Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings
GA 1
Translated by Steiner Online Library
3. The Origins of Goethe's Thoughts on Animal Development
[ 1 ] Lavater’s major work, *Physiognomic Fragments for the Advancement of Knowledge of Human Nature and Love of Mankind*, was published between 1775 and 1778. Goethe played an active role in its creation, not only by overseeing its publication but also by contributing articles himself. What is particularly interesting, however, is that we can already find the seeds of his later zoological work in these contributions.
[ 2 ] Physiognomy sought to discern a person’s inner self—their spirit—through their outward appearance. The form was not treated for its own sake, but as an expression of the soul. Goethe’s creative mind, designed to understand external conditions, did not stop there. In the midst of those works that treated external form merely as a means to understanding the inner self, he came to realize the significance of the former—the form—in its own right. We see this in his works on animal skulls from 1776, which are included in Volume 2, Section 2 of the “Physiognomic Fragments.” 25cf. Natw. Schr., Vol. 2, pp. 68ff. That year, he read Aristotle on physiognomy, 26Letter to J. K. Lavater, circa March 20, 1776; WA 3, 42. This inspired him to undertake the works mentioned above, but at the same time he attempted to investigate the difference between humans and animals. He found this difference in the prominence of the head, which is determined by the entirety of the human structure, and in the highly developed human brain, toward which all parts of the body point as their central focal point. “Just as the entire form stands as the cornerstone of the vault in which the heavens are to be reflected.” 27Cf. Natw. Schr., Vol. 2, p. 69 [beginning]. He now finds the opposite of this in the structure of animals. “The head is merely attached to the spine! The brain, at the end of the spinal cord, has no greater volume than is necessary for the expression of the vital spirits and for guiding a creature whose senses are entirely present.” 28Ibid. With these observations, Goethe rose above the consideration of individual connections between the external and internal aspects of the human being to arrive at a conception of a great whole and a view of form as such. He arrived at the view that the whole of the human structure forms the foundation for its higher expressions of life, and that the uniqueness of this whole constitutes the condition that places humanity at the pinnacle of creation. What we must bear in mind above all is that Goethe seeks out the animal form within the fully developed human form; only that there, the organs serving more animal functions come to the fore—they are, as it were, the point toward which the entire development points and which it serves—while human development particularly cultivates those organs that serve spiritual functions. Already here we find that what Goethe has in mind as an animal organism is no longer this or that sensually real entity, but an ideal one, which develops in animals more along a lower plane and in humans along a higher one. Already here lies the seed of what Goethe later called a “type,” by which he intended to denote not “a single animal” but the “idea” of the animal. Indeed, even more than that: even here one finds an echo of a law he later articulated—one of great significance in its implications—namely, that “the diversity of form arises from the fact that this or that part is granted a predominance over the others.” 29See Natw. Schr., Vol. 1, p. 247. Even here, the contrast between animal and human is sought in the fact that an ideal form develops in two different directions, such that in each case one organ system gains predominance and the entire creature derives its character from it.
[ 3 ] In that same year (1776), however, we also find that Goethe gained clarity regarding the starting point one must take when considering the structure of the animal organism. He recognized that the bones are the foundation of development, 30See Natw. Schr., Vol. 2 [pp. 68 ff.]. a notion he later upheld by consistently basing his anatomical work on osteology. That year, he wrote down the following statement, which is significant in this regard: 31Ibid. [p. 69]. “The movable parts take their shape from them (the bones)—or, more accurately, together with them—and perform their functions only to the extent that the fixed parts permit.” There is also another hint in Lavater’s *Physiognomics*: “One may already have noticed that I regard the skeletal system as the basic outline of the human being—the skull as the foundation of the skeletal system, and all flesh almost exclusively as the coloring of this outline,” 32Lavater’s Fragments II, 143. may well have been written at Goethe’s suggestion, as he often discussed these matters with Lavater. Indeed, they are identical to the remarks written by Goethe 33See Natw. Schr., Vol. 2 [p. 69].. However, Goethe makes a further comment on this that we must take special note of: “This observation (that it is most evident in the bones—and particularly in the skull—how the bones form the foundation of development), which is undeniable here (in animals), will face significant contradiction when applied to the diversity of human skulls .” 34Ibid. What else is Goethe doing here but seeking out the simpler animal within the complex human being, as he later (1795) puts it! From this we gain the conviction that the fundamental ideas upon which Goethe’s later thoughts on the formation of animals were to be based took root in him in 1776 as a result of his study of Lavater’s physiognomy.
