The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Genesis of Goethe's Thoughts on the Education of Animals

[ 1 ] Lavater's great work: "Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe" (Physiognomic Fragments for the Advancement of Knowledge and Love of Man) appeared in the years 1775-1778. Goethe had taken an active part in it, not only by editing it, but also by making contributions himself. It is particularly interesting, however, that we can already find the seeds of his later zoological work in these contributions.

[ 2 ] Physiognomics sought to recognize a person's inner self, their spirit, in their external form. The figure was not treated for its own sake, but as an expression of the soul. Goethe's sculptural spirit, created to recognize external relationships, did not stop there. In the midst of those works which treated external form only as a means of recognizing the inner, the significance of the former, of form, in its independence, became clear to him. We can see this in his work on animal skulls from 1776, which can be found in the 2nd volume, 2nd section of the "Physiognomic Fragments". ^{25gl. Natw. Schr., 2nd vol, p. 68ff.} In this year he reads Aristotle on physiognomy, ^{26letter to J. K. Lavater, about March 20, 1776; WA 3, 42.} He is inspired by this to do the above work, but at the same time he tries to investigate the difference between humans and animals. He finds this difference in the prominence of the head caused by the whole of the human structure, in the high development of the human brain, to which all parts of the body point as to their central location. "How the whole form stands as the foundation pillar of the vault in which the heavens are to be reflected." ^{27Cf. Natw. Schr., 2nd vol., p. 69 [entry].} He now finds the opposite of this in the animal structure. "The head is only attached to the backbone! The brain, the end of the spinal cord, has no more circumference than is necessary for the effect of the spirits of life and for the guidance of an entirely present sensual creature." ^28Ebenda. With these allusions, Goethe has risen above the consideration of individual connections between the exterior and interior of the human being to the conception of a great whole and to the view of the form as such. He came to the view that the whole of the human structure forms the basis for his higher expressions of life, that in the peculiarity of this whole lies the condition that places man at the pinnacle of creation. What we must bear in mind above all is that Goethe seeks out the animal form in the developed human form; only that there the organs that serve the animal functions come to the fore, are, as it were, the point to which the whole formation points and which it serves, while the human formation particularly develops those organs that serve the spiritual functions. Already here we find: What Goethe has in mind as an animal organism is no longer this or that sensually real one, but an ideal one, which in animals develops more towards a lower side, in man towards a higher one. Here already lies the germ of what Goethe later called type and by which he wanted to designate "not an individual animal" but the "idea" of the animal. Even more: here we already find an echo of a law that he later expressed, which is important in its consequences, 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., 1st vol., p. 247.} The contrast between animal and man is already sought here in the fact that an ideal form develops in two different directions, that each time one organ system gains predominance and the whole creature receives its character from it.

[ 3 ] In the same year (1776), however, we also find Goethe gaining clarity about what to assume when considering the form of the animal organism. He recognized that the bones are the foundations of formation, ^{30see Natw. Schr., 2nd vol. [p. 68 f.].} an idea that he later upheld by starting from the theory of bones in his anatomical works. In this year he wrote down the important sentence in this respect: ^{31Ebenda [p. 69].} "The movable parts form themselves according to them (the bones), or to be more precise, with them, and play their game only insofar as the fixed ones allow it." Another allusion in Lavater's Physiognomics: "It may already have been noticed that I regard the bone system as the basic drawing of man - the skull as the foundation of the bone system and all flesh as almost merely the coloring of this drawing", ^{32Lavater's Fragments II, 143.} may well have been written at Goethe's suggestion, who often discussed these things with Lavater. After all, they are identical with the allusions ^{33See Natw. Schr., 2nd vol. [p. 69].} written by Goethe. Goethe, however, makes a further remark on the subject, which we must pay particular attention to: "This remark (that it is in the bones, and especially in the skull, that one can see most clearly how the bones are the foundations of formation), which is undeniable here (in animals), will have to suffer great contradiction when applied to the difference in human skulls." ^34Ebenda. What is Goethe doing here other than seeking out the simpler animal in the composite human being again, as he later (1795) expressed it! From this we gain the conviction that the basic ideas on which Goethe's thoughts on the formation of animals were later to be based were established in him in 1776 as a result of his study of Lavater's physiognomy.

