Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/263

 PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 231

between Newton's theory of colours and my own, which is simply that his is false, and mine true: a discovery which could not fail to mortify my contemporaries. Wherefore, according to ancient custom, all serious examination into the question is wisely postponed for these few years. Professor Rosas knew no such policy as this and, as the matter was not alluded to anywhere, thought himself entitled, like the Danish Academician, to claim it as lawful prey (de bonne prise [fair game]). Evidently North and South German honesty had not yet come to a satisfactory understanding. Moreover the whole contents of §§ 538, 539 and 540 in Professor Rosas' book are taken from my pamphlet, nay even in great part copied word for word from my § 13. Still once, where he stands in need of a voucher for a fact, he finds himself obliged to refer to my treatise: that is, in his § 531; and it is most amusing to see the way in which he even brings in the numerical fractions used by me, as a result of my theory, to express all colours. It had probably occurred to him, that appropriating them quite sans façon [without more ado] might be a delicate matter, so he says, p. 308: "If we wished to express in numbers the first-mentioned relation in which colours stand to white, assuming white to be = 1, the following scale of proportion might by the way be adopted (as has already been done by Schopenhauer):

yellow = 3/4, orange = 2/3, red = 1/2, green = 1/2,

blue = 1/3, violet = 1/4,  black = 0

Now I should like to know how anyone could do this by the way, without having first thought out my whole colour- theory, to which alone these numbers refer, and apart from which they are mere abstract numbers without meaning; above all, how anyone could do it who, like Professor Rosas, professes to be a follower of Newton's