[ 4 ] This year also marked the beginning of Goethe’s study of the details of anatomy. On January 22, 1776, he wrote to Lavater: “The Duke has sent me six skulls; I have made some wonderful observations, which are at Your Reverence’s disposal, should you find them without my assistance.” [WA 3, 20] His connections to the University of Jena provided him with further inspiration for a more in-depth study of anatomy. We have the first indications of this from the year 1781. In the diary published by Keil, he notes under October 15, 1781, that he went to Jena with the old Einsiedel and studied anatomy there. There was a scholar there who greatly advanced Goethe’s studies: Loder. Loder went on to introduce him further to anatomy, as he wrote to Mrs. von Stein on October 29, 1781 35“A laborious labor of love that I have undertaken is bringing me closer to my hobby. Loder is explaining all the bones and muscles to me, and in a few days I will have grasped a great deal.” [WA 5, 207] and on November 4 to Karl August 36“In these eight days—which, admittedly, were devoted almost entirely to this, as far as my guard duty allowed—he (Loder) has thoroughly demonstrated osteology and myology to me.” [WA 5, 211] he writes. In the latter letter, he also expresses his intention to “explain the skeleton to the ‘young people’ at the Academy of Drawing and introduce them to the human body.” He adds: “I am doing this both for my own sake and for theirs; the method I have chosen will thoroughly familiarize them with the fundamental structure of the body this winter.” The entries in Goethe’s diary show that he actually gave these lectures and concluded them on January 16. At the same time, he must have discussed the structure of the human body at length with Loder. Under the date of January 6, the diary notes: “Demonstration of the heart by Loder.” Since we have now seen that Goethe already harbored far-sighted ideas about the structure of the animal organism as early as 1776, there can be no doubt whatsoever that his current in-depth studies of anatomy rose beyond the consideration of details to higher perspectives. Thus, in a letter to Lavater and Merck dated November 14, 1781, he writes that he treats “the bones as a text to which all life and all that is human can be attached.” [WA 5, 217 and 220] When we contemplate a text, images and ideas form in our minds that appear to be evoked and generated by that text. Goethe treated the bones as such a text; that is, as he observed them, thoughts about all life and all that is human arose within him. Certain ideas about the formation of the organism must therefore have taken hold in his mind during these contemplations. Now we have an ode by Goethe from the year 1782, “The Divine,” which gives us some insight into how he thought at that time about the relationship between human beings and the rest of nature. The first stanza reads:
“Let man be noble,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all beings
That we know.”
[ 5 ] By describing human beings in terms of their spiritual qualities in the first two lines of this stanza, Goethe states that these alone distinguish them from all other beings in the world. This “alone” shows us quite clearly that Goethe viewed human beings, in terms of their physical constitution, as being entirely in harmony with the rest of nature. In his work, the idea—which we have already highlighted above—becomes increasingly vivid: that a fundamental form governs the structure of both humans and animals, and that in the former, this form is elevated to such a degree of perfection that it is capable of being the vessel of a free spiritual being. In terms of his sensory characteristics, however, man must also, as the ode goes on to say:
“According to eternal, iron
Great Laws”
Of his ... “Existence
Complete its cycles.”
[ 6 ] But these laws take shape within him in a way that enables him to accomplish the “impossible”:
“He distinguishes,
chooses, and judges;
He can give the moment
duration.”
[ 7 ] Now one must also bear in mind that, while these views were taking on an ever clearer form in Goethe’s mind, he was in close contact with Herder, who began writing down his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind” in 1783. This work arose almost entirely from their conversations, and many of the ideas can likely be attributed to Goethe. The thoughts expressed here are often distinctly Goethean, merely phrased in Herder’s style, so that we can draw a reliable conclusion from them about Goethe’s thinking at that time.
[ 8 ] In the first part, 37Herder, *Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind*, Part 1, Book 5, in: Herder’s *Complete Works*, ed. by B. Suphan; Berlin 1877–1913, vol. 13, p. 167. the following view of the nature of the world. One must assume a primary form that pervades all beings and manifests itself in various ways. “From stone to crystal, from crystal to metals, from these to the plant kingdom, from plants to animals, and from animals to humans, we saw the form of organization rise, and with it the forces and instincts of creation become more diverse, finally uniting in the form of the human being, insofar as this form could encompass them.” The idea is quite clear: An ideal, typical form—which, as such, is not itself tangibly real—manifests itself in an infinite multitude of beings that are spatially separated from one another and differ in their properties, all the way up to human beings. At the lower levels of organization, it always manifests itself in a specific direction; it develops particularly along this line. As this typical form ascends to the human being, it brings together all the formative principles—which it had previously developed only one-sidedly in lower organisms and distributed among various beings—to form a figure. This also gives rise to the possibility of such a high degree of perfection in human beings. In humans, nature has applied a single being to what it has dispersed among many classes and orders in animals. This idea had an immensely fruitful influence on subsequent German philosophy. To illustrate this, we may mention here the exposition that Oken later provided for the same concept. He says: 38Oken, Textbook of Natural Philosophy. 2nd ed., Jena 1831, p. 389. “The animal kingdom is merely one animal, that is, the manifestation of animality with all its organs, each of which is a whole in itself. A single animal comes into being when a single organ separates itself from the general animal body and yet still performs the essential animal functions. The animal kingdom is merely the dismembered supreme animal: man. There is only one human order, only one human race, only one human genus—precisely because man is the entire animal kingdom.” Thus, for example, there are animals in which the tactile organs are highly developed—indeed, the entire organism is oriented toward the activity of touching and finds its purpose in it—while in others, the organs of ingestion are particularly well-developed, and so on; in short, in every animal species, one organ system comes to the fore; the entire animal is subsumed within it; everything else recedes into the background. In human development, however, all organs and organ systems develop in such a way that each leaves the others sufficient space for free development, so that each individual organ retreats within those limits that appear necessary to allow all the others to come into their own in the same way. Thus arises a harmonious interplay of the individual organs and systems, resulting in a harmony that makes human beings the most perfect creatures, uniting within themselves the perfections of all other creatures. These ideas also formed the substance of Goethe’s conversations with Herder, and Herder expresses them as follows: that “the human race is to be regarded as the great confluence of lower organic forces” , “which were to come together within it to form humanity.” And in another passage: “And so we may assume: that man is an intermediate creature among the animals, that is, the refined form in which the traits of all the species around him are gathered into the finest synthesis.” 39Herder, op. cit., Part 1, Book 5, and Part I, Book 2.
