out of it. He wants to recognize this lawfulness. He wants to know why the highest works of art are also the highest works of nature. It becomes clear to him that the Greeks acted according to the very laws that nature follows when they developed "the circle of divine formation from the human form" (Italian Journey, January 28, 1787). He wanted to see how nature brought about this formation in order to be able to understand it in the works of art. Goethe describes how he gradually succeeded in Italy in gaining an insight into the natural laws of artistic creation (cf. "Konfession des Verfassers", Kürschner, vol. 36). "Fortunately, I was able to hold on to some maxims brought over from poetry and proven to me through inner feeling and long use, so that it became difficult but not impossible for me, through uninterrupted contemplation of nature and art, through lively effective conversation with more or less insightful connoisseurs, through constant life with more or less practical or thinking artists, to gradually divide art in general without fragmenting it, and to become aware of its various, lively interlocking elements." There is only one element that does not want to reveal to him the natural laws according to which it works in a work of art: color. Several paintings are "invented and composed in his presence, the parts carefully studied in terms of position and form". The artists can give him an account of how they proceed with the composition. But as soon as the discussion turns to coloring, everything seems to depend on arbitrariness. No one knows the relationship between color and chiaroscuro, or between the individual colors. Goethe is unable to find out why yellow makes a warm and cozy impression, why blue evokes the sensation of coldness, why yellow and reddish blue produce a harmonious effect when placed side by side. He realizes that he must first acquaint himself with the laws of the world of color in nature in order to penetrate the secrets of coloration from there.

[ 2 ] Neither the concepts about the physical nature of color phenomena that Goethe still remembered from his student days, nor the physical compendia that he asked for advice, proved to be fruitful for his purpose. "Like the rest of the world, I was convinced that all colors were contained in light; I had never been told otherwise and had never found the slightest reason to doubt it, because I was not interested in the matter" ("Konfession des Verfassers", Kürschner, vol. 36/2). But when he began to be interested, he found that he could develop nothing for his purpose from this view. The founder of this view, which Goethe found prevalent among natural scientists and which still occupies the same position today, is Newton. It claims that white light, as it emanates from the sun, is composed of colored lights. The colors are created by separating the individual components from the white light. If you allow sunlight to enter a dark room through a small round opening and catch it on a white screen placed vertically against the direction of the incident light, you obtain a white image of the sun. If you place a glass prism between the opening and the screen, through which the light shines, the white round image of the sun changes. It appears shifted, elongated and colored. This image is called the solar spectrum. If the prism is positioned so that the upper parts of the light have a shorter path within the glass mass than the lower parts, the colored image is shifted downwards. The upper edge of the image is red, the lower violet; the red fades downwards into yellow, the violet upwards into blue; the middle part of the image is generally white. Only at a certain distance of the screen from the prism does the white in the middle disappear completely; the whole image appears colored, namely from top to bottom in the following sequence: red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, indigo, violet. From this experiment, Newton and his followers concluded that the colors were originally contained in the white light, but were mixed together. They are separated from each other by the prism. They have the property of being deflected from their direction, i.e. refracted, to different degrees when passing through a transparent body. Red light is refracted the least, violet the most. They appear in the spectrum in order of their refractive power. If you look at a narrow strip of paper on a black background through the prism, it also appears deflected. It is both wider and colored at its edges. The upper edge appears violet, the lower red; here too the violet fades into blue, the red into yellow; the center is generally white. Only at a certain distance of the prism from the stripe does it appear completely colored. The green appears again in the center. Here, too, the white of the strip of paper should be broken down into its colored components. The Newtonians explain simply that only at a certain distance of the screen or strip from the prism do all colors appear, while otherwise the middle is white. They say: in the center, the more strongly deflected lights from the upper part of the image coincide with the less strongly deflected lights from the lower part and mix to form white. Only at the edges do the colors appear, because no more strongly deflected light from above can fall into the most weakly deflected parts and no more weakly deflected light from below can fall into the most strongly deflected parts.

[ 3 ] This is the view from which Goethe can develop nothing for his purpose. He therefore wants to observe the phenomena himself. He turned to Privy Councillor Büttner in Jena, who lent him the apparatus with which he could carry out the necessary experiments. He is initially occupied with other work and, at Büttner's insistence, wants to return the apparatus. Before doing so, he takes a prism to look through it at a completely whitewashed wall. He expects it to appear colored in different shades. But it remains white. Colors only appear where the white meets the dark. The window bars appear in the most vivid colors. From these observations Goethe believes that Newton's view is wrong, that colors are not contained in white light. The boundary, the dark, must have something to do with the emergence of colors. He continued the experiments. White areas on a black background and black areas on a white background are observed. Gradually he forms his own view. A white disk on a black background appears shifted when viewed through the prism. According to Goethe, the upper parts of the disk are pushed over the adjacent black background, while this background extends over the lower parts of the disk. If you now look through the prism, you can see the black ground through the upper part of the disk as if through a white veil. If you look at the lower part of the disc, it shines through the superimposed darkness. At the top, a light is superimposed over a dark; at the bottom, a dark is superimposed over a light. The upper edge appears blue, the lower yellow. The blue changes to violet towards the black; the yellow changes to red towards the bottom. If the prism is removed from the observed disc, the colored edges widen; the blue downwards, the yellow upwards. At a sufficient distance, the yellow from below overlaps the blue from above; the overlapping creates green in the middle. To confirm this view, Goethe looks at a black disk on a white background through the prism. Now a dark color is passed over a light color at the top and a light color over a dark color at the bottom. Yellow appears at the top, blue at the bottom. When the edges are widened by removing the prism from the disc, the blue at the bottom, which gradually changes to violet towards the center, is passed over the yellow at the top, which gradually takes on a red tone as it widens. The result is peach blossom in the middle. Goethe said to himself: what is true for the white disk must also be true for the black one. "If the light there dissolves into so many different colors ... the darkness here must also be regarded as dissolved into colors." ("Konfession des Verfassers", Kürschner, Vol. 36/2.) Goethe now shared his observations and the misgivings he had about Newton's view with a physicist he knew. The latter declared the doubts to be unfounded. He deduced the colored edges and the white in the middle, as well as its transition to green, at a proper distance of the prism from the observed object, in the sense of Newton's view. Other naturalists to whom Goethe put the matter were similar. He continued the observations, for which he would have liked to have had the help of knowledgeable experts, on his own. He had a large prism assembled from mirror disks, which he filled with pure water. Because he noticed that the glass prisms, whose cross-section is an equilateral triangle, are often obstructive to the observer due to the strong broadening of the color appearance, he had his large prism given the cross-section of an isosceles triangle, whose smallest angle is only fifteen to twenty degrees. Goethe calls the experiments that are carried out in such a way that the eye looks through the prism at an object subjective. They present themselves to the eye, but are not fixed in the external world. He wants to add objective ones to these. To do this, he uses the water prism. The light shines through a prism, and behind the prism the color image is captured on a screen. Goethe now lets the sunlight pass through the openings of cut-out cardboard. The result is an illuminated space surrounded by darkness. This limited mass of light passes through the prism and is deflected from its direction by it. If a screen is held up to the mass of light coming out of the prism, an image is formed on it which is generally colored at the top and bottom edges. If the prism is positioned so that its cross-section narrows from top to bottom, the upper edge of the image is colored blue and the lower edge yellow. The blue changes to violet towards the dark space and to light blue towards the light center; the yellow changes to red towards the darkness. Goethe also derives the color appearance of this phenomenon from the border. At the top, the bright mass of light radiates into the dark space; it illuminates a dark area, which thus appears blue. Below, the dark space radiates into the light mass; it darkens a light and makes it appear yellow. By removing the screen from the prism, the edges of the colors become wider, the yellow approaches the blue. By shining the blue into the yellow, green appears in the center of the picture when the screen is sufficiently removed from the prism. Goethe visualizes the radiation of the light into the dark and the dark into the light by creating a fine white cloud of dust in the line in which the mass of light passes through the dark space, which he produces with fine dry hair powder. "The more or less colored appearance is now caught by the white atoms and presented to the eye in its entire width and length." (Farbenlehre, didaktischer Teil § 326.) Goethe finds his view, which he gained from the subjective phenomena, confirmed by the objective ones. Colors are produced by the interaction of light and dark. The prism only serves to push light and dark over one another.

