partially producing a common language, a systematic 

 and necessary registry of the estate of science; 

 this is material capable of subsequent development 

 .... To remain within the limits of such empiricism 

 in reality is difficult, almost impossible; for that, 

 a great deal of temperance is necessary, a great deal 

 of selflessness, the greatness of Cuvier or the 

 stupidity of any dull-witted specialist. 95 



There were two ways of searching for those common things 

 which were so necessary for the intellectual nature- 

 investigator, embodied, Hertzen saw, in the names of Schelling 

 and Goethe. 



Schelling 's science . . . was not practical, not real 

 nature; all this is more clearly seen from the fact 

 that he was engaged with the advantages of Natur- 

 philosophie and had never been involved in the actual 

 study of any branch of the natural sciences. His 

 erudition was great, and he knew the encyclopedia of 

 natural knowledge. He was a genius amateur. 



The naturalists, Schelling' s successors, took the 

 formal aspect of his studies .... They built from 

 his ideas a strange metaphysical-sentimental structure 

 .... they took two to three general formulas which 

 were strong and abstract, and from them they drew all 

 phenomena and all the universe .... Oken was above 

 all of them, but it is impossible to separate him from 

 them entirely. Oken was awkward and narrow and no less 

 dogmatic than others . His wide and voluminous work 

 included the mistaken idea that nature is a thought. 96 



Goethe was immeasurably superior to Schelling. "He taught 

 that the object, to the highest level, was practical; he went 

 into detail, not losing sight of the totality .... He knew 

 that without speciality general therapy would be rejected by 

 idealism, that the specific was part of the study of nature 

 also, that the reading of the sources was history. From that 

 he suddenly revealed to the world an entirely new side of his 



95. Ibid ., pp. 101 - 102. 



96. Ibid., pp. 115 - 116. 



203 



