On Vision and Colors

For Kant, and even more so for Schopenhauer, the objective world as we know it is mere appearance, representation, governed by the a priori given laws of space, time, and causality—space being the form of the outer sense, time the form of the inner sense, and causality the moderating agent between space and time.

If theory is not universally supported and founded on facts, then it is an empty chimera, and even each single, frayed-but-true experience has much more value. On the other hand, however, all isolated facts from a definite realm of the field of experience, even when they are completely comprised, do not constitute a science until the knowledge of their innermost nature has united them under one common conception, that comprises and contains all that can be found only in those facts to which again other conceptions are subordinated, by means of whose intervention we can arrive at the knowledge and definition of each individual fact at once.

all that is fact is already theory.

All intuitive perception [Anschauung] is intellectual. For without understanding we could never arrive at intuitive perception, observation, and apprehension of objects; rather, all would remain mere sensation, which could have at most a meaning in reference to the will as pain or comfort, but otherwise would be a succession of states devoid of meaning and nothing resembling knowledge. Intuitive perception, that is, knowledge of an object, comes about first of all because the understanding refers every impression the body receives to its cause.

The law of causality as an abstract principle is naturally, like all principles, in abstracto reflection, hence an object of the faculty of reason. But a real, vivid, direct, necessary knowledge of the law of causality precedes all reflection, as well as all experience, and is based in our understanding.

the nerve substance (apart from the sympathetic system) is, without the slightest difference, one and the same throughout our entire body. When it receives such specifically different sensations—through the eye when stimulated by light, through the ear when stimulated by sound—then the cause is not the nerve substance itself, but only in the manner in which it is affected.

If someone standing in front of a beautiful vista could be deprived for one moment of all understanding, then nothing of that vista would remain but the sensation of a manifold stimulation of his retina similar to the many color blobs on the palette of a painter

Every object affects each of the five senses differently, but all these effects still lead back to one and the same cause, which presents itself simply therefore as an object.

What is doubly experienced is intuitively singly perceived, because intuitive perception is intellectual, and not merely sensuous.

Knowledge of an object never results from a mere impression, but always only from the application of the law of causality, and consequently of the understanding.

understanding and sensibility are inaccessible to the principles of reason; they are simply without reason. From this we learn what illusion and error really are: The former is deception of the understanding, the latter deception of reason; the former is opposed to reality, the latter to truth. Illusion comes into being always, either from the fact that, to the always regular and unchangeable apprehension of the understanding, an unusual state of the sense organs is attributed, that is, a state different from the one it has learned to apply to its functions; or that an effect, which the senses receive otherwise daily and hourly from one and the same cause, is for once produced by a completely different one.

Error, however, is a judgment of reason, a judgment that does not stand to that which the Principle of Sufficient Reason requires in that particular form for which it is valid for the faculty of reason as such, thus an actual, but false, judgment, a groundless abstract assumption.

Since there is no intuitive perception without understanding, then all animals indisputably have understanding; it distinguishes animals from plants, just as reason distinguishes human beings from animals. The real outstanding characteristic of animal life is knowledge, and this requires by all means understanding.

The senses are merely the points of departure for the intuitive perception of the world. Their modifications are therefore given prior to all intuitive perception, as sensations are the data from which the knowing intuitive perception comes about in the understanding. Foremost among these sensations is the impression of light on the eye, and then color, as a modification of that impression. These are then the stimulation of the eye, they are the effect itself, which exists even without being related to a cause. A newborn child experiences light and color before it intuitively perceives and knows the luminous or colored object as such. Not even seeing cross-eyed changes the color.

Color is and remains stimulus to the eye; the object is merely being intuitively perceived as its cause. Color itself, however, is only the effect, the state produced in the eye, and as such is independent of the object, which exists only for the understanding; for all intuitive perception is intellectual.

before we undertake to discover the cause of a given effect, we must first become fully acquainted with the effect itself. Only from the effect can we draw data for the discovery of the cause.

Every color has a point of maximum purity and freedom from all white and black, a point represented by the equator of Runge’s very ingeniously thoughtout color sphere,13 which lies equidistant from the white and black poles.

Violet, for example, is the darkest of the colors, the most ineffective. Yellow, on the other hand, is essentially the brightest and most cheerful color.

