Theory of Colours, Volume II

communicated. These have arisen from notes that we recorded for some future, indefinite use while reading through their writings and observing the course of their lives. They make no claim to provide an exhaustive description or a final judgment; we present them just as we found them, for we were not always in a position, during the editing of these papers, to subject everything to a renewed and rigorous examination.

May they stand there simply to remind us how highly significant it is to consider an author as a human being; for if it has been asserted that a writer's style is the man himself A reference to Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon's famous phrase "Le style est l'homme même.", how much more should the whole person not contain the whole writer? Indeed, a history of the sciences, insofar as these have been handled by men, presents a completely different and highly instructive appearance than if discoveries and opinions were merely strung together.

Perhaps it is also necessary to excuse in another way that which we have done in excess. We have provided accounts of authors who contributed little or nothing to the Theory of Colors Farbenlehre: Goethe's comprehensive study of the nature of colors and their perception, yet only of those who were significant for Natural Inquiry Naturforschung: The broader study of the physical world and natural sciences