The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It was at the beginning of this century that a powerful intellectual endeavor arose among the German people and sought to penetrate the deepest secrets of world building through the power of human thought. An original science emerged that emancipated itself from all practical activity and, hovering in the highest spheres of idealism, sought only to satisfy the needs of the spirit. It was the deepest German trait, imbued with moral high-mindedness, that animated this striving,

If we look at German poetry from that time, we must say that it too is filled with that magical juice that flowed from the German thinkers' striving for the most intimate fraternization with the world spirit. In this respect, both research and artistic creation had a religious trait, because they fulfilled the first basic condition of religion, to lift man away from the everyday and the ordinary into a higher, purely spiritual region.

It was a break with old traditions, but it was a different kind of break from the almost simultaneous French Revolution. The Germans rebelled against the traditional, against the outdated forms of religion, art and science, because a new world was opening up within them, because the real, the inner truth, was replacing appearances. In the case of the French, it was nothing other than the clever mind, the emptiness of the Enlightenment, for whom the old was not enough, and that is precisely why the liberality of the French so easily turns into frivolity. This cultural height on which the Germans once stood seems to us today to be nothing more than a thing of the past; we disciples look back with melancholy on those better times; after all, we seem to have been left with almost nothing other than the less comforting task of being the gravediggers and monument-setters of those great spirits who brought about that mighty epoch.

What do we achieve that could even remotely compare with those achievements? The power to create something original seems to have long since vanished and our entire art consists of creating biographies of our great ancestors and commentaries on their works. Where is the German power that once gave birth to Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Jean Paul?

It could almost seem as if the mighty Germanic giant is sleeping in the midst of Europe. But on closer inspection, the gloomy picture gives way to a still highly pleasing one, and we gain the conviction that we need not despair of the present at all, but can in many respects rejoice in it.

When we look at the intellectual life of Europe, it resembles a system of threads that are intertwined in many ways, but no matter which of these threads we follow, we still come to Germany as the crossroads where they all meet. The scientific, artistic and economic-social life of Europe is a connection of forces that all have their center in Germany.

If we want to prove the truth of this sentence, we need only consider two different interests, one dominating the scientific and the other the economic and social aspirations of the present day.

By the first point we mean Darwinism, the scientific doctrine that all animal forms now living are only descendants of some or of a single basic form which has been perfected in the course of very long periods of time, and that man is only the most perfect, most developed animal form, that his ancestors are to be sought nowhere else than where those of the other mammals are to be found. This doctrine is of English origin. But as it emerged from the head of the Englishman Darwin around the middle of our century, it was a vague, inherently unclear view; neither the moral consequences had been drawn, nor was the necessary all-round scientific development available. In the middle was a number of observations, experiences and undoubted truths, but the beginning and end were completely shrouded in mist.

Then, at the beginning of the sixties, German scholars took hold of this view; German profundity, German thoroughness and deep moral seriousness struck like lightning into the tangled fabric. The whole was thought through and carried through to its final consequences with all the power of the mind, and under the care of German researchers a scientific structure soon emerged, firmly established and well-founded in all its parts. What the Englishman Darwin had begun, the German Haeckel completed in a wonderful, monumental way. What the latter created is a perfect edifice of the mind, executed in every detail with admirable ingenuity. A mysterious document of nature had been found in England, but there was a thick veil over it, then a German came and tore away the veil, and only now did the world know what was written on the mysterious document. But it did not stop there. The moral high-mindedness of the Germans also had to consider the necessary consequences of the new doctrine with regard to morality and public life. And numerous are the writings of German researchers who, with more or less luck, either want to show the harmony of Darwinism with a pure morality or the endangerment of the latter by the former. In doing so, they also recalled the pinnacle of German culture, German idealism and its greatest exponent: Goethe. There was a need to harmonize the ideas of this great genius with the new teachings. And it is not to be slight that the German is so imbued with that ideal world that any disharmony of new views with this world is embarrassing to him. The striving of German scholars to harmonize the results of the modern world view with Goetheanism is the reaction of the German conscience to the scientific fashion, the will of the German that only the ideal must find its way into life, finally the belief that idealism must be true.

It is a specifically German phenomenon that pessimism in its deepest form arises as a consequence of Darwinism. The number of sincere, thoroughly good and highly gifted souls who despair of the world and life because of the new doctrine is not small. One must have as deep a mind as the German has, one must be as far removed from every kind of frivolity and frivolity as he is, one must possess his striving for the divine, and one will not easily escape pessimism if one fully thinks through the nullity of man and his race, as it follows, if one accepts Darwinism in its full extent. This gives rise to a line of thought that could probably be continued for a long time, but we have seen that the most powerful force moving the scientific world today points us to Germany. The West has posed a problem, Germany is trying to solve it. And if redemption is ever to come from the spell of the immense one-sidedness of the modern world view, it can only come from Germany. It will be the power of the German spirit which will show what is true about Darwinism, and which will at the same time show that, applied beyond a certain degree, it is inwardly untrue, shallow and shallow; it will overcome it by limiting its sphere of power, by understanding it.

The second phenomenon we want to point out is the striving of the European peoples to find that form of state in which the moral dignity and freedom of each individual citizen is most fully realized. Again, it was the West, France and England, where this aspiration first asserted itself. Arbitrariness was to be replaced by the necessity of reason, privilege by equality, and bondage by freedom. But it is probably not too bold to claim that the first truly viable seeds for replacing the state, in which chance and subjective arbitrariness rule, with one in which reason reigns supreme, have just been laid in Germany. The state must ensure that the happiness of the individual does not depend on chance or arbitrariness, but that the whole, built according to the principles of reason, secures the welfare of the individual to such an extent that the latter can develop freely in physical and spiritual directions. The state cannot make men free, only education can do that; but the state must ensure that everyone finds the soil on which his freedom can flourish. The fact that today the watchword has been given for a development in this respect from the steps of the throne once occupied by Frederick the Great, that in Germany the leadership of the state is incumbent on a man who is deeply imbued with that mission of the state, will one day be recorded by history as one of the greatest of its political facts.

And now one more thing: there are Germans who are not called upon to participate in the great social work that the German people are accomplishing today. We are speaking to a large number of such Germans here. But we would not call it a misfortune that this is the case. For perhaps it is precisely to these Germans that the most insignificant part of the common cultural work of our people falls today. We accept the present conditions with unfeigned resignation and assert that it is highly desirable that it should be so. We must not forget that above the great economic problems of the present, the German people in the empire today have often lost the ideal impetus for higher spiritual matters; we must not ignore the fact that even the German youth, once the proven guardian of German idealism, forgets the latter over social reformist thoughts, and we will realize that the German essence in its most beautiful development needs a refuge precisely with those Germans who live outside the German fatherland.

This opens up a beautiful perspective for these latter German tribes. We know of a people who have always adhered to this principle and who are therefore on a par with all German tribes - and much ahead of many in culture and education: the Saxons in Transylvania! May this journal contribute to the continued growth of this culture and education, may it succeed in speaking to a German people in a non-German country in the sense indicated.

When Rosenkranz completed his biography of Hegel in 1844, he wrote the meaningful words in the preface: "Does it not seem as if we are today only the gravediggers and monument-setters for the philosophers whom the second half of the last century gave birth to in order to die in the first half of the present century? Kant began this death of German philosophers in 1804. Do we see an offspring for this harvest of death? Are we capable of sending a holy crowd of thinkers into the second half of our century?" Four decades have now passed since the intellectual and jovial Hegelian posed this question. Let us look around us! What answer does our time give us? Now they must have become the men of whom Rosenkranz asked: "Are there any of our young people alive to whom Platonic enthusiasm and Aristotelian industriousness inspire the mind to immortal effort for speculation?" A fairly superficial knowledge of the intellectual life of our time is sufficient to realize that the answer to the above question will not be a very pleasant one. The group of philosophers who are enthusiastic about speculation today is small, very small, but the group of those who shrug their shoulders and look down on the entire philosophical age of the German people is large. It almost seems as if we have buried German philosophy with the German philosophers.

What did philosophy mean to the Germans at the beginning of our century, what does it mean today? At that time it was the watchword of the day; the philosopher could count on the participation of every educated German, his words were not only listened to by an enthusiastic audience in the lecture halls, they penetrated everywhere where there was any intellectual interest at all. Today, philosophy professors read - in front of empty benches. For a time, philosophical questions were the issues of the day; they were treated in the same way as political, national or economic issues are treated today. Having a world view seemed to be a necessity for every thinking person. Philosophy seemed destined to carry the torch ahead of all other sciences, to determine their direction and goal. The full energy of human thought awoke, and with this energy came the fullest confidence in human reason. The deepest need to penetrate into the secrets of the mystery of the world awoke in the heart, and at the same time the spirit considered itself capable, supported by its own power - without revelation, without experience - of doing justice to this endeavor. How different things are today! We have completely lost confidence in our thinking. We regard it solely as a tool of observation, of experience, just as we once regarded it only as a tool for interpreting the dogmas established by the Church. We do not even try to solve the great riddles that nature and life pose to us. We have Aristotelian industriousness, but we lack Platonic enthusiasm. We waste endless effort on detailed research, which is of no value without great guiding principles. The only thing we forget is that we are on the best way to a point of view that we consider to have long been overcome: on the way to blind dogmatic faith.

The rejection of sovereign thinking, combined with the insistence on the sayings of experience, is quite the same for a deeper understanding as the blind faith in revelation of a dismissed theology. Theology is handed down truths that it must accept without being allowed to ask why, without being able to use its own thinking to work out why what it believes to be true is true. It hears the message and must believe it. Thinking has nothing to do but to bring the finished truth into a form suitable for man. It is no different with mere empirical science. In its view, nothing is true except what the facts proclaim. We should observe, organize, collect, but refrain from all reflection on the inner driving forces of the events we encounter. The truths of experience are also transmitted to us from the outside. The Church demanded that thought submit to revelation; empirical science demands submission to the random statements of the factual world.

And in the field of practical philosophy, where have we got to? The common thread that runs through the thinking of all minds of the classical period is the recognition of man's free will as the supreme power of his mind. This recognition is sometimes taken very lightly. Few realize that, grasped in its full depth, it forms the seeds of a religious view of the future. Whoever recognizes man's free will in the highest sense of the word must deny any inner or outer worldly influence on the actions of his spirit. He must refer him entirely to himself, to his own personality. No "divine commandments", no "thou shalt", as the religions have it, can he allow to apply to the moral life of man. Man must draw the goal and purpose of his existence from himself.

His destiny is not that which an "eternal counsel" of God assigns to him, but that which he gives to himself. He recognizes no master over himself. This view increases the awareness of human dignity infinitely. In order to cherish it, however, we need that trust in our own reason which we no longer have, or at least not to the same extent as in the classical epoch of our philosophy. This view must give up finding consolation in religion or in the consciousness of being a child of God in general; it must seek consolation in man's own breast. It must give up leading a life pleasing to God and recognize only its own reason as its guide. Only with this view does man feel completely free. It was a tremendous step forward in the education of the human race when the German philosophers proclaimed this truth in all its forms. Who recognizes it as such today? We no longer believe that we are capable of setting ourselves the goal and purpose of our lives. We believe ourselves to be under the sway of an iron necessity of nature, just as an outdated humanity believed itself to be under the sway of divine wisdom. Anyone who also has a sense of the miserable situation we would be in if this view were true becomes a pessimist. And so today, pessimism is considered the attitude of noble spirits. Our ancestors, who were strong in faith, were not pessimists only because they believed that the Creator was all-good and all-wise and that everything would ultimately work out for the best. Of course, such an assumption cannot apply to the blind necessity of nature.

Only free philosophical thinking, which is capable of the highest development, can rise above this view. And such was the thinking of our classical epoch.

Our German philosophy is not the deed of an individual, it is the deed of the German people. The German people brought their best, their lifeblood to the surface, and that is what we call German philosophy. The men who appeared at the turn of the century and in the first decades of ours proclaimed a message that arose from deep within the soul of the people. And not only the philosophers, but also the poets proclaimed the same message. For the epoch of our classical literature does not signify a one-sided upswing in poetry, but a deepening of the entire German essence. The basic character of all the creations of our greatest age is a philosophical one. Our greatest poets had to come to terms with the philosophical views of the time. Schiller considered himself fortunate to live at the time when Kant was bringing the greatest world problems into flow, and there are philosophical truths that no one has grasped more deeply than Schiller to this day.

If we ask for the reason for this phenomenon, we must look for it in the depth and peculiarity of the German essence. This essence is best grasped when it is linked to ancient Greekness. The cultural historian of the future will certainly attribute to the German spirit the same significance for the formation of modern times as today's historian does to the Greek spirit with regard to the formation of antiquity. The Greek spirit was directed outwards, it urged the shaping of the world of the senses in order to reproduce a small world in individual works of art. The Greek artist sought to imprint on his creation that which in nature is distributed among a multiplicity of beings, so that one might say that the Greek sought to unite all the laws of nature in a single work of art. When Goethe recognized this basic character of Greek masterpieces in Italy, he said that the Greeks followed the same laws in their work that nature follows and that he was on the trail of. This immediately expresses the contrast and similarity between the German and Greek spirit. The Greek seeks to imprint the idea of creation on matter, the German seeks to grasp it by thinking and to shape it as a world of ideas, to which he withdraws. Plastic sense is at home with the Greeks, plastic spirit with the Germans. It has been repeatedly stated what the Germans want with their philosophy. He wants to recreate in his mind the order according to which the world around us is assembled.

Only the German has grasped philosophy in this bold sense. All other worldly wisdom is merely a premonition, a foreshadowing of what became a world-historical phenomenon in the German spirit. Philosophy in the German people was transformed from a scholarly matter into a matter of humanity. It was with this awareness that Hegel was able to say, when he delivered his inaugural address on October 22, 1818: "This science has taken refuge with the Germans and lives on in them alone. We have been entrusted with the preservation of this sacred light, and it is our duty to nurture and nourish it and to ensure that the highest thing that man can possess, the self-consciousness of his being, does not go out and perish." This also explains why it had to be a philosopher who best showed the Germans their own nature in the mirror of the idea. The basic trait of German nature is precisely a philosophical one and can therefore be grasped most deeply by philosophical reflection. The "Speeches to the German Nation", which Fichte delivered in Berlin, surrounded by the armies of the enemy, are a treasure of the German people.

If the philosophical current is currently being pushed back in our nation, we must not be unfair. Today, we are too absorbed by political, economic and national interests. But the spirit of German philosophy continues to have an unconscious effect on the social reforms in the empire. We need only recall the idea of the "closed commercial state" advocated by Fichte. We surrender to the belief that in the not too distant future our people will completely reconnect their present with their past. It must, because it denied itself when it denied its philosophers. Our western neighbors have mocked us for our idealism. We were able to bear the mockery, because idealism can only be appreciated by those who have it. Things are different today anyway. While French chauvinism preferred to turn its weapons against our people, today French scholarship is immersed in German thought, and the English are competing with the French. Tying the present to the past: in this sign we shall triumph, and our best victories will be those of the spirit.

"Honor your German masters, then you will banish good spirits", Richard Wagner aptly calls out to us. Unfortunately, we still follow this call in a rather one-sided way. However, while we strive to create ever clearer and more complete images of the deceased greats of German intellectual development, we are often unfair to the living.

Without wishing to object in the slightest to the just appreciation of past cultural periods and to the ever-increasing immersion in the study of Schiller, Goethe, Herder and so on - on the contrary, we fully recognize the necessity of this - we cannot deny ourselves the insight that we usually lack the good will to come to a judgment about the greats of the present. Admittedly, it takes less courage to express one's admiration for Goethe and Schiller over and over again, whereby one can meet with no contradiction anywhere in the educated world, than to stand up for a living person and to speak a ruthless word here for once.

Since we believe that a newspaper is preferably called to serve the present, we would like to record our judgment on one of the most sympathetic German thinkers, Johannes Volkelt.

We want to start from a fact that will still be vividly remembered by many who studied in Vienna in the seventies. On March 10, 1875, Johannes Volkelt, a 27-year-old scholar at the time, gave a lecture at the "Reading Association of German Students in Vienna" which must be regarded as the most significant contribution to the cultural history of the present day.

In every sentence, Volkelt shows how deeply he has delved into the history of his time. There is an astonishing wealth of spirit in this lecture, and indeed of genuine German spirit.

Of course, this is not the light, French-style wit of Ludwig Speidel, Eduard Hanslick, Hugo Wittmann or even Oppenheim and Spitzer, who supposedly speak about some important subject, but in reality entertain their audience with stale quips and thoughtless phrases. No, Volkelt's speech was witty in the sense that it found the right word at the right moment, the genuine, pithy German word that always entertains us because it lifts us spiritually.

In this lecture, Volkelt measures our time against Kant's high concept of morality, which is deeply rooted in the essence of the German people. Kant makes the morality of an action solely dependent on the attitude from which it emerged. An action that complies with all existing laws, that is of incalculable benefit to others and posterity, is not moral if it does not flow from the good mindset of its author. If two do the same thing, one out of selfishness, the other out of duty, the first acts immorally, the second morally. Volkelt now asks: What is the attitude of our time to these views of the Königsberg sage? He comes to a sad answer. The view seems to have become almost universal: you don't get anywhere with a moral attitude, you don't build railroads with it, you don't found industrial enterprises with it. People believe they have done enough for morality if they do not come into conflict with the criminal law. Being good at heart is seen as a prejudice that children have to be taught at school, but which is of no use in life. There are circles today that have adopted ways of life that are immoral at their root. "It seems to me," says Volkelt, "that hardly any expression characterizes the moral life of our time as aptly as the word 'beguem'. Cool laxity, genteel comfort is part of the good tone."

There was a time when man had to wring the least he needed for his sustenance from nature. Hard work, a struggle in the truest sense of the word, was required to eke out an existence. Today things have changed. Conquering nature is easy for us. We have machines and tools that do what our ancestors had to do with their own hands. Like any sensible person, we naturally recognize this as progress. But we also do not fail to recognize that this very progress goes hand in hand with a decline in character and morals. The toil and labor that man once had to perform in order to wring a living from nature were for him a high school of morality. Today, all we have to do is lift a hand and the whole social apparatus works to satisfy our needs. As a result, the latter increase to the point of exaggeration, people lose the desire to walk the straight and hard path of duty, preferring instead the easy path of comfort. This results in a paralysis of personal strength of character, of the ability to work.

A large part of our society suffers from marrowlessness and softening of the bones in spiritual terms.

"We live in a time of general upholstery," says Volkelt aptly, and adds: "You will find out how right I am when you look around your comfortably furnished room, when you take a walk through the streets, when you go on a journey. Even the most remote mountain valleys are no longer safe from railroads and modern hotels. You experience it as often as you allow yourself to be served in a pub by the slickly combed waiters, those poetry-less machines; as often as you have to move about on a mirror-like saloon floor in tails and gloves. You experience it with every legal transaction you get into, with the simplest business you are supposed to handle. Even war today has an impersonal, prompt machine character." This is the age in which there are few who have an ideal goal in mind and, without a sideways glance to the right or left, head ruthlessly towards it; no, where everyone just abandons themselves to the blind hustle and bustle of the world and, playing a frivolous game with happiness and life, tries to get as much out of the social machine as they can. Everywhere the comfortable is preferred to that which requires the use of the whole personality. Who reads a systematic book today that has been produced by years of hard work? No, people prefer to take note of the issues of the day from "elegantly" written feuilletons or "popular", i.e. shallow lectures. The former is tedious and requires rigorous thinking, the latter is comfortable. In the theater, the audience is offered the lightest, meanest, even the most stupid stuff. They sip it with pleasure, because the enjoyment of something higher also requires mental effort. Political party life everywhere reveals only half-measures and opportunism. Almost no one can be found who utters a sincere, ruthless "That's what I want!"

The firmness of character has perished in the staggering life of pleasure. Volkelt recommends reading Kant's writings to all those who are corroded by the evil spirit of our time. For they are a school for the weak in character. In particular, Volkelt addresses his admonition to journalists. It is precisely this profession that most degrades the dignity of man in his own person, when he surrenders himself to the will-less tool of his financial backers. The journalist turns his person into a thing by selling himself.

It is curious that Volkelt, in view of the outcome of the Ofenheim trial in 1875, had already bluntly exposed the damage done to the Viennese press. He chose an example from the series of papers that do not want to know anything about morals and sentiment when it comes to large-scale undertakings, for which the only decisive factor is whether more or less can be gained from something. Irrespective of the fact that you risk a lot when you make enemies of the powerful, our thinker chose the "most respected" newspaper in Vienna, the "Neue Freie Presse", as the object of his attack. He was right, because although this newspaper lives only from the phrase, it still impresses many. One must first remove its mask. The other leaves of this character are not even worth this effort. Volkelt says: "After the acquitting verdict of the jury - in the Ofenheim trial - one should have confessed with moral sorrow: Our penal law is unfortunately so imperfect that it cannot catch the immorality of those people in its snares. But what happened instead? The next morning, an editorial appeared in the "Neue Freie Presse" that must make every simple and healthy-minded person nauseous. If the Ofenheim spirit was not adhered to in industrial undertakings, we would fall into an "era of dull, despondent resignation". This paper goes so far in its forced, artificially incited enthusiasm that it regards acquittal as the highest achievement for the 'conscience', for 'ethics'. The same conflation of legal right and morality can be found in the next editorial. In order to present its lapchild Ofenheim as completely morally rehabilitated, the 'Neue Freie Presse' seeks to scandalize morality in general. It has the temerity to declare that there is 'no earthly tribunal' for morality at all.

I ask: does not a voice of judgment live in the people, does not a voice of judgment live in every man's breast, urgently proclaiming his moral guilt and innocence? The 'Neue Freie Presse', which describes morality, which is different from law and justice, as an 'insubstantial abstract' and wants us to believe that every person's breast is as arid and paragraph-like as that of its followers, should take a lesson from the old Kant that acting in accordance with the law is legal, but not yet 'moral'. But the "Neue Freie Presse" probably knows this itself. Only the oppressive feeling of having once stood up for something morally hollow could give it the sentence: "If justice and the law have spoken, then morality has also been satisfied." While she usually loved to dress herself with a certain idealistic verve, she now displays a moral dullness and moral nakedness. In her eyes, all those who are morally indignant are hypocrites, sycophants, people with a crude attitude."

These were strong words. Volkelt had said what moved hundreds of people. Anyone who heard his words had to recognize the German man in Volkelt and agree with him wholeheartedly. And he has so far proved himself to be an energetic, fully German man. He leads a life of thought in the German sense and strives to solve the highest world problems. His works definitely bear the trait that is imprinted on them by his harmonious, indomitable personality.

Mind and thought are equally present in this man. If you want to see this for yourself, read his book: "Dream Fantasy."

Just as astronomy developed from astrology and chemistry from alchemy, a science of the dream world will develop from dream interpretation. Man always wants to exploit the realms of reality for his personal desires first and will only penetrate them later with the selfless research of science. In his book, Volkelt has eloquently compiled all the elements we have today for a future 'dream science'. Anyone who goes through the book will soon realize that this intimate field, this world of fairy tales, could only have been treated so favorably by a German.

Volkelt's writings: "The Unconscious and Pessimism", "Individualism and Pantheism", "The Concept of Symbol in the Latest Aesthetics", show us everywhere the highly gifted, thorough thinker who finally appears at his full height in his last writings: "Kant's Epistemology" and "Experience and Thought".

Volkelt is an original researcher who builds on Kant in his own way. Kant argued against the scientific "groping around in the dark" that we must first test our own cognitive faculty to see whether this instrument is also suitable for understanding extraordinary things such as God, the soul and the like. And he believed he had proved that we can understand nothing but the experience that is spread out before our senses. Everything supernatural remains uncertain. Volkelt is also of the opinion that we only have certain knowledge of that which is given to our eyes and ears and so on. However, he believed that by logical reasoning we could also gain knowledge of the active causes lying behind this sensory world, but that this knowledge had no character other than that of probability. He wanted to unite the "cautious criticism", which he had adopted from Kant, with a "highly aspiring idealism". It is true that the latest phase of his thought is not entirely free of the lack of courage and energy that generally prevails in thought today, but his healthy nature and his German sense will hopefully not allow him to fall into the error of thinking that our research is a futile struggle. We hope to see the disappearance from his philosophy of that which he regards as necessary today: "A going forward, which again partially recedes, a yielding, which again to a certain extent takes hold." We demand that the philosopher also be inspired by Hutten's spirit and speak a strong and resolute "Through!"

We would have liked this German thinker, who was born in Austria, to have found an appropriate place for his work here too. His bold, free spirit made him impossible in his homeland. Truly, he would have become a role model for the academic citizenry here in the upholding of our ideal goods and in the hatred of all that is bad and half-baked. Not everywhere, however, people love a free, unrestrained demeanor, and so Volkelt had to wander. He first found a place to work at the University of Jena, then in Basel, where he lives today.

Neither the future historian of philosophy nor the cultural historian will be able to deny Volkelt's name a place of honor.

With a shrug of the shoulders, our present-day generation remembers the time when a philosophical wave swept through the whole of German intellectual life. The powerful current of the times, which seized the minds at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century and boldly set itself the highest conceivable tasks, is currently regarded as a regrettable aberration. Anyone who dares to contradict the "fantasies of Fichte" or the "insubstantial thoughts and word games" of Hegel is simply portrayed as a dilettante "who has as little idea of the spirit of modern natural science as he does of the solidity and rigor of the philosophical method". Only Kant and Schopenhauer find favor with our contemporaries. The former succeeds in seemingly deriving from his teachings the somewhat sparse philosophical chunks on which modern research is based; the latter, in addition to his strictly scientific achievements, also wrote works in a light style and about things that need not be too remote even for people with the most modest intellectual horizon. But for that striving for the highest peaks of the world of thought, for that impetus of the spirit that paralleled our classical artistic epoch in the scientific field, there is now a lack of sense and understanding. The alarming aspect of this phenomenon only becomes apparent when one considers that a permanent turning away from that intellectual direction would be for the Germans a loss of their self, a break with the spirit of the people. For that striving arose from a deep need of the German essence. It does not occur to us to want to deny the manifold errors and one-sidedness that Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Oken and others committed in their bold undertakings in the realm of idealism, but the tendency that inspired them should not be misjudged in its grandeur. It is so appropriate to the people of thinkers. Not the lively sense for the immediate reality, for the outside of nature, which enabled the Greeks to create their magnificent, imperishable creations, is characteristic of the Germans, but instead an unrelenting urge of the spirit for the basis of things, for the seemingly hidden, deeper causes of the nature that surrounds us. While the Greek spirit lived in a wonderful world of forms and shapes, the German, who withdrew into himself and had less contact with nature and more with his heart, with his own inner being, had to seek his conquests in the realm of pure thought. And that is why it was German how Fichte and his followers approached the world and life. That is why their teachings were so enthusiastically received, that is why the whole life of the nation was gripped by them for a time. But that is also why we must not break with this school of thought. Overcoming the errors, but natural development on the foundation laid at that time, must become our watchword. It is not what these minds found or thought they found, but how they faced up to the tasks of research that is of lasting value. They felt the need to penetrate into the deepest secrets of the mystery of the world, without revelation, without experience limited to chance, purely through the power inherent in their own thinking, and they were convinced that human thinking was capable of the impetus necessary for this. How different are things today? We have lost all confidence in thinking. Observation and experience are regarded as the only tools of research. What is not tangible is considered uncertain. There is no understanding for the fact that our thinking can look deeper into the workings of the world than all external observation is capable of, without hanging on the shackles of the senses, relying purely on itself. One renounces any solution to the great riddles of creation and wastes endless effort on detailed research, which is of no value without great, guiding points of view. The only thing we forget is that with this view we are approaching a point of view that we believe we have long since overcome. For the rejection of all thought and the insistence on experience is, more deeply understood, quite the same as the blind faith in revelation of the religions. For what is the latter based on? But only on the fact that truths are handed down to us ready-made, which we must accept without having to weigh up the reasons in our own thinking. We hear the message, but we are denied insight into the reasons. It is no different with blind faith in experience. According to the naturalists and the strict philologists, we should merely collect and organize the facts and so on, without going into the inner reasons. Here, too, we should simply accept the finished truths without any insight into the forces behind the phenomena. Believe what God has revealed and do not search for the reasons, says theology; register what takes place before your eyes, but do not think about the causes behind it, for that is in vain, says the latest philosophy. And only in the field of ethics, where have we got to! The common thread that runs through the thinking of all the minds of the classical period of our science is the recognition of free will as the supreme power of the human spirit. This recognition is what, properly understood, makes man alone appear to us in his dignity. The religions which demand of us submission to the commandments which an external power gives us, and which see in this submission alone the moral, diminish this dignity. It is not appropriate for a being at the highest stage of organic development to submit without volition to the paths marked out for it by another; it must prescribe for itself the direction and goal of its activity. To obey not commandments but one's own insight, to recognize no power of the world that would dictate to us what is moral, that is freedom in its true form. This view makes us the masters of our own destiny. Fichte's meaningful words are borne by this conception: "Break down all upon me, and you earth and you heaven, mingle in wild tumult, and all you elements, - foam and rage, and in wild struggle wear away the last little sun-dust of the body which I call mine: - my will alone with its firm plan shall hover bold and cold above the ruins of the universe; for I have seized my destiny, and it is more lasting than you; it is eternal, and I am eternal like it." What was the basis of German idealistic philosophy: breaking with dogma in the field of thought, breaking with commandment in the field of action, must be the unalterable goal of further development. Man must create happiness and satisfaction from within himself and not let it come to him from outside. Pessimism and other similar diseases of the times arise purely from the inability to rely on an energetic self and to work powerfully from there. One does not know how to set oneself specific tasks in life that one could cope with, one dreams oneself into vague, unclear ideals and then complains when one does not achieve what one actually has no idea about. Ask one of today's pessimists what he actually wants and what he despairs of? He does not know. Don't think that I'm referring to Eduard von Hartmann's pessimism, which has nothing in common with the usual lamentation about the misery of life. (How highly I regard Hartmann's world view can be seen from the introduction to the second volume of my edition of Goethe's scientific writings. Kürschner's German National Literature.)

In spite of all the progress we have made in the most diverse fields of culture, we cannot deny that the signature of our age leaves much, very much to be desired. Our progress is for the most part only in breadth and not in depth. But only progress in depth is decisive for the content of an age. It may be that the abundance of facts that have penetrated us from all sides makes it seem understandable that we have momentarily lost our view into the depths over the view into the breadth; we only wish that the broken thread of progressive development will soon be tied up again and that the new facts will be grasped from the spiritual height once gained.

The number of writings and treatises currently appearing that set themselves the task of examining Goethe's relationship to the individual branches of modern science and to the various expressions of our intellectual life in general is overwhelming. This reflects the gratifying fact that ever wider circles are becoming aware that in Goethe we are confronted with a cultural factor with whom all those who wish to participate in the intellectual life of the present must come to terms. He who does not find the point where he can link his own striving to this greatest spirit of modern times can only allow himself to be led by the rest of humanity like a blind man; he cannot consciously, with full clarity, head for the goals which the cultural development of the time is taking. But science in particular does not do justice to Goethe everywhere. It lacks the impartiality necessary here more than anywhere else to first immerse itself in the full depth of Goethe's genius before sitting down in the critical chair. One believes oneself to be far beyond Goethe, because the individual results of his research have been overtaken by those of today's science, which works with more perfect tools and a richer experience. But we should look beyond these details to his comprehensive principles, to his great way of looking at things. We should adopt his way of thinking, his way of posing problems, so that we can then continue to build in his spirit with our richer means and our broader experience. Goethe himself illustrated the relationship of his scientific results to the progress of research in an excellent image. He describes them as stones with which he had perhaps ventured too far on the chessboard, but from which one should recognize the player's plan. This plan, with which he gave new, great impulses to the sciences to which he devoted himself, is a lasting achievement to which one does the greatest injustice if one treats it from above. But it is peculiar to our time that the productive power of genius seems almost insignificant. How could it be otherwise in an age in which any going beyond actual experience in science is frowned upon by so many! For mere observation, you need nothing but healthy senses, and genius is a rather dispensable thing.

But true progress in the sciences as well as in art has never been brought about by mere observation or slavish imitation of nature. If thousands and thousands pass by a fact, then someone comes along and makes the discovery of a great scientific law. Many people before Galileo may have observed a swaying church lamp, but it was up to this brilliant mind to discover the laws of the pendulum, which are so important for physics. "If the eye were not sunny, how could we see the light!" exclaims Goethe, and by this he means that only those who have the necessary dispositions and the productive power to see more in the facts than the mere facts are able to see into the depths of nature.

Based on these principles, purely philological and critical Goethe research, which it would be foolish to deny its justification, must be supplemented. We must go back to the tendencies that Goethe had and continue to work scientifically from the points of view that he showed. We should not merely research about his spirit, but in his spirit.

The aim here is to show how one of the youngest and most controversial sciences, aesthetics, must be developed in the spirit of Goethe's world view. This science is barely over a century old. In 1750, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten emerged with his "Aesthetica" with the certain awareness that he was opening up a new scientific field. What had previously been written about this branch of thought cannot even be described as an elementary approach to a science of art. Neither the Greek nor the medieval philosophers knew what to do with art scientifically. The Greek mind found everything it was looking for within nature, there was no longing for it that was not satisfied by this good mother. It demanded nothing beyond nature, so art did not need to offer it anything beyond that; it had to satisfy the same needs as nature, only to a greater degree. One found everything one was looking for in nature, therefore one needed to achieve nothing in art but nature. Aristotle therefore knows no other principle of art than imitation of nature. Plato, the great idealist of the Greeks, simply declared the fine arts and drama to be harmful. He had so little concept of the independent function of art that he only gave music the benefit of the doubt because it promoted bravery in war. - It could remain so only as long as man did not know that a world at least equal to external nature lived within him. But the moment he became aware of this independent world, he had to free himself from the fetters of nature, he had to face it as a free being who no longer had to create his desires and needs. Whether this new longing, which is not generated within bloße nature, can still be satisfied by the latter remains questionable. Thus the conflicts of the ideal with reality, of the desired with the achieved, in short everything that leads a human soul into a true spiritual labyrinth. Nature stands before us soulless, devoid of everything that our inner being announces to us as divine. The next consequence will be a turning away from all reality, an escape from the immediately natural. This flight shows us the world view of the Christian Middle Ages; it is the exact opposite of Greekism. Just as the latter found everything in nature, this view finds nothing at all in it. Even now, a science of art was not possible. After all, art can only work with the means of nature, and Christian scholarship could not grasp how works could be created within godless reality that could satisfy the spirit striving for the divine. But the helplessness of science never hindered the development of art. While the former did not know what to think about it, the most glorious works of Christian art were created.

For the emergence of aesthetics, a time was necessary in which the spirit, free and independent of the bonds of nature, sees its inner self, the ideal world, in full clarity, and the idea has become a necessity for it, but in which a union with nature is also possible again. This union cannot, of course, refer to the sum of coincidences that make up the world that is given to us as the world of the senses, and of which the Greek was still completely satisfied. Here we find nothing but facts, which could just as well be otherwise, and we seek the necessary, of which we understand why it must be so; we see nothing but individuals, and our spirit strives for the generic, the archetypal; we see nothing but the finite, the transient, and our spirit strives for the infinite, the imperishable, the eternal. If the human spirit, alienated from nature, were to return to nature, it would have to be to something other than that sum of coincidences. And this return means to Goethe: return to nature, but return with the full richness of the developed spirit, with the educational height of the new age. Goethe's view does not correspond to the fundamental separation of nature and spirit; he wants to see a great whole in the world, a unified chain of development of beings, within which man forms a link, albeit the highest. It is a matter of going beyond the immediate, sensuous nature without moving away in the slightest from what constitutes the essence of nature. It approaches reality with reverence because it believes in its ideal content. To survey nature from a unified center of development as a creative whole and to recreate the emergence of the individual from the whole in the spirit, that is the task. What matters is not the finished individual, but the law of nature, not the individual, but the idea, the type that makes it comprehensible to us in the first place. In Goethe this fact is expressed in the most perfect form imaginable. But what we can learn from his attitude towards nature is the incontrovertible truth that for the modern spirit immediate nature offers no satisfaction, because we do not already recognize the highest, the idea, the divine in it, as it lies spread out before our senses as a world of experience, but only when we go beyond it. In the purely ideal form, detached from all reality, the "higher nature in nature" is now contained in science. But whereas mere. While mere experience cannot come to a reconciliation of the opposites of the ideal and the real world because it has the reality but not yet the idea, science cannot do the same for the reason that it has the idea but no longer the reality. Between the two, man needs a new realm, a realm in which the individual, and not the whole, already represents the idea, in which the individual, and not the species, is already endowed with the character of necessity. But such a world does not come to us from outside, man must create it for himself; and this world is the world of art, a necessary third realm alongside that of the senses and that of reason. The task of aesthetics is now to understand art as this third realm and to understand the endeavors of artists from this point of view. It is to the credit of Kant's "Critique of Judgment", published in 1790, that the problem was first raised in the way we have indicated and that all the main aesthetic questions were thus actually brought into flow. The ideas expressed therein, in conjunction with the magnificent elaboration they received from Schiller (in the "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man"), are the cornerstone of aesthetics. Kant finds that pleasure in an object is only purely aesthetic if it is uninfluenced by interest in the real existence of the object, so that the pure pleasure in beauty is not clouded by the interference of the faculty of desire, which only asks for purpose and utility and judges the world according to these. Schiller now finds that the intellectual activity that lives itself out in the creation and enjoyment of beauty is characterized by the fact that it is neither bound by a natural necessity, to which we must adhere when we simply allow the world of experience to affect our senses, nor is it subject to a logical necessity, which immediately comes into consideration when we approach reality for the purpose of scientific research or technical exploitation of the forces of nature (for example, in the construction of a machine). The artist obeys neither the necessity of nature nor the necessity of reason unilaterally. He transforms the things of the outside world in such a way that they appear as if the spirit were already inherent in them, and he treats the spirit as if it had a direct natural effect.

This gives rise to the aesthetic appearance, in which both the necessity of nature and the necessity of reason are suspended; the former because it is not without spirit, and the latter because it has descended from its ideal height and acts like nature. The works that result from this are of course not true to nature in the usual sense of the word, because in nature idea and reality nowhere coincide, but they must be appearance if they are to be true works of art. With the concept of appearance in this context, Schiller is unique as an aesthetician, unsurpassed, indeed unrivaled. This is where aesthetics should have taken up and built on from there. Instead, Schelling entered the scene with a completely misguided basic view and thus led aesthetics astray, so that it has never found its way again. The doyen of our science of beauty, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, held on to his conviction until the end of his life, despite having written a five-volume aesthetics: Aesthetics is still in its infancy. Like all modern philosophy, Schelling found the task of the highest human endeavor in grasping the eternal archetypes of things. All truth and beauty is contained in them. True beauty is therefore something supersensible and the work of art, which aims to achieve beauty in the sensual, is only a reflection of that eternal archetype. According to Schelling, the work of art is not beautiful for its own sake, but because it depicts the idea of beauty. Art has no other task than to objectively embody and illustrate the truth as it is also contained in science. What matters here, what our pleasure in the work of art is linked to, is the expressed idea. The sensual image is only a means of expression for a supersensible content. And in this, all aestheticians follow the idealizing direction of Schelling. Neither Hegel and Schopenhauer, nor their successors, have made any progress on this point.¹ When Hegel says: "The beautiful is the sensuous appearance of the idea" and even more clearly: "The hard bark of nature and the ordinary world make it more sour for the spirit to penetrate to the idea than the works of art", it is quite clearly expressed therein that the aim of art is the same as that of science, namely to grasp the idea, only science wants to present it to us in pure thought form, but art in a sensuous way through a sensual means of expression. And in the same sense, Vischer defines beauty as "the appearance of the idea". This aesthetic cannot grasp the independent significance of art. What it offers, in its view, can also be achieved in a purer, more unclouded form through thought. And that is why the idealizing science of art has proven to be unfruitful. But it is not to be replaced by a physiology of taste, not by an unprincipled, mere history of art, but by following Goethe's conception of art. Merck once characterized Goethe's work by saying that the latter sought to give a poetic form to the real, while the others sought only to embody the so-called imaginative, which produced stupid things. This alludes to a principle of art that Goethe expresses in the second part of Faust with the words: "Consider the what, consider more how." This clearly states what art is all about. It is not about embodying the supersensible, but about transforming the sensual, the actual. The real should not be reduced to a means of expression, no, it should remain in its independence, only it should be given a new form, a form in which it satisfies our need for the necessary, the archetypal. It is not the idea in the sensual that should be the reason for our pleasure, our elevation in the work of art, but the fact that a real, an individual thing appears here as as the idea. In nature, objects never appear to us as they correspond to their idea, but inhibited, influenced from all sides by forces that have nothing to do with the germ within them. The external does not coincide with the internal, nature does not achieve what it intended. The artist now eliminates all these causes of imperfection and presents the individual thing to our eye as if it were an idea. The artist creates objects that are more perfect than they can be according to their natural existence, but it is only the perfection of the being that he visualizes, brings to representation. The beauty lies in this transcendence of an object beyond itself, but only on the basis of what is already hidden within it. Goethe can rightly say: "Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws that would have remained hidden from us forever without its appearance", and "To whom nature begins to reveal its open secret, he feels an irresistible longing for its most worthy interpreter, art". The beautiful should not embody an idea, but rather lend such form to the real that it appears before our senses as perfect and divine as an idea.

Beauty is appearance because it conjures up a reality before our senses that presents itself as such, like the world of ideas itself. The what remains a sensual, but the how of its appearance becomes an ideal. Science provides us with a world of ideal perfection; however, we can only think this; a world endowed with the character of the same perfection, but which is visual, confronts us in the beauty. Eduard von Hartmann, the most recent editor of aesthetics, who has created a very commendable work in his "Philosophy of Beauty", says quite correctly that the basic concept from which all contemplation of beauty must start is the concept of aesthetic appearance. But the world of ideas as such can never be regarded as appearance, regardless of the form in which it appears. It is a real appearance, however, when the natural, the individual, appears in an eternal, imperishable form, endowed with the characters of the idea, for the natural as such is not entitled to such a form. The aesthetics that proceeds from this view does not yet exist. It can certainly be described as the "aesthetics of Goethe's world view"; and it is the aesthetics of the future.

• 1. Even Eduard von Hartmann's comments on Hegel in his large-scale, intellectual aesthetics cannot shake me in this conviction, and the quotations cited in the text certainly speak for me.

The questions that arise for the observer of Goethe's scientific writings were not easy to answer from the material available so far. The reason for this is to be found in the fact that only in the field of color theory do we have to do with a fully elaborated work by the poet from the field of natural science, complete in all respects. From the other parts of it we have only more or less elaborated essays which comment on the most varied problems, but of which it cannot be denied that they present contradictions which are apparently difficult to reconcile when it is a question of gaining an all-round comprehensive view of Goethe's significance in this field. The most important points that come into consideration here have therefore been interpreted in the most diverse ways imaginable by the researchers involved in the matter. Was Goethe a theorist of descent? Did he assume a real transformation of species, and to what causes did he attribute it? Was he thinking of a sensuous-real being or an idea in his "type"? These are questions to which we have heard completely contradictory answers from various quarters in recent decades. From the assertion that Goethe was only thinking of an abstract concept in the Platonic sense with his "type", to the assertion that he should be regarded as a genuine predecessor of Darwin, all intermediate stages have found their representatives. While some disparaged him as a man who merely fantasized about nature, others praised him because he was the first to take that direction in natural science which today is regarded as the only one leading to the goal.

It must be admitted that the defenders of all these views were able to provide sufficient evidence from Goethe's works for their respective arguments. Of course, it should not be overlooked that in each case only the most appropriate passages were selected and other passages that would justify a contrary opinion were simply ignored. We are far from reproaching anyone for this; rather, we are convinced that what has been presented so far has made it extremely difficult to arrive at a consistent view of the matter, even if we cannot admit the impossibility of doing so.

For all those who have an interest in this aspect of Goethe's work, the question must have arisen at the moment when the treasures of the Goethe Archive became accessible: do the papers left behind by the poet offer a supplement here? The writer of these lines now finds, on studying them in detail, that they provide us with the most surprising information, especially with regard to the above-mentioned points of view, which are quite suitable for bringing about complete satisfaction in this direction.

The high owner of the archive, the Grand Duchess of Saxony, has graciously allowed me to use the available materials for the purpose of a preliminary orienting work in this field, and so this essay has been written, for which the necessary evidence was selected from the treasures of the archive with the continued loving assistance of the director of the Goethe and Schiller Archive, Prof. Suphan.

For the time being, we will leave aside the color theory and the geological and meteorological writings and limit ourselves to the morphological works, which are the most important for the problems outlined above. The purpose of our remarks is to show in general outline what we can expect from the publication of Goethe's as yet unprinted essays and fragments in this field for the clarification of the poet's significance in the field of the science of the organic. We will avoid as much as possible going into contemporary views on these matters and refrain from any polemics. For now, it will suffice to present Goethe's views purely in themselves, without any sideways glances at others.

Above all else, however, we must reject an error that is deeply rooted and with which Goethe already had to struggle many times during his lifetime. It culminates in the assumption that the poet did not arrive at his scientific results through methodical, logical thought, but "in passing", through a "happy idea". Goethe described the "History of his botanical studies" in detail mainly because he wanted to "illustrate" how he "found the opportunity to devote a large part of his life with inclination and passion to nature studies".¹

No better illustration of this last sentence can be imagined than the sheets preserved in the archives, which give us an insight into the course of Goethe's botanical work during his Italian journey. We can see from them how, through countless observations and conscientious considerations of the natural objects, he came to final clarity. These are records which point to the opposite of random ideas or a fleeting rush, but rather to careful and deliberate step-by-step striving towards the predetermined goals. Goethe is tireless in his search for plant specimens that are in some way suitable for introducing us to the laws of growth and reproduction. Particularly characteristic features are drawn in order to discover the secrets of nature's efficacy in vivid reproduction. We find observations made with great care about the importance of the individual organs, the influence of the climate and the environment of the plants. If Goethe thought he was on the trail of some law, he first set it out in hypothetical form in order to use it as a guide for further observations. In this way, it should either be confirmed or refuted. He assigned such hypotheses a very special task in scientific research. We take the following from an unpublished note: "Hypotheses are scaffolds that are erected in front of the building and taken down when the building is finished; they are indispensable to the worker, but he does not have to regard the scaffolding as the building."

These words indicate his scientific attitude, which is wary of taking a passing remark for a law of nature.

The sheets on which Goethe made his scientific notes during the Italian journey belonged to small notebooks, which were found torn apart, like other papers with notes from the same period, for example those on "Nausikaa". The latter were always arranged by Prof. Suphan for the respective purpose; the same has now been done with those belonging to natural science.

Goethe often remained in the dark for quite a long time with his observations, and he wanted this in order to gain as broad a basis as possible for his theoretical construction. He studies the processes of germination and fertilization, observes the various forms of organs and their transformations. We can see sentences that later became integral parts of his theory of metamorphosis here in these papers in their first form, as he reads them directly from the natural processes, for example: "The plant must have a lot of aqueous moisture so that the oils and salts can combine in it. The leaves must draw off this moisture, perhaps modify it." Or:

"What the soil is to the root, the plant later becomes to the finer vessels, which develop upwards and suck the finer juices out of the plant."

"Aloe... the leaves are expanded by the air and displace the interstices ... underground, the leaves are small, the interstices larger."

After Goethe had worked his way through a series of observations in this way, his later view suggested itself to him as a hypothesis. We find the following note on a leaf: "Hypothesis. Everything is a leaf and this simplicity makes the greatest diversity possible."

He now pursues this hypothesis further. Where a case of experience leaves him unclear about something, he conscientiously notes it down in order to obtain the necessary information from a more favorable one. We very often encounter such questions that have remained unclear and have been saved for future observations. In any case, these sheets provide proof that Goethe had put a great deal of thought and a considerable amount of experience behind him when he finally became firmly convinced of the hypothesis of the primordial plant in mid-1787. I have described in detail in the introduction to my edition of Goethe's scientific writings (Goethe's Works, in Kürschner's "Deutsche NationalLiteratur", Volume XXXIII) how he pursued it further, extended the approach he had adopted to other organisms and published the first attempt in this direction in 1790.