Just as red and green are the two completely equal qualitative halves of the activity of the retina, so orange is 2/3 of this activity and its complement blue is only 1/3; yellow is 3/4 of the full activity and its complement violet is only 1/4. It should not confuse us here that violet, because it lies in the middle between red, which is 1/2, and blue, which is 1/3, should be only 1/4 of the full activity. Here one thinks of chemistry: the quality of the compound cannot be predicted from its components

Color is the qualitatively divided activity of the retina. The difference between colors is the result of the difference between the qualitative halves in which this activity can be divided, and of their ratio to one another. These halves can only be equal once, when they show true red and perfect green. They can be unequal in innumerable ratios; therefore the number of possible colors is infinite. Every color, after its appearance, will be followed by its complement to the full activity of the retina, which remained behind in the eye as physiological spectrum. This happens because the nervelike nature of the retina is such that, when the retina has been forced by an external stimulus to divide its activity into two qualitatively different halves, the half that was brought about by the stimulus is automatically followed by the other half after removal of the stimulus. Because the retina has the natural urge to function to the fullest, it attempts to restore everything again after it has been torn apart. The greater the part of the retina’s full activity a color is, the smaller the complement of that activity must be. In other words, the closer an essentially—not accidentally —bright color is to white, the darker or closer to darkness the spectrum that follows will be, and vice versa.

If we did not have a subjective preconception of the six principal colors, which gives us an a priori standard for them, then, because the designation by individual names would be merely conventional (as is actually the case with fashionable colors), we would have no opinion about the purity of a given color, and consequently could not understand many things at all.

The number of colors is infinite, yet every two opposite colors contain the elements, the full possibility, of all the others.

The concept of a qualitatively divided activity, which I have advocated here with concrete examples, might even be the basic idea of all polarity, under which magnetism, electricity, and galvanism might be brought—each is only the manifestation of an activity, divided into two halves, which condition and seek each other and strive for reunion.

Now after nature was bisected, each half yearned for the half that it belonged to and united with it.

Know yourself

My theory, on the other hand, informs about these characteristics and makes us understand what the reason for a specific impression and special effect of each single color is, in that it teaches us to recognize color as a very definite part of the retina’s activity, expressed by a fraction, and further as belonging either to the ( + ) or to the ( − ) side of the division of that activity.

Besides the relation of colors to each other in the self-contained color circle marked by completely continuous transitions, we further notice, as already touched on above in Section 5, that each color itself has a maximum of energy, represented on Runge’s color sphere by the equator.38 By moving away from the equator, the colors will on the one hand disappear by fading into white, and on the other by darkening into black.

Natura non facit saltus.

with every refraction of light a necessary reduction of light is connected for that reason.

Everybody who wants to know what it is about must convince himself by observation.

Refraction, namely, is the distance of the main image from its line of incidence; dispersion, on the other hand, is the distance of the two secondary images from the main image that occurs thereby.

Physical colors are those causes of stimulation of a qualitative half of the retina’s activity that are accessible to us as such. We understand therefore that, although we still disagree about the nature of their operation, it must be subject to certain laws that exist under the most diverse circumstances and in the most diverse materials, so that the phenomenon can always be traced back to it. Chemical colors, on the other hand, are those colors for which this is not the case, but we recognize their cause, without possibly understanding the nature of their special effect on the eye. For although we know immediately that, for example, this or that chemical precipitate results in this specific color and is in that respect its cause, we do not know the cause of the color as such, not the law in accordance to which the color appears here, but its appearance is known only a posteriori and remains accidental for us in that respect. On the other hand, we know the cause of the physical colors as such, the law of their appearance; therefore our knowledge about them is not tied to definite materials, but holds true for each of them.

The colors themselves, their mutual relations, and the conformity of their appearance: all these reside in the eye itself and is only a special modification of the retina’s activity. The external cause can act only as stimulus, as the occasion for the manifestation of that activity, hence only in a very subordinate way. It can only play a part by producing color in the eye, that is, the stimulation of the polarity of its retina, just as friction does in the production of electricity that lies dormant in a body, that is, the separation of +E and −E. By no means can colors exist in a definite number, somewhere outside the eye, in a purely objective way, having definite laws and mutual relations and then being delivered to the eye readymade.

Every color is the qualitative half of the retina’s full activity, to which it is supplemented by another color, its complement. Consequently there are only pairs of color and no individual colors; hence, we cannot assume that seven (an odd number) single colors actually exist.

