GOETHE. 



119 



being perplexed by them, will assuredly, amidst all their 

 varieties of form, very soon detect the true species and 

 their characters. But if indeed, in any one genus rich 

 in forms, no limit to which nature herself adheres should 

 be discovered, what should hinder us from treating it 

 as a single species, and all its forms as so many varie- 

 ties? As long as the evidence is wanting, which it is 

 not likely will ever be produced, that no species what- 

 ever exists in nature, but that every, even the remotest 

 form, may be evolved from the other by intermediate 

 links, — till then we ■ must be allowed to rely upon the 

 course already indicated. Let the master now instruct 

 the scholar, or, according to ancient custom, support 

 him." And he does support him, for in his morpholog- 

 ical writings he adopts his pupil's enunciations on the 

 problem as a testimony of entire community of mind 

 and soul. 



There can be no question that Goethe'5 thoughts on 

 organic nature were more profound than those of his 

 contemporaries. But we must not forget that the cardi- 

 nal idea of a modifiable archetype prevailed among 

 eminent men both before and with Goethe, as I have 

 shown in my little work known to the profession, " The 

 Development of Comparative Anatomy " (Die Entwick- 

 elung der vergleichenden Anatomie, 1855). If in his 

 popular lectures, Peter Camper amused his audience by 

 a diagram in which he evolved a beautiful female figure 

 from a horse; if he says that he is so entirely absorbed 

 in studying the whale and comparing it with the human 

 structure that every girl, pretty or ugly, appeared to him 

 like a dolphin or a cachelot; this was because he started 

 from an archetype or fundamental form. Goethe was only 

 9 



