On Vision and Colors - Letter To Eastlake

Letter To Eastlake

In 1841, Schopenhauer wrote a letter in English to Charles Lock Eastlake whose English translation of Goethe's book on colors had recently been reviewed in several journals. Schopenhauer included a copy of his On Vision and Colors with the letter. He briefly communicated the main point of his book as follows:

...if, bearing in mind the numerical fractions, (of the activity of the Retina) by which I express the 6 chief colours, You contemplate these colours singly, then You will find that only by this, and by no other theory on earth, You will come to understand the peculiar sensation, which every colour produces in your eye, and thereby get an insight into the very essence of every colour, and of colour in general. Likewise my theory alone gives the true sense in which the notion of complementary colours is to be taken, viz: as having no reference to light, but to the Retina, and not being a redintegration of white light, but of the full action of the Retina, which by every colour undergoes a bipartition either in yellow (3/4) and violet (1/4) or in orange (2/3) and blue (1/3) or in red (1/2) and green (1/2). This is in short the great mystery.

Here he explained that color results from the way that the retina reacts to sensation. The cause may be light or other pressure on the retina. The fractions of two complementary colors sum to unity. White is undivided, whole retinal activity.