At this point, let us immediately turn to the question: what does Goethe mean by "Urpflanze"? On 17 April 1787 in Palermo, he wrote the following words about it: "There must be such a plant; how else would I recognize that this or that structure is a plant if they were not all formed according to one pattern." ² This sentence provides the proof that the primordial plant is to be understood as that something which confronts the human mind as the same in all the plant forms that are different for the sensory perception. We would not be able to recognize that all these forms belong together, that they form a kingdom of nature, if we could not grasp the "primordial plant".

If we visualize this, we can immediately get an idea of what Goethe meant by experience. He not only wanted to carefully observe that which is accessible to sense perception, but at the same time he strove for a spiritual content that would allow him to determine the objects of this experience according to their essence. He called this spiritual content, whereby a thing emerged from the dullness of sensory existence, from the indeterminacy of external perception, and became a definite thing (animal, plant, mineral), an idea. Nothing else can be read from the above words, and we are also able to substantiate our assertion with the following previously unpublished statement: "Time is governed by the swing of the pendulum, the moral and scientific world by the alternating movement from idea to experience."

What did Goethe mean by these words, if not that science cannot be content with experience, but must progress beyond it to the idea? The idea is supposed to determine what the object of experience is; it cannot therefore be identical with it. The fact that Goethe ascribed an essentially active role to the spirit in the production of ideas emerges from the following interesting classification of types of knowledge:

"In order to orient ourselves to some extent in these different kinds ³ let us divide them into: Users, Knowers, Viewers and Comprehenders.

1. the users, those who seek benefits, those who make demands are the first to outline the field of science, as it were, to grasp the practical. Consciousness through experience gives them security, the need a certain breadth.

2 The inquisitive require a calm, disinterested eye, a curious restlessness, a clear mind and are always in relation to them; they also only process in a scientific sense what they find.

3. the contemplators already behave productively, and knowledge, by increasing itself, demands contemplation without realizing it, and passes over to it, and however much the knowers crucify and bless themselves before the imagination, they must, before they know it, call upon the productive imagination for help.

4 The comprehensive ones, who in a proud sense could be called the creators, behave in the highest degree productively; namely, by starting from ideas, they already express the unity of the whole, and it is to a certain extent afterwards the matter of nature to fit into this idea."

What at the highest level of cognition should actually first lead into the riddles of nature, the spirit must creatively bring to the things of sense perception. Without this productive power, our cognition remains at one of the lower levels.⁴

Goethe thus conceives of the primordial plant as an entity that cannot become present in our spirit if it merely behaves passively towards the outside world. But what can only appear through the human spirit does not necessarily have to originate from the spirit. Here an erroneous view is very obvious. It is impossible for the majority of people to imagine that something, for the appearance of which subjective conditions are absolutely necessary, can nevertheless have an objective meaning and essence. And the "original plant" is precisely of this latter kind. It is the essential objectively contained in all plants; but if it is to gain apparent existence, the human mind must construct it freely.

But basically this view is only a further development of the view that modern natural science also holds in the field of sensory perception. Without the constitution and effectiveness of the eye there would be no perception of color, without that of the ear no sound. Nevertheless, no one would want to claim that color and sound do not have their absolutely objective meaning and essence. How one wants to imagine this in more detail: whether, as a supporter of the undulation hypothesis, one regards vibrations of the body parts and the ether or the air as the objective essence of color and sound, or whether one leans towards a different view, is irrelevant here. We only attach importance to the fact that, although the modern physiologist is convinced that sensory perception can only enter into apparent, perceptible existence through the activity of the corresponding sense organ, he will not for a moment assert that color, sound, warmth and so on are merely subjective, are without a corresponding correlate in the realm of the objective. But Goethe's idea of the organic type is only the logical extension of this conception of the subjective production of phenomenal existence to an area in which mere sensory perception is no longer sufficient to arrive at knowledge.

The matter only presents difficulties of understanding in this area because consciousness already begins at that stage of the human faculty of perception at which ideas are generated. We now know that we play an active part in the apprehension of ideas, while the activity of the organism, where it mediates sense-perception, is a completely unconscious one. But this circumstance is quite irrelevant to the matter itself. Just as color, sound, warmth and so on have an objective meaning in rerum natura, although they cannot acquire a meaning for us without the subjective activity of our sensory instruments, so ideas have an objective value, although they cannot enter into it without the mind's own activity.

It is absolutely necessary that everything that is to appear in our consciousness first passes through our physical or psychic organism.

Given this, we recognize that, in Goethe's way of thinking, there must be a constant alternation between the influx of material supplied by the senses and the typical created freely by reason and an interpenetration of these two products in the mind of the researcher if a satisfactory solution to the problems of natural science is to be possible. Goethe compares this alternation to a systole and diastole of the mind, the continuous merging of which he presupposes in every true natural scientist. He says: "In the mind of the true naturalist, it must always alternate like a systole and diastole moving in equilibrium."

What has been said so far now also provides us with the opportunity to decide whether it is in accordance with Goethe's view to identify the primordial plant or the primordial animal with any sensory-real organic form that occurred at a certain time or still occurs. The answer to this can only be a decisive "no". The "original plant" is contained in every plant and can be obtained from the plant world through the constructive power of the spirit; but no single individual form may be addressed as typical.

Now, however, the "original plant" (or the "original animal") is precisely what makes each individual form what it is; it is the essence. We must keep this in mind if we want to fully penetrate Goethe's intentions.

The lawfulness of the organic must not be sought in the same field as that of the inorganic. In the science of inorganic nature, I have completely fulfilled my task when I have succeeded in explaining what I perceive with my senses according to its causal connection. In the organic, I must subject to explanation those facts which are no longer perceptible to the senses. Anyone who only wanted to look at a living being and use as an explanation what he perceives about it with his senses was not sufficient in the forum of Goethean science.

It has often been claimed that the organic can only be explained if the laws of the inorganic are simply transferred to the realm of the animate. Attempts to establish a science of living things in this way are still on the agenda today. But it was Goethe's great flight of thought that made him realize that one need not doubt the possibility of an explanation of the organic even if the inorganic laws of nature should prove inadequate for this purpose. Should our ability to explain only extend as far as we can apply the laws of the inorganic? What Goethe wanted was nothing other than to banish all dark and unclear ideas such as the life force, formative instinct and so on from science and to find natural laws for them. But he wanted to find laws for organics that had been found for mechanics, physics and chemistry, not simply adopt those existing in these other fields. He would destroy the realm of the organic if he simply allowed it to merge into that of the inorganic. Goethe wanted an independent organic science that had its own axioms and its own method. This idea became more and more firmly established in his mind, and "morphology" gradually became for him the epitome of everything that must be applied to a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena of life. As long as one could not derive all phenomena of motion from natural laws, there was no mechanics; as long as one was not able to summarize the individual places occupied by the celestial bodies by legal lines, there was no astronomy; as long as one was not able to grasp the manifestations of life in the form of principles, there was no organics, Goethe said to himself. He envisioned a science that would grasp the organic at its core and reveal the laws of its various forms. He did not want to grasp the forms of the organs alone, nor the metabolism and its laws in isolation, nor the anatomical facts in isolation; no, he strove for a total conception of life from which all those partial phenomena could be derived. He wanted a science to which natural history, natural science, anatomy, chemistry, zoonomy and physiology were merely preparatory stages. Each of these sciences deals with only one side of the body of nature; but all of them together, considered merely as a sum, do not exhaust life. For life is much more than the sum of its individual phenomena. Anyone who has grasped all sides of organic being with the help of the individual sciences mentioned is still missing the living unity. According to Goethe, grasping this is the task of morphology in the broader sense.

The natural history has the task of conveying the "knowledge of organic natures according to their habitus and according to the difference in their form relationships"; the theory of nature is responsible for the "knowledge of material natures in general as forces and in their spatial relationships"; anatomy seeks the "knowledge of organic natures according to their internal and external parts, without taking into account the living whole"; chemistry strives for "knowledge of the parts of an organic body, in so far as it ceases to be organic, or in so far as its organization is regarded only as producing matter and as composed of matter"; zoonomy requires: "the consideration of the whole, in so far as it lives and a special physical force is subordinated to this life"; of physiology, "the consideration of the whole, in so far as it lives and acts"; of morphology in the narrower sense, "the consideration of the form both in its parts and as a whole, its correspondences and deviations without all other considerations". Morphology in the broader and Goethean sense, however, wants: "Observation of the organic whole by visualizing all these considerations and linking them through the power of the mind." ⁵

Goethe is fully aware that he is putting forward the idea of a "new science" according to "view and method". However, it is not new in terms of content, "for the same is known". But this means nothing other than that it is, taken purely as a matter of fact, the same as that set out in the previously characterized auxiliary sciences. What is new, however, is the way in which this content is placed at the service of an overall understanding of the organic world.

This is again important for the definition of Goethe's "type". For the type, the lawful in the organic, is the object of his morphology in the broader sense. What the seven auxiliary sciences have to achieve lies in the realm of the sensually attainable. Indeed, precisely because they remain in the realm of the sensually attainable, they cannot go beyond the knowledge of individual sides of the organic.

So we are forced to recognize that Goethe ascribed a lawfulness to the organic world that does not coincide with that which we observe in the phenomena of inorganic nature. We can only visualize it through a free construction of the mind, since it does not coincide with what we perceive in the organism through our senses.

The question now arises: how does Goethe relate to the diversity of organic species under such conditions?

This question cannot be answered without first establishing the relationship between the type (original plant, original animal) and the individual. "The individual is not a single entity, but a majority." ⁶ And indeed a majority of details that are outwardly quite different from one another. How is this possible? How can the different be a unity? Or more specifically: how can one and the same organ appear as a stem leaf, then again as a petal or as a stamen? Anyone who conceives of unity in terms of an abstract concept, a schema or the like cannot, of course, grasp this. But that is not what it is in Goethe's sense. There it is a lawfulness which, as such, leaves the form in which it expresses itself for the sense world still completely undefined. Precisely because the actual core, the deeper content of this lawfulness does not merge into that which becomes perceptible to the senses, it can express itself in different sensual forms and yet always remain the same. Rather, an infinite field is open to organic lawfulness in its appearance as external manifestation, as is possible. But since the substances and forces of inorganic nature must enter into the service of this lawfulness if real organisms are to arise at all, it follows of itself that only those forms are possible which do not contradict the conditions inherent in those substances and forces. And in this respect, the forces and substances of inorganic nature are negative conditions of organic life. The latter asserts itself through them and in their forms as well as they allow. This, however, already implies the necessity of an infinite diversity of organic forms. For this outwardness of existence is not something that stands in a clear connection with the inner lawfulness; indeed, from this point of view one can even raise the question: how is it that there are species at all, that not every individual is different from every other? We will come back to this later. In any case, it is certain that Goethe's characterized view cannot speak of constant forms of the organic, because that which gives a form its constancy does not flow from that which makes it an organic form. Only those who see something essential in this form can assume a constancy of form.

What is not essential to a thing, however, does not necessarily need to be retained. And thus the possibility of transforming existing forms is derived. From Goethe's point of view, however, nothing more could be given than a derivation of this possibility. Darwin provided the empirical observations for this. That is always the relationship between theory and experience, that the latter shows what is and happens, and the former shows the possibility of how such things can be and happen.

In any case, on the basis of the material available in the Goethe Archive, it is impossible to think of anything other than this relationship between Goethe and Darwin.

However, anyone who considers organic forms to be mutable is faced with the task of explaining the forms that actually exist at a given time, that is, of indicating the reasons why certain forms develop under the conditions he presupposes and, furthermore, of explaining the relationship between these existing forms. This was completely clear to Goethe, and we can see from the papers he left behind that he was thinking of shaping his views in this direction in the intended continuation of his morphological work. A scheme for a "Physiology of Plants" contains the following:

"The metamorphosis of plants, the basis of their physiology. It shows us the laws according to which plants are formed.

It draws our attention to a double law:

1. to the law of inner nature by which plants are constituted

2. to the law of external circumstances, by which plants are modified.

Botanical science makes us acquainted with the manifold formation of the plant and its parts, and from the other side it seeks out the laws of this formation.

If, then, the efforts to organize the great multitude of plants into a system deserve only the highest degree of applause, if they are necessary to separate the unchangeable parts from the more or less accidental and changeable, and thereby bring the nearest relations of the different sexes more and more into light: the efforts are certainly praiseworthy which seek to recognize the law by which those formations are produced; and though it may seem that human nature can neither grasp the infinite variety of organization, nor clearly comprehend the law by which it operates, yet it is well to exert all our powers, and to extend this field from both sides, by experience as well as by reflection. "

According to Goethe's conception, every particular plant and animal form can therefore be explained by two factors: the law of inner nature and the law of circumstances. But since these circumstances are given in a certain place and at a certain time, and do not change within certain limits, it is also explicable that the organic forms remain constant within these limits. For those forms which are possible under those circumstances find their expression in the beings once they have arisen. New forms can only be brought about by a change in these circumstances. But then these new circumstances not only have to submit to the laws of the interior of organic nature, but also have to reckon with the forms that have already arisen and which they confront. For what has once arisen in nature, henceforth proves to be a contributing cause in the context of facts. From this, however, it follows that the forms that have once arisen will have a certain power to maintain themselves. Certain characteristics, once adopted, will still be noticeable in the most distant descendants, even if they cannot be explained by the living conditions of these beings. This is a fact for which the word inheritance has been used in more recent times. We have seen that a conceptually strict correlate for what is connected with this word can be found in Goethe's way of looking at things.

However, the way in which Goethe conceived of the reproduction of organisms in connection with their other principles of development throws a special light on this view. For he imagined that the inner developmental capacity of an organic being is not yet complete with what we assume to be an individual, but that reproduction is simply the continuation and a special case of this developmental capacity. That which expresses itself as growth at a lower level is reproduction at a higher level. Goethe already held the view that procreation is only a growth of the organism beyond the individual.

This can also be proven from his own notes: "We have seen that plants reproduce in different ways, which species are to be regarded as modifications of a single species. Reproduction, like the continuation that occurs through the development of one organ from another, has mainly occupied us in metamorphosis. We have seen that these organs, which themselves change from external sameness to the greatest dissimilarity, have an internal virtual sameness..."

"We have seen that this sprouting continuation in perfect plants cannot go on to infinity, but that it leads step by step to the summit and produces, as it were, at the opposite end of its power, another kind of reproduction, by seeds."

Here, then, Goethe sees the continuation from limb to limb in one and the same plant and reproduction through seeds as just two different types of one and the same activity.

"In all bodies that we call living, we notice the power to produce their own kind," says Goethe; but this power also completes its circle, as it were, several times during the growth of an individual, for: Goethe wants to provide "proof" that "from node to node the whole circle of the plant is essentially completed"; when we then "become aware of this power divided, we designate it under the name of the two sexes". Based on this view, he outlines the course of his lecture on growth and reproduction as follows:

"In considering the plant, a living point is assumed, which eternally produces its own kind.

And it does so with the smallest plants by repeating the same thing.

Furthermore, in the more perfect ones, through progressive development and transformation of the basic organ into ever more perfect and effective organs, in order to finally produce the highest point of organic activity, to separate and detach individuals from the organic whole through procreation and birth.

Highest view of organic unity."

This also shows that Goethe does not see reproduction as an essentially new element of plant development, but only as a higher modification of growth.

The passage quoted is also remarkable in another respect. In it, Goethe speaks of an "organic whole" from which the individual parts separate and detach themselves. He calls understanding this the "highest view of organic unity".

This describes the sum of all organic life as a unified totality, and all individual beings can then only be described as members of this unity. We are therefore dealing with a consistent kinship of all living beings in the truest sense of the word. And this is an actual kinship, not a merely ideal one. The "organic wholeness" is a unified one that has the power to produce its own kind in perpetual external change; the diversity of forms arises by continuing this ability to produce not only beyond individuals, but also beyond genera and species.

It is only in the exact sense of Goethe's explanations if one says: the force by which the various plant families arise is exactly the same as that by which a stem leaf is transformed into a flower petal. And this force is to be conceived of as a real unity and the emergence of one species from another in a real sense.

