108 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
In the height of his genius, when Goethe, standing at 
the centre of the life of Weimar, frequently withdrew 
from the bustle of the town and court, he received the 
first suggestions of the “ Metamorphosis of Plants.” He 
was irresistibly attracted to the varying phenomena of 
vegetal life, and he could but muse on the implied unity 
and rule underlying this variation. This was a fresh 
source of agitation, which pursued him when, in 1787, he 
forcibly tore himself from the influences of Weimar and 
fled to Italy. There, in Sicily, he found the solution of 
the riddle: the leaf seemed to be the rudimentary organ 
of vegetal structure. And when, after his return, a new 
star rose for him in Christiana Vulpius, he laid down 
the quintessence of his ideas on the Metamorphosis of 
Plants in that exquisite poem, of which the lines— 
** All forms have a resemblance, none is the same as another, 
And their chorus complete points to a mystical law, 
Points to a sacred riddle,—" * 
are present to all who ever made themselves acquainted 
with the muse of Goethe. He now saw in the various 
parts of the plant what he had learnt to see with the 
eye of the imagination, which he considers essential to 
the Naturalist,—the harmonizing principle. “The 
same organ may be expanded into a compound leaf, or 
contracted into a simple stipule or scale. According to 
different circumstances, the self-same organ may be 
developed into a peduncle oran unfruitful branch. The 
calyx, by over-hastening itself, may become the corolla, 
and conversely, the corolla may approximate to the 
* Alle Gestalten sind iihnlich, und keine gleichet der andern, 
Und so deutet der Chor auf ein gehcimes Gesetz, 
Auf ein heiliges Rithsel_— 
