ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 245 



What did great harm to Goethe's correct anticipations 

 was the fact that in optics he had unsuccessfully com- 

 bated the generally accepted Newtonian theory of 

 colours, 1 and that his morphological glimpses were 

 taken up by Schelling and his school and incorpor- 

 ated in the fantastic speculations of the philosophy 

 of nature. They shared the fate of this and passed 

 into temporary oblivion. 



The idea of the fixity of certain forms in nature, of 

 the archetectonic modelling of her objects according to 

 certain archetypes, which Cuvier had put forth as the 

 result of extensive observation and inductive exam- 

 ination of living and fossil forms, which in De Candolle 

 was connected with the conception of geometrical order, 

 regularity, and symmetry, found in Goethe's mind an 

 artistic sanction. " It is," as the historian of botany 

 has remarked, " the idealistic conception of nature which 

 looks upon the organic forms as continually recurring 



1 A full discussion of Goethe's 

 theory of colours will be found in 

 two addresses of Helmholtz : the 

 first, from the year 1853, was re- 

 printed in the first volume of 

 his often - quoted ' Vortriige und 

 Reden ' ; the second was delivered 

 nearly forty years later at the 

 meeting of the Goethe Society at 

 Weimar, in June 1892. In the 

 latter Helmholtz significantly re- 

 fers to the great revolution which 

 in the interval had come over scien- 

 tific thought through the general re- 

 cognition of the principles of energy 

 and of evolution. By the light of 

 these we are better able to under- 

 stand the shadowy but nevertheless 

 truthful anticipations contained in 

 Goethe's poetical and scientific 

 writings. Helmholtz traces the 

 errors of Goethe's colour - theory 



largely to the fact that he worked 

 with imperfect apparatus and im- 

 pure colours ; that " he never had 

 before his eyes perfectly purified 

 homogeneous - coloured light, and 

 hence would not believe in its 

 existence. On this difficulty," 

 Helmholtz continues, " of complete 

 purification of the simple spectral 

 colours, a man like Sir D. Brewster 

 foundered, who was much more 

 experienced and clever in optical 

 experimenting than Goethe, and 

 was equipped with the best in- 

 struments" (Goethe's 'Vorahnung 

 kommender naturwissenshaftlicher 

 Ideen,' by H. von Helmholtz, 

 Berlin, 1892, p. 30). Cf. also 

 Helmholtz's Memoir on Brewster's 

 Analysis of Sunlight, 1852. Re- 

 printed in Wissenschaftl. Abhandl., 

 vol. ii. 



