Note 115 — Chapter V · OPENING MANHOOD—1847 TO 1850—Æt. 16-19.
Reading edition
Lucr. de Rer Nat., I. 329-345. The following Hamiltonian notions will be found appearing from time to time in Maxwell's correspondence and occasional writings:—
1. Opposition of Natural Realism to “Cosmothetic Idealism”:—
2. Unconscious Mental Modifications:—
3. Distinction between Knowledge and Belief in relation to the doctrine of Perception:—
4. The Infinite or Unconditioned.
The following passage is worth quoting here, although the experiment in question was probably well known to Maxwell before he went to college:—
“... The experiment which Sir W. Hamilton quotes from Mr. Mill, and which had been noticed before either of them by Hartley.
“It is known that the seven prismatic colours, combined in certain proportions, produce the white light of the solar ray. Now, if the seven colours are painted on spaces bearing the same proportion to one another as in the solar spectrum, and the coloured surface so produced is passed rapidly before the eyes, as by the turning of a wheel, the whole is seen as white.”—Mill On Hamilton (1st edition, 1865), p. 286.