[ 4 ] Goethe's study of the details of anatomy also began in this year. On January 22, 1776, he wrote to Lavater: "The Duke has sent me six skulls, and I have made wonderful observations which will be of service to Your Reverence, if you did not find them without me." [WA 3, 20] Further inspiration for a more detailed study of anatomy came from his connections with the University of Jena. 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 promoted Goethe's studies immensely: Loder. Loder also introduced him to anatomy, as he wrote to Frau von Stein on October 29, 1781 ^{35"An arduous labor of love that I have undertaken brings me closer to my hobby. Loder explains all the legs and muscles to me, and I will grasp much in a few days." [WA 5, 207]} and on November 4 to Karl August ^{36"He (Loder) has demonstrated osteology and myology to me in these eight days, which we, of course as much as my guardianship suffered, almost entirely devoted to it." [WA 5, 211]} writes. In the latter letter, he also expresses his intention to explain the skeleton to the "young people" of the Academy of Drawing "and to lead them to a knowledge of the human body". He adds: "I am doing this for my own sake as well as theirs; the method I have chosen will make them completely familiar with the basic pillars of the body this winter." The entries in Goethe's diary show that he actually gave these lectures and finished them on January 16. At the same time, there must have been much discussion with Loder about the structure of the human body. Under January 6, the diary notes: Demonstration of the heart by Loder. If we have now seen that Goethe already had far-sighted thoughts about the structure of animal organization in 1776, there can be no doubt for a moment that his current in-depth preoccupations with anatomy went beyond the consideration of details to higher points of view. Thus he wrote to Lavater and Merck on November 14, 1781 that he treated "the bones as a text to which all life and everything human can be attached". [WA 5, 217 and 220] When we contemplate a text, images and ideas are formed in our minds that appear to be evoked and generated by it. Goethe treated the bones as such a text, i.e. by looking at them, thoughts about all life and everything human arise in his mind. Certain ideas about the formation of the organism must therefore have asserted themselves in these considerations. Now we have an ode by Goethe from the year 1782: "The Divine", which gives us some idea of how he thought about the relationship of man to the rest of nature at that time. The first verse reads:

"Noble be man,
Helpful and good! For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all beings we know."

[ 5 ] In the first two lines of this stanza, man is described according to his spiritual qualities, and Goethe says that these alone distinguish him from all other beings in the world. This "alone" shows us quite clearly that Goethe conceived of man in terms of his physical constitution as being entirely in accordance with the rest of nature. The thought to which we have already drawn attention above, that a basic form dominates the shape of man as well as of animals, that in the former it only increases to such a perfection that it is capable of being the bearer of a free spiritual being, becomes ever more vivid in his work. According to his sensuous qualities, man must also, as the ode continues:

"According to eternal, honorable
Great laws"
Of his ... "existence
circles complete."

[ 6 ] But these laws develop in him in a way that makes it possible for him to achieve the "impossible":

"He discerns,
Chooses and judges;
He can give the moment
give duration."

[ 7 ] Now one must also consider that, while these views were developing more and more definitely in Goethe, he was in lively contact with Herder, who began to record his "Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind" in 1783. This work almost emerged from the conversations between the two, and some of the ideas can probably be traced back to Goethe. The thoughts expressed here are often entirely Goethean, only expressed in Herder's way, so that we can draw a reliable conclusion from them as to Goethe's thoughts at the time.

[ 8 ] Herder now has in the first part ^{37Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1. Teil, 5. Buch, in: Herders Sämtliche Werke, hg. v. B. Suphan; Berlin 1877-1913, 13. Bd., p. 167.} the following view of the nature of the world. A main form must be assumed, which runs through all beings and is realized in various ways. "From stone to crystal, from crystal to metals, from these to the creation of plants, from plants to animals, from the latter to man, we saw the form of organization rise, and with it the powers and impulses of the creature become more varied, and finally all unite in the form of man, in so far as this could contain them." The idea is quite clear: an ideal, typical form, which as such is not sensibly real, is realized in an infinite number of spatially separated beings with different characteristics, right up to the human being. On the lower levels of organization it always realizes itself in a certain direction; it develops in this direction in particular. As this typical form rises up to the human being, it takes together all the principles of formation which it has always developed only one-sidedly in the lower organisms, which it has distributed among different beings, in order to form one form. From this also arises the possibility of such high perfection in man. In him, nature has used one being, which it has dispersed among many classes and orders in the animals. This idea had an immensely fruitful effect on subsequent German philosophy. The description which Oken later gave of the same idea should be mentioned here to clarify it. He says: ^{38Oken, Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie. 2nd ed., Jena 1831,p. 389.} "The animal kingdom is only an animal, i.e. the representation of animality with all its organs, each a whole in itself. A single animal arises when a single organ detaches itself from the general animal body and still performs the essential animal functions. The animal kingdom is only the fragmented highest animal: man. There is only one human guild, only one human race, only one human species, precisely because he is the entire animal kingdom." Thus, for example, there are animals in which the organs of touch are developed, indeed the whole organization points to the activity of touching and finds its goal in it, others in which the feeding tools are particularly developed, etc., in short, in each animal species one organ system comes to the fore; the whole animal is absorbed in it; everything else recedes into the background. In human formation, all organs and organ systems are formed in such a way that one leaves enough room for the other to develop freely, that each one recedes into those limits which seem necessary to allow all the others to come into their own in the same way. In this way a harmonious interaction of the individual organs and systems results in a harmony which makes man the most perfect being, uniting the perfections of all other creatures. These thoughts also formed the content of Goethe's discussions with Herder, and Herder expresses them in the following way: that "the human race is to be regarded as the great confluence of lower organic forces, which should come to form humanity within it". And in another place: "And so we can assume: that man is a middle creature among the animals, i.e. the elaborated form in which the traits of all species gather around him in the finest embodiment." ^{39Herder, a. 0. 1. part, 5th book, or I. part, 2nd book.}

