| 291. Colour: Colour-Experience
06 May 1921, Dornach Tr. Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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| They suit the meadow everywhere; they have no inner connection with the green meadow. We pass on to the third; we look at the blue figures in the green meadow. That does not last long, for the blue figures deaden the green meadow to us. |
| What this means can best be realized by looking at a man in whom the psychic nature is withdrawn somewhat and does not ensoul the outer form. What colour does he then become? Green; he becomes green. Life is there, but he becomes green. We speak of green men; we know the peculiar green of the complexion when the soul is withdrawn; we can see this very well by the colour of the complexion. |
| The living, however, if it appear as a living being, must appear green, it must image itself in green; that is something objective. |
| 291. Colour: Colour-Experience
06 May 1921, Dornach Tr. Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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Colour, the subject of these three lectures, interests the physicist and—though we shall not speak of it from this aspect today—it interests also—or should do—the psychologist; more than all these, it must interest the artist, the painter. In a survey of the modern idea of the world of colour, we notice that although the psychologist may, admittedly, have something to say about the subjective experience of colour this is nevertheless of no value for the knowledge of the objective nature of the world of colour—a knowledge which really lies only in the province of the physicist. In the first place, Art is not allowed to decide anything at all about the nature of colour and its quality in the objective sense. At the present time people are very far from what Goethe intended in his oft-repeated utterance: “The man to whom Nature begins to reveal her open secret feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter—Art.” Any one who, like Goethe, really lives in art, can never doubt that what the artist has to say about the world of colour must be bound up with the nature of colour. In ordinary life colour is dealt with according to the surface of the objects presenting themselves to us as coloured, according to the impressions received through the nature of the coloured object. We obtain the colour fluctuating, in a sense, varying, as it were, through the well-known prismatic experiment, and we look into, or try to look into the world of colour in many ways. In so doing we have always in mind the idea that we ought to estimate colour according to subjective impressions. For a long time it has been the custom—we might say, the mischievous custom—in some places, to contend that what we perceive as a coloured world really exists only for our senses, whereas in the world outside, objective colour presents nothing but certain undulatory movements of the very finest substance, known as ether. Any one who wishes to form an idea from definitions and explanations such as these is able to make nothing of the concept that what he knows as colour-impressions, his personal experience of colour, has to do with some kind of ether in motion. Yet when people speak of the quality of colour, they really have only the subjective impression in mind, and seek for something objective. They then wander away from colour, however, for in all the vibrations of ether which are thought out, there is really nothing further from the content of our real world of colour. In order to arrive at the objective nature of colour we must try to keep to the world of colour itself and not leave it; then we may hope to fathom its real nature. Let us try for a while to sink ourselves into something which can be given us from the whole wide, varied world of colour. Then in order to penetrate into the nature of colour, we must experience something in regard to it which raises the whole consideration into our life of feeling. We must try to question our feeling as to what colour is in our surrounding world. In a sense we shall best proceed by means of an inward experiment, so that we may have before us not only the processes which on the whole are difficult to analyze and are not easily seen, but we will proceed at once to the essential thing. Suppose we colour a flat surface green. We shall only sketch this roughly. (see Diagram 1) If we simply allow the colour to stimulate our feelings, we can experience something in green as such, something which we need not define further. No one will doubt that we can experience the same thing when gazing on the green plant-covering of the earth; we must do so, of course, because it is green. We must disregard everything else offered by the plants, as we only wish to look at the greenness. Let us suppose we have this greenness before our mental eyes.  When painting, we can introduce different colours into this greenness. Let us picture three. We have before us three green surfaces. Into the first we will introduce red; into the second, peach-blossom colour; into the third, blue. You must admit that the sensation aroused is very different in the three cases, that there is a certain quality of sensation when red, peach-blossom colour, or blue forms are pictured in the green. It is now a question of expressing in some way the content of the sensation thus presented to our soul. If we wish to express such a thing as this, we must try to characterize it, for extremely little can be attained by abstract definitions. We must try to describe it somehow. Let us try to do so by bringing a little imagination into what we have painted before us. Suppose we really wish to produce the sensation of a green surface in the first place, and in it we paint red figures. Whether we give them red faces and red skin, or whether we paint them entirely red, is immaterial. In the first example we paint red figures; in the second, peach-blossom colour—which would approximate human flesh-colour—and on the third green surface we paint blue figures. We are not copying Nature in this experiment, but placing something before the soul in order to bring a complex of sensation into discussion. Suppose we have before us this landscape: Across a green meadow red, peach-blossom colour or blue figures are passing; in each of the three cases we have an utterly different complex of sensation. If we look at the first we shall say: These red figures in the green meadow enliven the whole of it. The meadow is greener because of them; it becomes still more saturated with green, more vivid because red figures are there, and we ought to be enraged on seeing these red figures. We may say: That is really nonsense, an impossible case. I should really have to make the red figures like lightning, they must be moving. Red figures at rest in a green meadow act disturbingly in their repose, for they are already in motion by reason of their red colour; they produce something in the meadow which it is really impossible to picture at rest. We must come into a very definite complex of feeling if we wish to make such a concept at all. The second example is harmonious. The peach-blossom coloured figures can stand there indefinitely; if they stand there for an hour it does not trouble us. Our sensation tells us that these peach-blossom coloured figures have really no special conditions; they do not disturb the meadow, they do not enhance its greenness, they are quite neutral. They may stand where they will, it does not trouble us. They suit the meadow everywhere; they have no inner connection with the green meadow. We pass on to the third; we look at the blue figures in the green meadow. That does not last long, for the blue figures deaden the green meadow to us. The greenness of the meadow is weakened. It does not remain green. Let us try to realize the right imagination of blue figures walking over a green meadow; or blue beings generally, they might be blue spirits. The meadow ceases to be green, it takes on some of the blueness, it becomes itself bluish, it ceases to be green. If the figures stay there long we can no longer picture them at all; we have the idea that there must be somewhere an abyss, and that the blue figures take the meadow from us, carry it away and cast it into the abyss. It becomes impossible; for a green meadow cannot remain if blue figures stand there; they take it away with them. That is colour-experience. It must be possible to have it, otherwise we shall not understand the world of colour. If we wish to acquaint ourselves with something which finds its most beautiful and significant application in imagination, we must be able to experiment in that sphere. We must be able to ask ourselves: What happens to a green meadow when red figures walk therein? It becomes still greener; it becomes very real in its greenness. The green begins veritably to burn. The red figures bring so much life into the greenness that we cannot think of them in repose. They must really be running about. If we wish to portray it exactly and to paint the true picture of the meadow, we should not paint red figures standing quietly in it; they must be seen dancing in a ring. A ring of red dancers would be permissible in a green meadow. On the other hand, people clothed not in red but entirely in flesh-colour might stand for all eternity in a green meadow. They are quite neutral to the green; they are absolutely indifferent to the meadow; it remains as it is, not the slightest tint is altered. In the case of the blue figures, however, they run from us with the meadow, for the entire meadow loses its greenness because of them. We must, of course, speak comparatively when speaking of experiences in colour. We cannot talk like pedants about colour-experiences, for we cannot approach them so. We must speak in analogy—not, indeed, as those who say that one billiard ball pushes another; stags push, also bullocks and buffaloes, but not billiard balls in actual fact. Nevertheless, in Physics we speak of a “thrust” because everywhere we need the support of analogy if we are to begin to speak at all. Now this makes it possible to see something in the world of colour itself, as such. There is something in that world which we shall have to seek as the nature of colour. Let us take a very characteristic colour, one we have already in mind, the colour which meets us everywhere in summer as the most attractive—green. We find it in plants; we are accustomed to regard it as characteristic of them. There is no other such intimate connection as that of greenness with the plant. We do not feel it as a necessity that certain animals which are green could only be green; we have always the subconscious thought that they might be some other colour; but as regards the plants our idea is that greenness belongs to them, that it is something peculiarly their own. Let us endeavour by means of the plants to penetrate into the objective nature of colour—as a rule the subjective nature alone is sought. What is the plant, which thus, as it were, presents green to us? We know from Spiritual Science that the plant owes its existence to the fact that it has an etheric body in addition to its physical body. It is this etheric body which really lives in the plant; but the etheric body is not itself green. The element which gives the plant its greenness is, indeed, in its physical body, making green peculiar to the plant, but in reality it cannot be the essential nature of the plant, for that lies in the etheric body. If the plant had no etheric body it would be a mineral. In its mineral nature the plant manifests itself through green. The etheric body is quite a different colour, but it presents itself to us by means of the mineral green of the plant. If we study the plant in relation to its etheric body, if we study its greenness in this connection, we must say: if we set on the one hand the essential nature of the plant, and on the other the greenness, dividing it abstractly, taking the greenness from the plant, it is really as