^{page 651 *} Beginning and end of this study were presented as a paper at the Sixth Triennial Congress of the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures and have since been published in its Proceedings, Literature and Science (Oxford, Blackwell, 1955), pp. 216–221.

¹ Goethe on Human Creatiteness and Other Goethe Essays, ed. Rolf King (Athens, Ga., 1950), p. 247. Abbreviations hereafter used: JA = Goelhes SämtlicheWerke, Jubiläums-Ausgabe (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, n.d. [1902–1907]); MR = Goethe, Maximen und Refiexionen, ed. Günther Müller, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 1949).

² Some of Goethe's discoveries, notably that of the intermaxillary bone in man, had actually been made before his time. His essays, “Meteore des literarischen Himmels” (JA, xxxix, 37–43) and “Erfinden und Entdecken” (JA, xxxix, 44–46), discuss the question of priority.

³ “Die Goethe'sche und die Newton'sche Farbenlehre im Lichte der modernen Physik,” Geist der Zeit, xix (1941), 270.

⁴ (Zurich, 1950), pp. 37, 39. Cf. Karl Viëtor, Goethe: Dichtung, Wissenschaft, Weltbild (Bern, 1949), pp. 395–399.

⁵ The translation is Barker Fairley's (A Study of Goethe, Oxford, 1947, p. 197). Goethe spoke in similar terms in a letter to Charlotte von Stein of 10 July 1786: “What pleases me most at present is plant-life. … The whole gigantic kingdom becomes so simple that I can see at once the answers to the most difficult problems. … And it is no dream or fancy; I am beginning to grow aware of the essential form with which, as it were, Nature always plays, and from which she produces her great variety. Had I the time in this brief span of life I am confident I could extend it to all the realms of Nature—the whole realm” (translation taken from R. D. Gray, Goethe the Alchemist, Cambridge, 19S2, pp. 62 f.).

⁶ Physiologische Bemerkungen (1829), JA, xxxrx, 102; quoted by Fischer, p. 36. Cf. below, p. 663, n. 16a.

⁷ H. Henel, “Goethe und die Naturwissenschaft,” JEGP, XLVIII (1949), 521, n. 50. See also MR, Nos. 993 and 1258.

⁸ Goethe's text is not entirely clear in this place. “Likewise” seems to refer to the groups just mentioned.

⁹ The MS. is dated 28 April 1792. It was sent to Schiller in 1798, but the essay was not published until 1823.

¹⁰ See, e.g., Ernst Cassirer, “Goethe und die mathematische Physik,” Idee und Gestalt, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1924), pp. 44, 63, 78.

¹¹ To disabuse unsuspecting readers of the notion that they may safely read Goethe in translation, I will quote the German text followed by Eastlake's translation: “Was ferner die Ordnung der Kapitel überhaupt betrifft, so mag man bedenken, daß selbst verwandte Naturphänomene in keiner eigentlichen Folge oder stetigen Reihe sich aneinanderschließen, sondern daß sie durch Tätigkeiten hervorgebracht werden, welche verschränkt wirken, so daß es gewissermafien gleichgültig ist, was für eine Erscheinung man zuerst und was für eine man zuletzt betrachtet, weil es doch nur darauf ankommt, dafi man sich aile möglichst vergegenwärtige, um sie zuletzt unter einem Gesichtspunkt, teils nach ihrer Natur, teils nach Menschenweise und Bequemlichkeit, zusammenzufassen.”—“With respect to the order of the chapters, it should be remembered that natural phenomena, which are even allied to each other, are not connected in any particular sequence or constant series; their efficient causes act in a narrow circle, so that it is in some sort indifferent what phenomenon is first or last considered; the main point is, that all should be as far as possible present to us, in order that we may embrace them at last from one point of view, partly according to their nature, partly according to generally received methods” (Goethe's Theory of Colours, tr. Charles L. Eastlake, London, 1840, pp. 151 f.).

¹² Henel, “Goethe und die Naturwissenschaft,” pp. 514 f.; “Der junge Goethe,” Monatshefte, xli (1949), 155–157.

¹³ Einleitung, Farbenlehre, ed. H. Wohlbold (Jena, 1928), p. 212.

¹⁴ Der Verfasser leilt die Geschichte seiner botanischen Stuiien mit Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Morphologische Schriften, ed. W. Troll, Jena [1932], pp. 201 f.); cf. Italienische Reise, 17 April and 17 May 1787; also “Bericht,” July, 1787.—Bedeuiende Fördernis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort (ed. Troll, pp. 293, 471).—Materialmen zur Geschichte der Farbenléhre, “Konfession des Verfassers” (ed. Wohlbold, p. 480).

