the "Farbenlehre," and looked up to Goethe on that side where his greatness was uncontested and supreme.
But in the month of May, 1878, Mr. Carlyle did me the honor of calling upon me twice; and I, not being at home at the time, visited him in Chelsea soon afterward. He was then in his eighty-third year, and, looking in his solemn fashion toward that portal to which we are all so rapidly hastening, he remembered his friends. He then presented to me, as "a farewell gift," the two octavo volumes of letterpress and the single folio volume, consisting in great part of colored diagrams, which are here before you. Exactly half a century ago these volumes were sent by Goethe to Mr. Carlyle. They embrace the "Farbenlehre"—a title which may be translated, though not well translated, "Theory of Colors"—and they are accompanied by a long letter, or rather catalogue from Goethe himself, dated the 14th of June, 1830, a little less than two years before his death. My illustrious friend wished me to examine the book, with a view of setting forth what it really contained. This year for the first time I have been able to comply with the desire of Mr. Carlyle; and as I knew that your wish would coincide with his, as to the propriety of making some attempt to weigh the merits of a work which exerted so great an influence in its day,[1] I have not shrunk from the labor of such a review.
The average reading of the late Mr. Buckle is said to have amounted to three volumes a day. But they could not have been volumes like those of the "Farbenlehre." For the necessity of halting and pondering over its statements was so frequent and the difficulty of coming to any undoubted conclusion regarding Goethe's real conceptions was often so great as to invoke the expenditure of an inordinate amount of time. I can not even now say with confidence that I fully realize all the thoughts of Goethe. Many of them are strange to the scientific man. They demand for their interpretation a sympathy beyond that required or even tolerated in severe physical research. Two factors, the one external and the other internal, go to the production of every intellectual result. There is the evidence without and there is the mind within on which that evidence impinges. Change either factor, and the result will cease to be the same. In the region of politics, where mere opinion comes so much into play, it is only natural that the same external evidence should produce different convictions in different minds. But in the region of science, where demonstration instead of opinion is paramount, such differences ought hardly to be expected. That they nevertheless occur is strikingly exemplified by the case before us; for the very experimental facts
- ↑ The late Sir Charles Eastlake translated a portion of the "Farbenlehre"; while the late Mr. Lewes, in his "Life of Goethe," has given a brief but very clever account of the work. It is also dealt with, in connection with Goethe's other scientific labors, in Helmholtz's lectures.
