,6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



... The p'-i-v. >rs inn of German science under the name of natu- 

 ral philosophy at the beginning of the century was as much of 

 Bathetic as of metaphysical origin, and even Goethe's scientific 

 efforts had the same background. This artistic comprehension 

 of the problems of Nature is defective because it is satisfied to 

 stop with the finely rounded figures, and does not press onward 

 fco the causal connections of the fact, to the limits of our under- 

 standing. It suffices, where it is concerned with the perceptions 

 of the resemblances of organic forms with plastic fancies, as in 

 the plant stem or the vertebrate skeleton; it fails when, as in 

 the theory of colors, instead of mathematically and physically 

 analyzing, it satisfies itself with the contemplation of presump- 

 t iv.-ly original phenomena. It was reserved for Herr von Briicke 

 to trace the colors of dark media, on which Goethe based his Far- 

 benlehre, and which to this day spread confusion instead of 

 clearness in many German heads, by the aid of the undulatory 

 theory to its true source. The difference between artistic and 

 scientific treatment is prominently set forth in this incident.* 



Yet it should not be said that artistic feeling may not be of 

 use to the theoretical naturalist. There is an aesthetic of research 

 which strives to impart mechanical beauty in the sense in which 

 we have defined it to an experiment; and the experimenter will 

 not regret having responded as far as possible to its demands. 

 At the transition-line between the literary and the scientific pe- 

 riod of a nation's civilization, there rises, under the influence of 

 the declining and that of the ascending genius, a tendency to a 

 more vivid representation of natural phenomena, as is illustrated 

 in France by Buffon and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and in Ger- 

 many by Alexander von Humboldt, in whom it continued vital 

 till extreme age. In this sense, as I have once said here and set 

 it forth as a desirable end, a strictly scientific treatise may under 

 a tasteful hand become an art-work like a novel, f The attain- 

 ment of perfection in this direction will reward the naturalist for 

 the labor, for it affords the best means of proving the faultless 

 accuracy of the chain of reasoning comprehending the results of 

 his observations. And in examples of this kind of beauty, which 

 often flows unsought and unconsciously through the pen of talent, 

 n< . lark will be found in our Leibnitz. Translated for Tlie Popular 

 Scu run Monthly from the Deutsche Rundschau. 



The deepest Bounding yet found in the Mediterranean Sea was obtained by an 

 -ian expedition in July, 1891, between Malta and Crete, 14,436 feet. At 22J 

 nnk-9 southeast, of this, a sounding of 13,148 feet was taken. 



Popgendorffs Annalen, etc., 1853, vol. lxxxviii, p. 363 et seq. Die Physiologie der 

 i arhon. Second edition, p. 104. 



t Uebcr eine kaiscrliche Akademie der deutschen Sprache. Reden, etc., vol. i, p. 160. 