[ 9 ] To illustrate the extent to which Goethe drew on Herder’s work *Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind*, let us quote the following passage from a letter Goethe wrote to Knebel on December 8, 1783: “Herder is writing a philosophy of history, as you can imagine, from scratch. We read the first chapters together the day before yesterday; they are delightful... World history and natural history are really taking off for us now.” [WA 6, 224] Herder’s remarks in Book 3, Chapter VI, and Book 4, Chapter 1—that the upright posture inherent in human organization, and everything associated with it, is the fundamental condition for human rational activity—directly echo what Goethe hinted at in 1776 in the 2nd section of the second volume of Lavater’s *Physiognomic Fragments* regarding the distinction between humans and animals—and what we have already mentioned above. It is merely an elaboration of that idea. All of this, however, justifies our assumption that Goethe and Herder were, for the most part, in agreement regarding their views on the place of humans in nature at that time (1783 and onward).
[ 10 ] However, such a fundamental view implies that every organ, every part of an animal, must be found in humans, albeit confined within the limits dictated by the harmony of the whole. A bone, for example, must indeed develop its specific form in a particular animal species—it must come to the fore there—but it must also be found, at least in a rudimentary form, in all other species; indeed, it must not be absent in humans. While it assumes the form that befits it according to its own laws in those species, here it must conform to a whole, adapting its own laws of formation to those of the entire organism. Yet it must not be absent, lest a rupture occur in nature that would disrupt the consistent development of a type.
[ 11 ] Such were Goethe’s views when he suddenly became aware of a perspective that completely contradicted this grand idea. Scholars of that time were primarily concerned with finding characteristics that distinguished one animal genus from another. The difference between animals and humans was thought to lie in the fact that the former have a small bone—the intermaxillary bone—between the two symmetrical halves of the upper jaw, which houses the upper incisors and is said to be absent in humans. When Merck began to take a keen interest in osteology in 1782 and turned to some of the most renowned scholars of the time for assistance, he received the following information regarding the difference between animals and humans from one of them, the eminent anatomist Sömmerring, on October 8, 1782: 40Letters to J. H. Merck, Darmstadt 1835 [pp. 354 ff.]. “I would urge you to consult Blumenbach regarding the os intermaxillare, which, ceteris paribus, is the only bone that all animals—starting with apes, including even the orangutan—possess, whereas it is never found in humans ; if you exclude this bone, you will lack nothing that would prevent you from transferring everything from humans to animals. I am therefore enclosing the skull of a doe to convince you that this os intermaxillare (as Blumenbach calls it) or os incisivum (as Camper calls it) is present even in animals that lack incisors in the upper jaw.” Although Blumenbach found a trace—quasi rudimentum—of the os intermaxillare in the skulls of unborn or young children, and even once found two completely separate small bone nuclei as true intermediate bones in one such skull, he did not admit the existence of such a bone. He says of it: “It is still a world away from the true os intermaxillare.” Camper, the most famous anatomist of the time, shared this view. The latter states 41In: “Natuurkundige verhandelingen over den orang Outang...”. Amsterdam 1782, p. 75, § 2. For example, regarding the intermaxillary bones: “which are never found in humans, not even among Negroes.” Merck was imbued with the deepest reverence for Camper and studied his writings.
