METAMORPHOSIS IN PLANTS. 85 



with pleased surprise, heard Schiller criticise the fragmentary 

 method which teachers of science uniformly adopted. When 

 they arrived at Schiller's house, Goethe went in with him, 

 expounding the theory of Metamorphosis with great warmth. 

 Taking up a pen he made a rapid sketch of the typical 

 plant. Schiller listened with great attention, seizing each 

 point clearly and rapidly, but shaking his head at last, and 

 saying : ' This is not an observation, it is an Idea '. Goethe 

 adds : ' My surprise was painful, for these words clearly 

 indicated the point which separated us. The opinions he 

 had expressed in his essay on Anmuth und Witrde recurred 

 to me, and my old repulsion was nearly revived. But I 

 mastered myself, and answered that I was delighted to find 

 I had ideas without knowing it, and to be able to contem- 

 plate them with my own eyes.' There can be no question 

 of Schiller having been in the right. . . . The typical plant, 

 Goethe knew very well, was not to be found in nature ; but 

 he thought it was revealed in plants. Because he arrived at 

 the belief in a type through direct observation and com- 

 parison, and not through a priori deduction, he maintained 

 that this type was a perception [A ns chanting), not an idea." 

 In another place (p. 345) Lewes expresses the same view in 

 his appreciation of Goethe as a man of science : " Goethe was 

 a thinker in science, a manipulator of scientific ideas. He 

 was not one of those laborious and meritorious workers who 

 with microscope and scalpel painfully collect the materials 

 from which Science emerges. He worked, too, in his way, 

 and everywhere sought in the order of nature for verifica- 

 tion of the ideas which he had conceived a priori. Do not, 

 however, mistake him for -o. metaphysician. He was a 

 positive thinker on the a priori method ; a method vicious 

 only when the seeker rests contented with his own assump- 

 tions, or seeks only a partial hasty confrontation with facts — 

 which Bacon calls notiones temere a rebus abstractas ; 3. 

 method eminently philosophic when it merely goes before 

 the facts, anticipating what will be the tardy conclusions of 

 experience." 



Moreover, it may be pointed out that the evidence upon 

 which Goethe relied was insufficient to warrant the generali- 



