Goethe's Theory of ColoursGoethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Philosophy
Goethe's Theory of Colours
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Color
It became necessary to connect all these incongruous parts and
additions by the strangest galleries, halls and passages. All damages,
whether inflicted by the hand of the enemy or the power of time, were
quickly made good. As occasion required, they deepened the moats,
raised the walls, and took care there should be no lack of towers,
battlements, and embrasures. This care and these exertions gave rise
to a prejudice in favour of the great importance of the fortress,
and still upheld that prejudice, although the arts of building and
fortification were by this time very much advanced, and people had
learnt to construct much better dwellings and defences in other cases.
But the old castle was chiefly held in honour because it had never
been taken, because it had repulsed so many assaults, had baffled so
many hostile operations, and had always preserved its virgin renown.
This renown, this influence lasts even now: it occurs to no one that
the old castle is become uninhabitable. Its great duration, its costly
construction, are still constantly spoken of. Pilgrims wend their
way to it; hasty sketches of it are shown in all schools, and it is
thus recommended to the reverence of susceptible youth. Meanwhile,
the building itself is already abandoned; its only inmates are a few
invalids, who in simple seriousness imagine that they are prepared for
war.
Thus there is no question here respecting a tedious siege or a
doubtful war; so far from it we find this eighth wonder of the world
already nodding to its fall as a deserted piece of antiquity, and
begin at once, without further ceremony, to dismantle it from gable
and roof downwards; that the sun may at last shine into the old nest
of rats and owls, and exhibit to the eye of the wondering traveller
that labyrinthine, incongruous style of building, with its scanty,
make-shift contrivances, the result of accident and emergency, its
intentional artifice and clumsy repairs. Such an inspection will,
however, only be possible when wall after wall, arch after arch, is
demolished, the rubbish being at once cleared away as well as it can be.
To effect this, and to level the site where it is possible to do
so, to arrange the materials thus acquired, so that they can be
hereafter again employed for a new building, is the arduous duty
we have undertaken in this Second Part. Should we succeed, by a
cheerful application of all possible ability and dexterity, in razing
this Bastille, and in gaining a free space, it is thus by no means
intended at once to cover the site again and to encumber it with a new
structure; we propose rather to make use of this area for the purpose
of passing in review a pleasing and varied series of illustrative
figures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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