1 Note that the series starts on the left with graphite, i.e. with carbon. This substance appears here as a metal among metals, and indeed as the most 'noble' of all. Electricity in this way reveals a secret of carbon well known to the mediaeval alchemist and still known in our day to people in the Orient.
2 There is even a gas which assumes magnetic properties when exposed to extreme cold-oxygen in the solid state.
3 By watering plants with water that had been exposed to heat from different sources, E. Pfeiffer has shown in the chemical laboratory of the Goetheanum that heat engendered by means of electricity is 'dead' heat. It follows that it is not the same for human health whether the heat used for cooking or heating purposes is obtained by burning wood or coal, or by means of electricity.
CHAPTER XIV
Colours as 'Deeds and Sufferings of Light'
'As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in it whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time as myself; poets more excellent have lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my century I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colours - of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here I have a consciousness of a superiority to many.'
In these words spoken to his secretary, Eckermann, in 1829, a few years before his death, Goethe gave his opinion on the significance of his scientific researches in the field of optical phenomena. He knew that the path he had opened up had led him to truths which belong to the original truths of mankind. He expressed this by remarking that his theory of colour was 'as old as the world'.
If in this book we come somewhat late to a discussion of Goethe's colour-theory, in spite of the part it played in his own scientific work, and in spite of its significance for the founding of a physics based on his method, the reasons are these. When Goethe undertook his studies in this field he had not to reckon with the forms of thought which have become customary since the development of mechanistic and above all - to put it concisely - of 'electricalistic' thinking. Before a hearing can be gained in our age for a physics of Light and Colour as conceived by Goethe, certain hindrances must first be cleared away. So a picture on the one hand of matter, and on the other of electricity, such as is given when they are studied by Goethean methods, had first to be built up; only then is the ground provided for an unprejudiced judgment of Goethe's observations and the deductions that can be made from them to-day.
As Professor Heisenberg, in his lecture quoted earlier (Chapter II), rightly remarks, Goethe strove directly with Newton only in the realms of colour-theory and optics. Nevertheless his campaign was not merely against Newton's opinions in this field. He was guided throughout by the conviction that the fundamental principles of the whole Newtonian outlook were at stake. It was for this reason that his polemics against Newton were so strongly expressed, although he had no fondness for such controversies. In looking back on that part of the Farbenlehre which he had himself called 'Polemical' in the title, he said to Eckermann: 'I by no means disavow my severe dissections of the Newtonian statements; it was necessary at the time and will also have its value hereafter; but at bottom all polemical action is repugnant to my nature, and I can take but little pleasure in it.'