his book met with the same fate as the phrase of Linnæus-it

was neglected. The savans did not read it, imagining that, coming from a poet, it could be nothing more than a reverie, written in the false poetic style of the Loves of the Plants. How ill they understood the genius of Goethe! that flexible genius which assumed every form, and always selected that which best suited the subject. When he wrote upon science he was grave as science itself. He had given the models of several kinds of literary composition, and he gave one for scientific composition. If his work was not accepted, it was because it appeared too soon for his contemporaries-he had anticipated the coming era.'

A few of the eminent botanists of his country began, after the lapse of some years, to recognize his discovery. Thus Kieser declared it to be "certainly the vastest conception which vegetable physiology had for a long time known". Voigt expressed his irritation at the blindness of the botanists in refusing to accept it. Nees von Esenbeck, one of the greatest names in the science, in 1818 wrote, "Theophrastus is the creator of modern botany. Goethe is its tender father, to whom it will raise looks full of love and gratitude, as soon as it grows out of its infancy, and acquires the sentiment which it owes to him who has raised it to so high a position." And Sprengel, in his History of Botany, frequently mentions the theory. In one place he says, "The Metamorphoses had a meaning so profound, joined to such great simplicity, and was so fecund in consequences, that we must not be surprised if it stood in need of multiplied commentaries, and if many botanists failed to see its importance."

Morphologie Végétale, 1, 15. To the same effect Prof. Schmidt in his little work Goethe's Verhältniss zu den organischen Wissenschaften, p. 10. Neither of these writers is aware of Wolff's priority.

It is now, and has been for some years, the custom to insert a chapter on Metamorphosis in every work which pretends to a high scientific character. Nevertheless it is only the great authorities who speak of Goethe as he deserves.

"For a half century," says Goethe in the History of his Botanical Studies, "I have been known as a poet in my own country and abroad. No one thinks of refusing me that talent. But it is not generally known, it has not been taken into consideration that I have also occupied myself seriously through many years with the physical and physiological phenomena of Nature, observing them with the perseverance which passion alone can give. Thus when my essay on the development of plants, published nearly forty years before, fixed the attention of botanists in Switzerland and France, there seemed no expression for the astonishment at the fact of a poet thus going out of his route to make a discovery so important. It is to combat this false notion that I have written the history of my studies, to show that a great part of my life has been devoted to Natural History, for which I had a passion. It is by no sudden and unexpected inspiration of genius, but through long prosecuted studies, I arrived at my results. I might doubtless have accepted the honour which men wish to pay my sagacity, and in secret rejoiced in it. But as it is equally pernicious in science to keep exclusively to facts, or exclusively to abstract theories, I have deemed it my duty to write, for serious men, the detailed history of my studies."

He was not much hurt at the reception of his work. He knew how unwilling men are to accord praise to any one who aims at success in different spheres, and found it perfectly natural they should be so unwilling; adding, however, that "an energetic nature feels itself brought into the world for its own development, and not for the approbation of the public".

Time brought him recognition, though never perhaps will his services meet with thorough justice. And now he takes his rank among the few great Naturalists whose biographies find a place in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles; the writer justly remarking that “ pour Goethe en effet l'étude de l'histoire naturelle ne fût pas un simple caprice, ou une distraction à ses innombrables travaux; ce fût une œuvre sérieuse et dans laquelle il a marqué l'empreinte de son génie. . . . Il s'y appliqua non en amateur qui se contente de notions générales, mais en savant qui n'arrive à la généralization qu'à force de détails."

We shall have occasion to consider his theory of Metamorphosis hereafter; at present let us follow the biographical path, and note his confession that some of the happiest moments of his life were those devoted to these botanical studies. "They have acquired an inestimable value in my eyes," he says, "because to them I owe the most beautiful of all the relations which my lucky star shone on. To them I owe the friendship of Schiller."

Beside these botanical studies must be placed his optical studies. A more illustrative contrast can scarcely be found than is afforded by the history of his efforts in these two directions. They throw light upon scientific Method, and they throw light on his scientific qualities and defects. If we have hitherto followed him with sympathy and admiration, we must now be prepared to follow him with that feeling of pain which rises at the sight of a great intellect struggling in a false direction. His botanical and anatomical studies were of that high character which makes one angry at their cold reception; his optical studies were of that character which gives professional contempt a pretext.

He has written the history of these studies also. From

youth upwards he had been prone to theorize on painting, led thereto, as he profoundly remarks, by the very absence of a talent for painting. It was not necessary for him to theorize on poetry; he had within him the creative power. It was necessary for him to theorize on painting, because he wanted "by reason and insight to fill up the deficiencies of nature". In Italy these theories found abundant stimulus. With his painter friends he discussed colour and colouring, trying by various paradoxes to strike out a truth. The friends were all deplorably vague in their notions of colour. The critical treatises were equally vague. Nowhere could he find firm ground. He began to think of the matter from the opposite side-instead of trying to solve the artists' problem, he strove to solve the scientific problem. He asked himself, What is colour? Men of science referred him to Newton; but Newton gave him little help. Professor Büttner lent him some prisms and optical instruments, to try the prescribed experiments. He kept the prisms a long while, but made no use of them. Büttner wrote to him for his instruments; Goethe neither sent them back, nor set to work with them. He delayed from day to day, occupied with other things. At last Büttner became uneasy, and sent for the prisms, saying they should be lent again at a future period, but that at any rate he must have them returned. Forced thus to part with them, yet unwilling to send them back without making one effort, he told the messenger to wait, and taking up a prism, looked through it at the white wall of his room, expecting to see the whole wall coloured in various tints, according to the Newtonian statement. To his astonishment, he saw nothing of the kind. He saw that the wall remained as white as before, and that only there, where an opaque interfered, could a more or less decisive colour be observed; that the window-frames were most

coloured, while the light grey heaven without showed no trace of colour. "It needed very little meditation to discover that to produce colour a limit was necessary, and instinctively I exclaimed, Newton's theory is false!'" There could be no thought of sending back the prisms at such a juncture; so he wrote to Büttner begging for a longer loan, and set to work in real earnest.

This was an unhappy commencement. He began with a false conception of Newton's position, and thought he was overthrowing Newton when only combating his own error. The Newtonian theory does not say that a white surface seen through a prism appears coloured, but that it appears white, its edges only coloured. His fancied discovery stung him like a gadfly. He multiplied experiments, turned the subject incessantly over in his mind, and instead of going the simple way to work, and learning the a, b, c, of the science, tried to excogitate and experimentalize it. He had a white disc on a black ground, and this, seen through the prism, gave him the spectrum, as in the Newtonian theory; but he found that a black disc on a white ground also produced the same effect. "If Light," said I to myself, "resolves itself into various colours in the first case; then must Darkness also resolve itself into various colours in this second case." And thus he came to the conclusion that Colour is not contained in Light, but is the product of an intermingling of Light and Darkness.

"Having no experience in such matters, and not knowing the direction I ought to take, I addressed myself to a Physicist of repute, begging him to verify the results I had arrived at. I had already told him my doubts of the Newtonian hypothesis, and hoped to see him at once share my conviction. But how great was my surprise when he assured me that the phenomenon I spoke of was already known, and perfectly explained by the