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The Museum Gazette 



the operations of Nature, I want to know not merely to conjecture 

 or to believe." 



He laid down the proposition, that Nature accidentally, and, as 

 it were, against her will, became the tell-tale of her own secrets.. 

 That everything was told — at least once ; not only in the time and. 

 place at which we looked for, or suspected it : we must collect it 

 here and there, in all the nooks and corners in which she had let it 

 drop. 



" In one of our former conversations, I called man the first dialogue 

 that nature held with God. I have not the least doubt this dialogue 

 may in other planets be kept up in a language far higher, deeper, and 

 more significant. At present we are deficient in a thousand of the 

 requisite kinds of knowledge." 



. This might possibly be the cause that our conversation took- a 

 direction towards the super-sensual, for which Goethe commonly 

 showed a repugnance, if not a contempt — completely on principle,, 

 as it appears to me ; for it was more consonant with his natural 

 disposition rather to confine himself to the present, and to all agree- 

 able and beautiful objects which Nature and Art offer to the eye and 

 observation, in paths accessible to us. Repugnance to the super- 

 sensual was an inherent part of his mind. 



With questions concerning time, space, mind, matter, God, immor- 

 tality, and the like, Goethe occupied himself little. On one occasion 

 he remarked : 



"What led to this was that I was always more disposed to an 

 examination of nature through the senses, than Herder, who con- 

 tinually wanted to hasten to the result, and grasped at the idea 

 while I had hardly got through the observation ; but it was just this, 

 reciprocal stimulus that made us mutually profitable." 



Goethe, as has been already remarked, loved nothing that was the 

 fruit of mere study : nothing got by rote. He maintained that all 

 systems of philosophy must foim part of our affections and of our life. 



