GOETHE. 115 



a perfect auxiliary organ, a consolidated lower jaw- 

 bone. Only its body is indefinitely long ; and the 

 cause of its being so is that it expends neither material 

 nor power upon auxiliary organs. As soon as these 

 make their appearance in another form, as, for instance, 

 in the lizard, though only short arms and legs are pro- 

 duced, the indefinite length must at once contract, and 

 a shorter body takes its place. The long legs of the 

 frog necessitate a very short form for the body of this 

 creature, and by the same law, the unshapely toad is 

 laterally extended." It is well to bear in mind this 

 somewhat trivial passage, that we may not see more in 

 the poetic glorification of the Metamorphosis of Animals 

 than it really contains. 



When Goethe says in the magnificent poem : 



" Hence, each form conditions the life and acts of the creature, 

 And each fashion of life, with reflex forcible action, 

 Works on the form :" * 



it sounds, as we must admit, extremely seductive. But 

 we are sobered, or rather led to the right standpoint, by 

 reading his fascinating remarks on d'Alton's skeletons 

 of the rodents (1824). It is there made manifest that 

 Goethe had not the remotest idea of an actual trans- 

 formation of a rodent into any other animal by the 

 force of external influences. 



The reader may judge for himself. " Let us contem- 

 plate the animal in the neighbourhood of water ; as the 

 so-called water-hog it wallows, pig-like, on the marshy 

 shore ; as a beaver it is seen building by fresh waters ; 



Also bestimmt die Gestalt die Lebensweise des Thieres, 

 Und die Weise des Lebens, sie wirkt auf alle Gestalten, 

 Miichtig zuriick 

 9 



