Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664)

Excerpt

CHAP. I.

have seen you so passionately addicted, Pyrophilus to the delightful Art of Limning and Painting, that I cannot but think my self obliged to acquaint you with some of those things that have occurred to mee concerning the changes of Colours. And I may expect that I shall as well serve the Virtuosi in general, as gratifie you in particular, by furnishing a person, who, I hope, will both improve my Communications, and communicate his Improvements, with such Experiments and Observations as may both invite you to enquire seriously into the Nature of Colours, and assist you in the Investigation of it. This being the principal scope of the following Tract, I should do that which might prevent my own design, if I should here attempt to deliver you an accurate and particular Theory of Colours; for that were to present you with what I desire to receive from you; and, as farr as in mee lay, to make that study needless, to which I would engage you.

2 Wherefore my present work shall be but to divert and recreate, as well as excite you by the delivery of matters of fact, such as you may for the most part try with much ease, and possibly not without some delight: And lest you should expect any thing of Elaborate or Methodical in what you will meet with here, I must confess to you before-hand, that the seasons I was wont to chuse to devise and try Experiments about Colours, were those daies, wherein having taken Physick, and finding my self as unfit to speculate, as unwilling to be altogether idle, I chose this diversion, as a kind of Mean betwixt the one and the other. And I have the less scrupled to set down the following Experiments, as some of them came to my mind, and as the Notes wherein I had set down the rest, occurr'd to my hands, that by declining a Methodical way of delivering them, I might leave you and my self the greater liberty and convenience to add to them, and transpose them as shall appear expedient.

3 Yea, that you may not think mee too reserv'd, or look upon an Enquiry made up of meer Narratives, as somewhat jejune, am content to premise a few considerations, that now offer themselves to my thoughts, which relate in a more general way, either to the Nature of Colours, or to the study of it. And I shall insert an Essay, as well Speculative as Historical, of the Nature of Whiteness and Blackness, that you may have a Specimen of the History of Colours, I have sometimes had thoughts of; and if you dislike not the Method I have made use of, I hope, you, and some of the Virtuosi, your friends, may be thereby invited to go thorow with Red, Blew, Yellow, and the rest of the particular Colours, as I have done with White and Black, but with farr more sagacity and success. And if I can invite Ingenious men to undertake such Tasks, I doubt not but the Curious will quickly obtain a better Account of Colours, than as yet we have, since in our Method the Theorical part of the Enquiry being attended, and as it were interwoven with the Historical, whatever becomes of the disputable Conjectures, the Philosophy of Colours will be promoted by the indisputable Experiments.