ON GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES. 49 



lately begun to make use of embryology as a sort of 

 check on the theoretical views of comparative anatomy. 

 It is evident that by the application of the physiological 

 views just suggested, the idea of a common type would 

 acquire definiteness and meaning as a distinct scientific 

 conception. Goethe did much : he saw by a happy 

 intuition that there was a law, and he followed up the 

 indications of it with great shrewdness. But what law 

 it was, he did not see ; nor did he even try to find it out. 

 That was not in his line. Moreover, even in the present 

 condition of science, a definite view on the question is 

 impossible ; the very form in which it should be proposed 

 is scarcely yet settled. And therefore we readily admit 

 that in this department Goethe did all that was possible 

 at the time when he lived. I said just now that he 

 treated nature like a work of art. In his studies on 

 morphology, he reminds one of a spectator at a play, 

 with strong artistic sympathies. His delicate instinct 

 makes him feel how all the details fall into their places, 

 and work harmoniously together, and how some common 

 purpose governs the whole ; and yet, while this exquisite 

 order and symmetry give him intense pleasure, he cannot 

 formulate the dominant idea. That is reserved for the 

 scientific critic of the drama, while the artistic spectator 

 feels perhaps, as Goethe did in the presence of natural 

 phenomena, an antipathy to such dissection, fearing, 

 though without reason, that his pleasure may be spoilt 

 by it. 



Goethe's point of view in the Theory of Colour is much 

 the same. We have seen that he rebels against the 

 physical theory just at the point where it gives complete 

 and consistent explanations from principles once accepted. 

 Evidently it is not the insufficiency of the theory to 

 explain individual cases that is a stumbling-block to 

 him. He takes offence at the assumption made for the 



