Lecture I

The truth of this was profoundly clear to Goethe. In him, it was a Nature-given instinct, and his whole outlook upon Nature was built upon this basis. Herein we have the quintessence of the contrast between Goethe and the modern Scientist as represented by Newton. The scientists of modern time have only looked in one direction, always observing external Nature in such a way as to refer all things to centric forces,—as it were to expunge all that in Nature which cannot be defined in terms of centric forces and their potentials. Goethe could not make do with such an outlook. What was called “Nature” under this influence seemed to him a void abstraction. There is reality for him only where centric forces and peripheric or cosmic forces are alike concerned,—where there is interplay between the two. On this polarity, in the last resort, his Theory of Colour is also founded, of which we shall be speaking in more detail in the next few days.