[ 4 ] After making these experiments, Goethe cannot adopt the Newtonian view as his own. His approach to it is similar to that of Haller's theory of nesting. Just as the latter thinks the formed organism with all its parts already contained in the germ, so the Newtonians believe that the colors which appear in the light under certain conditions are already enclosed in it. He could use the same words against this belief that he used against the nesting doctrine, that it "is based on a mere extra-sensory imagination, on an assumption that one believes to think, but can never represent in the world of the senses." Cf. the essay on K. Fr. Wolff, Kürschner, vol. 33.) For him, colors are new formations that are developed in the light, not entities that are merely unwound from the light. Because of his "way of thinking in accordance with the idea" he must reject the Newtonian view. This does not recognize the essence of the ideal. It only recognizes what actually exists. What exists in the same way as the sensually perceptible. And where it cannot prove actuality through the senses, it assumes it hypothetically. Because the colors develop in the light, and must therefore according to the idea already be contained in it, it believes that they are also actually, materially contained in it and are only brought out by the prism and the dark outline. Goethe knows that the idea is active in the world of the senses; therefore he does not transfer something that is present as an idea into the realm of the actual. The ideal works in inorganic nature just as it does in organic nature, only not as a sensuous-supersensible form. Its outer appearance is entirely material, merely sensual. It does not penetrate the sensual; it does not spiritualize it. The processes of inorganic nature proceed according to law, and this lawfulness presents itself to the observer as an idea. If one perceives white light at one point in space and colors arising at another, there is a lawful connection between the two perceptions that can be presented as an idea. But if someone embodies this idea and transposes it into space as an actuality, which moves from the object of one perception into that of the other, this arises from a gross sensory mode of perception. It is this gross sensuality that repels Goethe from the Newtonian view. It is the idea that leads one inorganic process into another, not an actuality that moves from one to the other.

[ 5 ] The Goethean worldview can only recognize two sources for all knowledge of inorganic natural processes: that which is sensually perceptible in these processes, and the ideal connections of the sensually perceptible that reveal themselves to thought. The ideal connections within the sensory world are not of the same kind. There are those that are immediately obvious when sensory perceptions occur side by side or one after the other, and others that can only be seen through when they are traced back to those of the first kind. In the appearance that presents itself to the eye when it looks at a dark through a light and perceives blue, Goethe believes he recognizes a connection of the first kind between light, darkness and color. It is the same when light is seen through dark and produces yellow. The peripheral phenomena of the spectrum reveal a connection that becomes clear through direct observation. The spectrum, which shows seven colors from red to violet in a gradual sequence, can only be understood if you can see how other colors are added to the conditions that create the marginal phenomena. The simple marginal phenomena have combined in the spectrum to form a complicated phenomenon that can only be understood if it is derived from the basic phenomena. What stands before the observer in its purity in the basic phenomenon appears impure, modified by the added conditions in the complicated phenomenon. The simple facts are no longer immediately recognizable. Goethe therefore seeks to trace the complicated phenomena everywhere back to the simple, pure ones. In this reduction he sees the explanation of inorganic nature. He goes no further from the pure phenomenon. It reveals an ideal connection between sensory perceptions that is self-explanatory. Goethe calls the pure phenomenon the primal phenomenon. He considers it moderate speculation to think further about the primordial phenomenon. "The magnet is a primordial phenomenon that one may only pronounce in order to have explained it." (Proverbs in Prose, Kürschner, vol. 36.) A composite phenomenon is explained when one shows how it is built up from primordial phenomena.

[ 6 ] Modern natural science takes a different approach to Goethe. It wants to trace the processes in the sensory world back to the movements of the smallest parts of the body and uses the same laws to explain these movements by which it understands the movements that take place visibly in space. Explaining these visible movements is the task of mechanics. If the movement of a body is observed, mechanics asks: By what force has it been set in motion; what path does it cover in a given time; what is the shape of the line in which it moves, etc. The relationships between the force, the distance traveled and the shape of the path are represented mathematically. Now the naturalist says: The red light can be traced back to an oscillating movement of the smallest parts of the body, which propagates in space. This movement is understood by applying the laws of mechanics to it. The science of inorganic nature regards it as its goal to gradually transition completely into applied mechanics.

[ 7 ] Modern physics asks for the number of oscillations in a unit of time that correspond to a certain color quality. From the number of vibrations that correspond to red and those that correspond to violet, it seeks to determine the physical relationship between the two colors. The qualitative aspect disappears before her eyes; she observes the spatial and temporal aspects of the processes. Goethe asks: What is the connection between red and violet if one disregards the spatial and temporal and only considers the qualitative aspects of the colors? Goethe's way of looking at things presupposes that the qualitative is really also present in the external world and is an inseparable whole with the temporal and spatial. Modern physics, on the other hand, must proceed from the basic assumption that only the quantitative, lightless and colorless processes of movement are present in the external world, and that everything qualitative only arises as an effect of the quantitative on the organism endowed with sense and spirit. If this assumption were correct, then the lawful connections of the qualitative could not be sought in the external world, but had to be derived from the nature of the sensory organs, the nervous system and the organ of imagination. The qualitative elements of the processes would then not be the subject of physical investigation, but of physiological and psychological investigation. Modern natural science proceeds according to this premise. In its view, the organism translates one movement process into the sensation of red, another into that of violet, according to the arrangement of its eyes, its optic nerve and its brain. Therefore, everything external to the world of color is explained once one has understood the connection between the processes of movement that determine this world.

[ 8 ] Proof of this view is sought in the following observation. The optic nerve perceives every external impression as a sensation of light. Not only light, but also a bump or pressure on the eye, a strain on the retina when the eye moves rapidly, an electric current passing through the head: all these things cause light perception. The same things are felt by another sense in a different way. Shock, pressure, strain, electric current, when they excite the skin, cause tactile sensations. Electricity excites a sensation of hearing in the ear and a sensation of taste on the tongue. From this it can be concluded that the sensory content that occurs in the organism as a result of an external influence is different from the external process that causes it. The red color is not perceived by the organism because it is bound to a corresponding process of movement outside in space, but because the eye, optic nerve and brain of the organism are set up in such a way that they translate a colorless process of movement into a color. The law expressed here was called the law of specific sensory energies by the physiologist Johannes Müller, who first established it.

[ 9 ] The above observation only proves that the sensory and mentally gifted organism can translate the most diverse impressions into the language of the senses on which they are exerted. However, it does not prove that the content of every sensory sensation is only present within the organism. When the optic nerve is strained, an indefinite, quite general excitement arises which contains nothing that causes its content to be transferred into space. A sensation that arises from a real impression of light is inseparably connected in content with the spatio-temporal that corresponds to it. The movement of a body and its color are perceptual content in quite the same way. When we imagine the movement for ourselves, we abstract from what else we perceive about the body. Like movement, all other mechanical and mathematical concepts are taken from the world of perception. Mathematics and mechanics arise from the fact that a part of the content of the world of perception is separated out and considered in its own right. In reality there are no objects or processes whose content is exhausted when one has understood what can be expressed by mathematics and mechanics. Everything mathematical and mechanical is bound to color, heat and other qualities. If it is necessary for physics to assume that the perception of a color corresponds to vibrations in space, which have a very small extension and a very great speed, then these movements can only be thought of as analogous to the movements that occur visibly in space. In other words, if the physical world is conceived as moving down to its smallest elements, then it must also be conceived as endowed with color, warmth and other properties down to its smallest elements. Whoever conceives of colors, warmth, sounds, etc., as qualities that exist only within the imagining organism as effects of external processes, must also transfer everything mathematical and mechanical that is connected with these qualities to this interior. But then he has nothing left for his outer world. The red that I see and the light vibrations that the physicist proves to correspond to this red are in reality a unity that only the abstracting mind can separate from each other. I would see the vibrations in space, which correspond to the quality "red", as movement if my eye were organized for it. But I would have the impression of the red color in connection with the movement.

[ 10 ] Modern natural science transposes an unreal abstract, a vibrating substrate stripped of all sensory qualities into space and wonders why it is impossible to understand what can cause the imaginative organism, equipped with nervous apparatus and brain, to translate these indifferent processes of movement into the colorful world of the senses, interspersed with degrees of warmth and tones. Du Bois-Reymond therefore assumes that man will never understand how the fact: "I taste sweetness, smell the scent of roses, hear the sound of an organ, see red" is connected with certain movements of the smallest parts of the body in the brain, which movements are in turn caused by the vibrations of the tasteless, odorless, soundless and colorless elements of the outer body world. "It is absolutely and forever incomprehensible that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. atoms should not be indifferent to each other. atoms should not be indifferent to how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how they will lie and move." ("Grenzen des Naturerkennens", Leipzig 1882, p.33f.) However, there is absolutely no limit to knowledge here. Where there is a number of atoms in a certain movement in space, there is necessarily also a certain quality (e.g. red). And vice versa, where red occurs, motion must be present. Only abstract thinking can separate the one from the other. Anyone who thinks of movement as separate from the rest of the content of the process to which the movement belongs in reality cannot find the transition from one to the other.

