GOETHE VIRTUALLY AN EVOLUTIONIST. 9 1 



natural philosophers were making in the same direction, 

 and especially the contest between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. 

 Hilaire. (See Chapter IV. in "History of Creation.") It 

 is also necessary to be in some degree master of Goethe's 

 language and his process of thought, before it is possible 

 rightly to understand the many expressions, often incidental, 

 which refer to the doctrine of descent. He who does not 

 know the great poet and thinker as a whole, may possibly 

 even construe these very expressions in a contrary sense. 



In proof of this I adduce the strange fact that two 

 second-rate German zoologists have recently discovered 

 that Goethe was an extremely narrow-minded naturalist 

 and a "willing adherent of the doctrine of constancy of 

 species." Karl Semper, the gifted discoverer of " Haeckelism 

 in Zoology," and Robby Kossman, the ingenious " Solver of 

 the Rhizo-cephalic Problem," have extracted from Goethe's 

 morphological writings that the latter needy Frankfort 

 geniuses had neither a clear conception of the whole sig- 

 nificance of organic forms, nor the faintest idea of the 

 natural evolution of these forms, and of their connection 

 by common descent. All who know the poor and narrow- 

 minded literary productions of Semper and Kossman must 

 smile at the sentence of annihilation thus pronounced on 

 Goethe's conception of nature. 



Notwithstanding the condemnation by these great 



students of animal life, the rest of the world may continue 



to admire Goethe as a true prophet of the theory of descent. 



The numerous sentences which I have prefixed, as mottos 



to the chapters of the Generelle Morphologie, clearly 



show how far Goethe had advanced in his conception of 



the innate genealogical connection of the diverse organic 

 9 



