Part II GOETHEANISM - WHENCE AND WHITHER

V. THE ADVENTURE OF REASON

Kant and Goethe. Goethe's study of the plant - a path toward seeing with the eye-of-the-spirit. Nature a script that asks to be read.

VI. EXCEPT WE BECOME ...

Spiritual kinsmen of Goethe in the British sphere of human culture. Thomas Reid's philosophic discovery, its significance for the overcoming of the onlooker-standpoint in science. The picture of man inherent in Reid's philosophy. Man's original gift of remembering his pre-earthly life. The disappearance of this memory in the past, and its re-appearance in modern times. Pelagius versus Augustine. Wordsworth and Traherne. Traherne, a 'Reidean before Reid was born'.

VII. 'ALWAYS STAND BY FORM'

Ruskin and Howard - two readers in the book of nature. Goethe's meteorological ideas. His conception of the urphenomenon. Goethe and Howard.

VIII. DYNAMICS VERSUS KINETICS

The onlooker science - by necessity a 'pointer-reading' science. The onlooker's misjudgment of the cognitive value of the impressions conveyed by the senses. The Parallelogram of Forces - its fallacious kinematic and its true dynamic interpretation. The roots in man of his concepts 'mass' and 'force'. The formula F=ma. The origin of man's faculty of mathematical thinking.

IX. PRO LEVITATE

(a) ALERTNESS CONTRA INERTNESS

Limitations of the validity of the concept 'inertia'. Restatement of Newton's first law. Introduction of the term 'magical' as opposed to mechanical. The phenomenon of the rising arm. Introduction of the term 'alertness' as opposed to 'inertness' (inertia). Van Helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter. The four Elements. The old concept of 'Chaos'. Young and old matter. The natural facts behind the ancient fire rites. The event on Mount Sinai.

(b) LEVITY CONTRA GRAVITY

The Contra Levitatem maxim of the Florentine Academicians. Ruskin's warning against science as an interpreter of its own observations. How man's inner nature and the outer universe interpret one another. The Solfatara phenomenon. The super-physical character of Levity.

X. THE FOURTH STATE OF MATTER

The need of raising scientific inquiry to nature's upper border. The laws of Conservation, their origin and their validity. Joule and Mayer. Extension of the field-concept from the central to the peripheral field-type. Natural phenomena brought about by the suctional effect of the earth's levity-field. The different conditions of matter seen in the light of the levity-gravity polarity. Heat, the fourth state of matter. Procreation of physical substance - a natural fact. The case of Tillandsia. The problem of the trace-elements. Homeopathy, an example of the effect of dematerialized matter. The meteorological circuit of water. The nature of lightning.

XI. MATTER AS PART OF NATURE'S ALPHABET

The origin of the scientific conception of the chemical element. Study of some prototypes of physical substances in the light of the levity-gravity polarity. The functional concept of matter. The complete order of polarities - cold-warm, dry-moist - in the doctrine of the four elements. The position of sulphur and phosphorus in this respect. Vulcanism and snow-formation as manifestations of functional sulphur and phosphorus respectively. The process of crystallization. Carbon as a mediator between sulphur and phosphorus. The alchemical triad.

XII. SPACE AND COUNTER-SPACE

Geometrical considerations required by the recognition of levity. The value in this respect of projective geometrical thinking. Geometrical polarities of the first and second order.

XIII. 'RADIANT MATTER'

Electricity and magnetism as manifestations of interacting levity and gravity. Electricity - a product of disintegrating matter. Modern physics, no longer a 'natural' science. Eddington's question,' Manufacture or Discovery?' Man's enhanced responsibility in the age of physical science.

XIV. COLOURS AS 'DEEDS AND SUFFERINGS OF LIGHT'

Goethe's Farbenlehre - the foundation of an optical science based on the colour-seeing faculty of the eye. The modern physicist's view of the Newtonian interpretation of the spectrum. A short history of Goethe's search for a satisfactory conception of Light and Colour. His discovery of Newton's cardinal error. First results of his own studies. The 'negative' spectrum.

XV. SEEING AS 'DEED' - I

Goethe's way of studying the totality of the act of seeing. The 'inner light'.

XVI. SEEING AS 'DEED' - II

Extension of Goethe's inquiry to a pursuit of the act of seeing beyond the boundaries of the body.

XVII. OPTICS OF THE DOER

Purging optics from its onlooker-concepts. The role of foregone conclusions in the physical conception of light. The true aspect of the so-called velocity of light.

XVIII. THE SPECTRUM AS A SCRIPT OF THE SPIRIT

Evaluation of the foregoing studies for a new understanding of the prismatic phenomenon. The secret of the rainbow. Intimation of new possibilities of experimental research guided by the new conception of the spectrum.