of 'light' as the source of colour-phenomena, he has in mind an idea of
light very different from that held by modern physics. For in dealing
with optics, physical science turns at once to phenomena of light found
outside man - in fact to phenomena in that physical realm from which,
as the lowest of the kingdoms of nature, the observations of natural
science are bound to start. Along this path one is driven, as we have
seen, to conceive of light as a mere 'disturbance' in the universe, a
kind of irregular chaos.

In contrast to this, Goethe sees that to gain an explanation of natural
physical phenomena which will be in accord with nature, we must
approach them on the path by which nature brings them into being. In
the field of light this path is one which leads from light as creative
agent to light as mere phenomenon. The highest form of manifestation of
creative light most directly resembling its Idea is within man. It is
there that light creates for itself the organ through which, as
manifest light, it eventually enters into human consciousness. To
Goethe it was therefore clear that a theory of light, which is to
proceed in accord with nature, should begin with a study of the eye:
its properties, its ways of acting when it brings us information of its
deeds and sufferings in external nature.

The eye with its affinity to light comes into being in the apparently
dark space of the mother's womb. This points to the possession by the
human organism of an 'inner' light which first forms the eye from
within, in order that it may afterwards meet the light outside. It is
this inner light that Goethe makes the starting-point of his
investigations, and it is for this reason that he treats physiological
colours before physical colours.