[ 12 ] Not only Merck, but also Blumenbach and Sömmerring were in contact with Goethe. The correspondence with the former shows us that Goethe took a keen interest in his studies of bones and exchanged thoughts on these matters with him. On October 27, 1782, he asked Merck to write to him about Camper’s *Inkognito* and to send him Camper’s letters. 42[WA 6,75] Furthermore, we have a record of a visit by Blumenbach to Weimar in April of 1783. In September of the same year, Goethe traveled to Göttingen to visit Blumenbach and all the professors there. On September 28, he wrote to Mrs. von Stein: “I have resolved to visit all the professors, and you can imagine how much walking that entails to get around in just a few days.” [WA 6, 202] He then went on to Kassel, where he met with Forster and Sömmerring. From there, he wrote to Mrs. von Stein on October 2: “I am seeing very beautiful and good things and am being rewarded for my quiet diligence. The happiest thing is that I can now say I am on the right path, and from now on, nothing will be lost to me.” [WA 6, 204]
[ 13 ] It was probably through these circles that Goethe first became aware of the prevailing views on the intervertebral bone. Given his own views, these must have immediately struck him as a mistake. They would have destroyed the typical basic form according to which all organisms must be constructed. Goethe could have no doubt that this structure—which is found to a greater or lesser extent in all higher animals—must also play a role in the formation of the human form, and that it is only less prominent here because the organs of nutrition generally take a back seat to those serving mental functions. Given his overall intellectual orientation, Goethe could not help but conclude that an intermediate bone must also be present in humans. The only question was empirical proof of its existence—specifically, what form it takes in humans and to what extent it fits into the organism as a whole. He succeeded in providing this proof in the spring of 1784, in collaboration with Loder, with whom he compared human and animal skulls in Jena. Goethe announced the discovery on March 27 to both Mrs. von Stein 43“It has been a delightful pleasure for me; I have made an anatomical discovery that is both important and beautiful.” [WA 6, 259] as well as to Herder. 44“I have found—neither gold nor silver, but something that gives me unspeakable joy—the os intermaxillare in humans!” [WA 6, 258]
[ 14 ] One must not overestimate this single discovery in relation to the great ideas of which underpin it; for Goethe, too, it served only to dispel a prejudice that seemed to stand in the way of consistently pursuing his ideas down to the minutest details of an organism. Goethe never viewed it as an isolated discovery either, but always in connection with his grand view of nature. This is how we must understand it when, in the aforementioned letter to Herder, he says: “You should also be truly delighted, for it is like the keystone of humanity—it is not missing; it is there! And how!” And immediately he reminds his friend of further prospects: “I have also thought of it in connection with your overall vision—how beautiful it will be there.” The claim that animals have an intermediate bone but humans do not made no sense to Goethe. If the forces that form an organism cause an intermediate bone to be inserted between the two upper jawbones in animals, then those same forces must be at work in humans at the very spot where that bone is located in animals—in essentially the same way, differing only in their outward appearance. Because Goethe never conceived of the organism as a dead, rigid composition, but always as emerging from its inner formative forces, he had to ask himself: What do these forces do in the human upper jaw? The question could not be whether the intermediate bone was present, but rather what its nature was and what form it took. And this had to be determined empirically.
[ 15 ] Goethe’s desire to write a major work on nature was now growing ever stronger. We can infer this from various statements he made. For example, in November 1784, he wrote to Knebel, when sending him the treatise on his discovery: “ I have refrained from pointing out the result—to which Herder already alludes in his *Ideen*—jetzo , namely that the difference between humans and animals cannot be found in any single feature.” [WA 6, 389] What is particularly important here is that Goethe says he refrained from pointing out the fundamental idea jetzo ; he thus intends to do so later in a broader context. Furthermore, this passage shows us that the fundamental ideas that interest us most in Goethe—the grand ideas concerning the animal type—had long existed prior to that discovery. For Goethe himself admits here that they are already hinted at in Herder’s *Ideen*; yet the passages in which this occurs were written before the discovery of the intermediate bone. The discovery of the intermediate bone is thus merely a consequence of those grand conceptions. For those who did not share these conceptions, it had to remain incomprehensible. They had been deprived of the sole natural-historical characteristic by which they distinguished humans from animals. They had little inkling of those ideas that dominated Goethe—and which we hinted at earlier—namely, that the elements scattered among animals unite in harmony within the human form , and thus, despite the similarity of all individual parts, establish a distinction in the whole that assigns humanity its high rank in the hierarchy of beings. Their observation was not an ideal one, but rather an external comparison; and for the latter, the intermaxillary bone in humans was indeed absent. They had little understanding of what Goethe demanded: to see with the eyes of the spirit . This, then, accounted for the difference in judgment between them and Goethe. While Blumenbach, who nevertheless saw the matter