S2 THE HISTOEY OF CPvEATlON. 



the fame of his other valuable works. It is quite different 

 in the organic sciences, in which we are but rarely able to 

 proceed, from the beginning, upon a firm mathematical 

 basis; we are rather compelled, by the infinitely difficult 

 and intricate nature of the problem, at the first to form 

 inductions — that is, we are obliged to endeavour to establish 

 general laws by numerous individual observations, which 

 are not quite complete. A comparison of kindred series of 

 phenomena, or the method of combination, is here the most 

 important instrument for inquiry, and this method was 

 applied by Goethe with as much success as with conscious 

 knowledge of its value, in his works relating to the 

 philosophy of nature. 



The most celebrated amongr Goethe's writinpjs relatinpf to 

 organic nature is his Metamorphosis of Plants, which ap- 

 peared in 1790, a work which distinctly shows a grasp of the 

 fundamental idea of the theory of development, inasmuch 

 as Goethe, in it, was labouring to point out a single organ, 

 by the infinitely varied development and metamorphosis of 

 which the whole of the endless variety of forms in the world 

 of plants might be conceived to have arisen; this funda- 

 mental organ he found in the leaf. If at that time the mi- 

 croscope had been generally employed, if Goethe had 

 examined the structure of organisms by the means of the 

 microscope, he would have gone still fui'ther, and would 

 have seen that the leaf is itself a compound of individual 

 parts of a lower order, that is, of cells. He would then not 

 have declared that the leaf, but that the cell is the real fun- 

 damental organ by the multiplication, transformation, and 

 combination (synthesis) of which, in the first place, the leaf 

 is formed ; and that, in the next place, by transformation, 



