THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 191 



of earlier days, but clearly enough, at Jena in 1807. 

 We have, he says, natural objects before us, 

 especially living objects. We try to penetrate the 

 secrets of their nature and their action. We are 

 not merely observers, but philosophers. It is from 

 this point of view that we approach the subject. 

 It appears to us that the best way to proceed is 

 to separate the various parts. Such a procedure 

 seems calculated to take us very far. Chemistry 

 and anatomy are instances of this analytic kind 

 of research, and both are greatly esteemed and 

 successful. But this method has its limitations, 

 *'We can easily break up the living thing into 

 its elements, but we cannot put these together 

 again and restore them to life. We cannot do 

 this in the case of many inorganic, to say 

 nothing of organic, bodies." What are we to do ? 

 "Hence," Goethe continues, "even scientific men 

 have at all times had an impulse to recognise 

 living things as such, to grasp connectedly their 

 external visible and tangible parts, and take 

 these as indications of the inner life, and thus in 

 a sense to compass the whole in one glance." 

 "Hence we find at the threshold of art and know- 

 ledge and science a number of attempts to 

 establish and elaborate a science that we may 

 call morphology.'' 



Perhaps Goethe's meaning can be realised best 

 if one takes a great work of art — say, the Venus 

 of Milo — and imagines how these different kinds 

 of knowledge would deal with it. Purely ana- 

 lytic anatomy would dissolve the superb artistic 