[ 9 ] In order to indicate the contribution Goethe made to Herder's work "Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind", we would like to 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 delicious ... World and natural history are now really racing through our minds." [WA 6, 224] Herder's statements in Book 3 VI and Book 4 1, that the upright posture conditioned by the human organization and what is connected with it is the basic condition of his rational activity, is directly reminiscent of what Goethe hinted at in 1776 in the second section of the second volume of Lavater's "Physiognomic Fragments" about the difference between the sexes of humans and animals, and what we have already mentioned above. It is only an elaboration of that idea. All this, however, justifies us in assuming that Goethe and Herder were mainly in agreement in their views on the position of man in nature at that time (1783ff.).

[ 10 ] Now, however, such a basic view implies that every organ, every part of an animal must be able to be found in man, only pushed back into the limits imposed by the harmony of the whole. A bone, for example, must certainly come to its particular development in a certain species of animal, it must push itself forward here, but it must also be found at least hinted at in all the others, indeed it must not be absent in man. If there it assumes the form which belongs to it by virtue of its own laws, here it must conform to the whole, adapting its own laws of formation to those of the whole organism. But it must not be absent if a rupture is not to occur in nature, whereby the consistent formation of a type would be disturbed.

[ 11 ] This was the state of Goethe's views when he suddenly became aware of an opinion that completely contradicted these great ideas. The scholars of the time were primarily concerned with finding characteristics that would distinguish one species of animal from another. The difference between animals and humans was supposed to be that the former had a small bone, the intermediate bone, between the two symmetrical halves of the upper jaw, which contained the upper incisors and which humans were supposed to lack. When Merck began to take a keen interest in the theory of bones in 1782 and turned to some of the most famous scholars of the time for help, he received the following information on 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 f.].} "I wish that you would follow Blumenbach's example, because of the ossis intermaxillaris, which ceteris paribus is the only bone that all animals from apes onwards, even including the orangutang, have, but which is never found in man; if you deduct this bone, you will lack nothing to prevent you from transferring everything from man to animals. I therefore enclose the head 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 have no incisors in the upper jaw." Although Blumenbach found a trace quasi rudimentum of the ossis intermaxillaris on the skulls of unborn or young children, and even once found two completely separate small bone cores on such a skull as a true intermaxillary bone, he did not admit the existence of such a bone. He said of it: "It is still very different from the true osse intermaxillari." Camper, the most famous anatomist of the time, was of the same opinion. The latter says ^{41in: "Natuurkundige verhandelingen over den orang Outang.... .". Amsterdam 1782, p. 75, § 2.} e.g. of the intermediate bones: "die nimmer by menschen gevonden wordt, zelfs niet by de Negers." Merck was imbued with the deepest reverence for Camper and devoted himself to 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 the closest interest in his bone investigations and exchanged his thoughts with him on these matters. On October 27, 1782, he asked Merck to write to him about Camper's incognito and to send him his letters. ^{42[WA 6,75]} We also have a visit by Blumenbach to Weimar in April 1783. In September of the same year, Goethe went to Göttingen to visit Blumenbach and all the professors there. On September 28, he writes to Frau von Stein: "I have resolved to visit all the professors and you can imagine what it will take to get around in a few days." [WA 6, 202] He then goes to Kassel, where he meets Forster and Sömmerring. From there he writes to Frau von Stein on October 2: "I see very beautiful and good things and am rewarded for my quiet diligence. The happiest thing is that I can now say that I am on the right path and nothing will be lost to me from now on." [WA 6, 204]

