Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 1.djvu/21

Rh him through life, and enabled him by the aid of his imagination to make his discoveries relating to the morphology of plants and animals which, in a way, anticipated the theories of Darwin. At the same time, the contempt which he even here shows for "library knowledge" and merely academic diplomas, grew into its corollary, a distrust of other scientific men. Such stalwart independence, when misdirected, leads often to error; hence it was that Goethe’s famous theory of colour, supported as it was by very plausible arguments, but based on false premises, was the result of his working by himself, satisfied with his notion that truth is simple, and the road to it straight and narrow. Though never accepted by the scientific men of his day, and now known to be fallacious, the Farbenlehre and the lesson of his advocacy of it are just as instructive as if it, like his new theories in osteology and botany, had been sound.

His early bent toward scientific study took the same general direction; it was led along the same path of which he makes mention in the letter to Friederike Oeser. Her father, A. F. Oeser, of whom he took lessons in drawing and painting, had taught him to find beauty in simplicity and directness.

Before he was fifteen, his acquaintance with a painter who applied his art to the manufacture of oilcloth brought about a practical familiarity with the process. When he was about the same age he got interested in the manufacture of jewelry, and acquired a considerable knowledge of precious stones. He had the acquisitive faculty largely developed, and his precocity made him a welcome companion to his elders.

He would gladly have been an artist, but his genius forbade that. He failed in the ability to express himself in terms of colour, but his art studies and his assiduous practice in Italy had their effect on his development. "Every man is led and misled in a way peculiar to himself," said Goethe, and his whole career is illustrative of that commonplace. Given the soil and the seeds, the garden is certain to produce something.

Goethe had the dramatic gift, and very early began to