though we simply made an image of something; in the greenness withdrawn from the etheric we have really only an image of the plant, and this image peculiar to it is necessarily green. We really find in greenness the image of the plant. While we ascribe the colour green very positively to the plant, we must ascribe greenness to the image of the plant and must seek in the greenness the special nature of the plant-image. Here we come to something very important. Anyone entering the portrait gallery of some ancient castle—such as may still frequently be seen—will not fail to say that the portraits are only the portraits of the ancestors, not the ancestors themselves. As a rule, the ancestors are not there, only their portraits are to be found. In the same way, we no more have the entity of the plant in the green than we have the ancestors in the portraits. Now let us reflect that the greenness is characteristic of the plant, and that of all beings the plant is the being of life. The animal possesses a soul; man has both spirit and soul. The mineral has no life. The plant is a being of which life is the special characteristic. The animal has, in addition, a soul. The mineral has as yet no soul. Man has, in addition to the soul, a spirit. We cannot say of man, of the animal or of the mineral, that its peculiar feature is life; it is something else. In the case of the plant its characteristic is life. The green colour is the image. Thus we remain entirely within the world of objective fact in saying that green represents the lifeless image of life. We have now—we will proceed inductively, if we wish to express ourselves in a scholarly way—we have now gained something by means of which we can place this colour objectively in the world. When I receive a photograph I can say that it is a portrait of Mr. N. In the same way we can say that green is the lifeless image of life. We do not now think merely of the subjective impression, but we realize that green is the lifeless image of life. Let us now take peach-blossom colour. More exactly, let us call it the colour of the human skin; of course, it is not the same for all people, but this colour, speaking generally, is that of the human skin. Let us endeavour to arrive at its essential nature. As a rule we see this human skin-colour only from outside. The question now arises as to whether a consciousness of it, a knowledge of it, can be gained from within, as we did in relation to the green of the plant. It can, indeed, be done in the following way. If a man really tries to imagine himself inwardly ensouled, and thinks of this ensouling as passing into his physical bodily form, he can imagine that in some way that which ensouls him flows into this form. He expresses himself by pouring his soul-nature into his form in the flesh-colour. What this means can best be realized by looking at a man in whom the psychic nature is withdrawn somewhat and does not ensoul the outer form. What colour does he then become? Green; he becomes green. Life is there, but he becomes green. We speak of green men; we know the peculiar green of the complexion when the soul is withdrawn; we can see this very well by the colour of the complexion. On the other hand, the more a person assumes the special florid tint, the more we shall notice his experience of this tint. If you observe the constitutional humour in a green person and in one who has a really fresh flesh-colour, you will see that the soul experiences itself in the flesh-colour. That which rays outwards in the colour of the skin is none other than the man's self-experience. We may say that in flesh-colour we have before us the image of the soul, really the image of the soul. If, however, we go far into the world around, we must select the lifeless peach-blossom colour for that which appears as human flesh-colour. We do not really find it in external objects. What appears as human flesh-colour we can only attain by various tricks of painting. It is the image of the soul-nature, but it is not the soul itself; there can be no doubt about that. It is the living image of the soul. The soul experiences itself in flesh-colour. It is not lifeless like the green of the plant, for if a man withdraws his soul more and more he becomes green. He can become a corpse. In flesh-colour we have the living. Thus peach-blossom colour represents the living image of the soul. We have now passed on to another colour. We endeavour to keep objectively to the colour, not merely to reflect upon the subjective impression and then to invent some kind of undulations which are then supposed to be objective. It is palpable that it is an absurdity to separate human experience from flesh-colour. The experience in the body is quite different when the colour of the flesh is ruddy and when it is greenish. There is an inward entity which really presents itself in the colour. We now pass on to the third colour, blue, and say: We cannot in the first place find a being to which blue is peculiar as green is to the plant. Nor can we speak of blue as we have spoken of the peach-blossom-like flesh-colour of man. In the case of animals we do not find a colour as innate to the animal as green is to the plant and flesh-colour to man. We cannot in this way start from blue in regard to Nature. We nevertheless wish to go forward; we will see whether we can proceed still further in our search into the essential nature of colour. We cannot continue by way of blue, but it is possible to proceed first of all to the light colours; we shall, however, progress more easily and quickly if we take the colour known as white. We cannot say that white is peculiar to any being in the outer world. We might turn to the mineral kingdom, but we will try in another way to form an objective idea of white. If we have white before us and expose it to the light, if we simply throw light upon it, we feel that it has a certain relationship to light. At first this remains a feeling. It will at once become more than a feeling if we turn to the sun, which appears tinged quite distinctly in the direction of white, and to which we must trace back all the natural illumination of our world. We might say that what appears to us as sun, what manifests itself as white—which at the same time shows an inner relationship to light—has the peculiarity that of itself it does not appear to us at all in the same way as an external colour. An external colour appears to us upon the object. Such a thing as the white of the sun, which for us represents light, does not appear to us directly on objects. Later on we shall consider the kind of colour which we may call the white of paper, chalk and the like, but to do this we shall have to enter upon a bypath. To being with, if we venture to approach white, we must say that we are led by white first of all to light as such. In order fully to develop this feeling, we need do no more than say to ourselves that the polar opposite of white is black. That black is darkness, we no longer doubt; so we can very easily identify white with brightness, with light as such. In short, if we raise the whole consideration into feeling, we shall find the inner connection between white and light. We shall go more fully into this question later. If we reflect upon light itself, and are not tempted to cling to the Newtonian fallacy; if we observe these things without prejudice, we shall say to ourselves that we actually see colours. Between white, which appears as colour, and light there must be a special relation. We will therefore first of all exclude true white. We know of light as such, not in the same way as other colours. Do we really perceive light? We should not perceive colours at all if we were not in an illuminated space. Light makes colours perceptible to us, but we cannot say we perceive light just as we do colours. Light is indeed, in the space where we perceive a colour, but it is in the nature of light to make the colours perceptible. We do not see light as we see red, yellow, blue, etc. Light is everywhere where it is bright, but we do not see it. Light must be fixed to something if we are to perceive it. It must be caught and reflected. Colour is on the surface of objects; but we cannot say that light belongs to something, it is wholly fluctuating. We ourselves, however, on awakening in the morning when the light streams upon us and through us, feel ourselves in our true being; we feel an inner relationship between the light and our essential being. At night, if we awake in dense darkness, we feel we cannot reach our real being; we are then, indeed, in a sense withdrawn into ourselves, but through the conditions we have become something which does not feel in its element. We know, too, that what we have from the light is a “coming to ourselves.” That the blind do not have it, is no contradiction; they are organized for this, and the organization is the essential point. We bear to the light the same relationship as that of our ego to the world, yet, again, not the same; for we cannot say that when the light fills us we gain the ego. Nevertheless, for us to gain this ego, light is essential, if we are beings which see. What underlies this fact? In light we have what is represented in white—we have yet to learn the inner connection—we have in light what really fills us with spirit, brings to us our own spirit. Our ego, that is, our spiritual entity, is connected with this condition of illumination. If we consider this feeling—all that lives in light and colour must first be grasped as feeling—if we consider this feeling we shall say: There is a distinction between light and that which manifests itself as spirit in the ego, in the “I.” Nevertheless, the light gives us something of our own spirit. We shall have an experience through the light in such a way that by means of the light the ego really experiences itself inwardly. If we sum up all this, we cannot but say that the ego is spiritual and must experience itself in the soul; this it does when it feels itself filled with light. Reduced to a formula, it may be expressed in the words: White or light represents the psychic image of the spirit. It is natural that we should have to construct this third stage from pure feeling; but if you try to sink yourselves deeply into the matter according to these formulae, you will see that a great deal is contained in them: Green represents the lifeless image of Life. Peach-blossom colour represents the living image of the Soul. White or Light represents the psychic image of the Spirit. Let us now pass on to black or darkness. We see that we can speak of white or light, brightness, in connection with the relation which exists between darkness and blackness. Let us now take black, and try to connect something with a black darkness. We can do so. Certainly black is easy to find as a characteristic of something even in Nature, just as green is an essential peculiarity of the plants. We need only look at carbon. In order to represent more clearly that black has something to do with carbon, let us realize that carbon can also be quite clear and transparent; but then it is a diamond. Black, however, is so characteristic of carbon that if it were not black, if it were white and transparent, it would be a diamond. Black is so integral a part of carbon that the latter really owed its whole existence to the blackness. Thus carbon owes its dark, black, carbon-existence to the dark blackness in which it appears; just as the plant has its image somehow in green, so carbon has its image in black. Let us place ourselves in blackness, absolute black around us, black darkness—in black darkness no physical being can do anything. Life is driven out of the plants when they become charcoal, carbon or coal. Thus black shows itself to be foreign in life, hostile to life. We see this in carbon, for when plants are carbonized they turn black; Life, then, can do nothing in blackness. Soul—the soul slips away from us when awful blackness is within us. The spirit, however, flourishes; the spirit can penetrate the blackness and make its influence felt within it. We may therefore say that in blackness—and if we endeavour to investigate the art of black and white, light and shade on a surface—we shall return to this later—then, by drawing with black on a white surface we bring spirit into the white surface by means of the black strokes; in the black surface the white is spiritualized. The spirit can be brought into the black. It is, however, the only thing that can be brought into black. Therefore we obtain the formula: Black represents the spiritual image of the lifeless. We have now obtained a remarkable circle respecting the objective nature of colour. In this circle we have in each colour an image of something. In all circumstances colour is not a reality, it is an image. In one case we have the image of the lifeless, in another the image of life, in another the image of the soul, and the image of the spirit (see Diagram 2). As we go around the circle, we have black, the image of the lifeless; green, the image of life; peach-blossom colour, the image of the soul; white, the image of the spirit. If we wish to have the adjective, we must start from the previous, thus: Black is the spiritual image of the lifeless; Green is the lifeless image of life; Peach-blossom colour is the living image of the soul; White is the psychic image of the spirit.  