DOROTHEA KUHN

GOETHE'S RELATIONSHIP TO THE THEORIES OF

DEVELOPMENT OF HIS TIME*

Having to deal with just one problem out of the vast spectrum of
Goethe's works, of which those concerning the natural sciences represent again only a small part, calls for some explanation.
Goethe himself would certainly be pleased with the attention given
to those of his thoughts and works devoted to the natural sciences, for
during his lifetime they did not receive the understanding and respect
for which he had hoped. Indeed, even if one could hope that Goethe
would applaud at least one's good intentions, it is still rather a difficult
task to discuss his scientific studies and ideas.
First of all, there is the purely quantitative problem: his own writings
in the natural sciences are amazingly extensive. The voluminous edition
being published by the German Academy of Natural Scientists
[Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher], Leopoldina and called, therefore, the Leopoldina edition, contains eleven weighty volumes of texts.
This edition had been planned almost half a century ago. The work was
begun forty years ago by the late Wilhelm Troll and Karl Lothar Wolf
with the assistance of Gunter Schmid and Rupprecht Matthaei. Today,
Wolf von Engelhardt and I, as editors, together with several colleagues,
continue work on the edition. In addition to the eleven volumes of texts
there will now be a number of volumes of commentary, five of which
have already been published. These supplemental volumes will contain
not only commentary but also Goethe's own working notes on which
they are based: notes on books which he read, subjects he had reflected
on, objects he had observed. His outlines for essays are printed there,
as are the drafts to his scientific writings, i.e. material that had remained
among Goethe's papers in the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar.
Additionally, these volumes of commentary in the Leopoldina
edition include Goethe's remarks on scientific topics from his diaries,
letters, and autobiographical writings, as well as the pertinent comments
by Goethe's contemporaries and letters addressed to Goethe: conversations, reviews, and the like.
Endless sources and references are presented. It is not enough that
there is this much material by and addressed to Goethe. In 1940 when
3
F. Amrine, F. 1. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-appraisal, 3-15.

DOROTHEA KUHN

Gunter Schmid compiled his bibliography there were already more than
4,500 titles of literature about Goethe as a natural scientist. In the
meantime the 5,000th title has probably long since been passed.
Aside from the sheer quantity, the diversity of its content and its
interpretation is also intimidating. Is there anything left to be said on
this topic? In the 150 years,since Goethe's death one would think that
all of the problems should have been solved long ago. Only the fact that
there are still open questions and controversies, and that the history of
science offers new perspectives for solutions, encourages a contribution
concerning the question of the theories of evolution at the time of
Goethe.
The question of Goethe's position regarding the theories of evolution
in his day is being answered in very different and even controversial
ways. On the one hand, it is said that Goethe had ignored the question
of evolution in so far as it went beyond individual development. His
concept of type had been a rigid idea; the morphological method had
been an idealistic morphology and, therefore, far from evolutionary
concepts of a more general nature. On the other hand, Goethe has
repeatedly been regarded as the precursor of Darwin's theory of
evolution and as the prophet of the notion of actual descent. All
possible variations occur between these extremes.
I would like to try to take a position on this based on my work with
the Leopoldina edition. Working with Goethe's material and with the
references by him and his contemporaries has inspired me to reflect on
the connections between Goethe's perceptions and those current in his
time, and to assess their place in the process of the history of science.
In doing so, I will limit the scope of this paper by choosing examples
only from my field of research; namely, the history of biology. I must
omit the equally interesting problems of development in the geosciences.
I will explore three questions. First, what was the young Goethe's
attitude toward natural history? Then, which theories of evolution did
he encounter? And, finally, how did he perceive them and integrate
them into his own perceptions of the natural sciences?
Quotations and bibliographical references can be found in Volume
9A of the commentary of the Leopoldina edition (Weimar, 1977).
The first question which comes to mind is how did Goethe, the
urbanite, the student of law, the writer, poet, painter, but also the
administrator and minister in Weimar, happen to immerse himself in
research of the natural sciences?

GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

During his childhood he heard very little about the study of nature.
His notebooks list plants and animals by their Latin names. In Latin
and German he wrote that there is nothing more beautiful than nature
with its flowers, herbs, berries, stones, and minerals because the hand
of the Lord, God's hand, had brought it all forth. Even such general
statements appear in the context of vocabulary and translation exercises. They have little to do with 'contemplation' [Anschauung] of
nature. In no way do they deal with scientific concerns.
Yet, the association of nature with God reminds one of an incident
which Goethe related in his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit
[Poetry and Truth]. The boy erected an altar to nature on his father's
music stand with pieces from his mineral collection because he wanted
to make an offering to God as the creator of nature by burning incense.
As a student in Leipzig and Strassburg, Goethe had attended
lectures in physics and anatomy. He was also engaged in a discussion
with students of medicine about specific and general questions of
nature. When the students came upon the Systeme de la Nature by
Baron Holbach, they expected a vivid depiction of nature as a whole.
They wanted to know something about its interconnections and were
disappointed by the mechanistic view of nature of this French materialist who described nature as a machine. Goethe spoke in Dichtung und
Wahrheit of Holbach's 'atheistic halfnight' and of the insipid, senile, and
deathlike style and content of the book which aroused his opposition in
every way and which even drove him, so he said, away from French
literature to Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's work, then, Goethe discovered the question of genius and of the creative spirit of man, and
this question guided him back to creation in nature.
He studied the views of nature by the three great natural scientists of
the eighteenth century, Carl von Linne, Georges Buffon, and Albrecht
von Haller, who were all born in the year 1707.
Linne's classification system fascinated Goethe. This great and
consistent system was an ordered depiction of nature, even though, at
first, Goethe could not make it come alive within the conceptualization
and nomenclature employing the criteria of separate parts of natural
objects in their artificial order. Goethe struggled for a time with Linne,
now in acceptance, now in opposition, and he even named Linne's
works, with those of Spinoza and Shakespeare, among the ones that
had the greatest influence and effect on him. Linne's Fundamenta
botanica was among the few books which Goethe took with him to
Italy.

DOROTHEA KUHN

Buffon's famous representation of nature which began to appear in

1749 (the year of Goethe's birth) imparts a vivid picture of nature,
particularly of the animals, of their bodily structure, but also of their
habits. Throughout his life Goethe was intrigued by Buffon's sketch of a
self-creating nature, with his theory of germs which preserve the species
of the prototype in a mold (moule) during procreation, and his
assumption of a simple and general design or pattern of the forms
(dessin primitiJ et general). He saw in Buffon a kind of precursor of his
own typology.
Finally, also Haller's views of nature as God's creation ordered in
steps, with man at the top leading down past the animals, the plants to
the minerals and to the realm of elements, inspired Goethe, even
though, later, he perceived the gradual order starting with man as
wrong. Also, he acknowledged, with interest, Haller's views on the
forces of nature which formed the basis of the physiology of his time.
All these models and visions of order, being and action of nature,
which were at once dependent upon each other and opposed to each
other, entered into the young Goethe's perception of nature. In the true
spirit of Storm-and-Stress, he designed a picture of nature as a
powerful, yet harmonically ordered force. He spoke of nature as force
engulfing force, or as a resounding whole, in living, acting harmonic
song, in which force consumes force, and force enhances force, ever
changing, ever constant, such as in his early play, Sa tyros.
This last phrase should be remembered - ever changing, ever
constant. This is important within Goethe's concept of nature as the
whole of creation, a persistent and yet renewed contemplation of
nature. Thus nature is simultaneously constant and changing.
This stands in opposition to the common eighteenth-century view of
nature as a mechanical cause-and-effect model which one perceived
as a mechanism of a clock running rhythmically on its own power,
driven by physical and chemical forces. Such perceptions, which since
Descartes explained the world and, with it, all living things as functioning interdependently, were current at the end of the eighteenth
century. When combined with a belief in Biblical creation, they
excluded further development once the process of creation had been
concluded. The early writings by Linne which were known to Goethe,
as well as those by Haller, Bonnet, and Spallanzani, to name but a few,
reflected concepts of nature which were bound to such models.
In this mechanistic model creatures have to be thought of as germs

GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

hidden invisibly in the egg or sperm created in the beginning by God.

