The microscope gave him the confirmation he expected by showing that all the different organs of the plant develop out of identical embryonic beginnings. In his absolute reliance on physical observation, however, he tried to go further than this and to detect in this way the reason why the plant does not always bring forth the same organ. He saw that the vegetative strength in the plant diminishes in proportion as its organism enters upon its later stages. He therefore attributed the differentiated evolution of plant organs from identical beginnings to an ever weaker process of development in them.

⁹ Entdeckung eines trefflichen Vorarbeiters.

Among the essays in which Goethe in later years gave out some of the results of his scientific observation in axiomatic form, is one called 'Intuitive Judgment' ('Anschauende Urteilskraft'), in which he maintains that he has achieved in practice what Kant had declared to be for ever beyond the scope of the human mind. Goethe refers to a passage in the Critique of Judgment, where Kant defines the limits of human cognitional powers as he had observed them in his study of the peculiar nature of the human reason. We must first go briefly into Kant's own exposition of the matter.¹

It is for the same reason that we shall here use the plant for introducing Goethe's method. The following exposition, however, does not aim at rendering in detail Goethe's own botanical researches, expounded by him in two extensive essays, Morphology and The Metamorphosis of Plants, as well as in a series of smaller writings. There are several excellent translations of the chief paper, the Metamorphosis, from which the English-speaking reader can derive sufficient insight into Goethe's way of expressing his ideas; a pleasure as well as a profit which he should not deny himself.

The plant clearly divides into three major parts: firstly, the one that extends from the cotyledons to the calyx, the green part of the plant, that is, where the life principle is most active; secondly, the one comprising the flower itself with the organs of fertilization, where the vitality of the plant gives way to other principles; and lastly, the fruit and seed, which are destined to be discharged from the mother organism. Each of these three contains two kinds of organs: first, organs with the tendency to grow into width-leaf, flower and fruit; second, organs which are outwardly smaller and simpler, but have the function of preparing the decisive leaps in the plant's development: these are the calyx, the stamens, etc., and the seed.

Goethe's observation of the single plant in statu agendi had trained him to recognize things of quite different outer appearance as identical in their inner nature. Leaf, sepal, petal, etc., much as they differ outwardly, yet showed themselves to him as manifestations of one and the same spiritual archetype. His idea of Metamorphosis enabled him to reduce what in outer appearance seems incompatibly different to its common formative principle. His next step was to observe the different appearances of one and the same species in different regions of the earth, and thus to watch the capacity of the species to respond in a completely flexible way to the various climatic conditions, yet without concealing its inner identity in the varying outer forms. His travels in Switzerland and Italy gave him opportunity for such observations, and in the Alpine regions especially he was delighted at the variations in the species which he already knew so well from his home in Weimar. He saw their proportions, the distances between the single parts, the degree of lignification, the intensity of colour, etc., varying with the varied conditions, yet never concealing the identity of the species.

Our observations have reached a point where we may consider that stage in the life cycle of the single plant where, by means of the process of pollination, the seed acquires the capacity to produce out of itself a new example of the species. Our discussion of this will bring home the fundamental difference in idea that arises when, instead of judging a process from the standpoint of the mere onlooker, we try to comprehend it through re-creating it inwardly.

In order that spiritual continuity may be maintained within the coming and going multitude of nature's creations, the physical stream must suffer discontinuity at certain intervals.

Despite his joy in Wolff as someone who in his own fashion had arrived at certain truths which he himself had also discovered, and despite his agreement with Wolff's phenomenalistic principle, Goethe could in no way accept his explanation of why metamorphosis took place in plants. He said: 'In plant metamorphosis Wolff saw how the same organ continuously draws together, makes itself smaller; he did not see that this contraction alternates with an expansion. He saw that the organ diminishes in volume, but not that at the same time it ennobles itself, and so, against reason, he attributed decline to the path towards perfection.' What was it, then, which had prevented Wolff from seeing things aright? 'However admirable may be Wolff's method, through which he has achieved so much, the excellent man never thought that there may be a difference between seeing and seeing, that the eyes of the spirit have to work in perpetual living connection with those of the body, for one otherwise risks seeing and yet seeing past a thing (zu sehen und doch vorbeizusehen).'

Kant distinguishes between two possible forms of reason, the intellectus archetypus and the intellectus ectypus. By the first he means a reason 'which being, not like ours, discursive, but intuitive, proceeds from the synthetic universal (the intuition of the whole as such) to the particular, that is, from the whole to the parts'. According to Kant, such a reason lies outside human possibilities. In contrast to it, the intellectus ectypus peculiar to man is restricted to taking in through the senses the single details of the world as such; with these it can certainly construct pictures of their totalities, but these pictures never have more than a hypothetical character and can claim no reality for themselves. Above all, it is not given to such a thinking to think 'wholes' in such a way that through an act of thought alone the single items contained in them can be conceived as parts springing from them by necessity. (To illustrate this, we may say that, according to Kant, we can certainly comprehend the parts of an organism, say of a plant, and out of its components make a picture of the plant as a whole; but we are not in a position to think that 'whole' of the plant which conditions the existence of its organism and brings forth its parts by necessity.) Kant expresses this in the following way: