THE HISTORY OF ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 289 



considered the founder of the purely scientific 

 higher anatomy. 



A few years later, art again took the lead in 

 the person of Goethe. Like all the really great 

 men of literature, Goethe added some of the 

 qualities of the man of science to those of the 

 artist, especially the habit of careful and patient 

 observation of Nature. The great poet was no 

 mere book-learned speculator. His acquaintance 

 with mineralogy, geology, botany, and osteology, 

 the fruit of long and wide studies, would have 

 sufficed to satisfy the requirements of a profes- 

 soriate in those days, if only he could have 

 pleaded ignorance of everything else. Unfor- 

 tunately for Goethe's credit with his scientific 

 contemporaries ; and, consequently, for the atten- 

 tion attracted by his work, he did not come 

 forward as a man of science until the public had 

 ranged him among the men of literature. And 

 when the little men have thus classified a big man, 

 they consider that the last word has been said 

 about him ; it appears to be thought hardly decent 

 on his part, if he venture to stray beyond the 

 speciality they have assigned to him. It does 

 not seem to occur to them that a clear intellect is 

 an engine capable of supplying power to all sorts 

 of mental factories ; nor to admit that, as Goethe 

 somewhere pathetically remarks, a man may have 

 a right to live for himself as well as for the 

 public ; to follow the line of work that happens 



VOL. II. U 