In this circle we can indicate certain fundamental colours, Black, White, Green and Peach-blossom colour, while always the previous word indicates the adjective for the next one; Black is the spiritual image of the Lifeless; Green is the lifeless image of the Living; Peach-blossom colour is the living image of the Soul; White is the psychic image of the Spirit. If we take the kingdoms of Nature in this way—the lifeless kingdom, the living kingdom, the ensouled kingdom, the spiritual kingdom, we ascent—precisely as we ascend from the lifeless to the living, to the ensouled, to that possessing spirit—from black to green, to peach-blossom colour, white. As truly as I can ascend from the lifeless, through the living, to the psychic, to the spiritual as truly as I have there the world which surrounds me, so truly have I the world around me in its images when I ascend from black to green, peach-blossom colour, white. As truly as Constantine, Ferdinand, Felix, etc. are the real ancestors, and I can ascend through this ancestral line, so truly can I go through these portraits and have the portraits of this line of ancestry. I have before me a world; the mineral, plant, animal and spiritual kingdom—in as far as man is the spiritual. I ascent through the realities; but Nature gives me only the images of these realities. Nature is reflected. The world of colour is not a reality; even in nature itself it is only image; the image of the lifeless is black; that of the living is green; that of the psychic, peach-blossom colour; and the image of the spirit is white. This leads us to the objective nature of colour. This we had to set forth today, since we wish to penetrate further into the nature, the peculiar feature of colour; for it avails us nothing to say that colour is a subjective impression. That is a matter of absolute indifference to colour. To green it is immaterial whether we pass by and stare at it; but it is not a matter of indifference that, if the living gives itself its own colour, if it is not tinged by the mineral and appears coloured in the flower, etc., if the living appear in its own colour, it must image itself outwardly as green. That is something objective. Whether or not we gaze at it, it is entirely subjective. The living, however, if it appear as a living being, must appear green, it must image itself in green; that is something objective. |
| 291. Colour: The Luminous and Pictorial Nature of Colours
07 May 1921, Dornach Tr. Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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| Taking the colours we found yesterday, we may say as follows: By its own nature green always allows us to make it with definite limits. Green can be enclosed or limited: in other words it is not unpleasant to us if we paint a surface green and give is a circumscribed area. |
| If you have a sense of colour, you can feel that. If, for instance, you think of a green—you can easily think of green card-tables. Because a game is a limited pedantic activity, something very Philistine, one can think of such an arrangement—a room with card-tables covered in green. |
| It would promptly dissolve the lumps, for it always strives for uniformity. If you have an extra green on green, that is a different matter; green has to be applied evenly and has to be outlined. We cannot imagine a radiating green. |
| 291. Colour: The Luminous and Pictorial Nature of Colours
07 May 1921, Dornach Tr. Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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We tried yesterday to understand the nature of colour from a certain point of view and found on the way—white, black, green, peach-blossom colour; and in such a manner that we were able to say: these colours are images or pictures, they are already present in the world with the character of pictures; but we saw also that something essential proceeded from something else giving rise to the pictorial character of the colour. We saw, for example, that the living must proceed from the lifeless, and that in the lifeless the image of the living, the green arises. I shall continue today from our yesterday's experience, and in such a way as to differentiate between, so to speak, the receiver and the give, between that in which the picture is formed, and the originator of it. Then I shall be able to put the following division before you: I differentiate (you will understand the expression if you take the whole of what we did yesterday)—I differentiate the shadow-thrower from the Illuminant. If the shadow-thrower is the spirit, the spirit receives that which is thrown upon it; if the shadow-thrower is the spirit and if the illuminant (it is an apparent contradiction, but not a real one) is the dead, then black is pictured in the spirit as the image of the dead, as we saw yesterday. If the shadow-thrower is the dead, and the illuminant the living, as in the case of the plant, then, as we saw, you have green. If the shadow-thrower is the living and the illuminant the psychic, then, as we saw, you get the image of peach-colour. If the shadow-thrower is the psychic and the illuminant the spirit, you get white as the image. So you see, we have got these four colours with the pictorial character. We can therefore say: with a shadow-thrower and an illuminant, we get a picture. So we get here four colours—but you must reckon black and white among the colours—with the picture-character: black, white, green, peach-colour. When the lifeless appears in the Spirit you get black.
Now, as you know, there are other so-called colours, and we have to search also for their natures. We shall not search for them through abstract concepts any more than before, but approach the matter according to feeling, and then you will see that we come to a certain understanding of the colours if we put the following before our eyes. Think of a quiescent white. Then we will let beams of different colours from opposite sides play on to this quiescent white—it can be a quiet white room—from one side yellow and from the other blue. We then get green. In this way therefore we got green. We have to visualize exactly what happens: we have a quiescent white, into which we throw rays of colour from both sides, one yellow and the other blue and we get the green we have already found from another point of view. You see, we cannot look for the peach-colour as we looked for the green, if we confine ourselves to the living production of colour. We must seek it in another way, as follows: Imagine I paint here a black, below it a white, another black, below it a white and so on—black and white alternately—now imagine that this black and white was not quiescent—they would vibrate, as it were. In fact, it is the opposite of what we had up here: here we had a quiescent white and let beams of colour into it from both sides in a continuous process, yellow and blue from left and right. Now I take black and white; I cannot of course paint that at the moment, but imagine these undulating through each other; and just as I let in yellow and blue before, allow now this undulation, with its continual interplay of black and white, to be shone through, pierced with red: if I could select the right shade, I should, through this play of black and white into which I let the red shine, get peach-colour. Notice how we must resort to quite different methods of producing colours. With one we must take a quiescent white—and thus we must destroy one of the picture-colours in the scale we already have here—and let two other colours which we have not yet got play upon it. But here we have to go about it differently; here we have to take two of the colours we have, black and white, we must instill movement into them, take a colour we have not yet got, namely red, and let is shine through the moving white and black. You will also see something which will strike you if you observe life: green you have in nature; peach-colour you have (as I explained yesterday, in my sense) only in a fully healthy man. And, I said, the possibility is not easily present of reproducing this shade of colour. For one could really reproduce it only if one could represent white and black in motion and then let fall on them the beam of red. One would really have to produce a circumstance—it is after all present in the human organism—in which there was always motion. Everything is in movement and from that fact arises this colour of which we are speaking. So that we can get this colour only in a roundabout way, and for this reason the majority of portraits are really only masks, because flesh-colour can be realized only by means of all sorts of approximations. It could be achieved only, you see, if we had a continual wave movement of black and white, with red rays through it. I have here pointed out to you from the nature of things a certain difference in relation to colour. I have shown you how to use the colours which we get as pictorial colours, how in one case we used white, in a condition of rest, and by throwing upon it two colours which we have not yet got, we obtained another pictorial colour, namely, green. Again, we take two colours, black and white, in a scale of reciprocated movement, and let them be penetrated or illuminated by a new colour, that we have not yet got, and the result is another colour—peach-colour. We get peach-colour and green, therefore, in quite different ways. In one case we required red, in the other yellow and blue. Now we shall be able to go a step further towards the nature of colour if we consider another thing. Taking the colours we found yesterday, we may say as follows: By its own nature green always allows us to make it with definite limits. Green can be enclosed or limited: in other words it is not unpleasant to us if we paint a surface green and give is a circumscribed area. But just imagine this is the case of peach-colour. It does not agree with our artistic sense. Peach-colour can be represented really only as a mood, without reference to a defined area, without expecting one. If you have a sense of colour, you can feel that. If, for instance, you think of a green—you can easily think of green card-tables. Because a game is a limited pedantic activity, something very Philistine, one can think of such an arrangement—a room with card-tables covered in green. What I mean is that it would be enough to make you run away, if you were invited to play cards on mauve tables. On the other hand, a lilac coloured room, or a room furnished throughout in mauve, would lend itself very well, shall we say, to mystical conversation, in the best and the very worst sense. It is true, the colours in this respect are not anti-moral, but amoral. Thus we note that as