the azure of noonday, and by the daffodil and crimson of the evening sky. The inimitable lines written at Ilmenau—
Ist Ruh’,
In allen Wipfeln
Spurest Du
suggest a stillness of the atmosphere which would allow the columns of fine smoke from the foresters' cottages to rise high into the air. He would thus have an opportunity of seeing the upper portion of the column projected against bright clouds, and the lower portion against dark pines, the brownish yellow of the one and the blue of the other being strikingly and at once revealed. He was able to produce artificially at will the colors which he had previously observed in nature. He noticed that when certain bodies were incorporated with glass this substance also played a double part, appearing blue by reflected and yellow by transmitted light.[1] The action of turbid media was to Goethe the ultimate fact—the Urphänomen—of the world of colors. "We see on the one side Light, and on the other side Darkness. We bring between both Turbidity, and from these opposites develop all colors."
As long as Goethe remained in the region of fact his observations are of permanent value. But by the coercion of a powerful imagination he forced his turbid media into regions to which they did not belong, and sought to overthrow by their agency the irrefragable demonstrations of Newton. Newton's theory, as known by everybody, is that white light is composed of a multitude of differently refrangible rays, whose coalescence in certain proportions produces the impression of white. By prismatic analysis these rays are separated from each other, the color of each ray being strictly determined by its refrangibility. The experiments of Newton, whereby he sought to establish this theory, had long appealed with overmastering evidence to every mind trained in the severities of physical investigation. But they did not thus appeal to Goethe. Accepting for the most part the experiments of Newton, he rejected with indignation the conclusions drawn from them, and turned into utter ridicule the notion that white light possessed the composite character ascribed to it. Many of the naturalists of his time supported him, while among philosophers Schelling and Hegel shouted in acclamation over the supposed defeat of Newton. The physicists, however, gave the poet no countenance. Goethe met their scorn with scorn, and under his lash these deniers of his theory, their master included, paid the penalty of their arrogance.
How, then, did he lay down the lines of his own theory? How,
- ↑ Beautiful and instructive samples of such glass are to be seen in the Venice Glass Company's shop, No. 30 St. James's Street.
