Seeing as 'Deed' - I
Having made ourselves so far acquainted with the fundamentals of
Goethe's approach to the outer phenomena of colour involved in the
spectrum, we will leave this for a while to follow Goethe along another
no less essential line of inquiry. It leads us to the study of our own
process of sight, by means of which we grow aware of the optical facts
in outer space.
*
The importance which Goethe himself saw in this aspect of the optical
problem is shown by the place he gave it in the didactic part of his
Farbenlehre. The first three chapters, after the Introduction, are
called 'Physiological Colours', 'Physical Colours', and 'Chemical
Colours'. In the first chapter, Goethe summarizes a group of phenomena
which science calls 'subjective' colours, since their origin is traced
to events within the organ of sight. The next chapter deals with an
actual physics of colour - that is, with the appearance of colours in
external space as a result of the refraction, diffraction and
polarization of light. The third chapter treats of material colours in
relation to chemical and other influences. After two chapters which
need not concern us here comes the sixth and last chapter, entitled
'Physical-Moral Effect of Colour' ('Sinnlich-sittliche Wirkung der
Farben'), which crowns the whole. There, for the first time in the
history of modern science, a bridge is built between Physics,
Aesthetics and Ethics. We remember it was with this aim in view that
Goethe had embarked upon his search for the solution of the problem of
colour.
In this chapter the experiencing of the various colours and their
interplay through the human soul is treated in many aspects, and Goethe
is able to show that what arises in man's consciousness as qualitative
colour-experience is nothing but a direct 'becoming-inward' of what is
manifested to the 'reader's' eye and mind as the objective nature of
colours. So, in one realm of the sense-world, Goethe succeeded in
closing the abyss which divides existence and consciousness, so long as
the latter is restricted to a mere onlooker-relationship towards the
sense-world.
If we ask what induced Goethe to treat the physiological colours before
the physical colours, thus deviating so radically from the order
customary in science, we shall find the answer in a passage from the
Introduction to his Entwurf. Goethe, in giving his views on the
connexion between light and the eye, says: 'The eye owes its existence
to light. Out of indifferent auxiliary animal organs the light calls
forth an organ for itself, similar to its own nature; thus the eye is
formed by the light, for the light, so that the inner light can meet
the outer.' In a verse, which reproduces in poetic form a thought
originally expressed by Plotinus, Goethe sums up his idea of the
creative connexion between eye and light as follows:
' Unless our eyes had something of the sun, How could we ever look upon
the light? Unless there lived within us God's own might, How could the
Godlike give us ecstasy?1
(Trans. Stawell-Dickinson)
By expressing himself in this way in the Introduction to his
Farbenlehre, Goethe makes it clear from the outset that when he speaks
of 'light' as the source of colour-phenomena, he has in mind an idea of
light very different from that held by modern physics. For in dealing
with optics, physical science turns at once to phenomena of light found
outside man - in fact to phenomena in that physical realm from which,
as the lowest of the kingdoms of nature, the observations of natural
science are bound to start. Along this path one is driven, as we have
seen, to conceive of light as a mere 'disturbance' in the universe, a
kind of irregular chaos.
In contrast to this, Goethe sees that to gain an explanation of natural
physical phenomena which will be in accord with nature, we must
approach them on the path by which nature brings them into being. In
the field of light this path is one which leads from light as creative
agent to light as mere phenomenon. The highest form of manifestation of
creative light most directly resembling its Idea is within man. It is
there that light creates for itself the organ through which, as
manifest light, it eventually enters into human consciousness. To
Goethe it was therefore clear that a theory of light, which is to
proceed in accord with nature, should begin with a study of the eye:
its properties, its ways of acting when it brings us information of its
deeds and sufferings in external nature.
The eye with its affinity to light comes into being in the apparently
dark space of the mother's womb. This points to the possession by the
human organism of an 'inner' light which first forms the eye from
within, in order that it may afterwards meet the light outside. It is
this inner light that Goethe makes the starting-point of his
investigations, and it is for this reason that he treats physiological
colours before physical colours.
