GOETHE, 117 
With the word Species, we reach the most important 
point in our account of Goethe's theory of nature; if 
indeed we have not already unquestionably proved that 
he can in no way be regarded as a true precursor 
of Darwin. Darwin and his adherents maintain the 
variability of the so-called vegetal and animal species. 
The question 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 determining 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 varicty. In 1820, a Dr. 
Korte gave a description of a primzeval bull found in 
the neighbourhood of Halberstadt, and instituted com- 
parisons and reflections, how under the influence of 
domestication our highly modified cattle had becn 
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 oppor- 
tunity of coinciding with KGrte, and of illustrating by an 
actual incident, the possibility of this doubtless easy 
transformation. 
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 