The organic species and genera are to be traced back to a true descent under continuous change of forms. Goethe's view is a theory of descent with a deep theoretical foundation.

But one must by no means think that the following forms of development are already implied in the earlier ones. For what runs through all forms is precisely the ideal organic lawfulness, in which one cannot speak of those forms at all. Precisely because the essence of the organic has nothing to do with the way it appears in forms, it can realize itself in them without winding them out of itself. The organic essence does not form the form out of itself, but into it. For this reason, these forms cannot have any pre-existence, not even in terms of their disposition. Goethe was therefore an opponent of the theory of nesting, which assumed that the entire diversity of the organic is already contained in the germ, but hidden.

"To think of this many ⁷ in one successively and as a nesting, is an imperfect conception, not suited to the imagination or to reason, but we must admit a development in the higher sense: the many in the individual, in the individual; and (thus) no longer embarrasses us."

Development consists precisely in the fact that a unity continues to develop and that the forms it assumes in the process appear as something completely new in it. This is because these forms do not belong to the unified principle of development, but to the means which it uses to manifest itself. The forms of development must all be ideally explicable from the unity, even if they do not really emerge from it. That Goethe was only thinking of this ideal containment is proven, for example, by the assertion that "these different parts arose from an ideal primordial body and are thought to be gradually formed in different stages..."

The next thing that must force itself upon us after the above propositions is to find out how the two factors: internal principle of formation and external conditions are involved in the formation of an organic form. For only if the rightful share is given from both sides can one speak of an actual explanation of such a form.

There is no doubt that the external conditions must first of all be known according to their actual reality through experience. Goethe lists among these conditions: Temperature of a country, quantity of sunlight, constitution of the air of the surroundings, and others. Observation shows us that a certain form is formed under the influence of a certain series of facts. Goethe says that the type undergoes a certain "restriction". But once we have recognized in this way that some form arises under certain external influences, then we are faced with the problem of explaining it, of saying how it could arise. And here we must take the idea of the type as a basis for explanation. We must be able to derive this particular form from the general form of the type. If we are not able to say: how the particular case is connected with the general one of the type, if we are not able to say: through this or that form of action the type has developed in the individual way, then the knowledge of the external conditions is worthless.

These conditions give the occasional cause that the organic appears in a certain way; the knowledge of the inner lawfulness gives the explanation of how this particular form of reality could arise. Goethe says, in a way that should not be misunderstood, that the form of an organism can be explained by "the interaction of the living parts only from themselves". And as a method of explanation he very often recommends in the most definite manner: to take cognizance of the external circumstances and then to inquire into the internal conditions which appear as a principle of form under the influence of the same.

An explanation that would only accept external influences as the cause of organic transformations would therefore have to be decisively rejected by Goethe.

We have limited ourselves to simply stating Goethe's view. How it relates to Darwinism in its present form: we leave it to the reader to form an opinion on this. ⁸ We will only conclude by saying a word about the method by which Goethe arrived at his results. Goethe's scientific views are based on idealistic research results, which rest on an empirical basis.⁹ The type is such an idealistic research result. We know from that much-mentioned conversation with Schiller that Goethe decidedly emphasized the empirical character of this "type".¹⁰ He became angry when Schiller called him an "idea". It was at a time when he was not yet fully aware of its ideal nature. He was only aware at the time that he had arrived at his "original plant" through careful observation. However, he did not yet realize that he had arrived at an "idea" in this very way. He still held on to the view of the one-sided empiricists, who believe that the observable is exhausted in the objects of external sensory perception. But it was Schiller's remark that prompted him to reflect further on this point. He said to himself: "If he considered what I expressed as experience to be an idea, then there must be something mediating and related between the two! The first step had been taken." ¹¹ Namely, the first step towards arriving at a satisfactory solution to the question through further reflection: how are the ideas of the type (primordial plant, primordial animal) to be retained if one wants to remain strictly on the ground of observation, of empirical science? How can harmony be achieved between the method and the basic character of the result? By ordinary observation of things we only arrive at knowledge of mere individual details and not of types. What modification must observation undergo? Goethe had to be driven to a "theory of observation". It was to be established: how must one observe in order to obtain scientifically usable results in the above sense? Goethe had only one predecessor in this investigation, but his way of thinking was quite alien to his own: Francis Bacon. The latter showed how one had to confront the phenomena of nature in order to obtain not random, worthless facts, as they present themselves to the ordinary naive view, but results with the character of necessity and natural law. Goethe attempted the same in his own way. So far, the only known fruit of this reflection is the essay: "Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt".¹² Now, however, we learn from a letter Goethe wrote to Schiller on 17 January 1798, . January 1798,¹³ that the former enclosed an essay with his letter containing the principles of his scientific method of research. I assumed from Schiller's reply of January 19, 1798, that this essay must contain important information on the question of how Goethe had conceived the basic structure of natural science, and then attempted in the introduction to my second volume of Goethe's scientific writings ¹⁴ to reconstruct it according to Schiller's explanations. To my particular satisfaction, this essay was found in the Goethe Archive in exactly the form I had previously constructed. It actually provides detailed information on Goethe's basic views on scientific methodology and on the significance and value of different types of observations. The researcher must rise from common empiricism through the intermediate link of abstract rationalism to rational empiricism. Common empiricism remains with the immediate facts of experience; it does not arrive at an estimate of the value of the details for a conception of legality. It registers the phenomena according to their course, without knowing which of the conditions that come into consideration are necessary and which are accidental. It therefore provides little more than a description of the phenomenal world. He only ever knows what must be present for a phenomenon to occur, but he does not know what is essential. Therefore he cannot represent the phenomena as a necessary consequence of their conditions. The next thing is that man goes beyond this point of view by appealing to the intellect and thus wants to become clear about the conditions by way of thinking. This standpoint is essentially that of hypothesis formation. The rationalist does not seek the causes of phenomena; he conceives them; he lives in the belief that one can find out why a phenomenon occurs by thinking about it. This, of course, leads him nowhere. For our mind is a merely formal faculty. It has no content other than that which it acquires through observation. Anyone who strives for necessary knowledge on the condition of this knowledge can only grant the intellect a mediating role. He must grant it the ability to recognize the causes of phenomena when it finds them; but not that it can sense them itself. This is the standpoint of the rational empiricist. It is Goethe's own standpoint. "Concepts without views" are empty, he says with Kant; but he adds: they are necessary in order to determine the value of the individual views for the whole of a world view. When the intellect now approaches nature with this intention and assembles those elements of fact that belong together according to an internal necessity, it rises from the observation of the common phenomenon to the rational experiment, which is a direct expression of the objective law of nature. Goethe's empiricism takes everything he uses to explain phenomena from experience; only the way in which he takes it is determined by his view. Now we understand more fully how he could speak the above words about his intended morphology, that it contains the idea of a "new science" "not in content", but "in view and method".¹⁵

The essay in question is thus the methodological justification of Goethe's research method. In this respect, it complements everything Goethe has written about natural science, because it tells us how we should understand it.

With these remarks, we wanted to point out the pleasing fact that the material in the Archive sheds a brighter light on Goethe's scientific view in two respects: firstly, it fills in the gaps in his writings that have been noticeable up to now, and secondly, it sheds new light on the nature of his research and his entire attitude to nature.

The question: what did Goethe seek in nature and natural science, without the answer to which an understanding of the whole personality of man is not possible, will have to be answered in a completely different way after the publication of the "natural science section" in the Weimar Goethe edition than has often been the case to date.

• 1. See the end of the essay: "Geschichte meines botanischen Studiums", in Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur", Goethes Werke, vol. XXXII, p. 84.
• 2. See Italienische Reise (Kürschners "Deutsche National-Literatur>), Goethes Werke, Vol. XXI, I. Abteilung,. 336.
• 3. of men according to the kinds of their knowledge and their behavior towards the outside world,
• 4. Although the above lines do not date from the time when Goethe began to pursue natural science, but probably from the end of the nineties, we can justifiably cite them here. For they were written at a time when the poet was already reflecting on his research, when he was becoming his own interpreter. They are therefore precisely suitable for showing how Goethe wanted his attitude towards nature to be conceived
• 5. These sentences are borrowed from a surviving manuscript, which outlines the idea of such a morphology in broad strokes and was apparently intended to serve as an introduction to it.
• 6. See: Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften (Kürschners "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Goethes Werke, Vol. XXXII, p. 9.
• 7. the multiplicity of organs and organisms
• 8. We have explained this relationship in the introductions to Goethe's scientific writings (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Goethes Werke, Volumes XXXIU and XXXIV.
• 9. The more detailed definition and proof of this sentence can be seen in Goethe's works (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Volume XXXIV, 8. XXXVIff.
• 10. See the essay: "Glückliches Ereignis" (Kürschners "Deutsche National-Literatur>), Goethes Werke, vol. XXXILI, pp. 108-113.
• 11. See "Glückliches Ereignis", op.cit., p.112.
• 12. See Goethe's works (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Volume XXXIV, pp. 10-21.
• 13. Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, 2. Band, 8.10 ff.
. January 1798,
• 13
• 14. Goethes Werke (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), vol. XXXIV, pp. XXXKX ff.
• 15. Cf. Goethe's letter to Hegel of October 7, 1820 (Fr. Strehlke, Goethes Briefe, Erster Teil, p.240 ): "We are not talking here of an opinion to be asserted, but of a method to be communicated, which everyone may use as a tool according to his own way."

According to an oft-repeated saying, it is incumbent on the philosopher to express the cultural content of his time in the form of pure thought. Just as the artist endeavors to express in a sensual, descriptive form the ideas, feelings and other contents of life that are present in the depths of the popular and contemporary consciousness, so the philosopher seeks to represent in a conceptual, thinking way the totality of everything that dominates and animates his time and his people. Kuno Fischer says in his witty work "History of Modern Philosophy": "If we want to compare a cultural system or an age with a pictorial pillar, then philosophy forms the sensing eye that looks inwards," Without this living reference to the age, without the urge to recognize that, without the urge to penetrate with calm clarity what takes place in life amidst to and fro struggles and in the restlessness of the day, in order to have a stimulating effect on it, the philosopher cannot escape the fate of leading a worthless existence on his lonely heights.

Few renowned philosophers have approached their task in the manner just described as brilliantly as our great contemporary Eduard von Hartmann. While on the one hand we see him wrestling with the deepest mysteries of world-building and the riddles of life, on the other hand he does not disdain to deal thoroughly with the pending questions of the day, with the aspirations of the parties and the interests of the state. The socio-political currents of the present, the errors of the liberal partisans, military and church policy issues, school and academic reform, national and democratic ideas occupied his interest no less than modern artistic endeavors, the women's question, and the literary events of our time. Indeed, he also spoke out openly and unreservedly on sensitive issues such as spiritualism, hypnotism and somnambulism; and when the Polish question came on the agenda in Germany, he was the first to write in favor of the solution that Bismarck later advocated as the right one. And yet, like so many philosophers, he did not intervene in the dispute of opinions with a preconceived template, but was always guided by the reasons that lay in the facts and emerged from a thorough study of the facts. To judge how Hartmann draws from the fullness of an almost immeasurable knowledge, what sum of knowledge he possesses, one must have had the good fortune to have met him personally. However, in the course of this essay we will show that this kind of work is only a consequence of his scientific conviction.

The consequence of this phenomenon, which is rare in the history of intellectual life, is also a quite incredible effect. E.v. Hartmann is now forty-nine years old, at the peak of his creative power and enthusiasm, still promising much (his first appearance was in 1868), and we already have a literature about him that is unmissable. The significance of a man is reflected differently in the consciousness of his contemporaries, and differently in that of posterity. The former can hardly find the right standard of judgment. The future historian of intellectual life in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century will have to devote a large chapter to Hartmann. We will first characterize the historical position of Hartmann's circle of ideas and then go into the individual main areas of his activity.

In the sixties of this century, German philosophy had reached a precarious point in its development. The confidence with which Hegel's students had appeared after the master's death (1830) had given way to complete discouragement in the field of this science. Starting from Hegel, they had hoped to spread a net of absolutely certain knowledge over all branches of knowledge, but the Hegelians were soon no longer able to deal with the abundance of the gradually accumulating material of actual results of research. They abandoned their doctrinal edifice piece by piece, tried to improve it here and there and to adapt the traditional doctrine to the new situation of empirical science. Most of them, however, tried to free themselves completely from the beliefs of their youth and, like the aesthetician Vischer, for example, regarded their Hegelian period only as a time for training their philosophical thinking. Complete confusion and perplexity prevailed in the cathedrals. While one group of professional philosophers gave up any prospect of success in the development of a world view for the time being and merely turned to the treatment of special questions, another group shifted to a rather unfruitful further development of Herbart's way of thinking, which had become stuck in antediluvian prejudices. The representatives of empirical science, however, looked down with contempt on all philosophy, which, in their opinion, only dealt with worthless fantasy. Finally, the great mass of educated people satisfied their philosophical needs from the world view of a thinker who had hitherto remained almost unnoticed and was in fact almost useless for a serious, thorough pursuit of science: Schopenhauer. The bad experiences that Schopenhauer had with his first work, the only one of his that was of any great significance for science: "On the Fourfold Root of the Theorem of the Ground", led him to take ever more precarious paths. He now turned personal views and subjective experiences into philosophical propositions and, in "Parerga and Paralipomena", completely sacrificed the truth to an ingenious style that captivated the audience. His explanations were gripped with greed because it was easy to obtain the phrases necessary for daily use from his writings, which offered nothing but philosophical trivialities in the appropriate form.

This was the state of philosophy when Hartmann came on the scene (1868). He did so with the indispensable self-confidence in the weapons of his thinking and in full possession of the knowledge of the individual sciences available at his time. He recognized that neither everything from Hegel could be accepted nor everything rejected. He peeled the lasting core of Hegel's world view out of its harmful shell and began to develop it further. He completely separated the method from the results of Hegel's philosophy and declared that the good in Hegel was found without, indeed against, his method, and that what the latter alone provided was of dubious value. In his view, the method needed a thorough reform. And it was here that he entered into an alliance with natural science. The demand to seek scientific results only by means of observation, which natural scientists were increasingly insisting on, also became his own in the philosophical field. "Metaphysical results according to the scientific-inductive method" became the motto of his main work "Philosophy of the Unconscious", published in Berlin in 1869. But he held the view that Hegel had also arrived at his truly valuable results using the same method, indeed that positive scientific propositions can only be arrived at in this way. Hartmann's strict consistency, however, prevented him from using this method to arrive at the one-sided views that characterize the natural sciences of the time. How can one claim that observation delivers nothing but what the senses perceive, what eyes see, ears hear and so on, he asked himself? Is not thinking an organ of perception that transcends all the senses? Should reality exhaust itself in the raw material? Open your senses to reality, but do no less with your rational thinking, he called out to the natural scientists, then you will find that there is a higher reality than the one you consider to be the only true one!

Hegel was no less thirsty for reality than a modern natural scientist, but his higher mind also revealed a higher reality to him. E. v. Hartmann also found himself in this position. He took the view that not everything we encounter in the world can be explained by causes that we perceive with our senses. Even when we see a stone fall to earth, we attribute the cause to the gravitational pull of the earth, which we can no longer perceive, but only grasp in our minds. And only when we follow an organism in its development from the egg to its completion! Who would want to satisfy his need for explanation without resorting to the view that forces are at work here which we can only visualize in our thoughts? It becomes clear to us from such a consideration of the organism that we must presuppose a unified mental basis if we want to satisfy our need for knowledge. We must add something to the perception in thought and out of thought if we want to understand the matter. What we add there can of course only be a thought, an idea. But just as we need an idea in our thinking in order to bring about the conception of an organism, for example, so there must also be something analogous in the thing itself that brings about the same thing in its reality. Hartmann calls the analog in reality, which corresponds to the idea in our consciousness, the unconscious idea.