[ 11 ] Only what is movement in a process can be derived from movement; what belongs to the qualitative world of color and light can also only be traced back to a similar qualitative within the same field. Mechanics traces compound movements back to simple ones that are immediately comprehensible. Color theory must trace complicated color phenomena back to simple ones that can be understood in the same way. A simple process of movement is just as much a primordial phenomenon as the emergence of yellow from the interaction of light and dark. Goethe knows what the mechanical primal phenomena can do for the explanation of inorganic nature. What is not mechanical within the physical world, he traces back to primordial phenomena that are not mechanical. Goethe has been reproached for rejecting the mechanical view of nature and limiting himself to the observation and juxtaposition of the sensible and vivid. Cf. e.g. Harnack in his book "Goethe in der Epoche seiner Vollendung", p. 12) Du Bois-Reymond finds ("Goethe und kein Ende", Leipzig 1883, p.29): "Goethe's theorizing is limited to allowing other phenomena to emerge from a primal phenomenon, as he calls it, such as one nebulous image follows another, without any plausible causal connection. It was the concept of mechanical causality that Goethe completely missed." But what does mechanics do other than allow complex processes to emerge from simple primordial phenomena? Goethe did exactly the same in the field of the world of color as the mechanic does in the field of motion processes. Because Goethe is not of the opinion that all processes in inorganic nature are purely mechanical, the concept of mechanical causality has been denied him. Whoever does this only shows that he himself is mistaken about what mechanical causality means within the physical world. Goethe remains within the qualitative aspects of the world of light and color; he leaves the quantitative, mechanical aspects, which are to be expressed mathematically, to others. He "has sought to keep the theory of color quite distant from mathematics, even though certain points arise clearly enough where the aid of the art of measurement would be desirable ... But even this deficiency may be an advantage, since it can now become the business of the ingenious mathematician to find out for himself where color theory needs his help and how he can contribute to the completion of this part of natural science." (§ 727 of the didactic part of the Theory of Colors.) The qualitative elements of the sense of sight: light, darkness, colors must first be understood from their own contexts, traced back to primordial phenomena; then, at a higher level of thinking, the relationship between these contexts and the quantitative, the mechanical-mathematical in the world of light and color can be investigated.

[ 12 ] The connections within the qualitative aspects of the world of color Goethe wants to trace back to the simplest elements in the same strict sense as the mathematician or mechanic does in his field. We have to learn from the mathematicians the "thoughtfulness of merely stringing together the next to the next, or rather of deducing the next from the next, and even where we make no use of a calculation, we must always proceed as if we owed an account to the most rigorous geometrician. - For it is actually the mathematical method which, on account of its deliberateness and purity, immediately reveals every leap in the assertion, and its proofs are really only circumstantial explanations that what is put forward in connection has already been there in its simple parts and in its whole sequence, has been overlooked in its whole scope and has been invented correctly and irrefutably under all conditions." (" Der Versuch als Vermittler von Subjekt und Objekt" Kürschner, vol. 34).

[ 13 ] Goethe takes the explanatory principles for phenomena directly from the realm of observation. He shows how phenomena are connected within the tangible world. He rejects ideas that point beyond the field of observation for the conception of nature. All types of explanation that transcend the field of experience by invoking factors for the explanation of nature that are not observable by their nature contradict Goethe's world view. One such type of explanation is that which seeks the essence of light in a luminous substance which as such cannot be perceived, but can only be observed in its mode of action as light. Also among these types of explanation is the one prevailing in modern natural science, according to which the processes of movement in the world of light are not carried out by the perceptible qualities given to the sense of sight, but by the smallest parts of the imperceptible substance. It does not contradict Goethe's view of the world to imagine that a certain color is connected with a certain process of movement in space. But it certainly contradicts it if it is claimed that this process of movement belongs to a realm of reality outside of experience, the world of matter, which can be observed in its effects but not in its own essence. For a follower of Goethe's world view, the oscillations of light in space are processes that have no other kind of reality than the rest of the content of perception. They elude direct observation not because they lie beyond the realm of experience, but because the human sense organs are not so finely organized that they can directly perceive movements of such smallness. If an eye were so organized that it could still observe in detail the swinging to and fro of an object that repeats itself four hundred trillion times in one second, such a process would present itself in exactly the same way as one of the gross sensory world. In other words, the vibrating thing would exhibit the same properties as other perceptual things.

