Man or Matter Part 26

Our pursuit of the dynamic causes underlying our apperception of the two poles of the colour-scale has led us to a point where it becomes necessary to introduce certain new terms to enable us to go beyond Goethe's general distinction between Finsternis (darkness) and Licht (light). Following Goethe, we have so far used these two terms for what appears both in blue and yellow as the respective light and dark ingredients. This distinction cannot satisfy us any more. For through our last observations it has become clear that the Finsternis in blue and the Licht in yellow are opposites only in appearance, because they are both caused by Levity, and similarly that the lightening effect in blue and the darkening effect in yellow are both effected by Gravity.

Therefore, to distinguish between what appertains to the primary polarity, Levity-Gravity, on the one hand, and their visible effects in the secondary polarity of the colours, on the other, we shall henceforth reserve the term darkness and, with it, lightness for instances where the perceptible components of the respective colours are concerned, while speaking of Dark and Light where reference is made to the generating primary polarity.

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 s.p.a.ce.

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 s.p.a.ce 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.

We may expect by now that our eye is fitted with two modes of seeing activity, polar to each other, and that the way in which they come into operation depends on whether the interplay of positive and negative density outside the eye leads to the appearance of the blue-violet or of the yellow-red side of the colour-scale. Such a polarity in the activity of the eye can indeed be established. Along with it goes a significant functional difference between the two eyes (not unlike that shown of the two hands).

To observe this we need simply to compare the two eyes of a person in a photograph by covering alternately the right and the left half of the face. Nearly always it will be found that the right eye looks out clearly into the world with an active expression, and the left eye with a much gentler one, almost held back. Artists are well aware of this asymmetry, as of others in the human countenance, and are careful to depict it. An outstanding example is Raphael's Sistine Madonna, where in the eyes and whole countenance both of Mother and Child this asymmetry can be studied in a specially impressive way.

Inner observation leads to a corresponding experience. A convenient method is to exercise the two eyes in complete darkness, in the following way. One eye is made to look actively into the s.p.a.ce in front of it, as if it would pierce the darkness with its visual ray, while the activity of the other eye is held back, so that its gaze rests only superficially, as it were, on the darkness in front of it. Experience shows that most people find it natural to give the active note to the right eye, and the pa.s.sive note to the left.

Once one has grown conscious of this natural difference between the two eyes, it is quite easily detected while one is looking normally into the light-filled environment. We thereby realize that for the two eyes to act differently in this way is the usual thing.

As an instance where this fact is well observed and effectively made use of, that of shooting may be mentioned here, especially shooting at flying game. Those who train in this sport learn to make a completely different use of the two eyes in sighting the target. The naturally more active eye - only once in about fifty cases is it the left - is called by them the 'master-eye'. Whilst the less actively gazing eye is usually employed for surveying the field as a whole into which the target is expected to enter, the master-eye is used for making active contact with the target itself ('throwing' oneself on the target 'through' the eye).

One further observation may be added. If one looks with rested eyes and in very faint daylight (perhaps in the early morning on awakening) at a white surface, while opening and closing the eyes alternately, then the white surface looks faintly reddish to the 'master-eye', and faintly bluish to the other.

Following the lines of our treatment of after-images in the last chapter, we will next inquire into the anatomical and physiological basis of the two opposite sight-activities. In the previous instance we found this in the polarity of nerve and blood. This time we must look for it in a certain twofold structure of the eye itself. We shall best perceive this by watching the 'becoming' of the eye, thus again following a method first shown by Goethe.

Fig. 11 shows the human eye in different stages of its embryonic formation. The eye is clearly seen to consist of two parts essentially different in origin. Growing out from the interior of the embryonic organism is a structure that is gradually pushed in, and in its further development becomes the entire posterior part of the eye, destined to carry its life-imbued functions. A second independent part grows towards this from outside; this is at first a mere thickening of the embryonic skin formation, but later it loosens itself and presses forward into the interior of the cup-shaped structure. It is gradually enclosed by this, and evolves finally into that part of the finished eye which embodies the optical apparatus functioning according to purely physical laws.

This series of forms shows that in the embryonic formation of the eye we are confronted with two processes, one of spherical, and the other of radial orientation. Consequently the two parts of the eye are differentiated in such a way that the posterior part, which has grown forth radially from the embryonic organism, as the life-filled element represents the sulphur-pole of the total eye, while the anterior part, with its much more crystalline nature, having grown spherically towards the organism, represents the eye's salt-pole.

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.

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 a.s.sumed 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.

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.

We established earlier that in the cold colours the role of darkness belongs to the pole of levity or negative density, and the role of lightness to the pole of gravity or positive density, whereas in the case of the warm colours the roles are reversed. Let us now unite with this the insight we have meanwhile gained into the two kinds of activity in seeing - the receptive, 'left-eyed' and the radiating, 'right-eyed' - which mediate to us the experience of the positive or negative density of s.p.a.ce spread out before our eyes. Taking together the results of outer and inner observation, we can express the polarity ruling in the realm of colour as follows.

If lightness and darkness as elements of colour, meet us in such a way that lightness, by reason of its positive density, calls forth 'left-eyed' activity, and darkness, by reason of its negative density, 'right-eyed' activity, then our soul receives the impression of the colour blue and colours related to blue. If lightness and darkness meet us so that we see the former in a 'right-eyed', and the latter in a 'left-eyed' way, then we experience this as the presence of yellow and the colours related to it.

