From the latter phenomena we see once more the significance of Goethe's arrangement of his Farbenlehre. For we are now able to realize that to turn one's attention to the deeds and sufferings of the inner light means nothing less than to bring to consciousness the processes of vision which in childhood, though in a dreamlike way, determine the soul's experience of seeing. Through placing his examination of the physiological colours at the beginning of his Farbenlehre, Goethe actually took the path in scientific research to which Thomas Reid pointed in philosophy. By adapting Reid's words we can say that Goethe, in his Farbenlehre, proclaims as a basic principle of a true Optics: that we must become again as little children if we would reach a philosophy of light and colours.
1Wär' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,
Wie könnten wir das Licht erblicken?
Lebt' nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft,
Wie könnt' uns Göttliches entzucken!
2 Inquiry, VI, 1. The italics are Reid's.
3 Presumably Kant and his school. Schopenhauer was definitely of this opinion.
4 As regards the principle underlying the line of consideration followed here, see the remark made in Chapter V in connexion with Goethe's study of the 'proliferated rose' (p. 76f.).
CHAPTER XVI
Seeing as 'Deed' - II
The observation of our own visual process, which we began in the last chapter, will serve now to free us from a series of illusory concepts which have been connected by the onlooker-consciousness with the phenomena brought about by light.
There is first the general assumption that light as such is visible. In order to realize that light is itself an invisible agent, we need only consider a few self-evident facts - for instance, that for visibility to arise light must always encounter some material resistance in space. This is, in fact, an encounter between light, typifying levity, and the density of the material world, typifying gravity. Accordingly, wherever visible colours appear we have always to do with light meeting its opposite.