soul's experience of seeing. Through placing his examination of the
physiological colours at the beginning of his Farbenlehre, Goethe
actually took the path in scientific research to which Thomas Reid
pointed in philosophy. By adapting Reid's words we can say that Goethe,
in his Farbenlehre, proclaims as a basic principle of a true Optics:
that we must become again as little children if we would reach a
philosophy of light and colours.

1Wär' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,
Wie könnten wir das Licht erblicken?
Lebt' nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft,
Wie könnt' uns Göttliches entzucken!

2 Inquiry, VI, 1. The italics are Reid's.

3 Presumably Kant and his school. Schopenhauer was definitely of this
opinion.

4 As regards the principle underlying the line of consideration
followed here, see the remark made in Chapter V in connexion with
Goethe's study of the 'proliferated rose' (p. 76f.).


CHAPTER XVI

Seeing as 'Deed' - II

The observation of our own visual process, which we began in the last
chapter, will serve now to free us from a series of illusory concepts
which have been connected by the onlooker-consciousness with the