[ 14 ] Any kind of explanation that derives the things and processes of experience from others that are not located within the field of experience can only arrive at substantive ideas of this realm of reality that lies beyond observation by borrowing certain properties from the world of experience and transferring them to the inexperient. Thus the physicist transfers hardness and impenetrability to the smallest physical elements, to which he also ascribes the ability to attract and repel their equals; on the other hand, he does not attribute color, warmth and other properties to these elements. He believes he can explain a tangible process of nature by tracing it back to a non-experiential one. In Du Bois-Reymond's view, recognizing nature means tracing the processes in the physical world back to the movements of atoms, which are caused by their attractive and repulsive forces ("Grenzen des Naturerkennens", Leipzig 1882, p. 10). Matter, the substance that fills space, is assumed to be the moving element. This substance is said to have existed from eternity and will continue to exist for all eternity. Matter, however, is not supposed to belong to the realm of observation, but to exist beyond it. Du Bois-Reymond therefore assumes that man is incapable of recognizing the nature of matter itself, that he therefore attributes the processes of the physical world to something whose nature will always remain unknown to him. "We will never know better than we do today what is haunting space, where matter is." ("Grenzen des Naturerkennens", p.22.) Before a precise consideration, this concept of matter dissolves into nothing The real content that one gives to this concept is borrowed from the world of experience. One perceives movements within the world of experience. You feel a pull when you hold a weight in your hand and a push when you place a weight on your horizontally held palm. To explain this perception, we form the concept of force. Imagine that the earth attracts the weight. The force itself cannot be perceived. It is ideal. But it does belong to the field of observation. The mind observes it because it observes the ideal relationships between perceptions. One is led to the concept of a repulsive force if one squeezes a piece of rubber and then leaves it to itself. It restores itself to its former shape and size. One imagines that the compressed parts of the rubber repel each other and regain their former volume. Such ideas, drawn from observation, are transferred to the unperceivable realm of reality. In reality, therefore, it does nothing more than derive one experienceable thing from another experienceable thing. It only arbitrarily transfers the latter into the realm of the unperceivable. Every mode of conception that speaks of an unperceivable within the view of nature must be shown to take some lobes from the realm of experience and refer them to a realm of reality beyond observation. If one removes the lobes of experience from the concept of the inconceivable, what remains is a concept without content, a non-concept. The explanation of an experience can only consist in tracing it back to another experience. Finally, one arrives at elements within experience that can no longer be traced back to others. These cannot be explained further because they do not require any explanation. They contain their explanation within themselves. Their immediate essence consists in what they offer to observation. For Goethe, one such element is light. In his view, light is recognized by those who perceive it impartially in its appearance. Colors arise from light and their emergence is understood when one shows how they arise from it. Light itself is given in direct perception. What is ideally determined in it can be recognized by observing the connection between it and the colors. To ask about the essence of light, about an inexperience that corresponds to the phenomenon of "light", is impossible from the point of view of Goethe's world view. "For we actually undertake to express the essence of a thing in vain. We become aware of effects, and a complete history of these effects would at best encompass the essence of that thing." That is to say, a complete representation of the effects of an experiencable comprises all phenomena that are ideally predisposed in it. "In vain do we endeavor to portray the character of a man; but put together his actions, his deeds, and a picture of character will confront us. - The colors are deeds of light, deeds and suffering. In this sense, we can expect them to provide us with information about light." (Didactic part of the Theory of Colors. Preface.)

[ 15 ] Light presents itself to observation as "the simplest, most undissected, most homogeneous being that we know." (Correspondence with Jacobi, p. 167.) Opposed to it is darkness. For Goethe, darkness is not the completely powerless absence of light. It is something effective. It opposes the light and interacts with it. Modern natural science sees darkness as a complete nothingness. According to this view, the light that streams into a dark room has no resistance from the darkness to overcome. Goethe imagines that light and darkness relate to each other like the north and south poles of a magnet. Darkness can weaken the power of light. Conversely, light can limit the energy of darkness. In both cases, color is created. A physical view that thinks of darkness as something completely ineffective cannot speak of such an interaction. It must therefore derive color from light alone. Darkness appears to the observer just as much as light. Darkness is the content of perception in the same sense as light. The one is only the opposite of the other. The eye that looks out into the night conveys the real perception of darkness. If darkness were absolute nothingness, there would be no perception at all when a person looks out into the darkness.

[ 16 ] The yellow is light attenuated by darkness; the blue is darkness attenuated by light.

[ 17 ] The eye is designed to convey the phenomena of the world of light and color and the relationships between these phenomena to the imagining organism. In doing so, it does not merely absorb, but enters into lively interaction with the phenomena. Goethe strives to recognize the nature of this interaction. He regards the eye as a living thing and wants to see through its vital manifestations. How does the eye relate to the individual phenomenon? How does it relate to the relationships between the phenomena? These are the questions he asks himself. Light and darkness, yellow and blue are opposites. How does the eye perceive these opposites? It must be in the nature of the eye that it also perceives the interrelationships that exist between the individual perceptions. For "the eye owes its existence to the light. From indifferent animal auxiliary organs, light calls forth an organ that becomes its equal; and thus the eye forms itself for light by light, so that the inner light confronts the outer light." (Didactic part of the Theory of Colors. Introduction.)

