'Thus not through an extraordinary spiritual gift, not through momentary inspiration, unexpected and unique, but through consistent work did I eventually achieve such satisfactory results.' These words of Goethe - they occur in his essay, History of my Botanical Studies, which he wrote in later life as an account of his labours in this field of science - show how anxious he was that it should be rightly understood that the faculty of reading in the Book of Nature, as he knew it, was the result of a systematic training of his mind. It is important for our further studies to make clear to ourselves at this point the nature of the change which man must bring to pass within himself in order to brave Kant's 'adventure of reason'. Goethe's concept for the newly acquired faculty of cognition, exact sensorial fantasy, can give us the lead.