According to Buffon, these germs not only receive their pattern in a
mold, but contain all the qualities of their species for all generations, as
if wrapped one inside the other, and out of whose growth and enlargement all representatives of the same species have originated. Therefore,
all development consists only in 'the growth of the already complete and
pre-formed germ. In this connection one speaks not only of preformation and of encapsulation (Einschachtelung; because the germs
are located within each other and develop from generation to generation consecutively), but also of evolution.
Evolution in this sense, however, is only the development of the
individual in the sequence of generations and has nothing to do with the
origin of the species [stammesgeschichtliche Dezendenz der Arten] as it
was defined in the nineteenth century. Pre-formation encapsulation, and
evolution in the eighteenth-century sense are directly contrary to a
theory of origin or real descent [reale Abstammung] with species
change.
The theory of pre-formation in this very strict form poses problems
which could no longer be simply ignored by the end of the eighteenth
century. It is impossible to imagine how crossbreeds or bastard forms
are possible; nor can one imagine how variations occur by changes in
environmental conditions, food, or climate, for example, or how a lost
or severed part of the body could be replaced. Everywhere such experiments were made with polyps which were regarded as the link between
plant and animal. One avoided these problems by using alternate
concepts for germs, for body parts, or for special male and female
germs. The pre-formation theory was, thus, in a state of flux. A further
problem arose from the notion of abiogenesis, life beginning from
inanimate matter, which was unthinkable given the condition of preformation and yet was, seemingly, proven.
Were not infusoria generated from clear well water, insects from
dust and dirt and even larger animals, like mice, from dirty laundry?
The notion of abiogenesis was argued far into the second half of the
nineteenth century.
If the notion of pre-formation persisted in spite of all other arguments, then the reason for the similarity of organisms which was
observed more and more with increasing knowledge of nature could
only be comprehended in the plan of the creator who had equipped
each germ with these similarities and who had provided that the entire

DOROTHEA KUHN

structure of the nature-machine fit together and functioned. Given this

notion of the germ as perfected in creation, a plan of similarities and
interdependent operations in nature, the natural scientist was confronted with the task of discovering and tracing the blueprint of this
plan. Already since the time of Aristotle and then again since Leibniz,
opinion held that natural things and organisms could be lined up in
gradual, successive steps. Since this opinion was reinforced by experience, the comparative method was employed to construct just such a
series of steps or chain of being. Albrecht von Haller's descending
gradation beginning with man has already been mentioned. More
comprehensible was the idea of ascending gradation presented by
Charles Bonnet (who, like Haller, was Swiss) in his Contemplation of
Nature of 1764.
He started with matter in its aggregate state, i.e. as a gas, a liquid,
and a solid; lifeless and inorganic objects such as soils, metals, stones,
and crystals, followed by plants as organic inanimate and animals as
organic animate beings. Organisms are then ordered according to the
perfection of their structure, i.e. by their forms, but also by the
perfection of their functions. Bonnet judged the functioning and the
determination of their place in successive gradation by way of comparison with machines. The more complicated a creature's functions,
that is, the more varied the parts in his machine, the higher is its state of
perfection. According to this scale, man succeeds plants and animals as
a highly differentiated, organic, animated, and reasoning being whose
spirit Bonnet spoke of, again, as a "small etheric machine." Yet, above
man, Bonnet placed the angels as pure spirits. As the "most beautiful
link" of the chain they remain invisible, as invisible as God, with whom
the chain is concluded. This image of a series of steps thus offers the
possibility of adding even the creator in the whole of nature.
Goethe, who had visited Bonnet in Geneva in 1779, and who knew
his works well, criticized "seeming comprehensibility" [scheinbare
Faj3lichkeit]. Above all, however, he critized Bonnet's theory of preformation. He examined infusoria on his own and could not perceive
and invisible pre-formation. He also believed that he could observe
newly developing life, even the metamorphosis of different infusoria,
which would have contradicted Bonnet's theories of pre-formation.
In principle, Goethe did not object to the idea of a gradated order of
nature with which he had been brought up, though he assumed greater
intervals between each of the realms of stones, plants, and animals. The

GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

succession of similar phenomena in nature was as illuminating to him as

it was to most of his contemporaries, and, indeed corresponds to
Goethe's own fundamental idea of change and constancy in nature
found, as we observed earlier, in the series of gradations and on
individual levels, respectively. The principle that constant qualities can
be compared and that those elements with the ability to change can be
perfected enters into Goethe's idea of nature as the prerequisite for the
construction of nature.
Research concerning the diversity of nature was making rapid
progress during that time, and the increase in observations together
with extended insights into classification and anatomy demanded
further methods of ordering within natural history. In this context,
comparison in a gradated series of beings assumes special value
and significance. Using the comparative method, Goethe took his first
steps into research of nature in 1775. In a chapter of Lavater's
Physiognomische Fragmente [Physiognomic Fragments], he compared
the skulls of animals to each other and to those of man (according to
illustrations by Buffon), in an attempt to characterize their different
qualities as linked to physical appearance.
In his essay, Goethe explains:
The genetic difference between man and animal already distinguishes itself vividly in
the bone structure ... How the whole body serves as the pillar to the vault in which
heaven is to be reflected! How our skull rises and rounds itself like the sky above us to
allow the pure image of the eternal spheres to circle within it!

