Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and ThoughtLehrs, Ernst
Religion
Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought
Lehrs, Ernst
Anthroposophy; Cosmology; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832
If we are justified in thus tracing the colour-polarity to a
polarically ordered interplay between levity and gravity, we may then
pursue the following line of thought. We know from earlier
considerations that wherever such an interplay between the poles of the
primary polarity takes place, we have to do, in geometric terms, with
the polarity of sphere and radius. We may therefore conclude that the
same characteristics will apply to the way in which the blue of the sky
and the yellow of the sunlight are encountered spatially. Now we need
only observe how the blue heavens arch over us spherically, on the one
hand, and how the yellow brightness of the sun penetrates the air
ray-wise, on the other, in order to realize that this really is so.
Having thus established the connexion of the two poles of the
colour-scale with the spherical and radial structure of space, we are
now able to express the Goethean ur-phenomenon in a more dynamic way as
follows: On the one hand, we see the blue of the heavens emerging when
levity is drawn down by gravity from its primal invisibility into
visible, spherical manifestation. In the yellow of the sunlight, on the
other hand, we see gravity, under the influence of the sun's levity,
gleaming up radially into visibility. The aspect of the two
colour-poles which thus arises before us prompts us to replace Goethe's
'lightened Dark' by Earthward-dawning-Levity, and his 'darkened Light'
by Heavenward-raying-Gravity.
We have now to show that this picture of the dynamic relationship which
underlies the appearance of the colour-polarity in the sky is valid
also for other cases which are instances of the ur-phenomenon of the
generation of colour in Goethe's sense, but seem not to lend themselves
to the same cosmic interpretation. Such a case is the appearance of
yellow and blue when we look through a clouded transparent medium
towards a source of light or to a black background. There is no special
difficulty here in bringing the appearance of yellow into line with its
macrotelluric counterpart, but the appearance of blue requires some
consideration.
We have seen that a corporeal surface appears as black if light
striking it is totally absorbed by it. Thus, wherever our eye is met by
the colour black, our visual ray is engaged in a process whereby light
disappears from physical space. Now we need only bring this process
into consciousness - as we have tried to do before in similar instances
- to realize that what happens here to the visual ray is something
similar to what it undergoes when it is directed from the earth into
cosmic space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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