a result of its own nature, colour has a inner character; whereby green allows itself to be defined, lilac and peach or flesh-colour tend to spread into vagueness. Let us try to get a the colours which we did not have yesterday, from this point of view. Let us take yellow, the whole inner nature of yellow, if we make here a yellow surface. Yes, you see, a defined surface of yellow is something disagreeable; it is ultimately intolerable for someone with artistic feeling. The soul cannot bear a yellow surface which is limited and defined in extent. So we must make the yellow paler towards the edges, and then still paler. In short we must have a full yellow in the centre and from there it must shade off to pale yellow. You cannot picture yellow in any other way, if you want to feel it with your own being. Yellow must radiate, getting paler all the time. That is what I might call the secret of yellow. And if you hem in the yellow, it is in fact as if you laughed at it. You always see the human factor in it, which has bounded the yellow. Yellow does not speak when it is bounded, for it refuses to be bounded, it wants to radiate in some direction or other. We shall see a case in a moment, where yellow consents to be bounded, but it will just go to show how impossible it is, considering its real inner nature. It wants to radiate. Let us take blue on the other hand. Imagine a surface covered equally with blue. One can imagine it, but it has something super-human. When Fra Angelico paints equal blue surfaces, he summons, as it were, something super-terrestrial into the terrestrial sphere. He allows himself to paint an equal blue when he brings super-terrestrial things into the terrestrial sphere. In the human sphere he would not do it, for blue as such, because of its own nature, does not permit a smooth surface. Blue by its inner nature demands the exact opposite of yellow. It demands that the colour is intensified on the circumference and shades off towards the center. It demands to be strongest at the edges and palest in the middle. Then blue is in its element. By this it is differentiated from yellow. Yellow insists on being strongest in the center, and then paling off. Blue piles itself up at the edges and flows together, to make a piled-up wave, as it were, round a lighter blue. Then it shows itself in its very own nature. We arrive therefore on all sides at what I might call the feeling or longing of the soul in face of colours. And these are fulfilled; that is, the painter really responds to them, if he paints in accordance with what the colour itself demands. If he consciously thinks—now I've dipped my brush in the green, now I must be a bit of a Philistine and give the green a sharp outline; if he thinks: now I am painting yellow—I must make that radiate, I must imagine myself the spirit of radiation; and if he thinks when painting blue: I draw myself in, into my innermost self and build, as it were, a crust round me, and so I must also paint by giving the blue a kind of crust: then he lives in his colour and paints in his picture what the soul really must want if it yields itself to the nature of colour. Of course, as soon as we touch upon art, a factor comes in which modifies the whole thing. I'll make circles here for you which I fill in with colour. (Diagram 1)  One can of course have other figures than these; but the yellow must always radiate in some direction and the blue must always contract, as it were, into itself. The red I might call the balance between them. We can accept the red completely as a surface. We understand it best if we differentiate it from peach-colour, in which it is, you remember, incorporated as an illuminant. Take the two shades side by side, red and peach-colour. What happens when you let the red really influence your soul? You say, this red affects me as a quiet redness. It is not the case with peach-colour. That wants to split up, to spread. It is a nice difference between red and peach-colour. Peach-colour wants to disintegrate, it wants to get ever thinner and thinner till it has disappeared. The red remains, but its effect is one of surface. It does not want to radiate or pile itself up, or to escape; it asserts itself. Lilac, peach-colour, flesh-colour, do not really assert themselves: they want always to change their form, because they want to escape. That is the difference between this colour, peach, which we already have, and red, which belongs to those colours which we have not yet got. But we have not three colours together: blue, red and yellow. Yesterday we found the four colours: black, white, peach-colour and green; now red, blue and yellow are before us and we have tried to get inside these three colours with our feeling, to see how they interplay with the others. We let the red interplay with a motionless white and we shall easily find the distinction if we now examine what we have brought before the soul. We cannot make such a distinction in the colours we found yesterday as we now have made between yellow, blue and red. We were compelled today to let black and white move in and out of each other when we produced peach-colour. Black and white are “picture-colours” which can do this; let us leave it at that. Peach-colour we must also leave; it disappears of its own accord, we cannot do anything with it, we are powerless against it. Nor can it help itself, it is its nature to disappear. Green outlines itself, that is it nature. But peach-colour does not demand to be differentiated in itself, but to be uniform, like red; if it were differentiated it would level itself out at once. Just imagine a peach-coloured surface with lumps in it! It would be awful. It would promptly dissolve the lumps, for it always strives for uniformity. If you have an extra green on green, that is a different matter; green has to be applied evenly and has to be outlined. We cannot imagine a radiating green. You can imagine a twinkling star, can't you; but hardly a twinkling tree-frog. It would be a contradiction for a tree-frog to twinkle. Well—that is the case also with peach-colour and green. If we want to bring black and white together at all we must make them undulate into each other as pictures, even if as moving pictures. But it is different with the three colours we have found today. We saw that yellow wants, of its own nature, to get paler and paler towards the edges; it wants to radiate; blue wants to heap itself up, to intensify itself, and red wants to be evenly distributed without outline. It wants to hold the middle place between radiating and concentrating; that is red's nature. So you see there is a fundamental difference between colours that are in themselves quiet or mobile, quiet as green, or mobile as mauve, or isolated like black and white. If we want to bring these colours together, it must be as pictures. And red, yellow and blue, in accordance with their inner activity, their inner mobility, are distinguished from the inner mobility of lilac. Lilac tends to dissolve—that is not an inner mobility—it tends to evaporate; red is quiet—it is movement come to rest—but, when we look at it, we cannot rest at one point: we want to have it as an even surface, which, however, is unlimited. With yellow and blue we saw the tendency to vary. Red, yellow and blue differ from black, white, green and peach-colour. You see it from this: Red, yellow and blue have, in contrast to those other colours which have pictorial qualities, another character and if you consider what I have said about them you will find the term I apply to this different character justified. I have called the colours black, white, green and peach-colour pictures—“pictorial colours” (Bildfarben,) I call the colours yellow, red and blue “lusters”—luster colours. (Blanz-farben,) in yellow, red and blue, objects glisten: they show their surfaces outwards, they shine or glisten. That is the nature and the difference in coloured things. Black, white, green, peach-colour have a pictorial colour, they take their colour from something; in yellow, blue and red there is an inherent luster. Yellow, blue, red are external to something essential. The others are always projected pictures, always something shadowy. We can call them the shadow-colours. The shadow of the spiritual on the psychic is white. The shadow of the lifeless on the spirit is black. The shadow of the living on the lifeless is green. The shadow of the psychic on the living is peach-colour. “Shadow” and “picture or image” are akin. On the other hand with blue, red and yellow we have to do with something luminous, not with shadow, but with that by which the nature advertises itself outwardly. So that we have in the one case pictures or shadows and in the other, in the colours red, blue and yellow we have what are modifications of illuminants. Therefore I call them lustrous. The things shine, they throw off colour in a way; and therefore these colours have of their own accord the nature of radiation: yellow radiating outwards, blue radiating inwards, and red the balance of the two, radiating evenly. This even radiation shining on and through the combination of white and black in motion produces peach-colour. Letting yellow flash from one side on to stationary white and blue from the other side, produces green. You will observe, we come here upon things which upset Physics completely—you can take everything known today in Physics about colours. There one just writes down the scale: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. One does not mention the reciprocal interplay. Let us run along the scale. You will see that starting with the luster red, the lustrous property ceases more and more till we come to a colour in picture, in shadow-colour, to green. Then we come again to a lustrous colour of an opposite kind to the former, we come to blue, the concentrated luster-colour. Then we must leave the usual physical colour-scale entirely in order to get to the colour which can really not be represented at all except in a state of movement. White and black, pierced by rays of red give peach-colour. If you take the ordinary scheme of the physicist, all you can say is: All right—red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo, violet ... Notice I start from a luster, go on to what is properly a colour, on again to a luster and only then come to a colour. Now, if I did not do that as it is on the physical plane, but were to turn it as it is in the next higher world, if I were to bend the warm side of the spectrum and the cold side so that I drew it like this (Diagram 2) red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet; if I were to bend this stretched-out line of colour into a circle, then I should get my peach-colour up here at the top. Thus I return again to colour. Colour I and Colour II to and bottom, Luster III and Luster IV left and right. Now there still lurks hidden only that other colour—white and black. You see, if I go up here with the white (from the bottom upwards) it would stick in the green, so the black comes down here to meet it (from the top downwards,) and here at V they begin to overlap; thus, together with the rays from the red, they produce the peach-colour. I have therefore to imagine a white and a black, overlapping and interplaying (See Diagram 2) and in this way I get a complex colour combination, which however corresponds more closely to the nature of colours than anything you see in the books on Physics.  