relative to Natural History, 315 



and was particularly desirous that the results to which he had 

 come should not be attributed to a brilliant imagination, but 

 that they should be regarded as the fruits of long and earnest 

 labours. He concludes the history of his botanical studies 

 with these words : u For half a century and more I have been 

 known as a poet in my own country and even to foreigners, 

 and no one dreams of denying me this talent. But what is 

 not so generally known, what has not been sufficiently taken 

 into consideration, is that I have worked earnestly and for a long 

 time at the physical and physiological phsenomena of nature, 

 that I have observed in silence with the perseverance which 

 devotion alone can give. Also when my Essay on the know- 

 ledge of the Laws of development of the Plant, printed in 

 German forty years ago, excited attention, first in Switzerland, 

 then in France, people knew not how to express their asto- 

 nishment, that a poet, usually occupied with intellectual phe- 

 nomena, which are from the fountain of sentiment and ima- 

 gination, turning an instant from his course, had by the way 

 made so important a discovery. It is to controvert this mis- 

 taken notion that this preface has been written. It is intended 

 to show that I have devoted a great part of my life to the 

 study of natural history, to which I was drawn by a passionate 

 taste. It was not by the sudden and unexpected inspiration 

 of a genius endowed with extraordinary faculties, it was by 

 continued studies, that I arrived at this result." 



Thus then we may look upon Goethe as a true naturalist, 

 who, if he had not had so great a reputation as a poet, would 

 long since have been quoted amongst the men of science, for 

 whom Germany is illustrious. He advanced science, and well 

 understood its requirements. He studied with ardour the facts 

 upon which it rests, and, as he himself tells us, he arrived at 

 general laws by a comparison of details. Assuredly we do 

 not wish to deny the share which the strength of his imagi- 

 nation may have had ; this noble gift has in general been the 

 endowment of all those who have advanced science by new 

 conceptions and felicitous theories. But we no longer live in an 

 age, when theories, which are but the produce of this faculty, 

 brilliant as it may be, can be regarded as a progress. The 

 imagination is to be admitted only when it generalizes facts, 



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