*
Of fundamental significance as regards method is the way in which
Goethe goes on from the passage quoted above to speak of the activity
of the inner light: 'This immediate affinity between light and the eye
will be denied by none; to consider them identical in substance is less
easy to comprehend. It will be more intelligible to assert that a
dormant light resides in the eye, and that this light can be excited by
the slightest cause from within or from without. In darkness we can, by
an effort of imagination, call up the brightest images; in dreams,
objects appear to us as in broad daylight; if we are awake, the
slightest external action of light is perceptible, and if the organ
suffers a mechanical impact light and colours spring forth.'
What Goethe does here is nothing less than to follow the development of
sight to where it has its true origin. Let us remember that a general
source of illusion in the modern scientific picture of the world lies
in the fact that the onlooker-consciousness accepts itself as a
self-contained ready-made entity, instead of tracing itself genetically
to the states of consciousness from which it has developed in the
course of evolution. In reality, the consciousness kindled by outer
sense-perception was preceded by a dreaming consciousness, and this by
a sleeping consciousness, both for the individual and for humanity as a
whole. So, too, outer vision by means of the physical apparatus of the
eye was preceded by an inner vision. In dreams we still experience this
inner vision; we use it in the activity of our picture-forming
imagination; and it plays continuously upon the process of external
sight. Why we fail to notice this when using our eye in the ordinary
way, is because of that dazzling process mentioned earlier in this
book. Goethe's constant endeavour was not to become the victim of this
blindness - that is, not to be led by day-time experience to forget the
night-side of human life. The passage quoted from the Introduction to
his Farbenlehre shows how, in all that he strove for, he kept this goal
in view.
How inevitably a way of thinking that seeks an intuitive understanding
of nature is led to views like those of Goethe is shown by the
following quotations from Reid and Ruskin, expressing their view of the
relationship between the eye, or the act of seeing, and external
optical phenomena. In his Inquiry, at the beginning of his review of
visual perceptions, Reid says:
'The structure of the eye, and of all its appurtenances, the admirable
contrivances of nature for performing all its various external and
internal motions and the variety in the eyes of different animals,
suited to their several natures and ways of life, clearly demonstrate
this organ to be a masterpiece of nature's work. And he must be very
ignorant of what hath been discovered about it, or have a very strange
cast of understanding, who can seriously doubt, whether or not the rays
of light and the eye were made for one another with consummate wisdom,
and perfect skill in optics.''3
The following passage from Ruskin's Ethics of the Dust (Lecture X)
brings out his criticism of the scientific way of treating of optical
phenomena:
'With regard to the most interesting of all their [the philosophers']
modes of force-light; they never consider how far the existence of it
depends on the putting of certain vitreous and nervous substances into
the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The German philosophers
began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us there was
no such thing as light at all, unless we choose to see it.2 Now, German
and English, both, have reversed their engines, and insist that light
would be exactly the same light that it is, though nobody could ever
see it. The fact being that the force must be there, and the eye there,
and 'light' means the effect of the one on the other - and perhaps,
also - (Plato saw farther into that mystery than anyone has since, that
I know of) - on something a little way within the eyes.'
Remarks like these, and the further quotation given below, make it seem
particularly tragic that Ruskin apparently had no knowledge of Goethe's
Farbenlehre. This is the more remarkable in view of the significance
which Turner, with whom Ruskin stood in such close connexion, ascribed
to it from the standpoint of the artist. For the way in which Ruskin in
his Modern Painters speaks of the effect of the modern scientific
concept of colours upon the ethical-religious feeling of man, shows
that he deplores the lack of just what Goethe had long since achieved
in his Farbenlehre where, starting with purely physical observations,
he had been able to develop from them a 'physical-moral' theory of
colour.
