Goethe's Theory of Colours · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
729.
He who has observed science and its progress with an unprejudiced eye, might even ask whether it is desirable that so many occupations and aims, though allied to each other, should be united in one person, and whether it would not be more suitable for the limited powers of the human mind to distinguish, for example, the investigator and inventor, from him who employs and applies the result of experiment? Astronomers, who devote themselves to the observation of the heavens and the discovery or enumeration of stars, have in modern times formed, to a certain extent, a distinct class from those who calculate the orbits, consider the universe in its connexion, and more accurately define its laws. The history of the doctrine of colours will often lead us back to these considerations. If in our labours we have gone out of the province of the mathematician, we have, on the other hand, endeavoured to meet the practical views of the dyer; and although the chapter which treats of colour in a chemical point of view is not the most complete and circumstantial, yet in that portion, as well as in our general observations respecting colour, the dyer will find his views assisted far more than by the theory hitherto in vogue, which failed to afford him any assistance.
It is curious, in this view, to take a glance at the works containing directions on the art of dyeing. As the Catholic, on entering his temple, sprinkles himself with holy water, and after bending the knee, proceeds perhaps to converse with his friends on his affairs, without any especial devotion; so all the treatises on dyeing begin with a respectful allusion to the accredited theory, without afterwards exhibiting a single trace of any principle deduced from this theory, or showing that it has thrown light on any part of the art, or that it offers any useful hints in furtherance of practical methods.
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