However, this concept of the idea is not so very different from what Hegel calls the idea. Hartmann asserts nothing other than this: what works outside in the world as the cause of things and processes is expressed within our consciousness in the form of the idea. Thus he must regard the content of our world of ideas as that which lifts the veil of existence for us, insofar as the latter is possible for us at all. And Hegel says: grasp the world of ideas in your consciousness, then you have grasped the objective content of the world. So far there would now be complete agreement between the two thinkers. Whereas But whereas Hegel simply seeks out the world of ideas within us and thereby accepts their inner logical character as decisive, Hartmann says: the idea as logical, merely as it is in us, in thought, could at most again cause ideas in a logical way, but not bring forth things of reality. For this there must be a second element, a force, something utterly illogical. Of this second element of the highest reality I can, of course, only recognize the representative that it sends into my consciousness. But if I ask myself, what is the power in me that actually accomplishes that, that makes it a reality, what determines logic, then I find my will. Something analogous to this must also prevail in the external world in order to lend reality, saturated existence, to the otherwise powerless ideas. Hartmann calls this analog the unconscious will. However, unconscious idea and unconscious will together form the unconscious mind or the unconscious.

Hartmann does not claim that the unconscious idea or the unconscious will are present in the outside world in the same quality as their conscious representatives in our mind. Rather, he maintains that we know nothing about the quality of what corresponds to the idea and the will in the objective, but that for us only one thing is certain, that such analogs exist.¹

Through the latter assumption, through the unconscious will, Hartmann now essentially goes beyond Hegel. If the latter, according to his basic assumption, had to regard logical determinacy as the only thing that comes into consideration in the idea, and see the highest laws of the world in logical laws, then Hartmann claims that everything we become aware of in the world is the ideal realized by the will. Since the will is, of course, a force that knows nothing of the laws of logic, the laws of the world are not logical laws either. So if I merely look into myself and observe my world of ideas in their logical connections, I will not reach any goal. I must look out and investigate through observation what creatures the will spouts forth from the eternal source of being. What I observe there, what I ultimately gain as a result, is an idea, but an idea borrowed from reality.

Hartmann reproached the natural scientists for simply not having the ability to observe ideas and therefore stopping at mere sensory perception. The natural scientists, however, dismissed the philosopher by declaring his "Philosophy of the Unconscious" to be the work of a fantasist who wanted to discuss scientific questions in a completely amateurish manner. Soon after the "Philosophy of the Unconscious", a series of counter-writings from a scientific point of view appeared, including one by an anonymous author. The natural scientists declared it to be a very meritorious booklet, which refuted Hartmann's frivolous statements from the standpoint of true empirical science with genuine expertise. The book went through a second edition, but now the author put his full name on the title page. It was - Eduard von Hartmann. The philosopher had had the fun of thoroughly demonstrating to his opponents that one can already understand them if one only wants to stand down on their point of view. He succeeded brilliantly in showing who contradicts because they don't understand their opponent.

The success of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious" was the greatest imaginable. To date, ten editions have been published and translations have been made into all European cultural languages. Encouraged by this, Hartmann devoted all his energy to expanding his world view. He sought not only to illuminate the ever-increasing experience of natural science from the point of view of his philosophy,².

Hartmann's ethical views can mainly be found in his book "Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness". His basic views in the field of ethics are also reflected in his position on politics and the cultural issues of the day.

The unconscious idea is realized through the unconscious will. This is the essence of the world process. And the histotic process of development is only a part of this process. But as such it is again a whole, and the individual cultural systems and moral views of peoples and ages are only its parts. He who recognizes this cannot seek the purpose of his existence in a single act, but only in the value which his particular existence has for the cultural process of the whole of humanity and indirectly thereby for the whole course of the world. Only in selfless devotion to the whole, in being absorbed in humanity, can the individual find his salvation. In addition to this insight, Hartmann seeks to provide empirical proof that no pleasure in the world can grant us an unrestricted feeling of happiness. Wherever we may look, if we become attached to individual, temporary things, the deprivation will be greater than the satisfaction. We must imbue ourselves with this conviction and then dedicate ourselves all the more joyfully to the ideal life task described above. If you want to call this ethical view pessimism, then you may do so. But beware of confusing this Hartmannian view with Schopenhauer's pessimism.

The latter is convinced that the will in its lack of reason is the only world principle and that the idea has no objective meaning at all, but is merely a "brain product". He therefore finds the world unreasonable and bad. A realization through the irrational will could only produce a worthless existence. There would be nothing worth living for in the world. Since we can achieve nothing in such a world, non-action is preferable to action for human beings. As you can see, Schopenhauer's ethics ends with the recommendation of complete inaction.

Compare this with Hartmann's ethics and you will see that it leads to a completely opposite result, that it seeks satisfaction precisely in selfless, devoted action, which selfish enjoyment could never offer us. The fact that both world views are nevertheless constantly thrown together, despite repeated protests on the part of E. v. Hartmann, proves the power that slogans have even over the educated public.

But where should we take the principles for our respective actions from, asks Hartmann. We work most effectively when we grasp our task most correctly in the place where history has placed us. What is good today was not good in the Middle Ages and will not be good centuries later. What a man has to do must result from what his predecessor has done. This is where he must pick up the thread and develop it further. Only those who know their tasks for the present from the past, from historical development, can create something good. We must not enter the arena of action with abstract, template-like concepts, but equipped with knowledge of the true needs of actual reality.

Because the liberal parties want to rule the world from the outside, from theory, disregarding these needs, Hartmann is an opponent of them. He wants party principles that follow from the study of reality. He is conservative in the sense that he wants reform efforts everywhere to be linked to what already exists, but not at all in the way of many conservatives who would like to put all kinds of restraints on development or preferably even order it to stand still. Hartmann wants progress, but not in the way that liberalism sees it, but as a continuous approach to the great cultural goals of mankind. For him, each cultural epoch is only the preparation for the next. No branch of culture is excluded from this development.

Hartmann has explained how religious needs are also subject to this general law in his two works: "Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums und die Religion der Zukunft" and "Das religiöse Bewußtsein der Menschheit im Stufengang seiner Entwicklung". We are living in a time in which the old religious forms have become rotten everywhere and must make way for new ones. Christianity is not an absolute religion, but only one phase in the religious development of mankind, and there are already enough signs of the new view that will replace it.

It would be a serious prejudice to believe that Hartmann's philosophical discussions are worthless for practical life. I would just like to point out a few things that could refute this. Hartmann theoretically called for the German-Austrian alliance and the current constellation of European states long before they actually materialized. The party formations that we have seen emerge in Germany in the second half of the past decade were previously presented by Hartmann as a necessity. We have already mentioned the Polish question. We must not forget that our philosopher is far from claiming that what he describes as necessary in this way is also the best. To demand the best is, in his view, an empty demand; one must see what can arise according to the motives at work in people and in time and offer one's hand to this. Hartmann is a real politician in the most eminent sense.

For some time now, people in German-Austria have not spoken well of Hartmann because in an essay in 1885 he spoke of a "regression of Germanism in the Austrian lands". If one were to examine the content of this essay closely, one would probably come to a different conclusion. For apart from a few remarks which make the situation of our fellow tribesmen appear sadder than it really is, and which must be set against the fact that Hartmann must have gained his knowledge in part from newspaper reports and brochures which falsify the matter, one will find in that essay only the views represented which today the most national Austrian politicians have written on their banner. Hartmann explained to the Germans in Austria that they must sink below the level of influence they deserve if they continue to lose sight of the real tasks of their nation and the Reich over liberal party programs. In his view, they must rely on the power of the people and their higher education in order to achieve what they can never achieve by making pacts with "immature nations" and through liberal phrases, namely to steer "the state of Western Austria". To accuse Hartmann of even the slightest anti-German sentiment because of this essay is unacceptable when you consider how deeply his entire world view is rooted in Germanness and how he honors this Germanness when he says, for example, that the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War "has shown so clearly that Germany will essentially have to forever renounce being understood by anything other than German blood".

The significance of Hartmann's view of the political situation will only be fully appreciated when one of his main ideas - the "complete separation of all political parties from economic and religious-church parties" - has been realized and when the Central European Customs Union he called for in 1881 becomes possible. It will then be seen that Hartmann's views are nothing but the moral, political, religious, economic, etc. forces of the. of the present. He tries to eavesdrop on the direction in which they are striving, and according to this direction he tries to show the way for practical reforms.

Recently, Hartmann gave us a two-volume "Aesthetics". The first volume seeks to give a historical account of the development of German art history since Kant; the second endeavors to build its own independent edifice of the "science of beauty". In the first part, we admire the all-round approach, which deals with every phenomenon and provides not only a historical development of the basic views of the individual aestheticians, but also an account of the progress of the individual basic aesthetic concepts, such as: beautiful, ugly, comic, sublime, graceful and so on. The fact that the often misunderstood Deutinger and the completely lost but highly significant Trahndorff find their just appreciation in the book is not one of its least merits. Anyone who wants to learn in detail how views on art have developed from Kant up to the present day must turn to this book.

In the "Science of Beauty" Hartmann, true to his principle, seeks to find that area in what actually exists in which beauty, that which is created by art, has its seat. He rejects the abstract idealism of the Schellingians, who seek beauty not in the object of art itself but in an abstract sphere and claim that every single beauty is only a reflection of the supernatural idea of beauty that never appears in its perfection. Hartmann counters this "abstract idealism" with his "concrete idealism", which seeks the reason and the root in the aesthetic object itself, in short, which also applies the observing, contemplating, not the constructing method here. What is actually the object in which the "beautiful" is realized? asks Hartmann. Neither merely the real work that we have before us, as the realists want, nor merely the harmony of feelings and sensations that it produces in us, as the idealists want, are the seat of beauty, but the appearance of reality, for the production of which the real product serves the artist only as a means. Anyone who is unable to disregard the real effects exerted on him by the art product and can only indulge in the impression of the "aesthetic appearance" detached from all reality is not yet capable of true enjoyment of art. A person who commits a crime in reality creates a real feeling of revulsion in us through his actual deed. He affects us through what he is. The actor who portrays the criminal only has the right effect on us if, denying his real being, he only arouses feelings and emotions in us through what he appears to be, through his representation, which is exhausted in appearance and behind which there is no reality. "Whoever has not yet stripped away the last trace of realistic velleities from aesthetic appearance and the content hidden in it has not yet penetrated to a purely aesthetic conception, but has more or less remained stuck in an amalgamation of aesthetic with theoretical or practical conception." (Wissenschaft des Schönen, p.21.) Only those who are able to emancipate themselves completely from the real meaning of the object in front of them and devote themselves only to the enjoyment of what it seems to be are capable of aesthetic contemplation. And now Hartmann shows us just as much how the appearance detached from reality expresses itself in individual forms of artistic creation, in the sensually pleasing, in mathematical relationships, in organic formations and so on, as he also shows us how the individual arts can evoke the "aesthetic appearance" with the means at their disposal. We ourselves have published an essay in these journals that takes as its starting point basic views that do not entirely coincide with Hartmann's. In particular, we believe that aesthetics should not neglect to say what it is in "aesthetic appearance" that actually has an effect on us. It is just as certain that he who is influenced in his aesthetic contemplation "by accidental knowledge of the private life of the actor Schultze and the dancer Müller in the judgment of their mimic artistic performances" does not arrive at the true enjoyment of art, as it is true that I must remain aesthetically unaffected even in the pure contemplation of appearances if I have no feeling for what speaks to me precisely through the aesthetic appearance. Certainly, the artist can only have an effect on me through appearance, but it is not the character of the appearance that constitutes the nature of the work of art, but the content in the appearance, that which the artist embodies in the appearance. Whoever has only a sense for appearance and none for what is expressed in appearance remains insensitive to art. Appearance is only necessary because art has something to tell us that cannot be said to us by immediate reality. It is a necessary auxiliary to art, a consequence of artistic creation, but it does not constitute the latter. These are objections of principle, however, and we would be unjust if we did not counter them with the fact that we have rarely read a book with such satisfaction, with such great benefit, as Hartmann's Aesthetics. Everyone can learn from it through the thorough knowledge of technique in the individual arts that characterizes the author, through the views on life that testify to Hartmann's genius and the great style with which he grasps the sum of all cultural expressions, and finally through the fine taste that underpins all his judgments on art.

We are rarely as pleased as when we read the announcement of a new work by Hartmann, because then we always know that a great treasure is being added to our minds. And we wish time good luck for everything that will come from Hartmann, because, as we have already mentioned, he is at the height of his creative powers. He has almost completed his system. We do not know what area his work will now focus on. But we do know this: everything we can still expect from him will have the character of greatness and significance.

• 1. Hartmann describes the relationship of something existing in consciousness to something beyond it, something unknown to us, as transcendental. This is why he calls his world view, which assumes such a reality and relates the content of consciousness to it, transcendental realism.
• 2. but also to draw the consequences for ethics, religious studies and aesthetics.

  A supplementary volume to the first to ninth edition of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious" (Leipzig, Wilhelm Friedrich) was published in 1891, which deals with the latest results of natural science.

It is one of the peculiarities of genius that it sketches out in broad outline the plan of the development of culture, the details of which are left to the following generation. Long periods of time must often elapse before the world arrives in a roundabout way at a full understanding of what an individual has created at the height of his intellectual culture. And whenever a seed planted by a leading genius of education is ripe to bear fruit for posterity, the latter returns to that leader to confront him once again.

The numerous proclamations that continually emerge from all parts of educated Europe with regard to Goethe are to be understood as such disputes. It is increasingly felt that the further one has come in education, the more one has to learn from Goethe. The branch of culture that has demonstrated this most vividly in recent decades is probably natural science. Numerous researchers who had arrived at some truth literally felt their consciences relieved when they found a clue that Goethe's view of the question they had raised was similar to their own. The chapter "Goethe and Natural Science" has been on the agenda for a long time and would undoubtedly remain so for an unforeseeable period if it were not for the extraordinary circumstance that the publications of the Goethe Archive have now considerably enriched our knowledge in this field. Since the latter is to a large extent the case, however, the discussion of the relevant questions will enter a new stage in the near future.

The author of these lines already drew the attention of the readers of the Goethe Chronicle some time ago to the expected enrichment of our knowledge of Goethe in this direction. The studies he resumed a few months ago in the Goethe Archive have not only strengthened his conviction, but have also increased his experience in this field by many a valuable piece. The high owner of the Goethe treasures, the Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxony, has now graciously allowed him, in agreement with the director of the Goethe and Schiller Archive, Prof. Suphan, to use the results of his research for the preliminary orientation of the public, which circumstance also makes this essay possible.

The maxim on which contemporary natural science places particular emphasis is that it wants to obtain all its results by means of observation. Nothing should be considered true that does not owe its origin to experience, to empiricism. It is not the place here to go into a comprehensive examination of the correctness of the viewpoint thus characterized. However, we must draw the attention of our readers to one thing, because it is of fundamental importance for the assessment of Goethe's scientific way of thinking. We mean the precise answer to the question: what actually is observation? What is experience? - If I present any proposition of science as the result of experience, I have not thereby indicated an objective characteristic of this proposition, but only the way in which the researcher arrived at it. I have said nothing about the thing itself, but only something about the relation of the observing man to things. He who recommends to me the strict observance of the principle of experience tells me nothing more than how I should act in order to arrive at correct results. He must leave the nature of these results themselves completely undetermined. For it lies in his demand that I should obtain information about their nature from the things themselves, that I should open my faculty of perception freely to the influence of the world and allow the objects to approach me. Then they themselves should reveal to me what is recognizable to me in them.

This principle is immediately contradicted if one claims, based on the demand of strict empirical science, that because the world is only recognizable through experience, it must therefore have these or those properties. Anyone who allows the principle of experience to push them towards materialism, atomism and so on is overstepping the boundaries they have set for themselves.

Among those researchers who have kept strictly within these boundaries is Goethe. But how is it that his views often differ considerably from those of the so-called pure empiricists? The latter, after all, reject the standpoint of idealism, and this is Goethe's standpoint. Is the demand of experience at all compatible with idealism? We answer: yes, if the empiricist knows how to observe not only with the senses of the body, but also with those of the mind. Just as the eye produces colors and forms, just as the ear produces sounds, so the mind produces ideas as results of experience.

This is a contradiction, we hear from the empiricists. Ideas can never be the object of experience, because they are not contained in the outside world, but only in us, in our soul. So say the representatives of experience, without realizing that they are committing a tremendous inconsistency. What entitles me to say that only that which can be perceived with the external sense organs belongs to the things of the external world? The objects can never reveal themselves to me in their entire content if I prescribe to them that they may have no other qualities than those which my physical organs allow me to recognize. The principle of experience demands that I hold up everything that is in me to the objects in order to explore their essence in all its aspects. But the sensory faculty of perception is only one side of man's being. And Goethe cannot accept as a true researcher someone who condemns himself from the outset to knowing only half of things because he claims that only half of his being provides him with the truth. Only in the unfolding of all our powers of cognition does the essence of things reveal itself to us, in Goethe's view, insofar as it is recognizable to us at all.