Ruskin's alertness to the effect on ethical life of a scientific
world-picture empty of all qualitative values led him to write:
'It is in raising us from the first state of inactive reverie to the
second of useful thought, that scientific pursuits are to be chiefly
praised. But in restraining us at this second stage, and checking the
impulses towards higher contemplation, they are to be feared or blamed.
They may in certain minds be consistent with such contemplation, but
only by an effort; in their nature they are always adverse to it,
having a tendency to chill and subdue the feelings, and to resolve all
things into atoms and numbers. For most men, an ignorant enjoyment is
better than an informed one, it is better to conceive the sky as a blue
dome than a dark cavity, and the cloud as a golden throne than a sleety
mist. I much question whether anyone who knows optics, however
religious he may be, can feel in equal degree the pleasure and
reverence an unlettered peasant may feel at the sight of a rainbow.'
What Ruskin did not guess was that the rudiments of the 'moral theory
of light' for which he craved, as this passage indicates, had been
established by Goethe long before.
*
In the section of his Farbenlehre dealing with 'physiological colours',
Goethe devotes by far the most space to the so-called 'afterimages'
which appear in the eye as the result of stimulation by external light,
and persist for some little time. To create such an afterimage in a
simple way, one need only gaze at a brightly lit window and then at a
faintly lit wall of the room. The picture of the window appears there,
but with the light-values reversed: the dark cross-bar appears as
light, and the bright panes as dark.
In describing this phenomenon Goethe first gives the usual explanation,
that the part of the retina which was exposed to the light from the
window-panes gets tired, and is therefore blunted for further
impressions, whereas the part on which the image of the dark frame fell
is rested, and so is more sensitive to the uniform impression of the
wall. Goethe, however, at once adds that although this explanation may
seem adequate for this special instance, there are other phenomena
which can be accounted for only if they are held to derive from a
'higher source'. Goethe means experiences with coloured after-images.
This will be confirmed by our own discussion of the subject.
What we first need, however, is a closer insight into the physiological
process in the eye which causes the after-images as such. Wherever
Goethe speaks of a simple activity of the retina, we are in fact
concerned with a co-operation of the retina with other parts of our
organ of sight. In order to make this clear, let us consider how the
eye adapts itself to varying conditions of light and darkness.
It is well known that if the eye has become adjusted to darkness it is
dazzled if suddenly exposed to light, even though the light be of no
more than quite ordinary brightness. Here we enter a border region
where the seeing process begins to pass over into a pathological
condition.4 A 'secret' of the effect of light on the eye is here
revealed which remains hidden in ordinary vision, for normally the
different forces working together in the eye hold each other in
balance, so that none is able to manifest separately. This equilibrium
is disturbed, however, when we suddenly expose the eye to light while
it is adapted to darkness. The light then acts on the eye in its usual
way, but without the immediate counter-action which normally restores
the balance. Under these conditions we notice that the sudden dazzling
has a painful influence on the eye - that is, an influence in some way
destructive. This will not seem surprising if we remember that when
light strikes on the background of the eye, consciousness is quickened,
and this, as we know, presupposes a breaking down of substance in some
part of the nervous system. Such a process does in fact occur in the
retina, the nerve-part of the eye, when external light falls upon it.
If the eye were solely a structure of nerves, it would be so far
destroyed by the impact of light that it could not be restored even by
sleep, as are the more inward parts of the nervous system. But the eye
receives also a flow of blood, and we know that throughout the
threefold human organism the blood supplies the nervous system with
building-up forces, polarically opposite to the destructive ones. In
sleep, as we have already seen, the interruption of consciousness
allows the blood to inundate the nervous system, as it were, with its
healing, building-up activity. It is not necessary, however, for the
whole of the body to pass into a condition of sleep before this
activity can occur. It functions to some extent also in the waking
state, especially in those parts of the organism which, like the eye,
serve in the highest degree the unfolding of consciousness.
