ON 



GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC EESEARCHES. 



A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE GERMAN SOCIETY OF 

 KONIGSBERG, IN THE SPRING OF 1853. 



IT could not but be that Goethe, whose comprehensive 

 genius was most strikingly apparent in that sober clear- 

 ness with which he grasped and reproduced with lifelike 

 freshness the realities of nature and human life in their 

 minutest details, should, by those very qualities of his 

 mind, be drawn towards the study of physical science. 

 And in that department, he was not content with ac- 

 quiring what others could teach him, but he soon at- 

 tempted, as so original a mind was sure to do, to strike 

 out an independent and a very characteristic line of 

 thought. He directed his energies, not only to the 

 descriptive, but also to the experimental sciences ; the 

 chief results being his botanical and osteological treatises 

 on the one hand, and his theory of colour on the other. 

 The first germs of these researches belong for the most 

 part to the last decade of the eighteenth century, though 

 some of them were not completed nor published till later. 

 Since that time science has not only made great progress, 

 but has widely extended its range. It has assumed in 

 some respects an entirely new aspect, it has opened out 