[ 18 ] Just as light and darkness are opposed to each other in external nature, so the two states into which the eye is placed by the two phenomena are opposed to each other. If the eye is kept open in a dark room, a certain lack of light becomes perceptible. If, on the other hand, it is turned towards a strongly illuminated white surface, it becomes incapable of distinguishing moderately illuminated objects for a certain period of time. Seeing into the dark increases sensitivity; seeing into the light weakens it.

[ 19 ] Every impression on the eye remains in it for a time. If you look at a black window cross on a light background, when you close your eyes you will still have the impression in front of you for a while. If you look at a light gray surface while the impression is still lasting, the cross appears light and the window space dark. The appearance is reversed. It follows that the eye is disposed by one impression to produce the opposite impression from itself. Just as light and darkness are related to each other in the outside world, so are the corresponding states in the eye. Goethe imagines that the place in the eye on which the dark cross fell is rested and receptive to a new impression. That is why the gray area has a more vivid effect on him than on the other places in the eye that previously received the stronger light from the window panes. Light causes the eye to lean towards dark; dark towards light. If you hold a dark image in front of a light gray surface and look at the same spot without looking at it, the space occupied by the dark image appears much brighter than the rest of the surface. A gray image on a dark background appears brighter than the same image on a light background. The eye is predisposed by the dark ground to see the picture brighter; by the light ground to see it darker. Goethe is reminded by these phenomena of the great responsiveness of the eye "and the silent contradiction that every living thing is compelled to express when it is presented with any particular state. Thus inhalation presupposes exhalation and vice versa... It is the eternal formula of life that is also expressed here. Just as the eye is offered the dark, so it demands the light; it demands the dark when it is offered the light and thereby shows its vitality, its right to grasp the object, by bringing forth from itself something that is opposed to the object." (§ 38 of the didactic part of the Theory of Colors.)

[ 20 ] In a similar way to light and darkness, color perceptions also evoke a counter-effect in the eye. Hold a small piece of yellow-colored paper in front of a moderately illuminated white board and look at the small yellow area without changing your gaze. After a while, lift the paper away. You will see that the area which the paper has filled is purple. The eye is predisposed by the impression of the yellow to produce the violet from itself. In the same way, the blue will produce the orange, the red the green as a counter-effect. Each color sensation therefore has a living relationship to another in the eye. The states into which the eye is placed by perceptions are related in a similar way to the contents of these perceptions in the outside world.

[ 21 ] When light and darkness, light and dark act on the eye, this living organ confronts them with its demands; if they act on the things outside in space, these interact with them. Empty space has the property of transparency. It has no effect at all on light and darkness. These shine through it in their own vividness. It is different when the space is filled with things. This filling can be such that the eye is not aware of it because light and darkness shine through it in their original form. Then one speaks of transparent things. If light and darkness do not shine through a thing undiminished, it is called cloudy. The cloudy filling of space offers the possibility of observing light and darkness, light and dark in their mutual relationship. A light seen through a cloudy space appears yellow, a dark blue. The cloudy is a material thing that is illuminated by the light. Compared to a brighter, more vivid light behind it, the cloudy is dark; compared to a translucent darkness, it behaves as light. Thus, when a cloudy object opposes light or darkness, an existing light and an equally dark object really interact.

[ 22 ] If the cloudiness through which the light shines gradually increases, the yellow changes to yellow-red and then to ruby-red. If the opacity through which the dark penetrates decreases, the blue changes to indigo and finally to violet. Yellow and blue are primary colors. They are created by the interaction of the light or dark with the cloudy color. Both can take on a reddish tone, the former by increasing, the latter by reducing the cloudiness. Red is therefore not a basic color. It appears as a hue next to the yellow or blue. Yellow with its reddish nuances, which increase to pure red, is close to light, blue with its shades is related to darkness. When blue and yellow mix, the result is green; when blue, which is intensified to violet, mixes with yellow, which is darkened to red, the result is purple.

