50 GOETHE 



scoffs at the scholars who would explain a living creature by 



anatomising it : 



" Dann hat cr die Theile in seiner Hand, 

 Fehlt leider ! nur das geistige Band." ' 



Goethe kept clear of this mistake ; he knew that the artist 

 comes nearer to the truth than the analyst. 



In the fragment entitled Dilditng und Umbildung 

 org<itiisc1icr Xaturcn (1807), introductory to a reprint of his 

 paper on the " Metamorphosis of Plants," we get an exposi- 

 tion of his general views on living things. He points out 

 there how we try to understand things by separating them 

 into their parts. We can, it is true, resolve the organism 

 into its structural elements, but we cannot recompose it or 

 endow it with life by joining up the parts. Hence we require 

 some other means of understanding it. " In all ages even 

 among scientific men there can be discerned a yearning to 

 apprehend the living form as such, to grasp the connection 

 of their external visible parts, to interpret them as indica- 

 tions of the inner activity, and so, in a certain measure, to 

 master the whole conceptually." This science which should 

 discover the inner meaning of organic Bildnug is called 

 Morphology. 2 In Morphology we should not speak of 

 Gestalt or fixed form, or if we do we should understand by 

 it only a momentary phase of Bilduiig. Form is of interest 

 not in itself but only as the manifestation of the inner 

 activity of the living being. Over development, he says 

 elsewhere, there presides a formative force, a bildcndc 

 Kraft or Bildnugstricb, which works out the idea of the 

 organism. Living things, in his view of them, strive to 

 manifest an idea. They are Nature's works of art and so, 

 incidentally, they require an artist to interpret them. 



This profound conception of the nature of life is applied 

 not only to the growing changing individual but also to the 

 whole changing world of organisms. They are all manifesta- 

 tions of a living shaping power which moulds them. This 

 shaping power, immanent in all life, is conceived to work 

 according to a general plan, and so we get an explanation of 



1 Then he has all the parts within his hand, excepting only, sad to 

 say, tht living bond. 



Goethe was the inventor of the word. 