Each color results from the division of this circle into two halves, and its complementary opposite is immediately given. Both together potentially70 contain always the whole circle. Thus colors are infinite in number; therefore we cannot assume either seven or any other number of fixed colors. Three pairs of colors in particular distinguish themselves through rational proportions, easy to understand and to express in simple numbers in which the retina’s activity divides itself by certain colors. For that reason, they have always and everywhere been labeled by proper names for which there is no other reason, except for this, because otherwise they have no advantage over the others.

To the infinite number of possible colors that originate from the divisibility of the retina’s activity, which is modifiable in endless ways, there must also correspond in the external cause, acting as stimulus, a modifiability that is equally infinite and capable of the most delicate transitions.

We have found the skieron (or shadowlike quality) essential for color substantiated in the eye, in that one-half of the retina’s activity presupposes the repose of the other half, the expression of which is exactly that skieron. We have its intimate union with light, which presents itself necessarily as color, compared with a chemical mixing of light and darkness.

with the reversal of the cause the effect reverses

Every polarity must originate from a unity which is a separation into two qualitative opposites.

do not trust too much in appearances

Nimium ne crede colori.

we have to be careful not to attribute too much significance to colors in nature.

For, while the physical colors only appear by a combination of circumstances, and the chemical colors, in contrast, require only illumination, so tourmalines only require warming to reveal their permanent electricity.

Light and heat are metamorphoses of each other. Sun rays are cold, as long as they illuminate; only when they impinge on opaque bodies and cease to illuminate does their light change into heat.

(1) Colors that divide the whole activity of the eye without leaving an undivided rest, that are accordingly free from all paleness or darkness foreign to their nature, and thus are extremely glaring and energetic colors. (2) Colors that are exactly 1/3, 1/2, and 3/4 of the activity of the eye, thus perfect blue, red, and yellow, that is, the three basic chemical colors of the greatest purity. Now, if by working with such colors we want to compose, for example, green, which is 1/2 of the full activity, from blue, which is 1/3, and yellow, which is 3/4, then the quantity of blue must be inverse to the quantity of yellow, like the difference between 1/3 and 1/2 is inverse to the difference between 3/4 and 1/2. For the closer the one given color lies to the color to be composed than to the other given color, so much more of it must be taken, and the more distant the other given color lies from the color to be composed, so much the less of it must be taken. Therefore, three parts blue and two parts yellow give perfect green. They have to be mixed as dry powder, by volume and not by weight, so that the pigments do not chemically react with each other. The rule formulated here in this example applies to every mixture of this kind.

Never to err and always to hit the mark is the business of the gods: it is not granted to mortals to escape their fate.

Simonidos of Keos (556 BC–468 BC)

An amusing extra is that they assign the fastest oscillations to the darkest and least effective of all colors, violet; on the other hand, they assign red to the slowest oscillation, which affects our eye so vividly and causes even locomotion amongst animals. But, as already mentioned, colors are for them mere names; they don’t perceive them, but start with calculating—that is the element in which they feel at home.

everyone is able to increase experience, especially through accumulation and complication of the conditions; there are only a few to explain it, and they are rare to find.

Where arithmetic begins, the understanding of phenomena ceases. When someone has mere numbers and symbols in his head, then he cannot get on the track of the causal connection. How much and how big has importance for practical purposes, but in theory the main thing is, first of all, the what. Once we have arrived at that point, we can get, with respect to the how much and how big, far enough ahead with a rough estimate.

They consider it a disgrace, to follow the youth and to recognize as indefensible what they learned in beardless youth.

that the excellent is rarely found and more rarely appreciated

that the absurd really fills the world.

Merit is like gun powder: the more it is compacted, the stronger the explosion.

The three pure individual qualities B. Y. and R. when they work together with equal force, completely lose all individuality and are dissolved into an absolute generality.

the sun can brighten white so much that it blinds the eye, its light can only be reflected, but it cannot penetrate white. At the same time, the depth of clear water is of such darkness that a piece of carbon of the same darkness would be in the same relation as the one just referred to. In other words: A quantity of dark transparent matter, which, like an infinite large space, absorbs all light and does not arrest the rays at the surface, like opaque black, will surpass black in darkness—just like a stream of light that floods through a transparent medium leaves the power and the force of white, as well as every opaque color, behind.