Now, let us take luster: but luster means that something shines. What shines? If you take the yellow (and you must take it with your feeling and colour-sense, not with the abstract-loving understanding,) you need only say: In receiving the impression of yellow, I am really so moved by it that it lives on within me, as it were. Just think, yellow makes us gay; but being gay means, really, being filled with a greater vitality of soul. We are therefore more attuned to the ego through yellow, in other words we are spiritualized. So, if you take yellow in its original nature, that is, fading outwards, and think of it shining within you, because it is a luster-colour, you will have to agree: Yellow is the luster of the spirit. Blue, concentrating, intensifying itself outwards, is the luster of the psychic. Red, filling space evenly, is the luster of the living. Green is the picture of the living; red, the luster. You can see this very well if you try to look at a fairly strong red on a white surface; if you look away quickly, you see green as the after-image, and the same surface as a green after-image. The red shines into you and it forms its own picture within you. But what is the picture of the living in the inner being? You have to destroy it to get an image. The image of the living is the green. No wonder that red luster produces the green as its image when it shines into you. Thus we get these three colour-natures of quite different kinds. They are the active colour-natures. It is the thing that shines which contains the differentiation; the other colours are quiescent images. We have something here which has its analogy in the Cosmos. We have in the Cosmos the contrast of the Signs of the Zodiac, which are quiescent images, and that which differentiates the Cosmos in the Planets. It is only a comparison, but one which is founded on fact. We may say that we have in black, white, green and peach-colour something whose effect is static; even when it is in movement; something of the fixed stars. And in red, yellow and blue we have something essentially in motion, something planetary. Yellow, blue, red give a nuance to the other colours; yellow and blue tinge white to green, red gives peach colour when it shines into the combined black and white. Here you see the Colour-Cosmos. You see the world in its inter-action, and you see that we really have to go to colour if we want to study the laws of coloured things. We must not go from colours to something else, we must remain in the colours themselves. And when we have a grasp of colours, we come to see in them what is their mutual relationship, what is the lustrous, the luminous, and what is the shadow-giving, the image-producing element in them. Just think what this means to Art. The artist knows if he is dealing with yellow, blue and red that he must conjure into his picture something that has a dynamic character, that itself gives character. When he works with peach-colour and green on black and white, he knows that the picture-quality is already there. Such a colour-theory is inherently so completely living that it can be transferred directly form the psychic into the artistic. And if you so understand the nature of the colours that you recognize, as it were, what each colour wants—that yellow wants to be stronger in the middle and to pale off towards the edge, because that is the inherent quality of yellow—then you must do something if you want to fix the yellow, if you want to have a smooth, even yellow surface somewhere. What does one do then? Something must be put into the yellow which deprives it of its own character, of its own will. The yellow has to be made heavy. How can this be done? By putting something into the yellow which gives it weight, so that it becomes gilded. There you have yellow without the yellow, left yellow to a certain extent, but deprived of its nature. You can make an even gold background to a picture, but you have given weight to the yellow, inherent weight; you have taken away its own will; you hold it fast. Hence the old painters who had a susceptibility to such things found that in yellow they have the luster of the spirit. They looked up to the spiritual, to the light of the spirit in yellow; but they wanted to have the spirit here on earth. They had to give it weight, therefore. If they made a gold background, like Cimabue, they gave the spirit habitation on earth, they evoked the heavenly in their picture. And the figures could stand out of the background of gold, could grow as creations of the spiritual. These things have an inherent conformity to law. You observe, therefore, if we deal with yellow as a colour, of it sown accord it wants to be strong in the centre and shade off outwards. If we want to retain it on an evenly-coloured surface, it is necessary to metallize it. And so we come to the concept of metallized colour, and to the concept of colour retained in matter, of which we shall say more tomorrow. But you will notice one must first understand colours in their fleeting character before one can understand them in solid substantial form. We shall proceed to this tomorrow. We come in this to what ordinary people—and “extraordinary” people, for that matter—alone call colour. For they know only the colours which are present in solid bodies, and therefore they say—“If one speaks of the spirit, as, for instance, of thought (pretty sentence, isn't it?), then the spirit either is coloured—or not coloured.” Well, then, in this case there is not the least possibility of rising to the volatility of colour! You will observe that what I have been explaining provides a way to recognize the materialization of the colours in the physical colour-spectrum. It stretches right and left endlessly, that is indefinitely; in the spirit and in the psychic realm, everything is joined up. We must join up the colour-spectrum. And if we train ourselves to see not only peach-colour, but the movement in it; if we train ourselves not only to see flesh-colour in man, but also to live in it; if we feel that our bodies are the dwelling-place of our souls as flesh-colour, then this is the entrance, the gateway into a spiritual world. Colour is that thing which descends as far as the body's surface; it is also that which raises man from the material and leads him into the spiritual. |
| 324a. The Fourth Dimension: Fourth Lecture
24 May 1905, Berlin Tr. Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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| Imagine that a green fog tints the red-and-blue squares, so that both edges (red and blue) appear colored. The blue edge becomes blue-green and the red acquires a murky tint. Both edges reappear in their own color only where the green stops. I could do the same thing with squares 2 and 4 by allowing a red-and- green square to move through a blue space. |
| We make these squares disappear into the third color in order to reappear on the other side. The red-and-blue squares pass through green. The red-and-green squares have no blue sides, so they disappear into blue, while the green-and-blue squares pass through red. |
| 324a. The Fourth Dimension: Fourth Lecture
24 May 1905, Berlin Tr. Catherine E. Creeger Rudolf Steiner |
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In a recent lecture I attempted to develop a schematic idea of four-dimensional space, which would be very difficult to do without using an analogy of sorts. The problem that confronts us is how to indicate a four-dimensional figure here in three-dimensional space, which is the only type of space initially accessible to us. To link the unfamiliar element of four-dimensional space to something we know about, we must find ways to bring a four-dimensional object into three dimensions, just as we brought a three-dimensional object into two dimensions. I would like to use the method popularized by Mr. Hinton to demonstrate a solution to the problem of how to represent four-dimensional space in three dimensions. [Note 27] Let me begin by showing how three-dimensional space can be depicted in two dimensions. Our chalkboard here is a two-dimensional surface. Adding depth to its dimensions of height and width would give us a three-dimensional space. Now let's attempt to depict a three-dimensional figure here on the chalkboard. A cube is a three-dimensional figure because it has height, width, and depth. Let's try to bring a cube into two-dimensional space—that is, into a plane. We can take a cube and unfold it so that its six square sides are spread out in a plane (Figure 25). In two dimensions, therefore, the surfaces defining a cube can be imagined as forming a cross.  These six squares form a cube again when I fold them up so that squares 1 and 3 are opposite each other. Squares 2 and 4 are also opposite each other, as are 5 and 6. This is a simple way of transferring a three-dimensional figure to a plane. We cannot use this method directly when we want to draw the fourth dimension in three-dimensional space. For that, we need a different analogy. We will need to use colors. I will color the edges of the six squares differently, so that opposite sets of squares are of the same colors. For squares 1 and 3, I will make one pair of edges red (dotted lines) and another blue (solid lines). I also will color all the horizontal edges of the other squares blue and all the verticals red (Figure 26).  Look at these two squares, 1 and 3. Their two dimensions are represented by two colors, red and blue. For us, then, on the vertical board, where square 2 is flat against the board, red means height, and blue means depth. Having consistently used red for height and blue for depth, let's add green (dashed lines) for width, the third dimension, and complete our unfolded cube. Square 5 has blue and green sides, so square 6 must look the same. Now only squares 2 and 4 are left. When you imagine them unfolded, you find that their sides are red and green. Having visualized these colored edges, you realize that we have transformed the three dimensions into three colors. Instead of height, width, and depth, we now call them red (dotted), green (dashed), and blue (solid). These three colors replace and represent the three dimensions of space. Now imagine the whole cube folded up again. You can explain the addition of the third dimension by saying that the blue and red square has moved through green i.e., from left to right in Figure 26. Moving through green, or disappearing into the dimension of the third color, represents the transition through the third dimension. Imagine that a green fog tints the red-and-blue squares, so that both edges (red and blue) appear colored. The blue edge becomes blue-green and the red acquires a murky tint. Both edges reappear in their own color only where the green stops. I could do the same thing with squares 2 and 4 by allowing a red-and- green square to move through a blue space. You could do the same with the two blue-and-green squares, 5 and 6, moving one of them through red. In each case, the square disappears on one side, submerging into a different color that tints it until it emerges on the other side in its original coloration. Thus, the three colors positioned at right angles to each other are a symbolic representation of our cube. We simply have used colors for the three directions. To visualize the changes the cube's three pairs of surfaces undergo, we imagine them passing through green, red, and blue, respectively. Instead of these colored lines, imagine squares, and instead of empty space, picture squares everywhere. Then I can draw the entire figure in a still different way (Figure 27). The square through which the others pass is colored blue, and the two that pass through it—before and after they make the transition—are drawn flanking it. Here they are in red and green. In a second step, the blue-and-green squares pass through the red square, and, in a third step, the two red-and-blue squares pass through the green.  