Goethe s Opinions on Education 



365 



<30ETHE'S OPINIONS ON EDUCATION AND THE 

 STUDY OF NATURE. 



{Continued from page 316.) 

 " Figure to yourself Nature, how she sits, as it were, at a card table, 

 incessantly calling an double/ i.e., exulting in what she has already 

 won, through every region of her operations, and thus plays on into 

 infinitude. Animal, vegetable, mineral, are continually set up anew 

 .after some such fortunate throws ; and who knows whether the whole 

 race of man is anything more than a throw for some higher stake ! " 



"As to Friar Bacon, extraordinary as was his appearance, it ought 

 not to excite wonder in us. We know that rich germs of civilisation 

 showed themselves in England at a very early period. The conquest 

 of that Island by the Romans possibly laid the first foundations for its 

 superiority. Such traces as they left are not so easily effaced as 

 people think. At a later period Christianity made early and remark- 

 able progress there. St. Boniface landed in Britain with a gospel in 

 one hand and a carpenter's rule in the other." 



" Believe me, this is a fragment of the earliest history of the human 

 species. The intermediate links you must find out for yourself. He 

 who cannot discover them will not be the wiser though he were told 

 them. Our scientific men are rather too fond of details. They count 

 out to us the whole consistency of the earth in separate lots, and are 

 so happy as to have a different name for every lot. That is argil 

 (thonerde), that is quartz (kiesclerde), that is this, and that is that. 

 But what am I the better if I am ever so perfect in all these names ? " 



" We constantly talk a great deal too much. We ought to talk less 

 and draw more. I, for my part, should be glad to break myself of 

 talking altogether, and speak like creative nature, only in pictures. 

 That fig-tree, this little snake, the chrysalis that lies there on the win- 

 dow, quietly awaiting its hew existence — all these are pregnant 

 Signatures ; indeed he who could decipher them might well afford to 

 dispense with the written or the spoken. The more I reflect upon it 

 the more it strikes me that there is something so useless, so idle, I 

 could almost say so buffoonish in talk, that one is awe-stricken before 

 the deep, solemn repose and silence of Nature, as soon as one stands 

 withdrawn into oneself, and confronted with her, before some massive 

 wall or rock, or in the solitude of some venerable mountain." 



" You have long known that ideas which are without a firm founda- 

 tion in the sensible world, whatever be their value in other respects, 

 bring with them no conviction to me ; for that, in what concerns 