The reason why we usually fail to observe the different kinds of interplay of the two modes of seeing, when we perceive one or other of the two categories of colour, is because in ordinary sight both eyes exercise each of the two activities without our becoming aware which is the leading one in a particular eye. If, however, one has come to a real experience of the inner polarity of the visual act, one needs only a little practice to realize the distinction. For example, if one looks at the blue sky, notably at noon-time, on the side away from the sun, or at the morning or evening sky, shining yellow and red, one quickly becomes conscious of how our eyes take hold of the particular contribution which Light and Dark make to one or other of the two colour appearances.

In the natural course of our argument we had to keep at first to the appearance of colours as they come freely before us in s.p.a.ce. The results we have obtained, however, hold good equally well for the permanent tints of material objects, as the following example will show.

A fact known to science is that red and blue surface colours, when illumined by light of steadily diminishing intensity, are seen to reverse their normal ratio of brightness. This phenomenon can be seen in nature, if, for instance, one observes a bed of blue and red flowers in the fading evening light and compares the impression with that which the same flowers make in bright daylight. If the phenomenon is reproduced artificially, the actual transition from one state to the other can be clearly observed. The easiest way is to place a red and a blue surface side by side under an electric light whose intensity can be gradually lessened by means of a sliding resistance. Here, as much as in the natural phenomenon, our reason finds it difficult to acknowledge that the surface gleaming in a whitish sheen should be the one which ordinarily appears as darkling blue, and that the one disappearing into darkness should be the surface which normally presents itself as radiant red.

This riddle is readily solved if we apply what we have learnt about the particular shares of lightness and darkness in these two colours, and if we link this up with the respective forms of seeing exercised by our two eyes. To the dim light, clearly, our eyes will respond more with the 'left-eyed' than with the 'right-eyed' form of vision. Now we know that it is 'left-eyed' vision which is roused by the lightness-component in blue and the darkness-component in red. It is only to be expected, therefore, that these elements should become conspicuous when in the dim light our seeing is mainly 'left-eyed'.

This solution of the problem makes us realize further, that the laws which Goethe first found for the coming into appearance of colours freely hovering in s.p.a.ce are indeed applicable to the fixed material colours as well.

1 It will be well to remember here the discussion of our experience of temperature through the sense of warmth in Chapter VIII (p. 134f.).

2 Along these lines the true solution of the problem of the so-called coloured shadows will be found, Goethe studied this without finding, however, a satisfactory answer.

CHAPTER XVII

Optics of the Doer

Three basic concepts form the foundation for the present-day scientific description of a vast field of optical phenomena, among them the occurrence of the spectral colours as a result of light pa.s.sing through a transparent medium of prismatic shape. They are: 'optical refraction', 'light-ray', and 'light-velocity' - the latter two serving to explain the first. In a science of optics which seeks its foundation in the intercourse between man's own visual activity and the doings and sufferings of light, these three concepts must needs undergo a decisive change, both in their meaning and in their value for the description of the relevant optical phenomena. For they are all purely kinematic concepts typical of the onlooker-way of conceiving things - concepts, that is, to which nothing corresponds in the realm of the actual phenomena.

Our next task, therefore, will be, where possible, to fill these concepts with new meaning, or else to replace them by other concepts read from the actual phenomena. Once this is done the way will be free for the development of the picture of the spectrum phenomenon which is in true accord with the Goethean conception of Light and Colour.

The first to be brought in this sense under our examination is the concept of the 'light-ray'.

In present-day optics this concept signifies a geometrical line of infinitely small width drawn, as it were, by the light in s.p.a.ce, while the cone or cylinder of light actually filling the s.p.a.ce is described as being composed of innumerable such rays. In the same way the object producing or reflecting light is thought of as composed of innumerable single points from which the light-rays emerge. All descriptions of optical processes are based upon this conception.

Obviously, we cannot be satisfied with such a reduction of wholes into single geometrically describable parts, followed by a rea.s.sembling of these parts into a whole. For in reality we have to do with realms of s.p.a.ce uniformly filled with light, whether conical or cylindrical in form, which arise through certain boundaries being set to the light. In optical research we have therefore always to do with pictures, spatially bounded. Thus what comes before our consciousness is determined equally by the light calling forth the picture, and by the unlit s.p.a.ce bordering it.

Remembering the results of our earlier study, we must say further of such a light-filled realm that it lacks the quality of visibility and therefore has no colour, not even white. Goethe and other 'readers', such as Reid and Ruskin, tried continually to visualize what such a light-filled s.p.a.ce represents in reality. Hence they directed their attention first to those spheres where light manifests its form-creative activity, as in the moulding of the organ of sight in animal or man, or in the creation of the many forms of the plant kingdom - and only then gave their mind to the purely physical light-phenomena. Let us use the same method to form a picture of a light-filled s.p.a.ce, and to connect this with the ideas we have previously gained on the co-operation in s.p.a.ce of levity and gravity.

Suppose we have two similar plant-seeds in germ; and let one lie in a s.p.a.ce filled with light, the other in an unlit s.p.a.ce. From the different behaviour of the two seeds we can observe certain differences between the two regions of s.p.a.ce. We note that within the light-filled region the spiritual archetype of the plant belonging to the seed is helped to manifest itself physically in s.p.a.ce, whereas in the dark region it receives no such aid. For in the latter the physical plant, even if it grows, does not develop its proper forms. This tells us, in accordance with what we have learnt earlier, that in the two cases there is a different relation of s.p.a.ce to the cosmically distant, all-embracing plane. Thus inside and outside the light-region there exists a quite different relation of levity and gravity - and this relation changes abruptly at the boundaries of the region. (This fact will be of especial importance for us when we come to examine the arising of colours at the boundary of Light and Dark, when light pa.s.ses through a prism.)