GOETHE. 107 



tions the lodestar of a higher research unknown to the 

 pure systematizers. Goethe elaborated this idea in his 

 own mind on the basis of a certainly remarkable special 

 knowledge of organic matter, and undeniably reached 

 the threshold of the solution. That his scientific activity 

 was a necessary effusion of his nature, I have demon- 

 strated in the treatises here cited. Additional evidence 

 has been given by Helmholtz and Virchow. 



Goethe's notes on his position towards nature, and his 

 researches, comprise a period of more than fifty years. ' 

 About the year 1780, there appears, under the title of 

 " Die Natur," a sort of Hymn to Nature, concluding 

 with the beautiful words which make him seem a pure 

 Pantheist : "She placed me in it ; she will also lead me 

 forth ; I trust myself to her. She may dispose of me. 

 She will not hate her work. I spake not of her. No, 

 whatever is true and whatever is false, she spake it all. 

 All is her fault, and all is her merit." And shortly 

 before his death, in March, 1832, he threw his whole soul 

 into the scientific controversy as to the different methods 

 of the investigation of nature and the fundamental 

 principles of study, which rose high in the midst of the 

 French Academy between the two renowned represen- 

 tatives of the inductive and deductive tendencies, Cuvier 

 and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. What Goethe here laid down 

 in the evening of his days, is a sort of scientific profes- 

 sion of faith, and it inspires the greatest admiration to 

 behold the venerable octogenarian standing on the pin- 

 nacle of time, and above all parties, with the same 

 principles which with his own powers he had framed 

 for himself five-and-forty years before, in the prime of 

 manhood. 