Having established this, we have a basis for an understanding of the
complete process of vision. We see that it is by no means solely the
nerve part of the eye which is responsible for vision, as the
spectator-physiology was bound to imagine. The very fact that the place
where the optic nerve enters the eye is blind indicates that the
function of mediating sight cannot be ascribed to the nerve alone. What
we call 'seeing' is far more the result of an interplay between the
retina carrying the nerves, and the choroid carrying the blood-vessels.
In this interplay the nerves are the passive, receptive organ for the
inworking of external light, while the blood-activity comes to meet the
nerve-process with a precisely correlated action. In this action we
find what Goethe called the 'inner light'.
The process involved in adaptation now becomes comprehensible. The
cause of the dazzling effect of light of normal intensity on an eye
adapted to the dark, is that in such an eye the blood is in a state of
rest, and this prevents it from exercising quickly enough the necessary
counter-action to the influence of the light. A corresponding effect
occurs when one suddenly exposes to darkness the eye adapted to light.
One can easily observe what goes on then, if, after looking for a time
at an undifferentiated light surface such as the evenly luminous sky,
one covers the opened eyes with the hollowed hands. It will then be
found that the space before the eyes is filled by a sort of white
light, and by paying close attention one recognizes that it streams
from the eyes out into the hollowed space. It may even be several
minutes before the field of vision really appears black, that is,
before the activity of the inner light in the choroid has so far died
away that equilibrium prevails between the non-stimulated nerves and
the non-stimulated blood.
With this insight into the twofold nature of the process of vision we
are now able to describe more fully the negative after-image. Although
in this case, as Goethe himself remarked, the ordinary explanation
seems to suffice, yet in view of our later studies it may be well to
bring forward here this wider conception.
On the basis of our present findings it is no longer enough to trace
the appearing of the after-image solely to a differential fatigue in
the retina. The fact is that as long as the eye is turned to the bright
window-pane a more intensive blood-activity occurs in the portions of
the eye's background met by the light than in those where the dark
window-bar throws its shadow on the retina. If the eye so influenced is
then directed to the faintly illumined wall of the room, the difference
in the activity of the blood persists for some time. Hence in the parts
of the eye adapted to darkness we experience the faint brightness as
strongly luminous, even dazzling, whereas in the parts more adapted to
light we feel the same degree of brightness to be dark. That the action
of the inner light is responsible for the differences becomes clear if,
while the negative after-image is still visible, we darken the eye with
the hollowed hands. Then at once in the dark field of vision the
positive facsimile of the window appears, woven by the activity of the
blood which reproduces the outer reality.
Having traced the colourless after-image to 'higher sources' - that is,
to the action of the blood - let us now examine coloured afterimages.
We need first to become conscious of the colour-creating light-activity
which resides in the blood. For this purpose we expose the eyes for a
moment to an intense light, and then darken them for a sufficient time.
Nothing in external nature resembles in beauty and radiance the play of
colour which then arises, unless it be the colour phenomenon of the
rainbow under exceptionally favourable circumstances.
The physiological process which comes to consciousness in this way as
an experience of vision is exactly the same as the process which gives
us experiences of vision in dreams. There is indeed evidence that when
one awakens in a brightly lit room out of vivid dreaming, one feels
less dazzled than on waking from dreamless sleep. This indicates that
in dream vision the blood in the eye is active, just as it is in waking
vision. The only difference is that in waking consciousness the
stimulus reaches the blood from outside, through the eye, whereas in
dreams it comes from causes within the organism. The nature of these
causes does not concern us here; it will be dealt with later. For the
moment it suffices to establish the fact that our organism is supplied
with a definite activity of forces which we experience as the
appearance of certain images of vision, no matter from which side the
stimulus comes. All vision, physiologically considered, is of the
nature of dream vision; that is to say, we owe our day-waking sight to
the fact that we are able to encounter the pictures of the outer world,
brought to us by the light, with a dreaming of the corresponding
after-images.
