lOS THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



In the height of his genius, when Goethe, standing at 

 the centre of the hfe of Weimar, frequently withdrew 

 from the bustle of the town and court, he received the 

 first suggestions of the " Metamorphosis of Plants." He 

 was irresistibly attracted to the varying phenomena of 

 vegetal life, and he could but muse on the implied unity 

 and rule underlying this variation. This was a fresh 

 source of agitation, which pursued him when, in 1787, he 

 forcibly tore himself from the influences of Weimar and 

 fled to Italy. There, in Sicily, he found the solution of 

 the riddle : the leaf seemed to be the rudimentary organ 

 of vegetal structure. And when, after his return, a new 

 star rose for him in Christiana Vulpius, he laid down 

 the quintessence of his ideas on the Metamorphosis of 

 Plants in that exquisite poem, of which the lines — 



" All forms have a resemblance, none is the same as another, 

 And their chorus complete points to a mystical law, 

 Points to a sacred riddle, — " * 



are present to all who ever made themselves acquainted 

 with the muse of Goethe. He now saw in the various 

 parts of the plant what he had learnt to see with the 

 eye of the imagination, which he considers essential to 

 the Naturalist, — the harmonizing principle. " The 

 same organ may be expanded into a compound leaf, or 

 contracted into a simple stipule or scale. According to 

 different circumstances, the self-same organ- may be 

 developed into a peduncle or an unfruitful branch. The 

 calyx, by over-hastening itself, may become the corolla, 

 and conversely, the corolla may approximate to the 



* AUe Gestalten sind ahnlich, und keine gleichet der andern, 

 Und so deulet der Chor auf ein geheimes Gesetz, 

 Auf ein heiliges Riithsel 



