40 ON GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES. 



the form of an abstract notion. The poet, feeling how the 

 charm of his works is involved in an intellectual process of this 

 type, seeks to apply it to other materials. Instead of trying to 

 arrange the phenomena of nature under definite conceptions, 

 independent of intuition, he sits down to contemplate them as 

 he would a work of art, complete in itself, and certain to yield 

 up its central idea, sooner or later, to a sufficiently susceptible 

 student. Accordingly, when he sees the skull on the Lido, 

 which suggests to him the vertebral theory of the cranium, he 

 remarks that it serves to revive his old belief, already confirmed 

 by experience, that Nature has no secrets from the attentive 

 observer. So again in his first conversation with Schiller on 

 the 'Metamorphosis of Plants.' To Schiller, as a follower of 

 Kant, the idea is the goal, ever to be sought, but ever unattain- 

 able, and therefore never to be exhibited as realised in a phe- 

 nomenon. Goethe, on the other hand, as a genuine poet, 

 conceives that he finds in the phenomenon the direct expression 

 of the idea. He himself tells us that nothing brought out 

 more sharply the separation between himself and Schiller. 

 This, too, is the secret of his affinity with the natural philosophy 

 of Schelling and Hegel, which likewise proceeds from the 

 assumption that Nature shows us by direct intuition the several 

 steps by which a conception is developed. Hence too the ardour 

 with which Hegel and his school defended Goethe's scientific 

 views. Moreover, this view of Nature accounts for the war 

 which Goethe continued to wage against complicated experi- 

 mental researches. Just as a genuine work of art cannot bear 

 retouching by a strange hand, so he would have us believe 

 Nature resists the interference of the experimenter who torturea 

 her and disturbs her ; and, in revenge, misleads the impertinent 

 kill-joy by a distorted image of herself. 



Accordingly, in his attack upon Newton he often sneers at 

 spectra, tortured through a number of narrow slits and glasses, 

 and commends the experiments that can be made in the open air 

 under a bright sun, not merely as particularly easy and parti- 

 cularly enchanting, but also as particularly convincing ! The 

 poetic turn of mind is very marked even in his morphological 