Just as the simple light-dark after-image shows a reversal of
light-values in relation to the external picture, so in the coloured
afterimages there is a quite definite and opposite relationship of
their colours to those of the original picture. Thus, if the eyes are
exposed for some time to an impression of the colour red, and then
directed to a neutral surface, not too brightly illuminated, one sees
it covered with a glimmering green. In this way there is a reciprocal
correspondence between the colour-pairs Red-Green, Yellow-Violet,
Blue-Orange. To whichever of these six colours one exposes the eye, an
after-image always appears of its contrast colour, forming with it a
pair of opposites.
We must here briefly recall how this phenomenon is generally explained
on Newtonian lines. The starting-point is the assumption that the eye
becomes fatigued by gazing at the colour and gradually becomes
insensitive to it. According to Newton's theory, if an eye thus
affected looks at a white surface, the sum of all the colours comes
from there to meet it, while the eye has a reduced sensitivity to the
particular colour it has been gazing at. And so among the totality of
colours constituting the 'white' light, this one is more or less
non-existent for the eye. The remaining colours are then believed to
cause the contrasting colour-impression.
If we apply the common sense of the Hans Andersen child to this, we see
where it actually leads. For it says no less than this: as long as the
eye is in a normal condition, it tells us a lie about the world, for it
makes white light seem something that in reality it is not. For the
truth to become apparent, the natural function of the eye must be
reduced by fatigue. To believe that a body, functioning in this way, is
the creation of God, and at the same time to look on this God as a
Being of absolute moral perfection, would seem a complete contradiction
to the Hans Andersen child. In this contradiction and others of the
same kind to which nowadays every child is exposed repeatedly and
willy-nilly in school lessons and so on - we must seek the true cause
of the moral uncertainty so characteristic of young people today. It
was because Ruskin felt this that he called for a 'moral' theory of
light.
Since Goethe did not judge man from artificially devised experiments,
but the latter from man, quite simple reflexions led him to the
following view of the presence of the contrasting colour in the
coloured after-images. Nature outside man had taught him that life on
all levels takes it course in a perpetual interplay of opposites,
manifested externally in an interplay of diastole and systole
comparable to the process of breathing. He, therefore, traced the
interchange of light-values in colourless after-images to a 'silent
resistance which every vital principle is forced to exhibit when some
definite condition is presented to it. Thus, inhalation presupposes
exhalation; thus every systole, its diastole. When darkness is
presented to the eye, the eye demands brightness, and vice versa: it
reveals its vital energy, its fitness to grasp the object, precisely by
bringing forth out of itself something contrary to the object.'
Consequently he summarizes his reflexions on coloured afterimages and
their reversals of colour in these words: 'The eye demands actual
completeness and closes the colour-circle in itself.' How true this is,
the law connecting the corresponding colours shows, as may be seen in
the following diagram. Here, red, yellow and blue as three primary
colours confront the three remaining colours, green, violet and orange
in such a way that each of the latter represents a mixture of the two
other primary colours. (Fig. 10.)
Colour and contrast-colour are actually so related that to whatever
colour the eye is exposed it produces a counter-colour so as to have
the sum-total of all the three primary colours in itself. And so, in
consequence of the interplay of outer and inner light in the eye, there
is always present in it the totality of all the colours.
It follows that the appearance of the contrast-colour in the field of
vision is not, as the Newtonian theory asserts, the result of fatigue,
but of an intensified activity of the eye, which continues even after
the colour impression which gave rise to it has ceased. What is seen on
the neutral surface (it will be shown later why we studiously avoid
speaking of 'white light') is no outwardly existing colour at all. It
is the activity of the eye itself, working in a dreamlike way from its
blood-vessel system, and coming to our consciousness by this means.
Here again, just as in the simple opposition of light and dark, the
perception of coloured after-images is connected with a breaking-down
process in the nerve region of the eye, and a corresponding building-up
activity coming from the blood. Only in this case the eye is not
affected by simple light, but by light of a definite colouring. The
specific destructive process caused by this light is answered with a
specific building-up process by the blood. Under certain conditions we
can become dreamily aware of this process which normally does not enter
our consciousness. In such a case we see the contrasting colour as
coloured after-image.
