254 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Similarly the aged Gauss, twenty-four years later, listened 

 with emotion when Kiemann, in his celebrated disserta- 

 tion, touched a string that had been vibrating in the 

 master's soul for fifty years, unheard or unheeded by 

 any other thinker. 1 We can best understand the two 

 ways of reasoning in natural objects, which found an 

 expression in the controversy between Cuvier and Saint- 

 Hilaire, if we read the account which Goethe himself 

 subsequently published in a Berlin periodical : " Cuvier 

 labours untiringly as a distinguishes describing accur- 

 ately what lies before him, and thus attains a command 

 over a great breadth of facts. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 

 on the contrary, is silently exercised about the analogies 

 of living creatures and their mysterious relations." ! The 

 two men had worked as colleagues for thirty-eight years, 

 Cuvier continuing and defining more clearly the classi- 

 fying work of Linnaeus, who, for example, had thrown 

 all non-vertebrate animals into one class. This led him 



to pass in the Academy between Geoffroy in France, cannot again 



Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, go back. ... I have for fifty 



and which is of such importance years laboured in this cause ; first 



to science.' This utterance of : alone, then supported, and at last, 



Goethe was so unexpected to me to my great delight, excelled by 



that I did not know what to say, congenial minds. . . . This event 



and that for some minutes I ex- i is for me of incredible value, and 



perienced a complete cessation of I rejoice rightly over the ultimate 



my thoughts. ' The matter is of general victory of the cause to 



the greatest importance,' continued which I have dedicated my life, 



Goethe, ' and you have no idea ; and which also is essentially my 



what I feel concerning the news > own." 



of the 19th July. We now have l On this incident see the prefa- 



a mighty ally permanently in | tory notice in Riemann's ' Mathe- 



Geoffroy. But I also see from it ! matische Werke,'ed. Weber, Leipzig, 



how great is the interest of the 1875, p. 517 ; also the 13th chapter 



scientific world in France in this of this volume, 



matter, as, in spite of the frightful 2 Goethe in the ' Berliuer Jahr- 



political excitement, the meeting biicher fur Wissenschaftliche Kri- 



took place in a crowded house. > tik,' vol. ii., 1830, September, re- 



What is best is, that the synthetic printed in Werke II. vol. vii. p. 167 



treatment of nature, introduced by sqq. 