[ 13 ] It was probably during this conversation that Goethe first became aware of the prevailing views on the intermaxillary bone. Given his views, these must have immediately appeared to him to be a mistake. The typical basic form, according to which all organisms must be built, would thus be destroyed. Goethe could be in no doubt that this limb, which is to be found more or less developed in all higher animals, must also participate in the formation of the human form, and would only recede here because the organs of food intake generally recede behind those that serve spiritual functions. Goethe, with his whole intellectual orientation, could not think otherwise than that an intermediate bone was also present in man. It was only a question of empirical proof of this, of the form it takes in man, of the extent to which it fits into the whole organism. He succeeded in proving this in the spring of 1784 in collaboration with Loder, with whom he compared human and animal skulls in Jena. Goethe announced the matter to Frau von Stein ^{43on March 27"It has become a delicious pleasure for me, I have made an anatomical discovery that is important and beautiful." [WA 6, 259]} as did Herder. ^{44"I have found - neither gold nor silver, but what gives me unspeakable pleasure - the os intermaxillare in man!" [WA 6, 258]}

[ 14 ] Now this single discovery must not be overestimated in comparison with the great ideas of which it is based; for Goethe, too, it only had the value of clearing away a prejudice that appeared to be an obstacle if his ideas were to be consistently pursued down to the extreme details of an organism. Goethe never saw it as an individual discovery either, always only in connection with his great view of nature. This is how we are to understand it when he says in the above-mentioned letter to Herder: "It should also make you very happy, for it is like the keystone to man, is not missing, is also there! But how!" And he immediately reminds his friend of further prospects: "I have also thought of it in connection with your whole, how beautiful it will be there." The assertion that animals have an intermediate bone, but humans do not, could not have made sense to Goethe. If it lies in the forces that form an organism to insert an intermediate bone between the two upper jaw bones in animals, then the same forces must be at work in man at the place where the bone is found in animals, in essentially the same way, only different in appearance. Because Goethe never thought of the organism as a dead, rigid composition, but always as arising from its inner formative forces, he had to ask himself: What do these forces do in the upper jaw of man? It could not be a question of whether the intermaxillary bone was present, but how it was constituted, what kind of formation it assumed. And this had to be found empirically.

[ 15 ] The idea of working out a larger work on nature now became more and more active in Goethe's mind. We can see this from various statements. In November 1784, for example, he wrote to Knebel when he sent him the treatise on his discovery: "I have refrained from mentioning the result that Herder already hinted at in his ideas, namely that the difference between man and animal cannot be found in any single thing." [WA 6, 389] What is particularly important here is that Goethe says that he has refrained from already making the basic idea jetzo noticeable; he therefore wants to do this later in a larger context. Furthermore, this passage shows us that the basic ideas that interest us above all in Goethe: the great ideas about the animal type were present long before that discovery. For Goethe himself admits here that they are already hinted at in Herder's ideas; the passages in which this occurs, however, were written before the discovery of the intermediate bone. The discovery of the intermaxillary bone is thus only a consequence of those great views. For those who did not have these views, it had to remain incomprehensible. They were deprived of the only natural-historical characteristic by which they distinguished man from animals. They had little idea of those thoughts which dominated Goethe and which we hinted at earlier, that the elements dispersed in the animals unite to form a harmony in the one human form and thus, despite the sameness of all individuals, establish a difference in the whole which assigns man his high rank in the series of beings. Their observation was not an ideal, but an external comparison; and for the latter, however, the intermediate bone in man was not there. They had little understanding of what Goethe demanded: to see with the eyes of the mind. This was the reason for the difference in judgment between them and Goethe. While Blumenbach, who also saw the matter quite clearly, came to the conclusion: "It is, after all, very different from the true osse intermaxillari", Goethe judged: "How can such a great external difference be explained with the necessary inner identity?". Goethe obviously wanted to work out this idea consistently and he spent a lot of time on it, especially in the years that followed. On May 1, 1784, Frau von Stein wrote to Knebel: ^{45We have already mentioned her words above [p. 26] in another context.} "Herder's new writing makes it probable that we were first plants and animals ... Goethe now broods over these things in a thoughtful way and everything that has passed through his imagination becomes extremely interesting." The degree to which the idea of presenting his views on nature in a larger work was alive in Goethe becomes particularly clear to us when we see that with every new discovery he succeeds in making, he cannot help but expressly emphasize to friends the possibility of extending his thoughts to the whole of nature. In 1786, he wrote to Frau von Stein that he wanted to extend his ideas about the way in which nature produces manifold life by playing, as it were, with one main form, "to all realms of nature, to its entire realm". And since in Italy the idea of metamorphosis for plants was vividly presented to his mind in every detail, he wrote in Naples on May 17, 1787: "The same law will apply to everything ... living things." ^{46Italian Journey.} The first essay in the "Morphologische Hefte" (1817) contains the words: "May therefore that which I often dreamed of as a work in my youthful mood now emerge as a draft, indeed as a fragmentary collection." We must lament the fact that such a work by Goethe's hand did not materialize. According to all that is available, it would have been a creation that would have far surpassed anything of its kind produced in more recent times. It would have become a canon from which every endeavor in the field of natural science would have to start and against which one could test its spiritual content. The deepest philosophical spirit, which only superficiality can deny Goethe, would have been combined here with a loving immersion in what is given by sensory experience; far removed from any one-sided systemism, which believes to encompass all beings through a general scheme, every single individuality would have been given its due here. We would be dealing here with the work of a spirit in which not a single branch of human endeavor stands out by setting aside all others, but in which the totality of human existence always hovers in the background when it deals with a single area. This gives each individual activity its proper place in 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 as if they were not abstracted from the objects by a mind, but as if they formed the objects themselves in a mind that forgets itself in the process of contemplation. This strictest objectivity would make Goethe's work the most perfect work of natural science; it would be an ideal to which every natural scientist should aspire; for the philosopher it would be a typical model for the discovery of the laws of objective observation of the world. It can be assumed that epistemology, which now appears everywhere as a basic philosophical science, will only be able to become fruitful when it takes its starting point from Goethe's way of viewing and thinking. Goethe himself gives the reason why this work did not come to fruition in the Annals of 1790 with the words: "The task was so great that it could not be solved in a scattered life."

