90 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



every organic form " as the inner original community " is 

 the inner constructive force, which receives the original 

 direction of form-production — that is, the tendency to give 

 rise to a particular form — and is propagated by Inheritance. 

 The "uninterruptedly progressive transformation," on the 

 other hand, which " springs from the necessary relations to 

 the outer world," acting as an external formative force, 

 produces, by Adaptation to the surrounding conditions of 

 life, the "infinite variety of forms" (Gen. Morph. i. 154; 

 ii. 224). The internal formative tendency of Inheritance, 

 which retains the unity of the original type, is called by 

 Goethe in another passage the centripetal force of the organ- 

 ism, or its tendency to specification ; in contrast with this he 

 calls the external formative tendency of Adaptation, which 

 produces the variety of organic forms, the centrifugal force 

 of organisms, or their tendency to variation. The passage 

 in which he clearly indicates the " equilibrium " of these two 

 extremely important organic formative tendencies, runs as 

 follows : " The idea of metamorphosis resembles the vis 

 centrifuga, and would lose itself in the infinite, if a counter- 

 poise were not added to it : I mean the tendency to specifi- 

 cation, the strong power to preserve what once has come 

 into being, a vis centripeta, which in its deepest foundation 

 cannot be affected by anything external." 



Metamorphosis, according to Goethe, consists not merely, 

 as the word is now generally understood, in the changes of 

 form which the organic individual experiences during its 

 individual development, but, in a wider sense, in the 

 transformation of organic forms in general. His idea of 

 metamorphosis is almost synonymous with the theory of 

 development. This is clear, among other things, from the 



