ordinary spectrum - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet -
then they were in duty bound to maintain also that the colourless,
'black' darkness is composed of the seven colours of the inverted
spectrum - yellow, orange, red, purple, violet, indigo, blue.

Despite the convincing force of this argument, the voice of the Hans
Andersen child speaking through Goethe failed to gain a hearing among
the crowd of Newtonian faithful. So has it been up to the present day -
regardless of the fact that, as we have shown, modern physics has
reached results which make a contradiction of the Newtonian concept of
the mutual relation of light and colour no longer appear so heretical
as it was in Goethe's time.

*

When we compare the way in which Goethe, on the one hand, and the
physical scientist, on the other, have arrived at the truth that what
Newton held to be 'discovery' was in actual fact 'manufacture', we find
ourselves faced with another instance of a fact which we have
encountered before in our study of electricity. It is the fact that a
truth, which reveals itself to the spectator-scientist only as the
result of a highly advanced experimental research, can be recognized
through quite simple observation when this observation is carried out
with the intention of letting the phenomena themselves speak for their
'theory'.

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