The Study of Colour

by Walter Johannes Stein
with a written reply by Rudolf & Marie Steiner

From the Golden Blade :
An Anthroposophical Science Journal

This article is sourced from the 2008 Volume

This article is an extract from GA291a, correspondence between Dr Stein and Marie Steiner.

The translation is by William Forward.

Most esteemed Fr Dr Steiner!

In this letter I shall express a request which is not intended to appear lacking in modesty. You will, most esteemed Fr Dr Steiner, simply
leave my letter unanswered if that seems right to you, and I shall then know that this will have been with good reason, also with
regard to myself.

My request is in fact that I may be allowed from time to time to report to you the thoughts that live in me and to put to you as
questions that which I am unable to account for myself, so that you can either reply to them yourself, or pass on Dr Steiner’s replies.

So let me begin by saying that I am currently studying Goethe’s natural scientific writings and have already progressed to the theory
of colour. The organ of sight, the eye and its working, which are the foundations for the sense of sight are the focus of my investigation. I
know that the act of perception proceeds in such a way that a living process streams towards the organ as something physical and etheric
and that when it penetrates the sphere of the sense organs, it comes into an area in which the physical has a preponderance over the
etheric (which is why the sense organs are embedded in the living body as it were as dead, physical apparatus). In this sphere the
etheric is repelled. A purely physical process takes place. Into this the human being then pours his astral nature as if he were filling out
With his astrality the hollow space left by the repulsion of the etheric. Thus perception is the subjective recreation of an objective
process.

This general concept I have to apply to the peculiarities of the eye. Thus a living process streams towards the eye: life-filled colour. As soon as this touches the eye, something like a process of withering or dying away occurs. It is as if the beautiful lily in Goethe’s fairytale had killed this living thing. What underlies this is an activity of the kind that belongs to the second layer of the Earth. What follows is a process similar in nature to what can be observed in a camera obscura.

The result of this purely physical event is the retinal image. This is an “image”, but only for another eye. For the perceiving eye it is a chemical process that takes place in the eye. But the eye is a living thing and a chemical process in a living thing amounts to a dying away or a process of reorganisation. In this case the former. The astral body however immediately attempts to restore what has been destroyed by calling forth a polar opposite chemical process. Thus if the incoming impression was “yellow”, the astral body will respond by generating “blue”.

What we now have in our consciousness is the process of destruction. The regenerative process appears in our consciousness when we look at a white wall after having looked at something yellow. We see a complementary blue.

This now gives rise to questions. quite apart from any errors that might be contained in the above:

1. How does this repulsion of the living etheric actually take place? How is it: the beautiful lily destroys the living thing. The man with the lamp transforms the dead object and only then can the beautiful lily bring it to life. This intermediary process of the man with the lamp is what I am missing. Nor do I understand how the lily does what it does.

2. Whilst I know that the colour yellow is perceived in a yellow object, I do not know on what basis the complementary colour blue is perceived. Does the eye really produce an objective blue? In which case one ought to be able to objectively display it on a screen, not just for the eye itself but also objectively, i.e. for other eyes also. So the question is: is the process of perception reversible? Can the eye generate colours which are also visible for other eyes?

3. In the book Anthroposophy (on the subject of seeing) it says: “The I does not meet outer existence with its own original experience but rather with such being as it has itself taken in from without; thus an entity from outside is imprinted into an inner experience which itself originally came from outside in. Within the experiences of the I the outer world is meeting itself. First it sends a part of its being into the
human being then it imprints its peculiar property into this part of its being”. What kind of being is it that the I has taken in from outside, has membered into itself’?

We now come to a point that makes it clear to me that seeing has something to do with memory for:

a) this passage (see point 3 above);

b) memories are visual, consist of images;

c) an observation: if I observe an object and if I recall any sense impression then I distinctly feel how, for the moment it takes to remember the impression, I have an experience of temporary blindness. I can either see or remember. Either or. The power of sight differs in its relationship to the ether body from all other perceptions. It also stands in the sign of the Budhi: Capricorn (Cancer – ether body, Indian culture; Gemini – astral body, Persian culture; Taurus – sentient soul, Egyptian culture; Aries – intellectual soul, GraecoLatin culture; Pisces – consciousness soul, present culture; Aquarius – Manas; Capricorn – Budhi.) How then does the ether body behave in the act of seeing? What particular role does it play in the emergence of the complementary colours?