Here you see a different way of flattening out a cube. Of the nine squares arranged here, only six—the upper and lower rows—form the boundaries of the cube itself (Figure 27). The other three squares in the middle row represent transitions,—they simply signify that the other two colors disappear into a third. Thus, with regard to the movement of transition, we must always take two dimensions at once, because each of these squares in the upper and lower rows is made up of two colors and disappears into the color that does not contain it. We make these squares disappear into the third color in order to reappear on the other side. The red-and-blue squares pass through green. The red-and-green squares have no blue sides, so they disappear into blue, while the green-and-blue squares pass through red. As you see, we can thus construct our cube out of two-dimensional—that is, bi-colored—squares that pass through a third dimension or color. [Note 28] The next obvious step is to imagine cubes in the place of squares and to visualize these cubes as being composed of squares of three colors (dimensions), just as we constructed our squares out of lines of two colors. The three colors correspond to the three dimensions of space. If we want to proceed just as we did with the squares, we must add a fourth color so that we can make each cube disappear through the color it lacks. We simply have four differently colored transition cubes—blue, white, green, and red—instead of three transition squares. Instead of squares passing through squares, we now have cubes passing through cubes. Mr. Schouten's models use such colored cubes. [Note 29] Just as we made one square pass through a second square, we must now make one cube pass through a second cube of the remaining color. Thus the white-red-and-green cube passes through a blue one. On one side, it submerges in the fourth color,—on the other side, it reappears in its original colors (Figure 28.1). Thus we have here one color or dimension that is bounded by two cubes whose surfaces are three different colors.  Similarly, we must now make the green-blue-and-red cube pass through the white cube (Figure 28.2). The blue-red-and-white cube passes through the green one (Figure 28.3), and, in the last figure (Figure 28.4), the blue-green-and-white cube has to pass through a red dimension,—that is, each cube must disappear into the color it lacks and reappear on the other side in its original colors. These four cubes relate to each other in the same way as the three squares in our previous example. We needed six squares to delineate the boundaries of a cube. [Note 30] Similarly, we need eight cubes to form the boundaries of the analogous four-dimensional figure, the tessaract. [Note 31] In the case of a cube, we needed three accessory squares that simply signified disappearance through the remaining dimension. A tessaract requires a total of twelve cubes, which relate to one another in the same way as the nine squares in a plane. We have now done to a cube what we did with squares in the earlier example. Each time we chose a new color, we added a new dimension. We used colors to represent the four directions incorporated by a four-dimensional figure. Each of the cubes in this figure has three colors and passes through a fourth. The point in replacing dimensions with colors is that three dimensions as such cannot be incorporated into a two-dimensional plane. Using three colors makes this possible. We do the same thing with four dimensions when we use four colors to create an image in three-dimensional space. This is one way of introducing this otherwise complicated subject. Hinton used this method to solve the problem of how to represent four-dimensional figures in three dimensions. Next I would like to unfold the cube again and lay it down in the plane. I'll draw it on the board. For the moment, disregard the bottom square in Figure 25 and imagine that you can see in two dimensions only—that is, you can see only what you can encounter on the surface of the board. In this instance, we have placed five squares so that one square is in the middle. The interior area remains invisible (Figure 29). You can go all the way around the outside, but since you can see only in two dimensions, you will never see square 5.  Now instead of taking five of the six square sides of a cube, let's do the same thing with seven of the eight cubes that form the boundaries of a tessaract, spreading our four-dimensional figure out in space. The placement of the seven cubes is analogous to that of the cube's surfaces laid down in a plane on the board, but now we have cubes instead of squares. The resulting three-dimensional figure is analogous in structure to the two-dimensional cross made of squares and is its equivalent in three-dimensional space. The seventh cube, like one of the squares, is invisible from all sides. It cannot be seen by any being capable only of three-dimensional sight (Figure 30). If we could fold up this figure, as we can do with the six unfolded squares in a cube, we could move from the third into the fourth dimension. Transitions indicated by colors show us how this process can be visualized. [Note 32]  We have demonstrated at least how we humans can visualize four-dimensional space in spite of being able to perceive only three dimensions. At this point, since you also may wonder how we can gain an idea of real four-dimensional space, I would like to make you aware of the so-called alchemical mystery, because a true view of four-dimensional space is related to what the alchemists called transformation. [First text variant:] If we want to acquire a true view of four-dimensional space, we must do very specific exercises. First we must cultivate a very clear and profound vision—not a mental image—of what we call water. Such vision is difficult to achieve and requires lengthy meditation. We must immerse ourselves in the nature of water with great precision. We must creep inside the nature of water, so to speak. As a second exercise, we must create a vision of the nature of light. Although light is familiar to us, we know it only in the form in which we receive it from outside. By meditating, we acquire the inner counterpart of outer light. We know where and how light arises,—we ourselves become able to produce something like light. Through meditation, yogis or students of esotericism acquire the ability to produce light. When we truly meditate on pure concepts, when we allow these concepts to work on our souls during meditation or sense-free thinking, light arises out of the concepts. Our entire surroundings are revealed to us as streaming light. Esoteric students must "chemically combine" the vision of water that they have cultivated with their vision of light. Water fully imbued with light is what the alchemists called mercury. In the language of alchemy, water plus light equals mercury. In the alchemical tradition, however, mercury is not simply ordinary quicksilver. After we awaken our own ability to create light out of our own work with pure concepts, mercury comes about as the mingling of this light with our vision of water. We take possession of this light-imbued power of water, which is one of the elements of the astral world. The second element arises when we cultivate a vision of air, just as we previously cultivated a vision of water. Through a spiritual process, we extract the power of air. Then, by concentrating the power of feeling in certain ways, feeling kindles fire. When you chemically combine, as it were, the power of air with the fire kindled by feeling, the result is "fire-air." As you may know, this fireair is mentioned in Goethe's Faust. [Note 33] It requires the inner participation of the human being. One component is extracted from an existing element, the air, while we ourselves produce the other fire or warmth. Air plus fire yields what the alchemists called sulfur, or shining fire-air. The presence of this fire-air in a watery element is truly what is meant when the Bible says, "And the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters." [Note 34] The third element comes about when we extract the power of the earth and combine it with the spiritual forces in sound. The result is what is called the Spirit of God. It also is called thunder. The active Spirit of God is thunder, earth plus sound. Thus, the Spirit of God hovered over astral substance. The biblical "waters' are not ordinary water but what we know as astral substance, which consists of four types of forces:—water, air, light, and fire. The sequence of these four forces is revealed to astral vision as the four dimensions of astral space. That is what they really are. Astral space looks very different from our world. Many supposedly astral phenomena are simply projections of aspects of the astral world into physical space. As you can see, astral substance is half-subjective, that is, passively given to the subject, and half water and air. Light and feeling (fire), on the other hand, are objective, that is, made to appear by the activity of the subject. Only one part of astral substance can be found outside, given to the subject in the environment. The other part must be added by subjective means, through personal activity. Conceptual and emotional forces allow us to extract the other aspect from what is given through active objectification. In the astral realm, therefore, we find subjective- objective substance. In devachan, we would find only a completely subjective element; there is no longer any objectivity at all that is simply given to the subject. In the astral realm, therefore, we find an element that must be created by human beings. Everything we do here is simply a symbolic representation of the higher worlds, or devachan. These worlds are real, as I have explained to you in these lectures. What lies within these higher worlds can be attained only by developing new possibilities for vision. Human beings must be active in order to reach these worlds. [Second text variant: (Vetfelahn):] If we want to acquire a true view of four-dimensional space, we must do very specific exercises. First, we must cultivate a clear and profound vision of water. Such vision cannot be achieved as a matter of course. We must immerse ourselves in the nature of water with great precision. We must creep inside water, so to speak. Second, we must create a vision of the nature of light. Although light is familiar to us, we know it only in the form in which we receive it from outside. By meditating, we acquire the inner counterpart of outer light. We learn where light comes from, so we ourselves become able to produce light. We can do this by truly allowing these concepts to work on our souls during meditation or sense-free thinking. Our entire surroundings are revealed to us as streaming light. Then we must "chemically combine" the mental image of water that we have cultivated with that of light. Water fully imbued with light is what the alchemists called mercury. In the language of alchemy, water plus light equals mercury. This alchemical mercury, however, is not simply ordinary quicksilver. We must first awaken our own ability to create mercury out of the concept of light. We then take possession of mercury, the light-imbued power of water, which is one element of the astral world. The second element arises when we cultivate a vivid mental image of air and then extract the power of air through a spiritual process, combining it with feeling inside us to kindle the concept of warmth, or fire. One element is extracted, while we ourselves produce the other. These two—air plus fire—yield what the alchemists called sulfur, or shining fire-air. The watery element is truly the substance referred to in the biblical statement 'The Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters." [Note 35] The third element is "Spirit-God," or earth combined with sound. It comes about when we extract the power of the earth and combine it with sound. The biblical "waters" are not ordinary water but what we know as astral substance, which consists of four types of forces: water, air, light, and fire. These four forces constitute the four dimensions of astral space. As you can see, astral substance is half subjective,—only one part of astral substance can be acquired from the environment. The other part is acquired through objectification from conceptual and emotional forces. In devachan, we would find only a completely subjective element,—there is no objectivity there. Everything we do here is simply a symbolic representation of the world of devachan. What lies within the higher worlds can be reached only by developing in ourselves new ways of perceiving. Human beings must be active in order to reach these worlds.