Whoever devotes himself in a one-sided way merely to thinking, to the development of our conceptual faculty, his scientific views are empty, devoid of content, they bear the character of the superfluous, because they flee the very area into whose riddle they are supposed to introduce us; He who trusts only in the senses, who seeks nothing but what they deliver to him, suffers from spiritual blindness; he gropes around at the objects without knowing the thread that leads him into the interior, where the apparent lack of rules reveals itself to him as lawful order. For Goethe, the true scientific spirit manifests itself in the fact that it continually alternates between sensual perception and thinking reflection. Just as inhalation and exhalation sustain life, so the to and fro movement of the mind between spreading out over the mass of the sensory world and drawing it back to the lawful sources of this multiplicity sustains proper research. Indeed, all scientific activity is ultimately only comprehensible to Goethe as such a vital human activity. Theories and hypotheses are dead in themselves; they only gain life when they dominate the mind like systole and diastole.¹ Goethe is not concerned with the results, but with coming closer to creative nature through the living power of the spirit. This cannot be achieved by those who are content with finished, dead knowledge, but only by those who creatively bring this dead material to life within themselves and thus bring forth within that which, apart from themselves, nature can become. For Goethe, the highest thing is not what man is able to gather from the world, but how he comes to terms with it in order to fill his spirit with true-to-life world content.

Whoever does not succeed in allowing things to affect him in such a way that the world within him is as alive, as active and thoroughly effective as the world outside us, where there is no part that is not affected by innumerable forces, has not done enough in Goethe's sense of the principle of experience.

What appears to be at rest in the world, to have become, to have solidified, is empty appearance, is only the superficial result of eternal becoming and working. But this apparent rest is the object of the senses, this becoming and working is revealed in the idea.² And so the idea is the result of experience. Of course, it only reveals itself to those who are not satisfied with superficial experience. Goethe never had any other view of the results of his scientific research than that he arrived at them by way of observation. But from the moment when he was urged by Schiller to reflect on the character of his experiences, it became ever clearer to him that his whole endeavor was only a search for ideas as the highest forms in which reality expresses itself. ³ This conviction became more and more apparent to us as we tried to visualize the path that this genius took in the scientific field by means of Goethe's papers that he left behind. No observation remains isolated; other related observations are always added to it in order to move beyond the "what" to the "how", beyond the individual to the whole, to ascend from knowledge to perception. Goethe is never directly interested in experiences as they are in themselves, but always as a question to nature. Anyone who immerses themselves in these notes will see an idea behind every single note, which in Goethe's mind always works its way out of the indeterminate into the more definite.

Those who thus follow the signs on the paper, which express clearly enough how ideas arise in Goethe through constant contact with the world, will also understand what it means: idealism is entirely compatible with empirical science. For idealism is nothing other than the whole of experience, the sum of all that it is possible for us to know of things, whereas what empiricists usually make the object of their science is only half experience, the summands without the sum. Francis Bacon, the famous English philosopher, once said that scientific research is a task of addition; but he did not get any further than an instruction on how to set up the individual items; how to find the sum remained hidden from him because he considered the senses to be the only mediators of experience and did not know that reason has the same claim to this title. Goethe also established the latter in its rights and thus fulfilled a high mission. The senses are wonderful messengers of the external world when the spirit understands the manifestations of their ideal meaning which they bring it; but their writings are worthless if we merely stare at what we should read. Anyone who claims that there is nothing to read will be answered by all those who went to school with Goethe: don't look for the reason in the things of this world, but in yourself.

• 1. During the preparation of this essay, Prof. Suphan drew my attention to a passage in Biedermann, Goethes Gespräche, VII, 5. 122, which provides important evidence for my above remarks: "Thus he (Goethe) emphatically replied to Mr. Vogel's assertion that theory must always precede practice, that it always goes together with practice: "for it is impossible for men to create disembodied souls."
• 2. For the first time, the peculiarity of the greatest German poet, characterized by this and appearing in full light for his scientific activity through Goethe's legacy, was made an aesthetic principle in the overall conception of the same by K. J. Schröer. (See Goethe's "Faust" I and II with introduction and continuous explanation and dramas, Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur", 6th to 11th volume.)
• 3. We find here transferred to the theoretical-scientific field the view that led Goethe in the moral sphere to his high conception of love, as selfless devotion to the object. (See Schröer, Goethe und die Liebe, and its introduction to the 3rd volume of Goethe's dramas, in Kürschner's 'Deutsche National-Literatur'.)

In philosophical circles one often hears complaints about the decline in interest in philosophy among the educated of the present day. However, the opinion expressed in this complaint cannot be upheld in general. A number of phenomena speak against it. Just think of the influence that Eduard von Hartmann, currently Germany's greatest thinker, has exerted on our contemporaries. His "Philosophy of the Unconscious", first published in 1868, has gone through ten editions to date. And the literature dealing with this philosopher's world view has grown immeasurably. Furthermore, what an impact Richard Wagner's aesthetic treatises have had on the contemporary view of art! The teachings presented here were enthusiastically received, especially by the younger generation. The eagerness with which Friedrich Albert Lange's "History of Materialism" was read for a time must also be mentioned here. No less important is the way in which very shallow writings, which nonetheless dealt with basic philosophical problems, such as Ludwig Büchner's "Kraft und Stoff" ("Force and Substance") and Carl Vogt's "Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft" ("Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft"), were devoured. Darwin's and Haeckel's writings on the history of development found a large audience. Finally, Friedrich Nietzsche, this tragic hero of thought, who approaches the highest problems of the human spirit, but without a logical conscience, without discipline of thought, merely rummages in the realm of ideas, as it were, is causing a tremendous stir in our time. On the one hand, he has aroused enthusiasm, which is, of course, as unclear as possible about its actual content, and on the other, he has annoyed, outraged and challenged to the sharpest contradiction. However, he has probably left few of the large number of people who have engaged with his bold thoughts cold; a clear indication that philosophical interest in our time is nevertheless conducive to stimulation on a large scale.

In one broad area, however, philosophy seems to have lost its power and influence. This is that of the individual sciences: cultural and, in particular, literary history, history and the natural sciences. This is most noticeable in the history of literature and the natural sciences. The way in which the creations of our classical poets are treated in literary-historical monographs, especially those of the Scherer school, is truly deplorable. They often lack the slightest knowledge of philosophical concepts and views. And how erroneous is the belief that the latter can be dispensed with when judging the artistic achievements of our classical period! Above all other things, it is necessary to have a complete command of the circle of views and ideas of the person whose artistic creations one wishes to appreciate. The works of our classics, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul, Schlegel and others, reflect the philosophical content of the great age in which they lived. And anyone who has no understanding of this element of content in their works is also unsuited to an aesthetic appreciation of their form. But even when dealing with other epochs of our literature, we can observe that scholars are truly horrified by philosophical treatment.

The situation is almost worse in the natural sciences. Here we find an accumulation of infinite details that are almost nowhere accompanied by guiding points of view or broad perspectives. Anyone who wants to exploit a characteristic individual experience in order to penetrate deeper into the context of natural things is immediately regarded as an enthusiast. The most thoughtless registration work is prevalent here. And when Richard Falckenberg says in his witty inaugural address "On the Present State of German Philosophy" (Leipzig 1890,.6) that "the time has yet to come when the character of an unphilosophical mind will be counted among the titles of honor", we would like to claim that in some scientific circles, this time has already come.

The above-mentioned phenomena show that the accusation of a lack of interest in the philosophical approach can be made against the representatives of the individual disciplines, but not against the educated reading public in general.

In view of these phenomena, the question is probably justified: what are the reasons for this emancipation of the individual sciences from philosophy?

Not in the slightest part do they lie in the historical development of philosophy in Germany. There is no doubt that the great philosophers of our people: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, for all their genius and the truly admirable tendency towards greatness that was characteristic of all of them, lacked one thing: the gift of making themselves easily understandable. It requires either an unusual dexterity in the execution of thought operations, so that thinking happens with the ease of playing, or else a great self-conquest in order to rise to the spheres into which those philosophers lead us. For those who are not capable of the one and do not have enough good will for the other, penetration into the teachings of our actual philosophical age is an impossibility. In this we must also seek the cause of the misunderstanding of Hegel. This philosopher who was hostile to metaphysics, who strove with an insatiable thirst for knowledge of the real, this most resolute of all representatives of positivism and empiricism, is strangely enough usually portrayed as a thinker of empty conceptual schemes who, denying all empirical knowledge, lose themselves in an insubstantial philosophical cloud-cuckoo land. One does not realize that Hegel's aim is to take everything that is to be used to explain a phenomenon completely from reality. Nowhere does he want to call upon elements to help him explain our world. Everything that constitutes it must lie within it. Thus his view is a strict objectivism. The mind should not draw anything from itself in order to graft it onto phenomena for the purpose of deciphering them. Hegel would vigorously reject scientific tendencies such as modern aromatism, which presupposes a whole world behind our world of appearances.

What lies objectively in the world process should, according to Hegel, become the content of philosophy, nothing above it. And because he could not merely recognize something material as the objective content of the world, but rather counted the laws of existence and events, which are also truly present in reality, as part of the content of the world, his teaching is idealism. What distinguishes Hegel from the modern positivists is not the type of research, not the belief that only the real can be the object of science. In this he is in complete agreement with them. He differs from them, however, in the view that for him the idea is also real, or conversely, that the real is real and ideal at the same time. This character of Hegel's philosophy was first understood again by Eduard von Hartmann, and he carried out the treatment corresponding to it in his exemplary historical works: "Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness" and "The Religious Consciousness of Mankind in the Stages of its Development". However, Hartmann has also understood how to avoid the difficulties of understanding Hegel in wider circles, which we mentioned above, and how to unite Hegelian sentiment with a comprehensible style of presentation that is also accessible to the less philosophically trained. In his historical works, Hartmann seeks the real with the same rigor as his contemporaries who call themselves historians, but unlike them he does not only find the bare facts, but also the ideal context of historical phenomena. And it is very regrettable that he did not gain a similarly authoritative influence on literary historians and historians from this side as he did on educated laymen through his "Philosophy of the Unconscious". Hartmann is to be regarded as the real continuator of that philosophy of great style which, through Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, has powerfully gripped the whole nation.

But why was he also able to have so little influence on the actual discipline? In our opinion, this question can be answered quite simply. The reason lies in the mistrust and lack of understanding that was shown to him by the officially appointed representatives of his science and which has only recently and only very slowly given way to better relations.

This lamentable relationship between the official philosophy on the one hand and Hartmann on the other has a deeper reason. As soon as Hartmann embarked on his philosophical studies, he tackled the central problem: how does consciousness relate to the unconscious in the world, and what role does the unconscious play in nature and the mind? From there, his thinking extends to all the more important questions of philosophy, so that he appears before the public with a self-contained circle of views from his very first appearance. School philosophy, however, does not like this - with some notable exceptions. It only likes to deal with individual problems and even prefers that timid skepticism which behaves as cautiously as possible towards the great questions naturally posed by every human being. For the most part it is rather contrived and self-made problems to which professional science adheres, while in contrast to what everyone wants to know, it regards only the expression of the doubter as that due to the true researcher and immediately has the accusation of dilettantism at hand when it sees a bold approach to such things, Thus school philosophy has gradually isolated itself completely from the other scientific enterprise, its results are no longer important and interesting enough to gain power over the individual sciences. While it would be right for the philosopher to characterize the general points of view, the leading ideas for the individual sciences and to take up the results of the latter in order to use them further in the sense of an overall view of things, the present philosophical specialist sees himself as an individual researcher alongside others. He walks alongside the specialists instead of engaging in lively interaction with them. Only Hartmann understood his profession as a philosopher in the ideal sense described above. He was not taken seriously for this for a long time and is still not taken seriously by many school philosophers today.

As we can see, the position that philosophy occupies in contemporary life and culture is by no means the one we would wish for. It is therefore with great pleasure that we welcome a book that has just been published and which seems destined to spread clarity about the tasks and goals of philosophy. We are referring to Johannes Volkelt's "Lectures as an Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy". Held in Frankfurt a.M. in February and March 1891, the book is suitable for reaching the widest circle of readers and showing what philosophy actually wants and is capable of achieving for life and culture. Volkelt, although a scientific philosopher in the best sense of the word - he and Johannes Rehmke have written the best books on epistemology. He and Johannes Rehmke wrote the best books on epistemology - has always had a free, open eye both for the far-reaching tasks of human life and for its most intimate phenomena. The former is demonstrated by his speech in Vienna: "Kant's Categorical Imperative and the Present" and his inaugural speech in Basel: "On the Possibility of Metaphysics", the latter by his book on "The Dream Fantasy" and his presentation: "Franz Grillparzer as a Poet of the Tragic". In these lectures Volkelt first presents the contrast between the philosophy of the present and that of the beginning of the century. He shows how everything intuitive, personal and bold has disappeared from this science and has given way to an intellectual, impersonal, skeptical approach. Whereas in the past people fearlessly inquired into the causes of phenomena, they are now anxious to first test our cognitive faculty to see to what extent it is capable of penetrating the secrets of the world. Philosophy has taken on a predominantly epistemological character. It has become hostile to all metaphysical activity. The author, however, emphasizes both the necessity and the possibility of metaphysics. He only thinks that it will not be able to go for its goal with the boldness and certainty that was previously believed. He is of the opinion that, instead of showing off with real solutions, it will often have to be content with indicating the direction in which certain problems are to be pursued, formulating the questions precisely, bringing forth the material that can lead to the results, indeed in some cases it will be able to do nothing more than indicate the various possible solutions. Volkelt also proves the necessity of those branches of philosophy that are usually referred to as natural philosophy and philosophy of mind, and to which he includes psychology, ethics, aesthetics and philosophy of religion. In all individual sciences, one ultimately arrives at the highest principles, ultimate results, which cannot be pursued further within the science in which they are obtained. They form the content of these particular philosophical sciences, from which they are combined to form a whole world view. Furthermore, Volkelt shows in the most beautiful way how, even if not scientific philosophy, at least the attitude that springs from a philosophical mental disposition permeates the entire human personality and becomes the ethical, religious basis of life, especially for those people for whom the positive religions have lost their compelling power of faith. Finally, in Volkelt's view, philosophy will be the power which, by transforming revealed religion into a religion of reason, will bring about a development of Christianity which will enable it to become a truly culturally friendly element in the life of modern peoples. Finally, the author devotes his consideration to the influence that philosophy will have on the modern progress of our culture. It must play an important role in the present and the future, if only because we have passed the stage where all culture springs only from a quasi unconscious working of temperament and feeling. We are consciously striving towards our cultural goals out of rational deliberation. Philosophy is particularly well-suited to serve this purpose.

The author of these lines does not agree with Volkelt on everything. In particular, he takes a different position on epistemology. He may perhaps refer to his own writing on epistemology. Nevertheless, he would like to recommend Volkelt's book to the attention of all circles.

We are undoubtedly facing some upheavals in the way we think about and value human actions. Philosophy will have a strong say in the reorganization of the situation. Writings such as Volkelt's are particularly suitable as preparation. I will deal with the second part of my topic in a future article.

A turn for the better will only occur in philosophical life when the urge to test the power of thought on the central problems of existence awakens again. This drive is currently paralyzed. We suffer from cowardice of thought. We cannot believe that our ability to think is sufficient to answer the deepest questions of life. I have often heard it said that our task at present is to collect building block after building block. The time is over when we proudly and arrogantly put together philosophical doctrines without having the materials at hand. Once we have collected enough of this material, the right genius will emerge and carry out the construction. Now is not the time to build systems. This view arises from a regrettable lack of clarity about the nature of science. If the latter had the task of collecting the facts of the world, registering them and organizing them systematically and expediently according to certain points of view, then one could speak like this. But then we would have to renounce all knowledge altogether; for we would probably only finish collecting the facts at the end of days, and then we would lack the necessary time to carry out the required scholarly registration work.