d) the book Anthroposophy states: “For the explanation of the sense of sight one has to think the reverse of the sense of taste. If the experience of seeing something were to come about through the external agency of a being like the one hypothetically assumed above, a being which did not experience its I within, like the human being, but were to serve it from without (what kind of a being is this? The Higher
Self?) so that for example the colour would fill this being and at the same time the being would be completely permeated by an activity that represents a tasting in reverse [“reversed tasting” – does that mean a process that the I calls forth from the chemical ether?] “then this taste-radiating activity could be thought of as the organ-forming power of the sense of sight.” (The complementary colour would also be chemical process induced in the visual purple of the retina which reorganises what has been destroyed.) “Then it would be the case that, unlike the experience of taste, where the effect 0f an external material is felt, the being concerned would find its own taste radiating back to it from within the human being. Just as in the case of taste we have a transformation of the substance by the human being, that external being would have to bring about a change in the inside of the human being. Now one such change in internal life processes occurs for example in warming.” (Is this not the missing element, where the man with the lamp, the: water bearer, the sense of warmth transforms what the lily)”
has killed? But how is this to be understood concretely?)

Please in any case, most esteemed Fr Dr, accept my inmost thanks. Please also convey to Dr Steiner how I have been enriched by his
kindness. I felt I should address myself to you. If my feelings have deceived me I shall meet necessity with fortitude.

[ Marie Steiner conveyed Rudolf Steiner’s replies to this
question on the 20th of September 1917: ]

Dear Mr. Stein,
I shall be pleased if I can act as intermediary and pass on to you what I can gather at favourable moments from Dr Steiner. I myself would find it presumptuous of me if I were to give you the benefit of my my own wisdom, since I share the fate of women in the highest degree, namely that I am obliged to fragment my attention and thus would not have leisure to pursue the study you are embarked upon.

So when circumstances permit me to receive instruction from Dr Steiner on a few points from time to time I shall pass it on. Initially I had to give Dr Steiner the space to complete his book [Riddles 0f the Soul] and hold back with all my own concerns. Then there was a short transitional period during which current business could be dealt with. And then some of the points raised in your letter could be touched on. Other questions will have to wait a little longer. At the moment Dr Steiner is writing his article for the Reich which is in danger of running late and then a great deal has to be organised to prepare for the journey to Dornach. I should like to thank you for the help you have bestowed on us with the paper: I believe we may by this means be helped out of dire straits. Fr Muecke will write in more detail about that.

With best regards and warm wishes for your work,
Marie Steiner.

[ In what follows, she passes on Rudolf Steiner’s answers. ]

Consider the process of perception as a whole. What happens when I perceive “yellow”?

l. In the eye itself, there is objectively speaking: enlivened yellow.

2. The ether body of the perceiving subject penetrates into this enlivened yellow from within; by this means the enlivened yellow which was imbued with ether from outside and was thus enlivened, becomes dead yellow. Thus in the eye there is dead yellow because its life has been supplanted by the life within (ether body). In this way the perceiving subject has instead of the outer, enlivened yellow, the image of yellow enlivened from within, but having the hue of the corpse of yellow. To that extent the process is objective-subjective. However this would only permit the perceiving subject to experience an inwardly living yellow, without knowing it. The perceiver could only experience his own subjective-objective response but not consciously experience it.

3. The astral body of the perceiver penetrates into the subjectively-objective newly enlivened yellow. This then generates from the enlivened yellow the enlivened “blue”; this blue is in fact created within the organism but does not extend beyond the organism in spacial terms. Thus there is present:

the astrally induced image “blue”,
the effect of this astral image on the ether body – as a subjective life process,
physiologically the physical process in the eye – which produces blue inwardly but not outwardly.

All this does not however enter the consciousness of the I, the I only knows what it is seeing when the initially enlivened “yellow” in the eye is damped down, (enfeebled) – then there is present the following:

1. the damping down of the life in the yellow by the I,
2. conscious appearance of the no longer living yellow in the astral body,
3. the astrally induced “blue” which however is outshone by the dead yellow and thus remains unconscious
4. its effect in the perceiver’s etheric body,
5. the physiological process in the eye.

If now the object from which the yellow proceeds is removed, then the extinguishing of the astrally generated blue ceases – and this gradually diminishes until the spiritual, soul and physical organism has restored itself. One cannot however reverse the process of perception because
the “blue” is not a spatial entity but rather springs from the astral body, and its physical effect remains exclusively within the physical body.

Just as the blue subjectively induced in the inner world by the objective yellow cannot be objectively projected onto a screen, the objective process that follows a real will impulse cannot work back in reverse onto the subject. One would otherwise, having gone forward from A to B – be able to be brought back from B to A by the effect produced in the outer world by one’s having made this journey.

RESOURCES

Goethean Colour Theory Collection

Johanne Wolgang von Goethe Literature Collection

Goethe’s Fairy Tail of the “Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” was mentioned several times in this article.
Below are several resources on this essential esoteric story.

1. Lectures by Rudolf Steiner:

2. Analysis by Douglas Gabriel [Includes the full story found in the latter half of the article]