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| 320. The Light Course: Lecture VII
30 Dec 1919, Stuttgart Tr. George Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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| You then see green where you formerly saw red, though there is nothing there. You yourself, as it were, see the green colour on to the white surface. |
| And so in this case: when I darken the source of light to red, you see the shadow green. What was mere darkness before, you now see green. And now I darken the same source of light to green,—the shadow becomes red. |
| I will produce the phenomenon and you must now look through on to the green strip. It stays green, does it not? So with the other colour: if I engendered red by means of green, it would stay red. |
| 320. The Light Course: Lecture VII
30 Dec 1919, Stuttgart Tr. George Adams Rudolf Steiner |
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My dear Friends, We will begin today with an experiment bearing upon our studies of the theory of colour. As I have said before, all I can give you in this Course can only be improvised and aphoristic. Hence too I cannot keep to the conventional categories of the Physics textbooks,—in saying which I do not mean to imply that it would be better if I did. In the last resort I wish to lead you to a certain kind of insight into Science, and you must look on all that I bring forward in the meantime as a kind of preparation. We are not advancing in the usual straight line. We try to gather up the diverse phenomena we need, forming a circle as it were,—then to move forward from the circumference towards the centre. You have seen that wherever colours arise there is a working-together of light and darkness. What we now have to do is to observe as many phenomena as we can before we try to theorize. We want to form a true conception of what underlies this interplay of light and darkness. Today I will begin by shewing you the phenomenon of coloured shadows, as they are called. Here are two candles (Figure VIIa),—candles as sources of light—and an upright rod which will throw shadows on this screen. You see two shadows, without perceptible colour. You only need to take a good look at what is here before you, you will be bound to say: the shadow you are seeing on the right is the one thrown by the left-hand source of light. It is produced, in that the light from this source is hidden by the rod. Likewise the shadow on the left arises where the light from the right-hand source is covered. Relatively dark spaces are created,—that is all. Where the shadow is, is simply a dark space. Moreover, looking at the surface of the screen apart from the two bands of shadow, you will agree it is illumined by both sources of light. Now I will colour the one (the left-hand) light. I make the light go through a plate of coloured glass, so that this one of the lights is now coloured—that is, darkened to some extent. As a result, you will see that the shadow of the rod, due to this left-hand source of light—the one which I am darkening to red—this shadow on the right becomes green. It becomes green just as a purely white background does when you look sharply for example at a small red surface for a time, then turn your eye away and look straight at the white. You then see green where you formerly saw red, though there is nothing there. You yourself, as it were, see the green colour on to the white surface. In such a case, you are seeing the green surface as an after-image in time of the red which you were seeing just before, when you exposed your eye to the red surface that was actually there. And so in this case: when I darken the source of light to red, you see the shadow green. What was mere darkness before, you now see green. And now I darken the same source of light to green,—the shadow becomes red. And when I darken it to blue, an orange shadow is produced. If I should darken it to violet, it would give yellow.  And now consider please the following phenomenon; it is most important, therefore I mention it once more. Say in a room you have a red cushion with a white crochet cover, through the rhombic-patterned apertures of which the red of the cushion shines through. You look at the red rhombic pattern and then look away to the white. On the white ground you see the same lattice-work in green. Of course it isn't there, but your own eye is active and makes an after-effect, which, as you focus on the white, generates the green, “subjective” images, as one is wont to call them. Goethe was familiar with this phenomenon, and also knew that of the coloured shadows. I darken this source of light and get green, said Goethe to himself, and he went on to describe it somewhat as follows: When I darken this source of light, the white screen as a whole shines red. I am not really seeing the white screen; what I see is a reddish-shining colour. In fact I see the screen more or less red. And as an outcome—as with the cushion mentioned just now—I with my own eye generate the contrasting colour. There is no real green here. I only see the green incidentally, because the screen as a whole now has a reddish colour. However, this idea of Goethe's is mistaken, as you may readily convince yourselves. Take a little tube and look through it, so that you only see the shadow; you will still see it green. You no longer see what is around it, you only see the green which is objectively there at the place you look at. You can convince yourself by this experiment that the green really is objective. It remains green, hence the phenomenon cannot be one of mere contrast but is objective. We cannot now provide for everyone to see it, but as the proverb says, durch zweier Zeugen Mund wird alle Wahrheit kund—two witnesses will always tell the truth. I will produce the phenomenon and you must now look through on to the green strip. It stays green, does it not? So with the other colour: if I engendered red by means of green, it would stay red. Goethe in this instance was mistaken, and as the error is incorporated in his Theory of Colour it must of course be rectified.1 Now to begin with, my dear Friends, along with all the other phenomena which we have studied, I want you to take note of the pure fact we have just demonstrated. In the one case we get a grey, a bit of darkness, a mere shadow. In the other case we permeate the shadow, so to speak, with colour. The light and darkness then work together in a different way. We note that by darkening the light with red the objective phenomenon of the green is called forth. Now side by side with this, I also drew your attention to what appears, as is generally said, “subjectively”. We have then, in the one case, what would be called an “objective” phenomenon, the green that stays there on the screen; though not a permanently fixed colour, it stays as long as we create the requisite conditions. Whilst in the other case we have something, as it were, subjectively conditioned by our eye alone. Goethe calls the green colour that appears to me when I have been exposing my eye for a time to red, the colour or coloured after-image that is evoked or “required” (gefordert),—called forth by reaction. Now there is one thing we must insist on in this connection. The “subjective, objective” distinction, between the colour that is temporarily fixed here and the colour that seems only to be called forth as an after-image by the eye, has no foundation in any real fact. When I am seeing red through my eyes, as at this moment, you know there is all the physical apparatus we were describing a few days ago; the vitreous body, the lens, the aqueous humour between the lens and the cornea,—a highly differentiated physical apparatus. This physical apparatus, mingling light and darkness as it does in the most varied ways with one another, is in no other relation to the objectively existent ether than all the apparatus we have here set up—the screen, the rod and so on. The only difference is that in the ^one case the whole apparatus is my eye; I see an objective phenomenon through my own eye. It is the same objective phenomenon which I see here, only that this one stays. By dint of looking at the red, my eye will subsequently react with the “required” colour—to use Goethe's term,—the eye, according to its own conditions, being gradually restored to its neutral state. But the real process by means of which I see the green when I see it thus, as we are wont to say, “subjectively”—through the eye alone,—is in no way different from what it is when I fix the colour “objectively” as in this experiment. Therefore I said in an earlier lecture: You, your subjective being, do not live in such a way that the ether is there vibrating outside of you and the effect of it then finds expression in your experience of colour. No, you yourself are swimming in the ether—you are one with it. It is but an incidental difference, whether you become at one with the ether through this apparatus out here or through a process that goes on in your own eye. There is no real nor essential difference between the green image engendered spatially by the red darkening of the light, and the green afterimage, appearing afterwards only in point of time. Looked at objectively there is no tangible difference, save that the process is spatial in the one case and temporal in the other. That is the one essential difference. A sensible and thoughtful contemplation of these things will lead you no longer to look for the contrast, “subjective and objective” as we generally call it, in the false direction in which modern Science generally tries to see it. You will then see it for what it really is. In the one case we have rigged-up an apparatus to engender colour while our eye stays neutral—neutral as to the way the colours are here produced—and is thus able to enter into and unite with what is here. In the other case the eye itself is the physical apparatus. What difference does it make, whether the necessary apparatus is out there, or in your frontal cavity? We are not outside the things, then first projecting the phenomena we see out into space. We with our being are in the things; moreover we are in them even more fully when we go on from certain kinds of physical phenomena to others. No open-minded person, examining the phenomena of colour in all their aspects, can in the long run fail to admit that we are in them—not, it is true, with our ordinary body, but certainly with our etheric body and thereby also with the astral part of our being. And now let us descend from Light to Warmth. Warmth too we perceive as a condition of our environment which gains significance for us whenever we are exposed to it. We shall soon see, however, that as between the perception of light and the perception of warmth there is a very significant difference. You can localize the perception of light clearly and accurately in the physical apparatus of the eye, the objective significance of which I have been stressing. But if you ask yourself in all seriousness, “How shall I now compare the relation I am in to light with the relation I am in to warmth?”, you will have to answer, “While my relation to the light is in a way localized—localized by my eye at a particular place in my body,—this is not so for warmth. For warmth the whole of me is, so to speak, the sense-organ. For warmth, the whole of me is what my eye is for the light”. We cannot therefore speak of the perception of warmth in the same localized sense as of the perception of light. Moreover, precisely in realizing this we may also become aware of something more. What are we really perceiving when we come into relation to the warmth-condition of our surroundings? We must admit, we have a very distinct perception of the fact that we are swimming in the warmth-element of our environment. And yet, what is it of us that is swimming? Please answer for yourselves the question: What is it that is swimming when you are swimming in the warmth of your environment? Take then the following experiment. Fill a bucket with water just warm enough for you to feel it lukewarm. Put both your hands in—not for long, only to test it. Then put your left hand in water as hot as you can bear and your right hand in water as cold as you can bear. Then put both hands quickly back again into the lukewarm water. You will find the lukewarm water seeming very warm to your right hand and very cold to your left. Your left hand, having become hot, perceives as cold what your right hand, having become cold, perceives as warmth. Before, you felt the same lukewarmness on either side. What is it then? It is your own warmth that is swimming there. Your own warmth makes you feel the difference between itself and your environment. What is it therefore, once again,—what is it of you that is swimming in the warmth-element of your environment? It is your own state-of-warmth, brought about by your own organic process. Far from this being an unconscious thing, your consciousness indwells it. Inside your skin you are living in this warmth, and according to the state of this your own warmth you converse—communicate and come to terms—with the element of warmth in your environment, wherein your own bodily warmth is swimming. It is your warmth-organism which really swims in the warmth of your environment.