quite clearly, came to the conclusion: “It is, after all, worlds apart from the true osse intermaxillari,” Goethe judges: How can such a great external difference be explained in the face of the necessary internal identity? Goethe evidently wanted to work out this idea consistently, and he devoted himself to it extensively, particularly in the years that followed. On May 1, 1784, Mrs. von Stein wrote to Knebel: 45We have already quoted her words above [p. 26] in a different context. “Herder’s new work makes it plausible that we were once plants and animals … Goethe is now pondering these matters with great depth, and everything that has first passed through his imagination becomes extremely interesting.” The extent to which Goethe harbored the idea of presenting his views on nature in a larger work becomes particularly clear to us when we see that, with every new discovery he makes, he cannot help but explicitly emphasize to his friends the possibility of extending his thoughts to encompass all of nature. In 1786, he wrote to Mrs. von Stein that he wished to extend his ideas about the way in which nature, as it were, playfully brings forth manifold life from a single archetype “to all the realms of nature, to its entire realm.” And since, in Italy, the concept of metamorphosis in plants stood vividly before his mind in every detail, he wrote in Naples on May 17, 1787: “The same law will apply to all … living things.” 46Italian Journey. The first essay in the “Morphological Notebooks” (1817) contains the words: “May what I often dreamed of as a work in the boldness of my youth now emerge as a draft, indeed as a fragmentary collection.” We must lament that such a work did not come to fruition from Goethe’s hand. Judging by all that is available, it would have been a creation that would have far surpassed everything of its kind achieved in more recent times. It would have become a canon from which every endeavor in the field of natural science would have to proceed and against which one could test its intellectual content. The deepest philosophical spirit—which only superficiality can deny Goethe possessed—would have been combined here with a loving immersion in what is given through sensory experience; far removed from any one-sided obsession with systematization, which believes it can encompass all beings through a general schema, every single individuality would have been accorded its due here. We would be dealing here with the work of a mind in which no single branch of human endeavor stands out at the expense of all others, but in which the totality of human existence always hovers in the background whenever he addresses a particular field. As a result, every individual activity finds its proper place within the context of the whole. The objective immersion in the objects under consideration causes the mind to be completely absorbed in them, so that Goethe’s theories appear to us not as if a mind were abstracting from the objects, but as if the objects themselves were forming a mind that forgets itself in the very act of contemplation. This utmost objectivity would make Goethe’s work the most perfect work of natural science; it would be an ideal toward which every natural scientist must strive; for the philosopher, it would serve as a quintessential model for discovering the laws of objective worldview. One may assume that the theory of knowledge, which now appears everywhere as a fundamental branch of philosophy, will only be able to bear fruit when it takes its starting point from Goethe’s mode of observation and thought. Goethe himself explains why this work was never completed in the Annals for 1790, stating: “The task was so great that it could not be accomplished in a distracted life.”
[ 16 ] From this perspective, the individual fragments of Goethe’s work on the natural sciences that have come down to us take on immense significance. Indeed, we come to appreciate and understand them all the more when we view them as emerging from that greater whole.
[ 17 ] In 1784, however, the treatise on the intermediate bone was to be drafted, as it were, merely as a preliminary exercise. It was not initially intended to be published, for Goethe wrote to Sömmerring about it on March 6, 1785: “Since my little treatise is not intended for publication at all and is to be regarded merely as a draft, I would greatly appreciate anything you might wish to share with me on this subject.” [WA 7, 21] Nevertheless, it was carried out with the utmost care and with the aid of all necessary individual studies. Young people were immediately enlisted to assist, and they were tasked with producing osteological drawings under Goethe’s direction, following Camper’s method. He therefore wrote to Merck on April 23 [1784] [WA 6, 267f.] requesting information about this method and had Sömmerring [WA 6, 277] send him some of Camper’s drawings. Merck, Sömmerring, and other acquaintances were asked to provide skeletons and bones of all kinds. On April 23, he wrote to Merck that he would very much appreciate the following skeletons: “... a Myrmecophaga, Bradypus, lions, tigers, or the like.” [WA 6, 268] On May 14 [WA 6, 278], he asks Sömmerring for the skull from his elephant skeleton and the skull of the hippopotamus; on September 16, he asks for the skulls of the following animals: “wildcat, lion, young bear, incognitum, anteater, camel, dromedary, sea lion.” ” [WA 6, 357] The friends are also asked for specific information; for example, Merck is asked to describe the palate of his rhinoceros and, in particular, to explain “how exactly the rhinoceros’s horn is attached to the nasal bone.” [WA 6, 267] During this period, Goethe was completely absorbed in these studies. The aforementioned elephant skull was drawn by Waitz from many angles using Camper’s method [WA 6, 356] and compared by Goethe with a large skull in his possession and with other animal skulls, as he discovered that