Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/179

 explains the lively, nay passionate, interest which he took in the dispute between Cuvier and Geoffrey de St. Hilaire in 1830 We gather from it that Goethe, in spite of all his wanderings in the mists of the nature-philosophy of the time, felt a growing need for some clearer insight into the nature of metamorphosis, both in plants and animals, without ever being able to make his way into the clear light.

But these better motions remained without importance for the history of botany; the adherents of his doctrine of metamorphosis all apprehended it in the sense of the nature-philosophy, and Goethe himself did not remonstrate against the frightful way in which it was distorted by them. Its further development therefore was in accordance with the principles of that philosophy, which was accustomed to apply the results of purely idealistic views in an uncritical way to imperfectly observed facts. Above all the difficulty remained unsolved, how the dogma of the constancy of species was to be brought into logical connection with the idea of the metamorphosis of organs. The supranatural, which Elias Fries found in the natural system, subsisted still in the doctrine of metamorphosis in comparing the organs of a plant.

Still more obscure and entirely the product of the nature-philosophy is Goethe's view of the spiral tendency in vegetation. At p. 194 of his essay entitled 'Spiraltendenz der Vegetation' (1831) he says: 'Having fully grasped the idea of metamorphosis we next turn our attention to the vertical tendency, in order to gain a nearer acquaintance with the development of the plant. This tendency must be looked upon as an immaterial staff, which supports the existence. . . . This principle of life (!) manifests itself in the longitudinal fibres which we use as flexible threads for many purposes; it is this which forms the wood in trees, which keeps annual and biennial plants erect, and even produces the extension from node to node