GOETHE. 117 



indeed we have not already unquestionably proved that 

 he can in no way be regarded as a true precursor of Dar- 

 win. Darwin and his adherents maintain the variability 

 of the so-called vegetal and animal species. The ques- 

 tion is simply whether Goethe was or was not, like his 

 contemporary Lamarck, convinced of this mutability. If 

 he says on one occasion that ''from the seed, plants are 

 developed, ever diverging and variously deternjining the 

 mutual relations of their parts," this is ambiguous in 

 itself; it may refer either to the origin of new species, 

 or to the variability of species by nature immutable. 

 Another time he speaks of the '" purpose of Nature " in 

 the horse. 



I can find but one single passage in Goethe's writings 

 in which there is a question of an actual transformation 

 of a creature, if not into a new species, at least into a 

 very marked and persistent variety. In i8ro, a Dr. 

 Korte gave a description of a primaeval bull found in 

 the neighbourhood of Halberstadt, and instituted com- 

 parisons and reflections, how under the influence of do- 

 mestication our highly modified cattle had been evolved 

 from the former. This relic, and another in Thuringia 

 (1821), which latter specimen was obtained by him for 

 the museum at Jena, gave him an opportunity of coin- 

 ciding with Korte, and of illustrating by an actual in- 

 cident, the possibility of this doubtless easy transforma- 

 tion. 



But from this to the transformation of species there 

 is still a long way, and Goethe did not traverse it. We 

 have just seen that the idea of deriving single animals 

 now existing from extinct " ancestral races," was not un- 

 familiar to him. Nor would his remark, " For we have 



