158 Morphology under the Doctrine of [BOOK i- 



regard a particular leaf-form as first in time, and that others 

 proceeded from it by change ; he uses the word metamor- 

 phosis in a purely ideal sense. At other times his remarks 

 may be interpreted as though he really considered the normal 

 ascending metamorphosis to be a real change in the organs, 

 arising from a transmutation of the species. With this con- 

 fusion of notion and thing, idea and reality, subjective 

 conception and objective existence, Goethe took up exactly 

 the position of the so-called nature-philosophy. 



Goethe's doctrine could only make its way to logical con- 

 sistency and clearness of thought by deciding for the one or 

 the other way ; he must either assume that the different leaf- 

 forms, which were regarded as alike only in the idea, were 

 really produced by change of a previous form, a conception 

 that at once presupposes a change of species in time ; or he 

 must entirely adopt the position of the idealistic philosophy, in 

 which idea and reality coincide. In this case the assumption 

 of a change in time was not necessary ; the metamorphosis 

 remained an ideal one, a mere mode of view ; the word leaf 

 then signifies only an ideal fundamental form from which the 

 different forms of leaves actually observed may be derived, as 

 De Candolle's constant species from an ideal type. 



If now we read Goethe's further remarks on the doctrine of 

 metamorphosis attentively 1 , we perceive that he really arrived 

 at neither of these conclusions, but perpetually vacillated 

 between the two ; a number of his sayings might be collected, 

 which might be taken for precursors of a theory of descent, as 

 they have been taken by some modern writers ; but it is quite 

 as easy to make a selection which would carry us back to the 

 position of the ideal philosophy and the constancy of species. 

 In the later years of his life the idea of a physical metamor- 

 phosis accomplished in time, and involving a change of 

 species, does appear more distinctly in Goethe's writings. This 



See Goethe's collected works in forty volumes, Cotta, 1858, vol. xxxvi. 



