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408 the charm of his works is involved in an intellectual process of this type, seeks to apply it to other materials. Instead of trying to arrange the phenomena of Nature under definite conceptions, independent of intuition, he sits down to contemplate them as he would a work of art, complete in itself, and certain to yield up its central idea, sooner or later, to a sufficiently susceptible student. Accordingly, when he sees the skull on the Lido, which suggests to him the vertebral theory of the cranium, he remarks that it serves to revive his old belief, already confirmed by experience, that Nature has no secrets from the attentive observer. So, again, in his first conversation with Schiller on the "Metamorphosis of Plants." To Schiller, as a follower of Kant, the idea is the goal, ever to be sought, but ever unattainable, and therefore never to be exhibited as realized in a phenomenon. Goethe, on the other hand, as a genuine poet, conceives that he finds in the phenomenon the direct expression of the idea. He himself tells us that nothing brought out more sharply the separation between himself and Schiller. This, too, is the secret of his affinity with the natural philosophy of Schelling and Hegel, which likewise proceeds from the assumption that Nature shows us by direct intuition the several steps by which a conception is developed. Hence, too, the ardor with which Hegel and his school defended Goethe's scientific views. Moreover, this view of Nature accounts for the war which Goethe continued to wage against complicated experimental researches. Just as a genuine work of art can not bear retouching by a strange hand, so he would have us believe Nature resists the interference of the experimenter who tortures her and disturbs her; and, in revenge, misleads the impertinent kill-joy by a distorted image of herself.

Accordingly, in his attack upon Newton, he often sneers at spectra, tortured through a number of narrow slits and glasses, and commends the experiments that can be made in the open air under a bright sun, not merely as particularly easy and particularly enchanting, but also as particularly convincing!

We have seen that Goethe rebels against the physical theory just at the point where it gives complete and consistent explanations from principles once accepted. Evidently it is not the insufficiency of the theory to explain individual cases that is a stumbling block to him. He takes offense at the assumption made for the sake of explaining the phenomena, which seem to him so absurd, that he looks upon the interpretation as no interpretation at all. Above all, the idea that white light could be composed of colored light seems to have been quite inconceivable to him; at the very beginning of the controversy, he rails at the disgusting Newtonian white of the natural philosophers, an expression which seems to show that this was the assumption that most annoyed him.

To give some idea of the passionate way in which Goethe, usually so temperate and even courtier-like, attacks Newton, I quote from a few pages of the controversial part of his work the following expressions, which he applies to the propositions of this consummate thinker in physical and astronomical science: "Incredibly impudent"; "mere twaddle"; "ludicrous explanation"; "admirable for school-children in a go-cart"; "but I see nothing will do but lying, and plenty of it."

Thus, in the "Theory of Color," Goethe remains faithful to his principle that Nature must reveal her secrets of her own free will; that she is but the transparent representation of the ideal world. Accordingly, he demands, as a preliminary to the investigation of physical phenomena, that the observed facts shall be so arranged that one explains the other, and that thus we may attain an insight into their connection without ever having to trust to anything but our senses. This demand of his looks most attractive, but is essentially wrong in principle. For a natural phenomenon is not considered in physical science to be fully explained until you have traced it back to the ultimate forces which are concerned in its production and its maintenance. Now, as we can never become cognizant of forces as forces, but only of their effects, we are compelled in every explanation of natural phenomena to leave the sphere of sense, and to pass to things which are not objects of sense, and are defined only by abstract conceptions.

But this step into the region of abstract conceptions, which must necessarily be taken if we wish to penetrate to the causes of phenomena, scares the poet away. In writing a poem he has been accustomed to look, as it were, right into the subject, and to reproduce his intuition without formulating any of the steps that led him to it. And his success is proportionate to the vividness of the intuition. Such is the fashion in which he would have Nature attacked. But the natural philosopher insists on transporting him into a world of invisible atoms and movements, of attractive and repulsive forces, whose intricate actions and reactions, though governed by strict laws, can scarcely be taken in at a glance. To him the impressions of sense are not an