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
Note, in this respect, the principle of the mirror as another instance
of the fact that the interplay between light and an illumined surface
can have on the visual ray an effect similar to that of external space.
For the optical processes which occur on the surface of a mirror are
such that, whilst taking place on a two-dimensional plane, they evoke
in our consciousness pictures of exactly the same nature as if we were
looking through the mirror into the space behind it.
*
The value of our picture of the colour-polarity is shown further if we
observe how natural phenomena based on the same kind of polarity in
other realms of nature fit in with it. We remember that one of Goethe's
starting-points in his investigation of the riddle of colour was the
observation that of the totality of colours one part is experienced as
'warm' and the other as 'cold'. Now we can go further and say that the
colours of the spherical pole are experienced as cold, those of the
radial pole as warm. This corresponds precisely to the polarity of
snow-formation and volcanic activity. The former, being the spherically
directed process, requires physically low temperatures; the latter,
being the radially directed process, requires high temperatures. Here,
once more, we see with what objectivity the human senses register the
facts of the outer world.
Another realm of phenomena based on a similar polar order is that of
electricity. When we studied the negative and positive poles of the
vacuum tube, with regard to the polar distribution of radius and
sphere, our attention was drawn to the colours appearing on the two
electrodes - red at the (positive) anode, blue at the (negative)
cathode. Again we find a coincidence with the natural order of the
colours.
Note how the qualitative dynamic method employed here brings into
direct view the relationship between light and electricity, while it
precludes the mistake of tracing light processes to those of
electricity, as modern science does. Nor are electric processes
'explained' from this point of view merely as variations of light
processes. Rather is the relation between light and electricity seen to
be based on the fact that all polarities arising perceptibly in nature
are creations of the same primeval polarity, that of Levity and
Gravity. The interplay of Levity and Gravity can take on many different
forms which are distinguished essentially by differences in cosmic age.
Thus the colour-polarity in its primal form, made manifest by the
heavens, differs as much from the corresponding polarity shown by the
vacuum tube, as does the lightning in the heights from the electric
spark.
*
With the aid of what we have learnt here concerning outer
light-processes we shall turn once more to the activity of our own
inner light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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