Furthermore, there is a corresponding difference in the effect the knowledge of such truth has on the human mind. In the field of electricity we saw that together with the scientist's recognition of the absolute qualities of the two polar forms of electricity a false semblance of reality was lent to the hypothesis of the atomic structure of matter. Something similar has occurred in the field of optics. Here, after having been forced to recognize the fallacy of Newton's theory, the spectator's mind has been driven to form a concept of the nature of light which is further than ever from the truth. For what then remains of light is - in Eddington's words - a 'quite irregular disturbance, with no tendency to periodicity', which means that to light is assigned the quality of an undefined chaos (in the negative sense of this word) sprung from pure chance.

Moreover, as Eddington shows, the question whether the optical contrivance 'sorts out' from the chaotic light a particular periodicity, or whether it 'impresses' this on the light, becomes just 'a matter of expression'.¹¹ So here, too, the modern investigator is driven to a resigned acknowledgment of the principle of Indeterminacy.

No such conclusions are forced upon the one who studies the spectrum phenomenon with the eyes of Goethe. Like the modern experimenter, he, too, is faced with the question 'Discovery or Manufacture?' and he, too, finds the answer to be 'Manufacture'. But to him nature can disclose herself as the real manufacturer, showing him how she goes to work in bringing about the colours, because in following Goethe he is careful to arrange his observations in such a way that they do not veil nature's deeds.

The eye with its affinity to light comes into being in the apparently dark space of the mother's womb. This points to the possession by the human organism of an 'inner' light which first forms the eye from within, in order that it may afterwards meet the light outside. It is this inner light that Goethe makes the starting-point of his investigations, and it is for this reason that he treats physiological colours before physical colours.

Of fundamental significance as regards method is the way in which Goethe goes on from the passage quoted above to speak of the activity of the inner light: 'This immediate affinity between light and the eye will be denied by none; to consider them identical in substance is less easy to comprehend. It will be more intelligible to assert that a dormant light resides in the eye, and that this light can be excited by the slightest cause from within or from without. In darkness we can, by an effort of imagination, call up the brightest images; in dreams, objects appear to us as in broad daylight; if we are awake, the slightest external action of light is perceptible, and if the organ suffers a mechanical impact light and colours spring forth.'

What Goethe does here is nothing less than to follow the development of sight to where it has its true origin. Let us remember that a general source of illusion in the modern scientific picture of the world lies in the fact that the onlooker-consciousness accepts itself as a self-contained ready-made entity, instead of tracing itself genetically to the states of consciousness from which it has developed in the course of evolution. In reality, the consciousness kindled by outer sense-perception was preceded by a dreaming consciousness, and this by a sleeping consciousness, both for the individual and for humanity as a whole. So, too, outer vision by means of the physical apparatus of the eye was preceded by an inner vision. In dreams we still experience this inner vision; we use it in the activity of our picture-forming imagination; and it plays continuously upon the process of external sight. Why we fail to notice this when using our eye in the ordinary way, is because of that dazzling process mentioned earlier in this book. Goethe's constant endeavour was not to become the victim of this blindness - that is, not to be led by day-time experience to forget the night-side of human life. The passage quoted from the Introduction to his Farbenlehre shows how, in all that he strove for, he kept this goal in view.

How inevitably a way of thinking that seeks an intuitive understanding of nature is led to views like those of Goethe is shown by the following quotations from Reid and Ruskin, expressing their view of the relationship between the eye, or the act of seeing, and external optical phenomena. In his Inquiry, at the beginning of his review of visual perceptions, Reid says:

'The structure of the eye, and of all its appurtenances, the admirable contrivances of nature for performing all its various external and internal motions and the variety in the eyes of different animals, suited to their several natures and ways of life, clearly demonstrate this organ to be a masterpiece of nature's work. And he must be very ignorant of what hath been discovered about it, or have a very strange cast of understanding, who can seriously doubt, whether or not the rays of light and the eye were made for one another with consummate wisdom, and perfect skill in optics.''³

The following passage from Ruskin's Ethics of the Dust (Lecture X) brings out his criticism of the scientific way of treating of optical phenomena:

'With regard to the most interesting of all their [the philosophers'] modes of force-light; they never consider how far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and nervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The German philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us there was no such thing as light at all, unless we choose to see it.² Now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the force must be there, and the eye there, and 'light' means the effect of the one on the other - and perhaps, also - (Plato saw farther into that mystery than anyone has since, that I know of) - on something a little way within the eyes.'