GOETIIE. 107 
tions the lodestar of a higher research unknown to the 
pure systematizers. Goethe elaborated this idea in his 
own mind on the basis of a certainly remarkable special 
knowledge of organic matter, and undeniably reached 
the threshold of the solution. That his scientific activity 
was a necessary effusion of his nature, I have demon- 
strated in the treatises here cited. Additional evidence 
has been given by Helmholtz and Virchow. 
Goethe’s notes on his position towards nature, and his 
researches, comprise a period of more than fifty years. 
About the year 1780, there appears, under the title of 
“Die Natur,” a sort of Hymn to Nature, concluding 
with the beautiful words which make him seem a pure 
Pantheist: “She placed me in it; she will also lead me 
forth; I trust myself to her. She may dispose of me. 
She will not hate her work. I spake not of her. No, 
whatever is true and whatever is false, she spake it all. 
All is her fault, and all is her merit.” And shortly 
before his death, in March, 1832, he threw his whole soul 
into the scientific controversy as to the different methods 
of the investigation of nature and the fundamental 
principles of study, which rose high in the midst of the 
French Academy between the two renowned represen- 
tatives of the inductive and deductive tendencies, Cuvier 
and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. What Goethe here laid down 
in the evening of his days, is a sort of scientific profes- 
sion of faith, and it inspires the greatest admiration to 
behold the venerable octogenarian standing on the pin- 
nacle of time, and above all parties, with the same 
principles which with his own powers he had framed 
for himself five-and-forty years before, in the prime of 
manhood. 
