254 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Similarly the aged Gauss, twenty-four years later, listened 

 with emotion when Eiemann, in his celebrated disserta- 

 tion, touched a string that had been vibrating in the 

 master's soul for fifty years, unheard or unheeded by 

 any other thinker. 1 We can best understand the two 

 ways of reasoning in natural objects, which found an 

 expression in the controversy between Cuvier and Saint- 

 Hilaire, if we read the account which Goethe himself 

 subsequently published in a Berlin periodical : " Cuvier 

 labours untiringly as a distinguisher, describing accur- 

 ately what lies before him, and thus attains a command 

 over a great breadth of facts. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 

 on the contrary, is silently exercised about the analogies 

 of living creatures and their mysterious relations." 2 The 

 two men had worked as colleagues for thirty-eight years, 

 Cuvier continuing and defining more clearly the classi- 

 fying work of Linnaeus, who, for example, had thrown 

 all non-vertebrate animals into one class. This led him 



to pass in the Academy between Geoffroy in France, cannot again 



Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, : go back. ... I have for fifty 



and which is of such importance | years laboured in this cause ; first 



to science.' This utterance of j alone, then supported, and at last, 



Goethe was so unexpected to me | to my great delight, excelled by 



that I did not know what to say, 

 and that for some minutes I ex- 

 perienced a complete cessation of 

 my thoughts. ' The matter is of 

 the greatest importance,' continued 

 Goethe, ' and you have no idea 

 what I feel concerning the news 

 of the 19th July. We now have 



congenial minds. . . . This event 

 is for me of incredible value, and 

 I rejoice rightly over the ultimate 

 general victory of the cause to 

 which I have dedicated my life, 

 and which also is essentially my 



own. 



1 On this incident see the prefa- 



mighty ally permanently in tory notice in Riemann's ' Mathe- 



Geoffroy. But I also see from it matische Werke,' ed. Weber, Leipzig, 



how great is the interest of the ; 1875, p. 517 ; also the 13th chapter 



scientific world in France in this ! of this volume, 



matter, as, in spite of the frightful j 2 Goethe in the ' Berliner Jahr- 



political excitement, the meeting biicher fiir Wissenschaftliche Kri- 



took place in a crowded house. I tik,' vol. ii., 1830, September, re- 



What is best is, that the synthetic | printed in Werke II. vol. vii. p. 167 



treatment of nature, introduced by sqq. 



