ON GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES. 45 



Thus, in the theory of colour, Goethe remains faithful to 

 his principle, that Nature must reveal her secrets of her own 

 free will ; that she is but the transparent representation of the 

 ideal world. Accordingly, he demands, as a preliminary to the 

 investigation of physical phenomena, that the observed facts 

 shall be so arranged that one explains the other, and that thus 

 we may attain an insight into their connection without ever 

 having to trust to anything but our senses. This demand of 

 his looks most attractive, but is essentially wrong in principle. 

 For a natural phenomenon is not considered in physical science 

 to be fully explained until you have traced it back to the 

 ultimate forces which are concerned in its production and its 

 maintenance. Now, as we can never become cognisant of forces 

 qua forces, but only of their effects, we are compelled in every 

 explanation of natural phenomena to leave the sphere of sense, 

 and to pass to things which are not objects of sense, and are 

 denned only by abstract conceptions. When we find a stove 

 warm, and then observe that a fire is burning in it, we say, 

 though somewhat inaccurately, that the former sensation is 

 explained by the latter. But in reality this is equivalent to say- 

 ing, we are always accustomed to find heat where fire is bum- 

 ing ; now, a fire is burning in the stove, therefore we shall find 

 heat there. Accordingly we bring our single fact under a more 

 general, better-known fact, rest satisfied with it, and call it 

 falsely an explanation. Evidently, however, the generality of the 

 observation does not necessarily imply an insight into causes; such 

 an insight is only obtained when we can make out what forces 

 are at work in the fire, and how the effects depend upon them. 



But this step into the region of abstract conceptions, which 

 must necessarily be taken if we wish to penetrate to the causes 

 of phenomena, scares the poet away. In writing a poem he 

 has been accustomed to look, as it were, right into the subject, 

 and to reproduce his intuition without formulating any of the 

 steps that led him to it. And his success is proportionate to 

 the vividness of the intuition. Such is the fashion in which he 

 would have Nature attacked. But the natural philosopher in- 

 sists on transporting him into a world of invisible atoms and 