most of the sutures on that skull were still unfused. [WA 6, 293 f.] He makes another important observation regarding this skull. Until then, it had been assumed that in all animals only the incisors were embedded in the intermaxillary bone, while the canines belonged to the maxilla; only the elephant was thought to be an exception. In the elephant, the canines were believed to be contained within the intermaxillary bone. That this is not the case is now also demonstrated to him by that skull, as he writes in a letter to Herder. [WA 6, 308] On a trip to Eisenach [WA 6, 278] and Braunschweig, which Goethe undertook that summer [1784], his osteological studies accompanied him. During the latter trip, he intends to “look into the mouth of an unborn elephant in Braunschweig and have a lively conversation with Zimmermann .” [WA 6, 332] He goes on to write to Merck about this fetus: “I wish we had the fetus they have in Braunschweig in our cabinet; it should be dissected, skeletonized, and prepared in a short time. I do not know what use such a monstrosity in formalin is if one does not dissect it and explain its internal structure.” [WA 6, 332 and 333] These studies then gave rise to the treatise published in Volume 1 [p. 277] of the *Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften* in Kürschner’s *National-Literatur*. Loder was of great assistance to Goethe in drafting it. With Loder’s help, a Latin terminology was established. Loder also provided a Latin translation. [WA 6, 407] In November 1784, Goethe sent the treatise to Knebel [WA 6, 389 f.] and, as early as December 19, to Merck [WA 6, 409 f.], although shortly before that (December 2) he had believed that not much would come of it before the end of the year. [WA 6, 400 f.] The work was accompanied by the necessary illustrations. Because of Camper, the aforementioned Latin translation was included. Merck was to send the work to Sömmerring, who received it in January 1785. From there, it was forwarded to Camper. If we now take a look at the reception Goethe’s treatise received, a rather disheartening picture emerges. At first, no one had the capacity to understand it except Loder, with whom he had collaborated, and Herder. Merck is pleased with the treatise but is not fully convinced of the truth of the assertion. [WA 7, 11 f.] Sömmerring writes in the letter in which he informs Merck of the treatise’s arrival: “Blumenbach had already had the main idea.” ” In the letter that begins: ‘There will therefore be no doubt [left],’ he [Goethe] says, ‘since the remaining (boundaries) have fused’; it’s just a pity that these were never there to begin with. I now have the lower jaws of embryos, ranging from three months to adulthood, before me, and on none of them has a boundary ever been visible. And to explain the matter by the pressure of the bones against one another? Yes, if nature worked like a carpenter with a wedge and a hammer!” 47Letters to J. H. Merck, p. 438. On February 13, 1785, Goethe writes to Merck: “I have received a very brief letter from Sömmerring . He wants to talk me out of it entirely. Oh dear!” [WA 7, 12] — And Sömmerring writes to Merck on May 11, 1785: “As I can see from his letter of yesterday, Goethe does not yet wish to abandon his idea regarding the ossis intermaxillaris.” 48Ibid., p. 448.
[ 18 ] And now Camper. 49It had previously been assumed that Camper had received the treatise anonymously. It reached him through a roundabout route: Goethe first sent it to Sömmerring, who then sent it to Merck, and the latter was supposed to pass it on to Camper. However, among Merck’s letters to Camper—which remain unpublished and whose originals are housed in the “Bibliothèque de la société néerlandaise pour les progrès de la médecine” in Amsterdam—there is a letter dated January 17, 1785, containing the following passage (we quote verbatim): “Monsieur de Goethe, famous poet and close advisor to the Duke of Weimar, has just sent me an osteological specimen, which you must have sent to him after Mr. Sömring had seen it... It is a short treatise on the intermaxillary bone, which teaches us, among other things, the truth that the Triche(chus) has four incisors and the camel has two.” A letter dated March 10, 1785, indicates that Merck will soon send the treatise to Camper, with Goethe’s name again appearing explicitly: “I shall have the honor of sending you the osteological specimen from Mr. de Goethe, my friend, by a means that will not be revealed one of these days.” On April 28, 1785, Merck expresses the hope that Camper has received the item, with “Goethe” appearing once again. There is thus likely no doubt that Camper knew the author. On September 16, 1785 50Letters to J. H. Merck, p. 466. he informed Merck that the enclosed plates were by no means drawn according to his method. He even finds them quite reprehensible. He praises the appearance of the beautiful manuscript, criticizes the Latin translation, and even advises the author to improve his skills in this area. Three days later 51Ibid., p. 469. he writes that he has made a number of observations regarding the intervertebral bone, but that he must continue to maintain that humans do not have an intervertebral bone. He acknowledges all of Goethe’s observations, except those pertaining to humans. On March 21, 1786 52Ibid., p. 481. he writes once again that, based on a large number of observations, he had come to the conclusion: the interdigital bone does not exist in humans. Camper’s letters clearly show that he had the best of intentions to get to the bottom of the matter, but that he was unable to understand Goethe in the slightest.
[ 19 ] Loder immediately saw Goethe’s discovery in the proper light. He highlights it in his *Anatomical Handbook* of 1788 53Goethe’s *Annalen* for 1790. and from then on treats it in all his writings as a matter that is fully established in science, about which there can be not the slightest doubt.
