ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 213 



one who loved above all things to watch the works of 

 nature in their proper abodes who combined the poeti- 

 cal with the scientific interest, by Goethe. The term 

 genesis l has long been employed to describe the pro- 

 cesses by which the actual world has come to be what 

 it is. To the statical and dynamical aspects of the 

 abstract sciences correspond accordingly to some extent 

 the morphological and genetic aspects of the natural 14. 



Morphology 



sciences. To some extent only, for in nature, where and genetics. 

 everything is subject to continual flow, we never come 

 upon a realisation of absolute rest, a pure form, a 

 rigid type. Bather would I put it in this way : In the 

 perpetual variety of change the morphological view 

 tries to define those recurring forms or types which 

 present themselves again and again, towards which all 

 changes seem to revert ; thus bringing some order into 



morphological writings have been 

 for the first time completely edited 

 and annotated in the three volumes 

 (6 to 8) of the second division of 

 his works now being published by 

 the Qoethe-Gesellschaft at Weimar. 

 The authority whom I approach 

 nearest in the use I make of the term 

 morphology is probably Haeckel. 

 See the first book of his ' Generelle 

 Morphologic der Organischen Wesen ' 

 (1866, vol. i. pp. 1-108). 



1 Goethe's morphological studies 

 were equally directed towards the 

 formation and the transformation 

 of living things : morphology was 

 to him the science of " Bildung 

 und Umbildung." In the course of 

 the century the terms morphology 

 and morphological school have come 

 to mean more and more that com- 

 plex of comparative researches 

 which historically prepared the 

 genetic, developmental, or evolu- 

 tionist school of thought, but which 



were mainly dominated by the con- 

 ception of fixed types and forms, 

 and, though searching for the laws 

 of modification, did not rise to a 

 clear enunciation of a theory of 

 evolution and descent. Goethe him- 

 self hovered all his life long between 

 an artistic predilection for the per- 

 fect form or model and a deeper 

 philosophical conviction of the con- 

 tinual flow of things. See a remark 

 of his ('Werke,' II., vol. vi.p. 304) 

 in an aphorism on " genetic treat- 

 ment " : " Erst bin ich geneigt 

 mir gewisse Stufen zu denken ; weil 

 aber die Natur keinen Sprung 

 macht, bin ich zuletzt genothigt mir 

 die Folge einer ununterbrochenen 

 Thiitigkeit als ein Ganzes anzu- 

 schauen, indem ich das Einzelne 

 aufhebe, ohne den Eindruck zu 

 zerstoren." See also a remark on 

 Goethe's undefined position in 

 Carus, ' Geschichte der Zoologie ' 

 (1872), p. 590. 



