GOETHE'S ' FABBENLEHBE.' 69 



/ 



the assertion that by experiment nothing can really be 

 proved. Phenomena may be observed and classified ; 

 experiments may be accurately executed, and made thus 

 to represent a certain circle of human knowledge ; but 

 deductions must be drawn by every man for himself. 

 Opinions of things belong to the individual, and we 

 know only too well that conviction does not depend upon 

 insight but upon will that man can only assimilate 

 that which is in accordance with his nature, and to 

 which he can yield assent. In knowledge, as in action, 

 says Goethe, prejudice decides all, and prejudice, as its 

 name indicates, is judgment prior to investigation. It 

 is an affirmation or a negation of what corresponds or 

 is opposed to our own nature. It is the cheerful activity 

 of our living being in its pursuit of truth or of false- 

 hood, as the case may be of all, in short, with which 

 we feel ourselves to be in harmony. 



There can be no doubt that Goethe, in thus philoso- 

 phising, dipped his bucket into the well of profound 

 self-knowledge. He was obviously stung to the quick 

 by the neglect of the physicists. He had been the idol 

 of the world, and accustomed as he was to the incense 

 of praise, he felt sorely that any class of men should 

 treat what he thought important with indifference or 

 contempt. He had, it must be admitted, some ground 

 for scepticism as to the rectitude of scientific judgments, 

 seeing that his researches on morphology met at first 

 no response, though they were afterwards lauded by 

 scientific men. His anger against Newton incorporates 

 itself in sharp and bitter sarcasm. Through the whole 

 of Newton's experiments, he says, there runs a display 

 of pedantic accuracy ; but how the matter really stands 

 with Newton's gift of observation, and with his experi- 

 mental aptitudes, every man possessing eyes and senses 

 may make himself aware. Where, it may be boldly 