If you only once realize what you actually want to achieve through science, you will soon see the fallacy of this demand, which requires an infinite amount of work. When we confront nature, it initially stands before us like a profound mystery, it stretches out before our senses like an enigma. A mute being looks out at us. How can we bring light into the mystical darkness? How can we solve the riddle?

The blind man who enters a room can only feel darkness in it. No matter how long he wanders around and touches all the objects: Brightness will never fill the room for him. Just as this blind man faces the furnishings of the room, so in a higher sense man faces nature, who expects the solution to the riddle from the contemplation of an infinite number of facts. There is something in nature which a thousand facts do not reveal to us if we lack the power of sight to see it, and which one single fact reveals to us if we possess this faculty. Every thing has two sides. One is the outside. We perceive it with our senses. But then there is also an inner side, which presents itself to the spirit when it knows how to look. No one will believe in his own inability in any matter. Whoever lacks the ability to perceive this inner side would prefer to deny it to man altogether, or to disparage as fantasists those who pretend to possess it. Nothing can be done about an absolute inability, and one could only pity those who, because of it, can never gain insight into the depths of the world. The psychologist, however, does not believe in this inability. Every person with normal spiritual development has the ability to descend to those depths up to a certain point. But the convenience of thinking prevents many from doing so. Their spiritual weapons are not blunt, but the bearers are too lazy to wield them. It is infinitely more convenient to pile fact upon fact than to seek out the reasons for them by thinking. Above all, such an accumulation of facts rules out the possibility of someone else coming along and overturning what we have advocated. In this way we never find ourselves in the position of having to defend our intellectual positions; we need not be upset that tomorrow someone will advocate the opposite of our current positions. If you only deal with actual truth, you can lull yourself into the belief that no one can dispute this truth, that we are creating for eternity. Yes, we also create for eternity, but we only create zeros. We lack the courage of thought to give these zeros a value by placing a meaningful number in front of them in the form of an idea.

Few people today have any idea that something can be true, even if the opposite can be asserted with no less right. There are no unconditional truths. We drill deep into a thing of nature, we bring up the most mysterious wisdom from the most hidden shafts, we turn around, drill in a second place: and the opposite shows itself to be just as justified. That every truth is only valid in its place, that it is only true as long as it is asserted under the conditions under which it was originally fathomed, that is what Hegel's genius taught the world. Little has been understood.

Who today does not cringe respectfully when the name Friedr. Theod. Vischer is mentioned. But not many people know that this man considered it the greatest achievement of his life to have learned from Hegel the above-mentioned conviction about the nature of truth. If they knew, then a completely different air would flow towards them from Vischer's magnificent works, and one would encounter less ceremonial praise, but more unconstrained understanding of this writer.

Where are the days when Schiller found deep understanding when he praised the philosophical mind over the bread scholar! The one who digs unreservedly for the treasures of truth, even if he is exposed to the danger that a second treasure digger will immediately devalue everything for him with a new find, compared to the one who only ever repeats the banal, but absolutely "true": "Two times two is four".

We must have the courage to boldly enter the realm of ideas, even at the risk of error. Those who are too cowardly to err cannot be fighters for the truth. An error that springs from the mind is worth more than a truth that comes from platitude. He who has never asserted anything that is in a sense untrue is not fit to be a scientific thinker.

For cowardly fear of error, our science has fallen victim to bareness.

It is almost hair-raising which character traits are extolled today as virtues of the scientific researcher. If you were to translate them into the area of practical living, the result would be the opposite of a firm, decisive, energetic character.

A recent book has attempted to expose these shortcomings in our intellectual life: "Rembrandt als Erzieher. From a German." It is bad enough that this book has been so widely read. It is not difficult to see shortcomings and attack them, but it is difficult to find their origin. Go to an inn every evening for two weeks, where educated German beer-philistines are sitting, sit aside and listen to their critical remarks. Then you go home, carefully note down what you have heard and add a quotation from a well-known writer to each sentence. After a fortnight, send this "collective work" to the printers and a second book will grace the German book market, which will be in no way inferior in value to "Rembrandt as Educator".

The author of this book fights specialism in science. This is his fundamental error. The mistake is not that researchers devote themselves to special tasks, but that they cannot work the universal spirit into the world of details. It would be a bad thing if we were to replace the study of individual entities with the spinning out of abstract generalities and gray theories. Study the grain of sand, but find out to what extent it is part of the spirit.

It is not mysticism that we want to advocate here. Anyone who seeks the spirit of the things of this world in clear, transparent ideas is by no means a mystic. There is nothing that excludes mystical chiaroscuro more than the crystal-clear world of ideas, with its sharp contours down to the last ramifications. He who enters into this world with human acuity, with strict logic, will have nothing in common with the mystic, who sees nothing, but only suspects, who does not think out the world of reasons, but only conjures it up, in the awareness that he sees through his spiritual realm in all directions. The mathematician is the model for the mystic-free thinker.

So our task is not to endlessly collect individual facts, but to sharpen our mental faculties for seeing the depths of nature.

Our reason must once again become aware of its absoluteness; and an end must be put to its cowardly, slavish subordination to the oppressive power of facts. It is unworthy that a higher being, which reason is after all, should yield itself to a mere collector of things of lower value. If the world consisted only of sensually perceptible things, then reason would have to abdicate. It only has a task if there is something in the world that it is able to grasp. And that is the spirit.

To deny it is to retire reason.

Is there now any prospect that this legitimate ruler on the throne in the realm of science will soon be restored to his innate rights? The answer to this question will be the subject of the next installment of this article.

When Knebel read the fragment "On Nature" in the 32nd edition of the Tiefurt Journal at the beginning of 1783, he wrote in his diary: "Goethe's fragment on nature made a deep impression on me. It is masterly and great. It encourages me in love." Like the other contributions to the journal, the essay was published without the author's name. Knebel was only able to attribute the ideas set down in it to Goethe. Other readers of the journal would probably have thought the same. Goethe himself opposed this opinion. He wrote to Knebel: "The essay in the Tiefurt Journal, which you mention, is not mine, and I have so far made a secret of who it is by. I cannot deny that the author has dealt with me and has often spoken to me about these matters... He has given me much pleasure himself and has a certain lightness and softness which I could perhaps not have given him." And Frau von Stein wrote to Knebel on March 28, 1783: "Goethe is not the author, as you believe, of the thousandfold picture of views of nature; it is by Tobler; sometimes it is not charitable to me, but it is rich!" If these passages from the letter had not existed, it would seem almost impossible today to raise the questions: "Is Goethe the author of this essay?" or "To what extent do the thoughts expressed in it belong to him?". If we are to say in a few words what has so far forced the conviction of Goethe's authorship on every connoisseur of Goethe's scientific development, it is the fact that the latter must necessarily have passed through the stage recorded in the essay in his progress towards his later views of nature. When Ernst Haeckel wanted to place a particularly characteristic work by Goethe at the head of his "Natural History of Creation" to prove that he was one of the first prophets of a unified (monistic) view of nature, he chose the essay "Nature". However, this is nothing other than what Goethe himself considered to be the right thing to say at a very old age, when the essay, which had long since disappeared from his memory, was presented to him. In 1828, he received it from the estate of Duchess Anna Amalia. He had no hesitation in describing the ideas expressed in it as his own, even though he could not actually remember writing it. In an explanatory note to the fragment, which he wrote in 1823, we read: "I do not actually remember writing these reflections, but they certainly correspond to the ideas my mind was forming at the time." And further above: "It is written by a well-known hand, which I used to use in my business in the eighties." This hand is that of Seidel, who also wrote the other Goethe contributions to the Tiefurt Journal. These historical testimonies also include a leaf that is in the Goethe Archive among Goethe's scientific manuscripts and is probably a note by Chancellor von Müller. (Written in pencil at the top in the margin in Eckermann's hand: Probably refers to the essay: Die Natur, in G. Werke 1890, vol. 40, We lift out the following passages from it: May 25, 1828. " The above essay, no doubt by Goethe, probably intended for the Tiefurter Journal, marked by Einsiedeln as No. 3 and thus dating from about the first eighties, but written before the metamorphosis of plants, as Goethe himself told me, was communicated to me by him on May 24, 1828. As he will have it printed, I have found no hesitation in copying it for the time being." ... May 30, 1828: "After a conversation, Goethe did not fully admit to it with complete conviction; and it also seemed to me that it was indeed his thoughts, but not written down by himself, but per traducem. The manuscript is Seidel's, the subsequent rent officer, and since he was privy to Goethe's ideas and had a tendency towards such thoughts, it is probable that those thoughts were written down by him collectively as coming from Goethe's mouth." The view that Seidel had a real share in the authorship will probably not be upheld by anyone; the quite unique harmony between the thoughts of the essay and the form in which they are expressed speaks against this. These are not transformed thoughts, they are thoughts that must have been conceived entirely as they are. In almost no sentence can one imagine that the content could be formulated more precisely or more beautifully. If the essay was not dictated by Goethe, but written by someone else after an oral communication, then it could only have been written by someone who was at such an educational level that he was able to grasp Goethe from all sides and write down his thoughts almost verbatim from memory in their artistically perfect form. Now the G. Chr. Chr. Tobler, mentioned by Frau von Stein, does indeed seem to have been such a man; Frau Herder wrote of him to Müller: "He was greatly honored and loved in this circle (of Goethe and the princely persons) and elevated as the most philosophical, most learned, most beloved man; in short, they spoke of him as a man of a higher kind." And J. G. Müller wrote in his diary when he met Tobler with Passavant in Münden in April 1781: "Tobler is entirely of Greek blood, his only ambition is to become more and more human, full of health and virility like a young tree; whom he loves, he loves completely. He does not have enough of the simple light sentences of Christianity. He is soon a Christian, soon a Greek..." Tobler only spent the summer of 1781 in Weimar. He stayed with Knebel, and Goethe spent a lot of time with him. In a letter from Goethe to Lavater dated June 22, 1781, the former says that he "grew very fond" of Tobler, and the diary contains the remark under August 2: "With Tobler about history on the occasion of Borromeo." This is evidence that intimate conversations about general views may have taken place between Goethe and Tobler, and that the latter may have put down on paper a version of Goethe's work that coincides with the fragment "Nature".

Tobler, however, could have played no other role than that of a reporter who adhered as closely as possible to the wording of what he had heard, and there are important internal reasons for this, which emerge from a consideration of the relationship of the essay in question to Goethe's later works on natural science. He himself says in the explanatory remark already quoted above: "I would like to call the level of insight at that time a comparative, which is urged to express its direction against a superlative that has not yet been reached. One sees the tendency to a kind of pantheism, in that an inscrutable, unconditional, humoristic, self-contradictory being is conceived as the basis of world phenomena, and may well be regarded as a game that is bitterly serious.

The fulfillment that it lacks, however, is the view of the two great driving wheels of nature: the concept of polarity and of increase, the former belonging to matter insofar as we think of it materially, the latter to it insofar as we think of it spiritually."

Goethe's scientific development presents itself to closer scrutiny as a progressive shaping of the maxims expressed in the essay "Nature". These propositions set out the general requirements according to which thinking must proceed in the exploration of particular areas of nature. All natural events correspond to these principles. Goethe later tries to find out how this happens in detail in various areas. The essay in question is a kind of life program that underlies all of Goethe's thinking about nature.

Wherever we start looking at Goethe's research, this is confirmed. In geology, Goethe, independently of other researchers, establishes the principle that the same laws that currently determine the formations taking place on the earth's surface were also valid in past epochs and that they have never suffered a violent interruption through exceptional upheavals and so on. This principle points back to the passage in the fragment: "It (nature) is forever creating new forms; what is there has never been, what was there will not come again - everything is new and yet always the same." "Even the most unnatural is nature. If you can't see it everywhere, you can't see it properly anywhere."

Almost like the plant from the seed, the doctrine of metamorphosis has developed from the following sentences in the fragment: "There is an eternal life, becoming and movement in it, and yet it does not move on. It transforms itself eternally, and there is not a moment of stasis in it." "It seems to have designed everything for individuality and does not care about individuals." "It has few driving forces, but they are never worn out, always effective, always manifold." In the first sentence the beginning of the idea of the transformation of the individual organs of a living being and the progressive development of the same is already made quite clear. One need only compare the following passage from "Metamorphosis" (1790) for proof: "If we look at all forms, especially the organic ones, we find that nowhere is there anything existing, nowhere is there anything at rest or closed off, but rather that everything fluctuates in constant motion." The above sentence on "individuality" is the germ of the idea of the type, which we encounter in Goethe's osteological works. In the "Lectures on the Type" (1796), Goethe says: "We have thus gained the right to assert without fear that all perfect organic natures, among which we see fish, amphibians, birds, mammals and, at the top of the latter, man, are all formed according to one archetype, which only in its very constant parts moves more or less back and forth and is still being formed and reshaped daily through reproduction." But this means nothing other than: nature creates individuals, but all individuality is based on the type; this is what ultimately matters and not the individuals. Indeed, the way in which nature proceeds to create a particular form out of the general form of the type is also indicated in the fragment. This way consists in the fact that one organ or one group of organs is particularly strongly developed, and the other parts of the type have to take a back seat, because nature has only a certain budget for each living being, which it must not exceed. Depending on the development of one or the other part of the type, one or the other form of living being is created. In the essay on the dispute between Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire and Cuvier in the French Academy, Goethe summarizes this rule in the words: "...that domestic nature prescribes for itself a budget, a budget in whose individual chapters it reserves to itself the most complete arbitrariness, but in the main sum remains completely true to itself, in that, if too much has been spent on one side, it deducts it from the other and places itself in the same position in the most decisive way." The fragment contains exactly the same concept: "If it (nature) gives one (a need) more, it is a new source of pleasure; but it soon comes into balance." The following are also two parallel lines of thought. Fragment: "She (nature) is the only artist, from the simplest material to the greatest contrasts"; and in the osteological lectures: "If we consider the various parts of the most perfect animals, which we call mammals, according to that type which has only been established in the most general way, we find that the circle of formation of nature is indeed limited, but that because of the quantity of parts and because of the multiple modifiability, the changes of form become possible to infinity." Even the core point of the theory of metamorphosis, that the infinite diversity of organic beings is based on a single primordial organism, can be found in the idea alluded to in the "Fragment": "Each of its (nature's) works has its own essence, each of its phenomena the most isolated concept, and yet everything is one."

No less remarkable is the fact that the point of view from which Goethe later viewed the deformities of organisms is already taken up in our essay. According to this assumption, the deviation from the normal form of a natural being is not a deviation from the general laws of nature, but only a mode of operation of these laws under special conditions. "Nature forms normally when it gives the rule to innumerable details, determines and conditions them; but the phenomena are abnormal when the details prevail and stand out in an arbitrary, even seemingly random way. But because the two are closely related and both the regulated and the irregular are animated by one spirit, there arises a fluctuation between the normal and the abnormal, because formation and transformation always alternate, so that the abnormal seems to become normal and the normal abnormal." This is the thought from the fragment in a more mature form (the essay to which the sentence belongs was written with regard to Jäger's work "Über die Mißbildung der Gewächse", which appeared in 1814): "Auch das Unnatürlichste ist Natur."

If we disregard Goethe's principles relating specifically to the realm of inorganic nature, we find Goethe's entire thought structure already prefigured in the fragment "Nature". In the general, abstract way in which these ideas are presented here, they appear like the proclamation of a new world view. They can only be ascribed to a spirit that wanted to find its own, new ways of explaining phenomena. The fulfillment of this proclamation is Goethe's special works on scientific subjects. Only here do those general propositions acquire their full value, their real meaning. In fact, we only fully understand them when we see them realized in Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, in his osteological studies and in his geological observations. If we had these latter without the general theoretical principles, we would have to supplement them ourselves. We would have to ask ourselves: how did Goethe conceive of nature as a whole in order to be able to form his own ideas about the plant and animal world? The answer to this question, however, can be given with nothing better and more satisfying than with the contents of the fragment "Nature". Goethe says in the "History of the Theory of Colors": "How anyone thinks about a certain case can only be fully understood when one knows how he thinks at all." We will only fully know what Goethe thought about an individual case in nature when we have learned from the fragment under discussion what views he had about nature in general.

This relationship seems more important than the question of whether the person who wrote the essay provided a direct dictation or a more or less literal report from memory.