ON GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC; RESEARCHES. 39 



mena the subject of direct investigation ; all of them, thanks 

 to the accuracy with which it is possible to calculate beforehand 

 the result of every variety in the construction and combination 

 of instruments, have had the opportunity of putting the infer- 

 ences deduced from Newton's views to the test of experiment, 

 and all, without exception, agree in accepting them. On the other 

 side is a man whose remarkable mental endowments, and 

 whose singular talent for seeing through whatever obscures 

 reality, we have had occasion to recognise, not only in poetry, but 

 also in the descriptive parts of the natural sciences ; and this 

 man assures us with the utmost zeal that the physicists are 

 wrong : he is so convinced of the correctness of his own view, 

 that he cannot explain the contradiction except by assuming 

 naiTOwness or malice on their part, and finally declares that he 

 cannot help looking upon his own achievement in the theory of 

 colour as far more valuable than anything he has accomplished 

 in poetry. 1 



So flat a contradiction leads us to suspect that there must 

 be behind some deeper antagonism of principle, some difference 

 of organisation between his mind and theirs, to prevent them 

 from understanding each other. I will try to indicate in the 

 following pages what I conceive to be the grounds of this anta- 

 gonism. 



Goethe, though he exercised his powers in many spheres 

 of intellectual activity, is nevertheless, par excellence, a poet. 

 Now in poetry, as in every other art, the essential thing is to 

 make the material of the art, be it words, or music, or colour, 

 the direct vehicle of an idea. In a perfect work of art, the idea 

 must be present and dominate the whole, almost unknown to 

 the poet himself, not as the result of a long intellectual process, 

 but as inspired by a direct intuition of the inner eye, or by an 

 outburst of excited feeling. 



An idea thus embodied in a work of ait, and dressed in the 

 garb of reality, does indeed make a vivid impression by appeal- 

 ing directly to the senses, but loses, of course, that universality 

 and that intelligibility which it would have had if presented in 

 1 See Eckermann's Conversations. 