[ 20 ] Herder writes to Knebel about this: “Goethe has presented us with his treatise on bones, which is very simple and beautiful; man follows the true path of nature, and happiness comes to meet him.” 54Knebel’s Literary Estate, etc., ed. by Varnhagen von Ense and Th. Mundt, Leipzig 1835, Vol. II, p. 236. Herder was precisely capable of viewing the matter through the “spiritual eye” with which Goethe regarded it. Without this, one could make no headway with it. This is best illustrated by the following. Wilhelm Josephi (private lecturer at the University of Göttingen) writes in his *Anatomy of Mammals* (1787): “The ossa intermaxillaria are generally regarded as a primary distinguishing feature between apes and humans; however, according to my observations, humans also possess such ossa intermaxillaria, at least during the first months of their existence, though these usually fuse outwardly with the actual upper jaws at an early stage—indeed, even while still in the womb—so that often no discernible trace of them remains at all. ” Here, Goethe’s discovery is indeed stated quite clearly, but not as one required by the consistent development of the type, rather as the expression of a fact that immediately catches the eye. If one relies solely on the latter, then it depends, of course, only on a fortunate coincidence whether one happens to find precisely those specimens in which one can see the matter clearly. But if one grasps the matter in Goethe’s ideal way, these particular specimens serve merely to confirm the idea, merely to openly demonstrate what nature otherwise conceals; yet the idea itself can be traced in any specimen whatsoever, for each one illustrates a particular instance of it. Indeed, once one possesses the idea, one is able, through it, to find precisely those cases in which it manifests itself most clearly. Without it, however, one is at the mercy of chance. One sees, in fact, that after Goethe had provided the inspiration through his great idea, people gradually became convinced of the truth of his discovery through the observation of numerous cases.
[ 21 ] Merck seems to have remained indecisive throughout. On February 13, 1785, Goethe sent him a split upper jawbone from a human and from a Trichechus and provided him with clues to help him understand the matter. From Goethe’s letter of April 8, it appears that Merck was somewhat convinced. Soon, however, he changed his mind again, for on November 11, 1786, he wrote to Sömmerring: 55[Rudolf Wagner, Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring’s Life and Interactions with His Contemporaries, Part 1:] Letters from Famous Contemporaries to Sömmerring [Leipzig 1844], p. 293. “As I hear, Vicq d’Azyr has even included Goethe’s so-called discovery in his work.”
[ 22 ] Sömmerring gradually abandoned his opposition. In his work, *On the Structure of the Human Body*, he states (p. 160): “Goethe’s ingenious experiment in comparative osteology from 1785—demonstrating that the intermaxillary bone of the upper jaw is common to humans and other animals—accompanied by very accurate illustrations, deserved to be made known to the public.”
[ 23 ] It was probably more difficult to win over Blumenbach . In his *Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie* (Handbook of Comparative Anatomy), 1805, 56Ibid. — see note 55 — p. 22. he still asserted that humans have no intervertebral bone. In his essay “Principes de Philosophie Zoologique,” written in 1830–32, however, Goethe can already speak of Blumenbach’s conversion. 57Natw. Schr., Vol. 1, p. 405. After personal contact, he sided with Goethe. 58Conversations with Eckermann, Aug. 2, 1830. On December 15, 1825, he even provided Goethe with a fine example to confirm his discovery. An athlete from Hesse sought help from Blumenbach’s colleague Langenbeck regarding a “quite monstrously prominent os intermaxillare.” 59Goethe’s Scientific Correspondence (1812–1832), ed. by F. Th. Bratranek, Vol. 1, p. 51. We will discuss later followers of Goethe’s ideas in due course. For now, it suffices to mention that M. J. Weber succeeded in separating the intermaxillary bone—which had already fused with the upper jaw—using dilute nitric acid. 60Froriep, Notes from the Field of Natural Science and Medicine, Vol. 19, 1828, p. 283.
[ 24 ] Goethe continued his studies of bones even after completing that treatise. Contemporary discoveries in botany further heightened his interest in nature. He constantly borrowed relevant specimens from his friends. On December 7, 1785 61Letters to J. H. Merck, p. 476. Sömmerring was even annoyed “that Goethe had not sent his skulls back to him.” From a letter Goethe wrote to Sömmerring on June 8, 1786, we learn that he still had some of Sömmerring’s skulls at that time.
[ 25 ] His grand ideas accompanied him in Italy as well. As the concept of the primordial plant took shape in his mind, he also began to form ideas about the form of the human being. On January 20, 1787, Goethe wrote from Rome: “I am fairly well prepared in anatomy, and I have acquired knowledge of the human body, to a certain extent, not without effort. Here, one is constantly reminded of this—though in a higher way—through the ceaseless contemplation of statues. In our medical and surgical anatomy, the only thing that matters is knowing the part, and even a puny muscle serves this purpose well. In Rome, however, the parts mean nothing unless they also present a noble, beautiful form.
[ 26 ] At the large San Spirito military hospital, a very beautiful, muscular body has been prepared for the artists in such a way that its beauty is truly astonishing. It could truly be taken for a tormented demigod, for a Marsyas.
[ 27 ] Thus, following the guidance of the ancients, one should not study the skeleton as an artificially assembled mass of bones, but rather in conjunction with the ligaments, through which it already gains life and movement.» 62Italian Journey.