Only by representing the process in this way do we do justice to a fact
which completely eludes the onlooker-consciousness - namely, that the
eye produces the contrasting colour even while it is still exposed to
the influence of the outer colour. Since this is so, all colours
appearing to us in ordinary vision are already tinged by the subdued
light of the opposite colour, produced by the eye itself. One can
easily convince oneself of this through the following experiment.
Instead of directing the eye, after it has been exposed to a certain
colour, to a neutral surface, as previously, gaze at the appropriate
contrasting colour. (The first and second coloured surfaces should be
so arranged that the former is considerably smaller than the latter.)
Then, in the middle of the second surface (and in a field about the
size of the first), its own colour appears, with a strikingly
heightened intensity.
Here we find the eye producing, as usual, a contrast-colour from out of
itself, as an after-image, even while its gaze is fixed on the same
colour in the outer world. The heightened brilliance within the given
field is due to the addition of the after-image colour to the external
colour.
The reader may wonder why this phenomenon is not immediately adduced as
a decisive proof of the fallacy of the whole Newtonian theory of the
relation of 'white' light to the various colours. Although it does in
fact offer such a proof, we have good reason for not making this use of
it here. Throughout this book it is never our intention to enter into a
contest of explanations, or to defeat one explanation by another. How
little this would help will be obvious if we realize that research was
certainly not ignorant of the fact that the opposite colour arises even
when the eye is not turned to a white surface. In spite of this,
science did not feel its concept of white light as the sum of all the
colours to be an error, since it has succeeded in 'explaining' this
phenomenon too, and fitting it into the prevailing theory. To do so is
in thorough accord with spectator-thinking. Our own concern, however,
as in all earlier cases, is to replace this thinking with all its
'proofs' and 'explanations' by learning to read in the phenomena
themselves. For no other purpose than this the following facts also are
now brought forward.
*
Besides Rudolf Steiner's fundamental insight into the
spiritual-physical nature of the growing human being, through which he
laid the basis of a true art of education, he gave advice on many
practical points. For example, he indicated how by the choice of a
suitable colour environment one can bring a harmonizing influence to
bear on extremes of temperament in little children. To-day it is a
matter of practical experience that excitable children are quietened if
they are surrounded with red or red-yellow colours, or wear clothes of
these colours, whereas inactive, lethargic children are roused to inner
movement if they are exposed to the influence of blue or blue-green
colours.
This psychological reaction of children to colour is not surprising if
one knows the role played by the blood in the process of seeing, and
how differently the soul-life of man is connected with the blood-nerve
polarity of his organism in childhood and in later life. What we have
described as the polar interplay of blood and nerve in the act of sight
is not confined to the narrow field of the eye. Just as the nerve
processes arising in the retina are continued to the optic centre in
the cerebrum, so must we look for the origin of the corresponding blood
process not in the choroid itself, but in the lower regions of the
organism. Wherever, therefore, the colour red influences the whole
nerve system, the blood system as a whole answers with an activity of
the metabolism corresponding to the contrasting colour, green.
Similarly it reacts as a whole to a blue-violet affecting the nerve
system, this time with a production corresponding to yellow-orange.
The reason why in later years we notice this so little lies in a fact
we have repeatedly encountered. The consciousness of the grown man
to-day, through its one-sided attachment to the death-processes in the
nerve region, pays no attention to its connexion with the
life-processes centred in the blood system. In this respect the
condition of the little child is quite different. Just as the child is
more asleep in its nerve system than the grown-up person, it is more
awake in its blood system. Hence in all sense-perceptions a child is
not so much aware of how the world works on its nerve system as how its
blood system responds. And so a child in a red environment feels
quietened because it experiences, though dimly, how its whole blood
system is stimulated to the green production; bluish colours enliven it
because it feels its blood answer with a production of light yellowish
tones.
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.).