The above-mentioned criteria for the view of nature of Goethe's time

can be found in this picture, namely in the circling spheres, the model
of the nature-machine, and in the human skull, rising to the sky, its sign
of perfection or perfectibility. From this position Goethe then observed
and described what is changeable in the difference between the animal
skull and that of man and in the differences in the bone structure of
animals. He described the following characters: the gentleness of the
ruminant, the cruelty of the rodent, the fastidiousness of the cat, the
intelligence, power, and tact of the elephant, and so on. These are still
purely anthropomorphic characteristics, but already Goethe also recognized the relation of the skull structure to the lifestyle of the animals
and that led to intensive studies of the intermaxillary bone.
Meanwhile, after his move to Weimar, where parks and gardens had
brought him close to nature, as did his duties with the waterways and

10

DOROTHEA KUHN

roads, in forests and mines, he had dealt more intensively with the
natural sciences. In Jena he attended lectures on anatomy and seminars
on dissection by the anatomist Justus Christian Loder. In the Weimar
school of drawing he gave instruction in anatomy himself in order to
further his knowledge. There, he traced the structure and function of
the intermaxillary bone which in vertebrates holds the incisors in the
upper jaw. Convinced of the existe~ce of a general design, he insisted
on the presence of this bone in man too. Among contemporary
anatomists he encountered the opinion that man differed from the
animals, and especially from the monkey, precisely on account of that
missing intermaxillary bone. He did not rely on the contradictory
literature on anatomy and on its prejudice that man's ability for
language depended on the very absense of just that bone. He dissected
on his own and had prepared specimens sent to him: the skull of a
giraffe from Darmstadt, the skull of an elephant from Kassel; others
were available to him in Jena. He also conducted comparative studies.
After he arrived at the now well-known result, that man "like the other
animals" had an intermaxillary bone, he wrote to Knebel on November
17, 1784 about the conclusion he had drawn from his discovery,
namely that one "cannot find the difference between man and animal in
any specific detail. Rather, man is most closely related to the animals."
That similarity which was consistent throughout the chain of being
confirmed for him the fact of the consistency and harmony of nature,
the accordance of the whole of nature which assigns as identity to every
creature in its place within the whole order, to man as well as to every
other creature.
Goethe expressed his great satisfaction with his discovery even more
vividly when he wrote to Herder on May 24, 1784: "I finally found not gold or silver, but something that gives me boundless pleasure the os intermaxillare in man. It should please you greatly as well,
because it is the final link to man. It is not missing; it is there too!"
With those words, Goethe was referring to Herder's work on the
Ideas Concerning the Philosophy of the History of Mankind [Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit], which began with a history
of nature, and in which Goethe actively participated. The Ideas offer a
world view [Weltbild] which is based, in every phase of the history of
nature and culture, on a differentiated theory of gradation. Herder's
thought on the 'gradation of organization,' or, as he also put it, the
"series of rising forms and forces," which is developed in the Ideas, led

GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

11

him away from the idea of species as being predetermined in germs. He

states (and he probably had to state it being the theologian he was) that
no new forms were generated after the doors of creation had been
closed, but that the created forms vary and transform themselves, and
that the organisational force of nature is the "guide to a higher
development of the forms." Herder observed a principal form, a
prototype of beings, which is infinitely variable. Thus, he left the theory
of pre-formation behind and turned to Buffon's molds and prototype,
as well as to the teachings of Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach who, in place of pre-formation, assumed a
general Bildungstrieb [formation-drive] in nature which allowed variability as well as growth without pre-cast forms through the incorporation of additional matter - a view which is termed epigenesis in
contrast and opposition to pre-formation or evolution. A time component becomes apparent here which the historian Herder introduced
into the gradation of "self-perfecting beings." But Herder's ambivalent
expression, perhaps also his indecision concerning these views of
nature, which he characterized not only as emanation of God, but as
functioning machine, or gradation, as well as organism, led Kant to
remark in his sagacious review of the Ideas that a gradation of
organisms was 'meaningful only if one were to assume a relation
between beings in which "all were derived from an original species or,
perhaps, from a single creative womb," if, indeed, they actually
descended from one another. But that, said Kant, would lead to
conclusions so ominous that reason shudders to think of them, and
such conclusions should not be attributed to Herder without being
unjust. Kant, then, had realized that Herder had offered a first step
toward a theory of descent and he reproached Herder for it. They had
reached a barrier, a limit to thinking. What had led Goethe and Herder
to this limit was their observation of changeability and motion in
nature. It was their view that nature as a whole acts like a being, i.e. as
an organism, which includes the idea of development, procreation, selfregulation and the reproductive ability of nature. It coincides with
Goethe's belief in nature as a harmonic entity which is in itself
changeable and, at the same time, constant. It was with these views that
Goethe now observed nature on his trip to Italy. Already while crossing
the Brenner pass he contemplated the creation of the world and drafted
a model of the earth and the atmosphere as a pulsating, oscillating
whole, into which he gradually integrated descriptions of clouds,

