Goethe's Theory of ColoursGoethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Philosophy
Goethe's Theory of Colours
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Color
If the spectator advances nearer with the prism through which he looks,
the image is again elevated, and by degrees becomes coloured according
to the law of the first prism. If he again retires till he has brought
the image to the neutralized point, and then retires still farther
away, the image, which had become round and colourless, moves still
more downwards and becomes coloured in the opposite sense, so that
if we look through the prism and upon the refracted spectrum at the
same time, we see the same image coloured according to subjective and
objective laws.
355.
The modes in which this experiment may be varied are obvious. If the
refracting angle of the prism, through which the sun's image was
objectively elevated, is greater than that of the prism through which
the observer looks, he must retire to a much greater distance, in order
to depress the coloured image so low on the vertical plane that it
shall appear colourless, and _vice versâ_.
356.
It will be easily seen that we may exhibit achromatic and
hyperchromatic effects in a similar manner, and we leave it to the
amateur to follow out such researches more fully. Other complicated
experiments in which prisms and lenses are employed together, others
again, in which objective and subjective experiments are variously
intermixed, we reserve for a future occasion, when it will be our
object to trace such effects to the simple phenomena with which we are
now sufficiently familiar.
XXX.
TRANSITION.
357.
In looking back on the description and analysis of dioptrical colours,
we do not repent either that we have treated them so circumstantially,
or that we have taken them into consideration before the other physical
colours, out of the order we ourselves laid down. Yet, before we quit
this branch of our inquiry, it may be as well to state the reasons that
have weighed with us.
358.
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