[ 28 ] Goethe’s primary concern here was to understand the laws by which nature forms organic and, above all, human forms, the tendency it follows in shaping them. Just as he sought, within the infinite variety of plant forms, the primordial plant from which one could continue to invent plants ad infinitum—plants that must be consistent, that is, that are perfectly in accordance with that natural tendency and that would exist if the appropriate conditions were present; Goethe had similarly set out, with regard to animals and humans, to “discover ideal characters” that are perfectly in accordance with the laws of nature. Soon after his return from Italy, we learn that Goethe is “diligent in anatomy,” and in 1789 he writes to Herder: “I have a newly discovered *Harmoniam naturae* to present.” What was newly discovered here is likely to be part of the vertebral theory of the skull. The completion of this discovery, however, dates to the year 1790. What he knew up to that point was that all the bones forming the occiput represent three modified spinal vertebrae. Goethe conceived of the matter as follows. The brain is merely a mass of spinal cord perfected to the highest degree. While the nerves serving primarily the lower organic functions terminate in and originate from the spinal cord, the nerves serving the higher (mental) functions—primarily the sensory nerves—terminate in and originate from the brain. In the brain, only that which is already hinted at as a possibility in the spinal cord appears fully developed. The brain is a fully developed medulla, while the spinal cord is a brain that has not yet reached its full development. Now, the segments of the spinal cord are perfectly reflected in the vertebral bodies of the spine; they are the necessary enveloping structures of the spinal cord. It now seems highly probable that if the brain is a spinal cord at its highest potential, then the bones enveloping it are likewise merely more highly developed vertebral bodies. In this way, the entire head appears to be already prefigured in the lower-level physical organs. The forces already at work at a lower level are also active here; they simply develop in the head to the highest potential inherent in them. Once again, Goethe was concerned only with demonstrating how the matter actually takes shape in sensory reality. Goethe says that he recognized these relationships very early on in the occipital bone, the posterior and anterior sphenoid bones; but he realized that the palatine bone, the upper jaw, and the intermaxillary bone were also modified vertebral bodies during his trip to northern Italy, when he found a shattered sheep skull on the dunes of the Lido. This skull had broken apart in such a fortunate way that the individual vertebral bodies could be clearly recognized in the separate pieces. Goethe showed this wonderful discovery to Mrs. von Kalb on April 30, 1790, saying: “Tell Herdern that I have come a whole step closer to understanding the structure of animals and their various transformations—and through the strangest of coincidences.” [WA 9, 202]
[ 29 ] This was a discovery of the most far-reaching significance. It thus proved that all parts of an organic whole are identical in concept, and that “internally unformed” organic masses open up to the outside in various ways; that it is one and the same thing which, at a lower level as a spinal nerve and at a higher level as a sensory nerve, opens up to the sensory organs that perceive, grasp, and comprehend the external world. Every living being was thus revealed in its power to form and shape itself from within; it was only now truly understood as truly living . Goethe’s fundamental ideas had now also reached a conclusion with regard to animal formation. The time had come to elaborate on them, although he had already conceived the plan earlier, as Goethe’s correspondence with F. H. Jacobi demonstrates. When he followed the Duke to the Silesian camp in July 1790, he was primarily occupied there (in Breslau) with his studies on the formation of animals. It was there that he actually began to record his thoughts on the subject. On August 31, 1790, he wrote to Friedrich von Stein: “Amid all the commotion, I have begun to write my treatise on the formation of animals.” [WA 9, 223]
[ 30 ] In a broad sense, the idea of the animal type is embodied in the poem “The Metamorphosis of Animals,” which first appeared in 1820 in the second volume of the “Morphological Notebooks.” 63See *Natw. Schr.*, Vol. 1, pp. 344ff., where further details are provided in the notes. Between 1790 and 1795, Goethe devoted himself primarily to his work on the theory of colors among his scientific writings. At the beginning of 1795, Goethe was in Jena, where the von Humboldt brothers, Max Jacobi, and Schiller were also present. In this circle, Goethe presented his ideas on comparative anatomy. His friends found his explanations so significant that they urged him to put his thoughts on paper. As is evident from a letter Goethe wrote to Jacobi the Elder [WA 10, 232], Goethe complied with this request immediately in Jena by dictating the diagram of comparative osteology printed in the first volume of Goethe’s Scientific Writings in Kürschner’s National Literature [pp. 241–275], which was printed in the first volume of Goethe’s *Natural Science Writings* in Kürschner’s *National Literature*. The introductory chapters were further elaborated in 1796 [Ibid., pp. 325 ff.]. These treatises contain Goethe’s fundamental views on animal development just as much as his work “An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants” contains those on plant development. In his correspondence with Schiller—beginning in 1794—a turning point in his views occurred, in that he henceforth adopted a reflective stance toward his own methods and research, whereby his way of thinking became concrete . Following these historical observations, we shall now turn to the nature and significance of Goethe’s views on the formation of organisms.