Finally, Newton's way of explaining things would say that if we have a piece of white—say a luminous strip—and look at it through a prism, it appears in the colors of the rainbow as in Figure 17. Goethe said that this might do in a pinch if light is indeed composed of seven colors. But to carry it a step further, the same people who say light consists of these seven colors allege that darkness is just nothing—the mere absence of light. Yet if we leave a black strip in the middle of the same piece of white paper and look at it through a prism, then too we get a rainbow, only the colors are now reversed (Figure 18), mauve (a delicate purple) in the middle and one side merging into greenish-blue and the other into the yellow colors.

The order of the colors is different. Based on the analysis theory we ought now to say the black too is analyzable, and would thus be admitting that darkness is more than the mere absence of light, for its analysis would also yield seven colors. That he saw the black band too in seven colors, but in a different order, is what put Goethe off—and shows how needful it is simply to take the phenomena as we find them.

Next, Steiner said, we have to consider the relation of colors to what we call "bodies." As a transition to this problem, he projected a complete spectrum upon the screen, then placed a trough containing a little iodine dissolved in carbon disulfide in the path of the cylinder of light. The middle part of the spectrum was extinguished so that only the violet on one side and the reddish yellow on the other, the two poles of color, were seen. He then indicated the need to see how it comes about that the bodies around us appear colored at all. How, simply by dint of their material existence, so to speak, do they develop such relation to the light that one body looks red, another blue, etc.? Physicists adopt the simple explanation that when full light falls on a body that looks red it is due to that body's swallowing all the other colors and throwing back only the red. Similarly with the other colors. But we must shun these speculative explanations and approach the phenomena by the pure facts.

Here Steiner interjects a background reference. In the seventeenth century a Bologna cobbler doing an alchemical experiment with barytes, a kind of heavy spar, found that it held and then gave off a certain colored light after it had been exposed to light for a while. If one comes across the word "phosphor" or "phosphorus" in the literature of that time, it is not what is called "phosphorus" today but refers to phosphorescent bodies of this kind—bearers of light, phosphores. Stating that this is not the simplest phenomenon Steiner moves on to the following one, "really the simple one."

If you take ordinary paraffin oil and look through it toward a light, the oil appears slightly yellow. If on the other hand you place yourself so as to let the light pass through the oil while you look at it from behind, the oil will seem to be shining with a bluish light—only so long, however, as the light impinges on it. You can do the same experiment with a variety of other bodies (speaking of a liquid here as a "body"). It is most interesting if you make a solution of plant green-chlorophyll (Figure 19). Look toward the light through the solution and it appears green. But if you stand to some extent behind the light, the chlorophyll shines back with a red or reddish light, just as the paraffin shone blue.

FIGURE 19

There are many bodies with this property. They shine a different way when, so to speak, they of themselves send the light back—when they have somehow come into relation to the light, changing it through their own nature—than when the light goes through them as through a transparent body. When we look at the chlorophyll (or body) from behind, we see the mutual relation between the light and the chlorophyll. When a body shines thus with one kind of light while illumined by another kind of light, we call the phenomenon fluorescence. The difference between fluorescence and phosphorescence is that the latter is a fluorescence which lasts longer. And now there is a third stage, the body that, as an outcome of whatever it is that the light does with it, appears with a lasting color. Thus, this sequence:

1. Fluorescence

2. Phosphorescence

3. Coloredness-of-bodies

The terminology is found in standard scientific works.⁴²

Two observations seem pertinent here. First, it seems clear from the rest of Steiner's lecture cycle on light that he is not necessarily saying that neither space nor time can ever be a phenomenon in itself. Rather, in this particular instance it is our identification with space and time that keeps them from being phenomena outside of us—and phenomena is what is observable on the outside of the observer. Second, Steiner seems to be in accord with Einstein's Relativity in saying that space and time are not independent realities.

We can separate ourselves from the velocity, but not from the space and time. With them (s and t) we are one. Nor should we, without more ado, ascribe to external bodies what we ourselves are one with. We only measure the velocity by means of space and time. The space and time are our own instruments. Here we see sharply the dividing line between the "subjective" (space and time) and the "objective" (velocity) things. It will be good if we will bring this home to ourselves very clearly. The truth will then dawn upon us more and more.

Steiner makes it clear that he is not saying that space and time are within us, but merely that in perceiving the reality outside us we make use of space and time for our perception. They are at one and the same time both inside and outside of us. The point is that we unite with space and time but not with the velocity.

In like manner, we are in one and the same element with the so-called bodies whenever we behold them by means of light. We ought not to ascribe objectivity to light any more than to space and time. We swim in space and time just as the bodies swim in it with their velocities. So too we swim in the light. You will never understand what light is without going into these realities. We with our etheric bodies, our life bodies (I-9), swim in the light, or, if you will, the light ether, for the word does not matter in this connection.