w-red side of the spectrum, but
certainly does so on the blue-red side. The physical colors are
thereby identified with the chemical colors. The time and care which
I have devoted to this subject give me the greatest advantage in
judging of new observations, inasmuch as, in fact, I have thought out
some new experiments which will carry the matter further still. I
foresee that I shall this year write at least two or three chapters
more in my theory of colors. I am anxious, some day soon, to show you
the latest.

Would you care to come to me on Thursday with Professor Meyer? Please
talk this over with him, and I will then write to him more fully on
the subject. Meanwhile, farewell.

* * * * *

SCHILLER _to_ GOETHE

Weimar, August 18, 1802.

You can never be inactive, and what you call an unproductive mood most
other people would consider time fully occupied. If only some
subordinate genius--one of those very persons residing and presiding
at the universities--would give the finishing touch to your scientific
ideas, collect and edit them fairly, and, in this way, preserve them
for the world! For, unfortunately, you yourself will always be putting
off this business, because, as I think, what is actually didactic is
not a part of your nature. You are, in reality, very well qualified
for being appropriated and plundered by others during your own
lifetime, as has already happened to you several times and would
happen more frequently still if people understood their own advantage
better.

If we had become acquainted with each other half a dozen years earlier
than we did, I should have had time to master your scientific
investigations; I should perhaps have sustained your inclination to
give these important subjects their ultimate shape, and, in any case,
should have honestly looked after what belonged to you.

I have lately been reading some notices on the elder Pliny, which have
astonished me in regard to what a man can accomplish by putting time
to good use. Compared with him, even Haller was a time-squanderer. But
I am afraid that the immense amount of time he devoted to reading,
making quotations and dictating, left him no proper time for
independent reflection, and he seems to have applied all the activity
of his mind to acquiring knowledge; for on one occasion he called his
nephew severely to task for walking up and down the garden without
having a book in his hand.

During thes