a satisfactory understanding.--Moreover the whole contents of §§ 538, 539 and 540 in Professor Rosas' book are taken from my pamphlet, nay even in great part copied word for word from my § 13. Still once, where he stands in need of a voucher for a fact, he finds himself obliged to refer to my treatise: that is, in his § 531; and it is most amusing to see the way in which he even brings in the numerical fractions used by me, as a result of my theory, to express all colours. It had probably occurred to him, that appropriating them quite _sans façon_ might be a delicate matter, so he says, p. 308: "_If we wished_ to express in numbers the first-mentioned relation in which colours stand to white, assuming white to be = 1, the following scale of proportion might _by the way_ be adopted (as has already been done by Schopenhauer): yellow = 3/4 orange = 2/3 red = 1/2 green = 1/2 blue = 1/3 violet = 1/4 black = 0" [194] Rosas, "Handbuch der Augenheilkunde" (1830). Now I should like to know how anyone could do this _by the way_, without having first thought out my whole colour-theory, to which alone these numbers refer, and apart from which they are mere abstract numbers without meaning; above all, how anyone could do it who, like Professor Rosas, professes to be a follower of Newton's colour-theory, with which these numbers are in direct contradiction? Finally, I should like to know how it came, that during the thousands of years in which men have thought and written, no one but myself and Professor Rosas should ever have thought of using just these particular fractions to denote colours? For the words I have quoted above tell us, that he would have stated those fractions precisely as he has done, even had I not chanced to do it 'already' fourteen years before and thus needlessly anticipated his statement; they also tell us, that all that is required is '_to wish_,' in order to do so. Now it is precisely in these numerical fractions that the secret of colours lies: by them alone can we rightly solve the mystery of their nature and of their difference from one another.--I should however be heartily glad, were plagiarism the worst kind of dishonesty that defiled German literature; there are others far more mischievous, which penetrate more deeply, and to which plagiarism bears the same proportion as picking pockets in a mild way to capital crime. I allude to that mean, despicable spirit, whose loadstar is personal interest, when it ought to be truth, and in which the voice of intention makes itself heard beneath the mask of insight. Double-dealing and time-serving are the order of the day. Tartuffe comedies are performed without _rouge_; nay, Capuchin sermons are preached in halls consecrated to Science; enlightenment, that once revered word, has become a term of opprobrium; the greatest thinkers of the past century, Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, are slandered--those heroes, ornaments and benefactors of mankind, whose