¹⁵ “Einleitendes und Allgemeines,” Versuch einer Witterungslehre, Weimar ed., Part ii, Vol. xii, 74; quoted by G. Müller, MR, p. lxvi, and by E. L. Stahl, “The Genesis of Symbolist Theories in Germany,” MLR, XLI (1946), 307.

¹⁶ Viëtor (pp. 396, 545) and Millier (pp. lxvi-lxviii) came to the same conclusion. 16a See above, p. 655, n. 6.

¹⁷ There is, to be sure, an alternative to the modest and, if one will, skeptical interpretation of the term proto-phenomenon which we have proposed. This alternative—it is the only one open to those unwilling simply to repeat the term in pious wonder—is to say that “Urphänomen” in the Theory of Colors means the basic opposition between light and darkness itself. A number of distinguished scholars, Karl Vië'tor among them, have in fact adopted this alternative, but if their interpretation saves Goethe's concept, it accuses him, implicitly at least, of an extraordinarily loose use of the language. For even if light and darkness might conceivably be thought of as phenomena, their opposition is not a phenomenon, because it cannot be observed. Moreover, those who took this view realized quite clearly that it makes the terms proto-phenomenon and type mean virtually the same thing. They declared that the proto-phenomenon has the same function in Goethe's physics that the type has in his biology. Now the type is not a phenomenon; it is an idea. Only during the earliest stages of his biological studies did Goethe search for an actual “Urpflanze,” a primal plant or proto-plant. Not a trace is left of the “Urpflanze” concept in The Metamorphosis of Plants of 1790, and if he did cherish a lingering hope of finding the proto-plant in an actual botanical specimen, he was finally disabused of this hope by Schiller in their famous conversation of 20 July 1794. The proto-phenomenon, on the other hand, is definitely a phenomenon and not an idea. This is not only implied by the term which Goethe coined, but it is also confirmed by the definitions of it which he gave. Goethe's argument in the Theory of Colors is as clear as it is novel and challenging: he asserts that the phenomena carry their own explanations with them, and that the explanations can be found in phenomena of a special kind—the proto-phenomena. This argument becomes meaningless if we assume that Goethe said “phenomenon” but meant “idea,” because there would be nothing new in the assertion that the observation of phenomena can give rise to ideas. It is preferable, I think, to believe that Goethe was mistaken than to believe that he uttered platitudes.

¹⁸ See my “Goethe und die Naturwissenschaft,” p. 508, n. 2.

¹⁹ Bedeutende Fordernis (1823), JA, xxxrx, 48. Significantly, Goethe says in this passage that his earlier essay, “Der Versuch als Vermittler,” is a particularly clear revelation both of himself and of his methods in the study of nature (see p. 659, above). Goethe also reversed the idea: just as a man's character is revealed through his attitude toward nature, so he discovers who he is through observation of the world outside. Discovery Goethe defines as “becoming aware of one's inward self on the occasion of an external phenomenon,” and he adds: “Man gains certainty of his own nature through recognizing that the nature outside is like him, is governed by laws” (JA, xxxix, 38; cf. JA, xxxix, 49).

²⁰ MR, No. 486. The translation is R. D. Gray's (p. 96).

²¹ In the letter to Schiller already mentioned (p. 663, above), Goethe speaks of “the conflict… between my nature and immediate experience, which in former times I was never able to resolve.” And in Nahirwissenschaftlicher Entwicklungsgang (1821) he admits that he “very soon turned against visible nature,” that he was not born with a sharp sense of sight, and that this gave him (the poet's) ability to see the gracefulness of things (JA, xxxix, 46).

²² One such strain of early ideas was examined recently in R. D. Gray's book, Goethe the Alchemist.

²³ J. P. Eckermann, Gesprache mit Goethe, 19 Feb. 1829, ed. Eduard Castle, i, 259 f. and n, 164. Goethe on his part reacted sharply against the heresies of his pupils. At least one of his poems on color theory is directed against Schopenhauer. See also Gray, p. 113, n. 1.

²⁴ Dichtung und Wahrheit, Book 18 (JA, xxv, 67).

²⁵ Bedeutende Fordernis (JA, xxxix, 48 f.).

²⁶ Günther Müler, Introd. to MR, pp. lxiv f.

²⁷ Ernst Cassirer, p. 58.

²⁸ Cf. MR, No. 895: “In the sciences it is most meritorious to return to the insufficient truths which the ancients possessed, and to improve upon them.”