THE BELFAST ADDRESS 159 



colors. This theory he deemed so obviously absurd that 

 he considered its author a charlatan, and attacked him 

 with a corresponding vehemence of language. In the do- 

 main of Natural History, Goethe had made really consid- 

 erable discoveries ; and we have high authority for assum- 

 ing 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 detection of analogies apparently re- 

 mote, in the classification and organization of facts accord- 

 ing to the analogies discerned, Goethe possessed extraordi- 

 nary powers. These elements of scientific inquiry fall in 

 with the disciplines of the poet. But, on the other hand, a 

 mind thus richly endowed in the direction of natural his- 

 tory, may be almost shorn of endowment as regards the 

 physical and mechanical sciences. Goethe was in this 

 condition. He could not formulate distinct mechanical 

 conceptions; he could not see the force of mechanical 

 reasoning; and, in regions where such reasoning reigns 

 supreme, he became a mere ignis fatuus to those who 

 followed him. 



I have sometimes permitted myself to compare Aris- 

 totle with Goethe to credit the Stagirite with an almost 

 superhuman power of amassing and systematizing facts, 

 but to consider him fatally defective on that side of the 

 mind, in respect to which incompleteness has been just 

 ascribed to Goethe. Whewell refers the errors of Aris- 

 totle not to a neglect of facts, but to "a neglect of the 

 idea appropriate to the facts: the idea of Mechanical 

 cause, which is Force, and the substitution of vague or 

 inapplicable notions, involving only relations of space or 

 emotions of wonder." This is doubtless true; but the 