—If you think these things through, you will come nearer the real processes of Nature—far nearer than by what is given you in modern Physics, abstracted as it is from all reality. Now let us go still farther down. We experience our own state-of-warmth by swimming with it in our environment-of-warmth. When we are warmer than our environment we feel the latter as if it were drawing, sucking at us; when we are colder we feel as though it were imparting something to us. But this grows different again when we consider how we are living in yet another element. Once more then: we have the faculty of living in what really underlies the light; we swim in the element of light. Then, in the way we have been explaining, we swim in the element of warmth. But we are also able to swim in the element of air, which of course we always have within us. We human beings, after all, are to a very small extent solid bodies. More than 90% of us is just a column of water, and—what matters most in this connection—the water in us is a kind of intermediary between the airy and the solid state. Now we can also experience ourselves quite consciously in the airy element, just as we can in the element of warmth. Our consciousness descends effectively into the airy element. Even as it enters into the element of light and into the element of warmth, so too it enters into the element of air. Here again, it can “converse”, it can communicate and come to terms with what is taking place in our environment of air. It is precisely this “conversation” which finds expression in the phenomena of sound or tone. You see from this: we must distinguish between different levels in our consciousness. One level of our consciousness is the one we live with in the element of light, inasmuch as we ourselves partake in this element. Quite another level of our consciousness is the one we live with in the element of warmth, inasmuch as we ourselves, once more, are partaking in it. And yet another level of our consciousness is the one we live with in the element of air, inasmuch as we ourselves partake also in this. Our consciousness is indeed able to dive down into the gaseous or airy element. Then are we living in the airy element of our environment and are thus able to perceive the phenomena of sound and of musical tone. Even as we ourselves with our own consciousness have to partake in the phenomena of light so that we swim in the light-phenomena of our environment; and as we have to partake in the element of warmth so that we swim also in this; so too must we partake in the element of air. We must ourselves have something of the airy element within us in a differentiated form so that we may be able to perceive—when, say, a pipe, a drum or a violin is resounding—the differentiated airy element outside us. In this respect, my dear Friends, our bodily nature is indeed of the greatest interest even to outward appearance. There is our breathing process: we breathe-in the air and breathe it out again. When we breathe-out the air we push our diaphragm upward. This involves a relief of tension, a relaxation, for the whole of our organic system beneath the diaphragm. In that we raise the diaphragm as we breathe-out and thus relieve the organic system beneath the diaphragm, the cerebrospinal fluid in which the brain is swimming is driven downward. Here now the cerebrospinal fluid is none other than a somewhat condensed modification, so to speak, of the air, for it is really the out-breathed air which brings about the process. When I breathe-in again, the cerebrospinal fluid is driven upward. I, through my breathing, am forever living in this rhythmic, downward-and-upward, upward-and-downward undulation of the cerebrospinal fluid, which is quite clearly an image of my whole breathing process. In that my bodily organism partakes in these oscillations of the breathing process, there is an inner differentiation, enabling me to perceive and experience the airy element in consciousness. Indeed by virtue of this process, of which admittedly I have been giving only a rather crude description, I am forever living in a rhythm-of-life which both in origin and in its further course consists in an inner differentiation of the air. In that you breathe and bring about—not of course so crudely but in a manifold and differentiated way—this upward and downward oscillation of the rhythmic forces, there is produced within you what may itself be described as an organism of vibrations, highly complicated, forever coming into being and passing away again. It is this inner organism of vibrations which in our ear we bring to bear upon what sounds towards us from without when, for example, the string of a musical instrument gives out a note. We make the one impinge upon the other. And just as when you plunge your hand into the lukewarm water you perceive the state-of-warmth of your own hand by the difference between the warmth of your hand and the warmth of the water, so too do you perceive the tone or sound by the impact and interaction of your own inner, wondrously constructed musical instrument with the sound or tone that comes to manifestation in the air outside you. The ear is in a way the bridge, by which your own inner “lyre of Apollo” finds its relation, in ever-balancing and compensating interplay, with the differentiated airy movement that comes to you from without. Such, in reality is hearing. The real process of hearing—hearing of the differentiated sound or tone—is, as you see, very far removed from the abstraction commonly presented. Something, they say, is going on in the space outside, this then affects my ear, and the effect upon my ear is perceived in some way as an effect on my subjective being. For the “subjective being” is at long last referred to—described in some kind of demonology—or rather, not described at all. We shall not get any further if we do not try to think out clearly, what is the underlying notion in this customary presentation. You simply cannot think these notions through to their conclusion, for what this school of Physics never does is to go simply into the given facts. Thus in effect we have three stages in man's relation to the outer world—I will describe them as the stage of Light, the stage of Warmth, and that of Tone or Sound. There is however a remarkable fact in this connection. Look open-mindedly at your relation to the element of light—your swimming in the element of light—and you will have to admit: It is only with your etheric body that you can live in what is there going on in the outer world. Not so when you are living in the element of warmth. You really live in the warmth-element of your environment with your whole bodily nature. Having thus contemplated how you live in light and warmth, look farther down—think how you live in the element of tone and sound—and you will recognize: Here you yourself are functioning as an airy body. You, as a living organism of air, live in the manifoldly formed and differentiated outer air. It is no longer the ether; it is external physical matter, namely air. Our living in the warmth-element is then a very significant border-line. Our life in the element of warmth is for our consciousness a kind of midway level—a niveau. You recognize it very clearly in the simple fact that for pure feeling and sensation you are scarcely able to distinguish outer warmth from inner warmth. Your life in the light-element however lies above this level:—  For light, you ascend as it were into a higher, into an etheric sphere, therein to live with your consciousness. On the other hand you go beneath this level, beneath this niveau, when in perceiving tone or sound you as a man-of-air converse and come to terms with the surrounding air. While upon this niveau itself (in the perceiving of warmth) you come to terms with the outer world in a comparatively simple way. Now bring together what I have just been shewing with what I told you before out of Anatomy and Physiology. Then you will have to conceive the eye as the physical apparatus, to begin with. Indeed the farther outward you go, the more physical do you find the eye to be; the farther in you go, the more is it permeated with vitality. We therefore have in us a localized organ—the eye—with which to lift ourselves above a certain level or niveau. Upon this actual niveau we live as it were on equal terms with our environment; with our own warmth we meet the warmth of our environment and perceive the difference, whatever it may be. Here we have no such specialized organ as the eye; the whole of us, we ourselves in some way, become the sense-organ. And we dive down beneath this level or niveau when functioning as airy man,—when we converse and come to terms with the differentiated outer air. Here once again the “conversation” becomes localized—localized namely in this “lyre of Apollo”, in this rhythmic play of our whole organism, of which the rhythmic play of our spinal fluid is but the image and the outcome. Here then again we have something localized—only beneath the niveau this time, whilst in the eye it is above this midway level. The Psychology of our time is, as you see, in an even sorrier position than the Physiology and Physics, and we can scarcely blame our physicists if they speak so unrealistically of what is there in the outer world, since they get so little help from the psychologists. The latter, truth to tell, have been only too well disciplined by the Churches, which have claimed all the knowledge of the soul and Spirit for their own domain. Very obediently the psychologists restrict their study to the external apparatus, calling this external apparatus “Man”. They speak no doubt of soul and mind, or even Spirit, but in mere words, mere sounding phrases, until Psychology becomes at last a mere collection of words. For in their books they never tell us what we are to understand by soul and mind and Spirit,—how we should conceive them. So then the physicists come to imagine that the light is there at work quite outside us; this light affects the human eye. The eye somehow responds; at any rate it receives an impression. This then becomes subjective inner experience. Now comes the veriest tangle of confused ideas. The physicists allege it to be much the same as to the other sense-organs. They follow what they learn from the psychologists. In text-books of Psychology you will generally find a chapter on the Science of the Senses, as though such a thing as “sense” or “sense-organ” in general existed. But if you put it to the test: study the eye,—it is completely different from the ear. The one indeed lies above and the other beneath the “niveau” which we explained just now. In their whole form and structure, eye and ear prove to be totally diverse organs. This surely is significant and should be borne in mind. Today now we will go thus far; please think it over in the meantime. Taking our start from this, we will tomorrow speak of the science of sound and tone, whence you will then be able to go on into the other realms of Physics. There is however one more thing I want to demonstrate today. It is among the great achievements of modern Physics; it is in truth a very great achievement. You know that if you merely rub a surface with your finger—exerting pressure, using some force as you do so,—the surface will get warm. By this exertion you have generated warmth. So too by calling forth out-and-out mechanical processes in the objective world external to yourself, you can engender warmth. Now as a basis for tomorrow's lecture, we have rigged up this apparatus. If you were now to look and read the thermometer inside, you would find it a little over 16° C. The vessel contains water. Immersed in the body of water is a kind of drum or flywheel which we now bring into quick rotation, thus doing mechanical work, whirling the portions of the water all about, stirring it thoroughly. After a time we shall look at the thermometer again and you will see that it has risen. By dint of purely mechanical work the water will have gained in warmth. That is to say, warmth is produced by mechanical work. It was especially Julius Robert Mayer who drew attention to this fact, which was then worked out more arithmetically. Mayer himself derived from it the so-called “mechanical equivalent of warmth” (or of heat). Had they gone on in the same spirit in which he began, they would have said no more than that a certain number, a certain figure expresses the relation which can be measured when warmth is produced by dint of mechanical work or vice-versa. But they exploited the discovery in metaphysical fashion. Namely they argued: If then there is this constant ratio between the mechanical work expended and the warmth produced, the warmth or heat is simply the work transformed. Transformed, if you please!—where in reality all that they had before them was the numerical expression of the relation between the two.
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