12

DOROTHEA KUHN

mountains, plants, animals, and men. However, it did not develop into a
clearly defined concept. He observed especially the changeability of the
species in the alpine and maritime environments, and in the luxuriousness and multiplicity of the southern flora he searched for his Urp[lanze
[archetypal plant]. But since he only expressed himself regarding the
Urp[lanze in letters and autobiographical writings, and while admitting
that he had not found it, he never described in detail what he had
envisioned by such a plant. The Urp[lanze is often understood as a
simplification which could stand at the beginning of the descent of a
species [Stammesentwicklung].
Analogous to the concept of the intermaxillary bone it can be
assumed, however, that Goethe was looking for a generalization which
could represent the realm of plants in its place in the overall order of
nature. As Goethe later stated, a plant could be seen as a symbol for
the entire plant world. Genetic, even morphogenetic [realgenetisch]
concepts were touched upon when Herder spoke of gradation by steps,
or when Goethe spoke of relationship [Verwandtschaftl and the chain
of being. "If we had a sense to see the primal forms and the first germs
of things, then we could possibly perceive in the smallest point the
whole progression of the entire creation," says Herder in the Ideas. At
the same time, Goethe reflected on creatures which 'develop' from the
primal beginnings of the 'water-earth' [Wassererde] to land and air
inhabitants. A letter by Charlotte von Stein of May 1, 1784 to Knebel
relates to this, wherein she wrote: "Herder's latest writing makes it
probable that we were first plants and animals; what nature will make
of us will remain unknown to us: Goethe expends much profound
thought on these things."
At this point, it is difficult for our later scientific thinking to refrain
from postulating morphogenesis [Realgenese],which seems to be hinted
at everywhere. We find traces of genetic conceptions which were,
already in Buffon's molds, pre-formed to his 'dessin primitif et general'
as the foundations of a primal form, and which Herder used in terms of
the prototype (also used by Robinet) or the main form. In Goethe's
writings, the terms development and relation appear. But nowhere did
he leap into a theory of descent. On the one hand, the barrier of
Christian dogma must have been too prohibitive. Buffon's difficulties
with church censorship when he saw nature and not God as the acting
force are well known. Herder, as a theologian, avoided such difficulties
from the start by emphasizing in his introduction that he always meant

GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

13

God even if he spoke of active nature. On the other hand, knowledge of

biology was too narrow, and thinking was directed, first of all, by using
comparison to find singular units within the multiplicity of nature.
Goethe noted the great difficulty in determining the type of a whole
class in general,
such that it fit every genus and every species, since nature can produce its genera and
species only because type, which is prescribed to it by eternal necessity, is such a
proteus that it escapes the keenest of the comparing senses and can scarcely be caught
in part, and even then, only by contradictions.

He avoided these difficulties by dismissing them. Upon his return

from Italy he once again confronted the question of pre-formation and
even though he called the encapsulation theory absurd he noted that
one could not do without certain conceptions of predetermined forms.
However, none of these notes and thoughts can be found in his publications. There he dealt only with the development of the individual. He
described it in The Metamorphosis of Plants [Die Metamorphose der
Pflanzen] which he published in 1790. There is no mention of the
Urpflanze. The constant is the species of the plant with its specific
properties; even abnormal or induced malformations are still subject to
the laws of formation. However everything has mobility and flexibility
within this regular formation gnd re-formation. Even the principle of
the type among animals rests on consistency, on conformity of their
parts, their constant relation of position, and on the ability to retain that
which has become reality. This is now contrasted with the ability to
change the form, which, given its variability, guarantees the multiplicity
of creatures. Goethe spoke of a balance between these two formulations, not, however, of the deductions, reasons or causes involved.
Goethe thought himself a realist, an empiricist, and he avoided the
formulating of hypotheses. Under Schiller's and Schelling's influence,
primal form and type gained philosophical significance and the science
of form became, like 'morphology,' the mode of observation which
teaches one to see the congruent whole of animated nature 'with the
eyes of the mind,' and which, in tum, enables the natural scientist to
recognize the hidden blueprint with its laws of form. With regard to
actual descent, Schelling stated in 1799, at a time of close collaboration with Goethe: "the assertion that, indeed, the different organisms
had been formed by gradually developing one from the other is the
misunderstanding of an idea. Each product which appears fixed to us

