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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.

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Closer inspection into the connexion of the two visual activities of the eye with its basic corporeal parts reveals that here, at the outermost boundary of the human organism, we encounter once more that peculiar reversal of functions which we have already several times met in various realms of nature. For the anterior part of the eye – its salt-pole – which has come into being through a spherically directed formative process, seems to be the one through which we exercise the perceptive activity streaming out radially from the eye, whilst the posterior part – the eye’s sulphur-pole – which has come into being through radially directed formative action, serves that form of seeing which is more receptive and is carried out in a plane-wise manner.

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With regard to our visual experience of white and black, it is quite different. We are concerned here with definite conditions of corporeal surfaces, just as with other colours, although the conditions conveying the impressions of white or black are of a special character. A closer inspection of these conditions reveals a property of our act of seeing which has completely escaped scientific observation, but which is of fundamental importance for the understanding of optical phenomena dynamically.

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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.

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Considerations of this kind, and they alone, enable us also to draw true comparisons between the different sense-organs. Take the organ of hearing. Usually the ear is assumed to fill the same role in the field of hearing as does the eye in the field of seeing. In fact the ear corresponds to only one half of the eye; the other half must be looked for in the larynx. In other words, the two parts of the eye are represented in the realm of hearing by two separate organs, ear and larynx. Speaking from the aspect of metamorphosis, the vital part of our eye may be regarded as our ‘light-ear’; the crystalline part, as our ‘light-larynx’. In order to come consciously to a perception of sight we must ‘listen’ to the ‘deeds and sufferings’ of light, while at the same time we meet them with the help of the ‘speaking’ of our inner light. Something similar holds good for hearing. In fact, observation reveals that we take in no impression of hearing unless we accompany it with an activity of our larynx, even though a silent one. The significance of this fact for the total function of hearing will occupy us more fully later.

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It is well known that a corporeal surface, which we experience as white, has the characteristic of throwing back almost all the light that strikes it, whereas light is more or less completely absorbed by a surface which we experience as black. Such extreme forms of interplay between light and a corporeal surface, however, do not only occur when the light has no particular colour, but also when a coloured surface is struck by light of the same or opposite colour. In the first instance complete reflexion takes place; in the second, complete absorption. And both these effects are registered by the eye in precisely the same manner as those mentioned before. For example, a red surface in red light looks simply white; a green surface in red light looks black.

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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.

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Our insight into the polar nature of visual activity will enable us now to link the external interplay of Light and Dark – to which the physical colours owe their existence – to that play of forces which we ourselves set in motion when our eye meets the world of colours in their polar differentiation.

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The usual interpretation of this phenomenon, namely, that it consists in a subjective ‘contrast’ impression of the eye – a red surface in red light looking brighter, a green surface darker, than its surroundings, and thereby causing the illusion of white or black – is a typical onlooker-interpretation against which there stands the evidence of unprejudiced observation. The reality of the ‘white’ and the ‘black’ seen in such cases is so striking that a person who has not seen the colours of the objects in ordinary light can hardly be persuaded to believe that they are not ‘really’ white or black. The fact is that the white and the black that are seen under these conditions are just as real as ‘ordinary’ white and black. When in either instance the eye registers ‘white’ it registers exactly the same event, namely, the total reflexion of the light by the surface struck by it. Again, when the eye registers ‘black’ in both cases it registers an identical process, namely, total absorption of the light.1

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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.