[ 23 ] Goethe traces these basic phenomena within nature. The bright disk of the sun seen through a pile of cloudy vapours appears yellow. Dark outer space, seen through the vapors of the atmosphere illuminated by daylight, appears as the blue of the sky. "In the same way the mountains also appear blue to us: for when we see them at such a distance that we no longer see the local colors, and no light from their surface affects our eye, they are regarded as a pure dark object, which now appears blue through the intervening vapors." (§ 156 of the didactic part of the Theory of Colors.)

[ 24 ] From his immersion in the works of art of the painters, Goethe felt the need to penetrate the laws to which the phenomena of the sense of sight are subject. Every painting posed a riddle for him. How does the chiaroscuro relate to the colors? What is the relationship between the individual colors? Why does yellow create a cheerful mood and blue a serious one? Newton's theory of color did not provide a point of view from which these mysteries could be unraveled. It derives all colors from light, juxtaposes them in stages and says nothing about their relationship to the dark, nor about their living relationships to one another. Goethe was able to solve the riddles that art had given him from the insights he had gained on his own. Yellow must possess a cheerful, lively, gently charming quality, for it is the closest color to light. It arises from the mildest moderation of it. Blue points to the dark that is at work in it. That is why it gives a feeling of coldness, just as "it also reminds us of shadows". The reddish yellow is created by increasing the yellow on the side of the dark. This intensification increases its energy. The cheerful, cheerfulness merges into the blissful. As soon as the increase goes even further, from reddish yellow to yellowish red, the cheerful, blissful feeling is transformed into an impression of violence. The violet is the blue striving towards the light. The calm and coldness of the blue thus becomes restlessness. This restlessness is further intensified in the blue-red. The pure red stands in the middle between yellow-red and blue-red. The storminess of the yellow appears diminished, the casual calm of the blue is revitalized. The red gives the impression of ideal satisfaction, the balancing of opposites. A feeling of satisfaction is also created by the green, which is a mixture of yellow and blue. But because the cheerfulness of the yellow is not heightened here and the calm of the blue is not disturbed by the reddish tone, the satisfaction will be purer than that produced by the red.

[ 25 ] When the eye is confronted with one color, it immediately demands another. If it sees yellow, it longs for violet; if it perceives blue, it desires orange; if it sees red, it desires green. It is understandable that the feeling of satisfaction arises when, next to one color presented to the eye, another is placed which it naturally desires. The law of color harmony arises from the nature of the eye. Colors that the eye demands next to each other appear harmonious. If two colors appear side by side, one of which does not demand the other, the eye is stimulated to counteract them. The combination of yellow and purple has something one-sided, but cheerful and splendid about it. The eye wants violet next to yellow in order to be able to express itself naturally. If purple takes the place of violet, the object asserts its claims against those of the eye. It does not submit to the demands of the organ. Compositions of this kind serve to point out the significance of things. They are not necessarily intended to satisfy, but to characterize. Colors that are not in complete contrast to one another, but which do not merge directly into one another, are suitable for such characteristic combinations. Compositions of the latter kind give the things in which they occur something characterless.

[ 26 ] The becoming and essence of light and color phenomena was revealed to Goethe in nature. He also recognized it in the creations of painters, in which it is raised to a higher level, translated into the spiritual. Goethe gained a deep insight into the relationship between nature and art through his observations of facial perceptions. He may well have been thinking of this when he wrote to Frau von Stein about these observations after completing the "Theory of Colors": "I am not sorry to have devoted so much time to them. I have thereby attained a culture that I would have found difficult to obtain from any other source."

[ 27 ] Goethe's theory of color is different from that of Newton and those physicists who base their views on Newton's ideas, because the former proceeds from a different world view than the latter. Anyone who does not see the connection between Goethe's general conceptions of nature and his theory of color, as described here, cannot help but believe that Goethe arrived at his conceptions of color because he lacked a sense for the physicist's genuine methods of observation. Anyone who sees through this connection will also realize that no other theory of color is possible within Goethe's view of the world than his own. He could not have thought differently about the nature of color phenomena than he did, even if all the discoveries made in this field since his time had been laid out before him, and even if he himself had been able to use the experimental methods that are now so perfected. Even if, after he became acquainted with the discovery of Fraunhofer's lines, he could not fully integrate them into his view of nature, neither they nor any other discovery in the optical field would be an objection to his view. In all this it is only a question of developing this Goethean conception in such a way that these phenomena fit into it in their sense. It must be admitted that those who stand on the point of view of Newton's conception cannot imagine anything in Goethe's views of color. However, this is not because such a physicist is familiar with phenomena that contradict Goethe's view, but because he has become accustomed to a view of nature that prevents him from recognizing what Goethe's view of nature actually wants.