14

DOROTHEA KUHN

has been started by nature from the beginning, that is, with an entirely
new plan." Goethe himself took as his point of departure what he found
in nature and in literature. But those names which, for us, are connected with the theories of descent, such as de Maillet, or Robinet, or
Lamarck, do not appear among his extensive writings. It appears as if
after his travels to Italy he. totally abandoned his approach to an actual
concept of descent which he had worked out earlier along with Herder.
In a sketch of 'genetic treatment' in the natural sciences Goethe
noted that he would like to observe the development of an individual in
the smallest possible intervals, in order, finally, to be able to recognize
not just the single phases of development, but, rather, the development
itself, which is a sort of integral method. This means that he could
represent as a whole that which had been developed by steps in time
[das zeitlich nacheinander Entstehende], which he then called the ideal
whole. This kind of genetic observation is connected only to actual
descent in so far as Goethe included in the total picture what he had
found earlier by comparing and observing development and relationship. The type, then, contains the development. With this, however, he
was not pursuing the question of descent, but, rather, the question of
appearance, of the phenomenon.
Goethe. maintained this point of view, which he had already reached
before the turn of the century, even if ~here do exist later remarks by
him, especially in an exchange of ideas with d'Alton, Carus, and Ernst
Meyer, which presuppose polygenesis as being self-evident in terms of
the limited boundaries in the relationships between plants and animals.
Among Goethe's papers there is an article by the Jena botanist,
Friedrich Siegmund Voigt, with whom Goethe had often worked. In
1816 Voigt had written a paper about the colors of plants in connection with Goethe's color theory. In it he included a paragraph in which
he states that plants could not have stemmed from the hand of God as
they appear today, but, rather, that simpler forms had been created and
that then a further development took place up to our current species.
Goethe crossed out this paragraph and took pains to rewrite the
surrounding text so that everything would fit back together. He did this
possibly just because, in his judgment, this excursion did not seem to fit
in with the explanations concerning the colors of plants, or, then again,
possibly because of fundamental disagreement. In any case, Voigt
emphasized in his next work, the Fundamentals of a Natural History
[Grundziige einer Naturgeschichte] of 1817, that those cosmogonies are

GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

15

wrong which are based on the idea that gradual developments create
organisms by descent. He also criticized works from de Maillet to
Lamarck, and took a stand against a continuous change or a gradual
degeneration of organisms.
What speaks even more clearly against Goethe's participation in
phylogenetic thinking is the fact that he, as intensely involved in the
debate of the two French anatomists Cuvier and Geoffroy de SaintHilaire as he was, and to whom he dedicated his last publication in
1832, did not discuss that part of the debate which concerned the
development of the species of animals, but adhered strictly to questions
of structure and type.
For part of the way in his investigative journey in the natural
sciences Goethe had followed the paths of contemporary theorists of
development. He had integrated these thoughts into his own ideas of
type. Therefore, one cannot say that type was a mere idea and
morphology only an idealistic morphology. However, the ideas of actual
descent, as developed by Darwin, were still blocked by barriers which
were difficult to overcome for Goethe and his contemporaries, and
Goethe was not interested in surmounting them. He let this problem
remain an enigma. In 1826 in a letter to Carl Gustav Carus he wrote,
"of a secret, according to which nothing originates except what has
already been announced, and that prediction becomes clear only
through the result, as does prophecy through fulfillment."
NOTE

Translated from the German by Frauke von der Horst, with the financial assistance
of the Goethe Institute, San Francisco. Originally presented at the symposium 'Goethe
as a Scientist' held at the University of California at Los Angeles and the California
Institute of Technology, 12-13 April 1982, and initially published in the Journal of
Social and Biological Structures 7 (1984)307-324; 345-356. It appears with the
kind permission of the editors of JSBS.

Schiller-Nationalmuseum
D-7142 Marbach am Neckar
B.R.D.lFederal Republic of Germany