24. A Moral Science of Light

For security, therefore, and simplicity of definition of light, you will find no possibility of advancing beyond Plato’s “the power that through the eye manifests colour,”2 but on that definition, you will find, alike by Plato and all great subsequent thinkers, a moral Science of Light founded, far and away more important to you than all the physical laws ever learned by vitreous revelation. Concerning which I will refer you to the sixth lecture which I gave at Oxford in 1872, on the relation of Art to the Science of Light (Eagle’s Nest, § 973), reading now only the sentence introducing its subject:—

“The ‘Fiat lux’ of creation is therefore, in the deep sense, ‘fiat anima,’ and is as much, when you understand it, the ordering of Intelligence as the ordering of Vision. It is the appointment of change of what had been else only a mechanical effluence from things unseen to things unseeing,—from Stars, that did not shine, to Earth, that did not perceive,—the change, I say, of that blind vibration into the glory of the Sun and Moon for human eyes: so making possible the communication out of the unfathomable truth of that portion of truth which is good for us, and animating to us, and is set to rule over the day and over the night of our joy and our sorrow.”