ON GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES. 59 



But we cannot triumph over the machinery of matter 

 by ignoring it ; we can triumph over it only by subordi- 

 nating it to the aims of our moral intelligence. We must 

 familiarise ourselves with its levers and pulleys, fatal 

 though it be to poetic contemplation, in order to be able 

 to govern them after our own will, and therein lies the 

 complete justification of physical investigation, and its 

 vast importance for the advance of human civilisation. 



From what I have said it will be apparent that 

 Goethe did follow the same line of thought in all his 

 contributions to science, but that the problems he en- 

 countered were of diametrically opposite characters. And, 

 perhaps, when it is understood how the self-same cha- 

 racteristic of his intellect, which in one branch of science 

 won for him immortal renown, entailed upon him egre- 

 gious failure in the other, it will tend to dissipate, in the 

 minds of many worshippers of the great poet, a lingering 

 prejudice against natural philosophers, whom they sus- 

 pect of being blinded by narrow professional pride to the 

 loftiest inspirations of genius. 

 4 



