150 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



"When the human mind has achieved greatness and 

 given evidence of extraordinary power in one domain, 

 there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in 

 all other domains. Thus theologians have found com- 

 fort and assurance in the thought that Newton dealt 

 with the question of revelation forgetful of the fact 

 that the very devotion of his powers, through all the 

 best years of his life, to a totally different class of ideas, 

 not to speak of any natural disqualification, tended to 

 render him less, instead of more competent to deal with 

 theological and historic questions. Goethe, starting from 

 his established greatness as a poet, and indeed from his 

 positive discoveries in Natural History, produced a pro- 

 found impression among the painters of Germany, when 

 he published his ' Farbenlehre,' in which he endeavoured 

 to overthrow Newton's theory of colours. This theory 

 he deemed so obviously absurd, that he considered its 

 author a charlatan, and attacked him with a corre- 

 sponding vehemence of language. In the domain of 

 Natural History, Goethe had made really considerable 

 discoveries ; and we have high authority for assuming 

 that, had he devoted himself wholly to that side of 

 science, he might have reached an eminence comparable 

 with that which he attained as a poet. In sharpness 

 of observation, in the detection of analogies apparently 

 remote, in the classification and organisation of facts 

 according to the analogies discerned, Goethe possessed 

 extraordinary powers. These elements of scientific 

 enquiry fall in with the disciplines of the poet. But, 

 on the other hand, a mind thus richly endowed in the 

 direction of natural history, may be almost shorn of 

 endowment as regards the physicial and mechanical 

 sciences. Goethe was in this condition. He could not 

 formulate distinct mechanical conceptions ; he could 

 not see the force of mechanical reasoning ; and s in ' 



