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 
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