148 FKAGMENTS 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, tendered 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, pro- 

 duced a profound 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 ab- 

 surd, that he considered its author a charlatan, and at- 

 tacked him with a corresponding vehemence of lan- 

 guage. 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 detec- 

 tion of analogies apparently remote, in the classification 

 and organization 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 physical and mechanical sciences. Goethe was in 

 this condition. He could not formulate distinct me- 

 chanical conceptions; he could not see the force of 



