that everything looked coloured, but in what manner I could no longer
recollect. I was just then in a room completely white; remembering the
Newtonian theory, I expected, as I put the prism to my eye, to find the
whole white wall coloured in different hues and to see the light
reflected thence into the eye, split into as many coloured lights.

'But how astonished was I when the white wall seen through the prism
remained white after as before. Only where something dark came against
it a more or less decided colour was shown, and at last the window-bars
appeared most vividly coloured, while on the light-grey sky outside no
trace of colouring was to be seen. It did not need any long
consideration for me to recognize that a boundary or edge is necessary
to call forth the colours, and I immediately said aloud, as though by
instinct, that the Newtonian doctrine is false.'

For Goethe, there could be no more thought of sending back the prisms,
and he persuaded Büttner to leave them with him for some time longer.

Goethe adds a short account of the progress of the experiments he now
undertook as well as of his efforts to interest others in his
discovery. He makes grateful reference to those who had brought him
understanding, and who had been helpful to him through the exchange of
thoughts. Among these, apart from Schiller, whom Goethe especially
mentions, we find a number of leading anatomists, chemists, writers and
philosophers of his time, but not a single one of the physicists then
active in teaching or research. The 'Guild' took up an attitude of
complete disapproval or indifference, and so have things remained till
a hundred years after his death, as Goethe himself prophesied.

One of the first systematic pieces of work which Goethe undertook in