[ 16 ] If we start from this point of view, the individual fragments we have of Goethe's natural science take on enormous significance. Indeed, we learn to appreciate and understand them only when we see them as emerging from that great whole.

[ 17 ] In 1784, however, the treatise on the intermaxillary bone was to be worked out, as it were merely as a preliminary exercise. It was not to be published at first, as Goethe wrote to Sömmerring on March 6, 1785: "Since my little treatise has no appeal to publicity at all and is to be regarded merely as a concept, anything you want to tell me about this subject would be very pleasant to me." [WA 7, 21] Nevertheless, it was carried out with all due care and with the aid of all the necessary individual studies. Young people were immediately taken on to carry out osteological drawings under Goethe's direction according to Camper's method. He therefore asked Merck [WA 6, 267f.] on April 23 [1784] for information about this method and had Sömmerring [WA 6, 277] send him some of Camper's drawings. Merck, Sömmerring and other acquaintances are asked for skeletons and bones of all kinds. On April 23, he writes to Merck that he would be very pleased to receive the following skeletons: " ... a Myrmecophaga, Bradypus, lion, tiger or the like." [WA 6, 268] On May 14 [WA 6, 278] he asks Sömmerring for the skull of his elephant skeleton and the skull of the hippopotamus, and on September 16 for the skulls of the following animals: "Wild cat, lion, young bear, incognitum, anteater, camel, dromedary, sea lion." [WA 6, 357] The friends were also asked for specific information, such as Merck's description of the palatal part of his rhinoceros and in particular for clarification of "how the horn of the rhinoceros actually sits on the nasal bone". [WA 6, 267] Goethe was completely immersed in these studies at the time. The aforementioned elephant skull is drawn by Waitz from many sides according to Camper's method [WA 6, 356], compared by Goethe with a large skull of his own and with other animal skulls, as he discovered that most of the sutures on that skull were still undeveloped. [WA 6, 293 f.] He makes another important remark about this skull. Until then it had been assumed that in all animals only the incisors were inserted in the intermaxillary bone, while the canines belonged to the maxillary bone; only the elephant was supposed to be an exception. In the elephant, the canines should be contained in the intermaxillary bone. That this is not the case is also shown by the skull, as he writes in a letter to Herder. [WA 6, 308] On a journey to Eisenach [WA 6, 278] and Brunswick, which Goethe undertook that summer [1784], his osteological studies accompanied him. On the latter, he wants to "look an unborn elephant in the mouth and have a brave conversation with Zimmermann" in Brunswick. [WA 6, 332] He went on to write to Merck about this fetus: "I wish we had the fetus they have in Brunswick in our cabinet; it should be dissected, skeletonized and prepared in a short time. I don't know what such a monster in spirit is good for if you don't dissect it and explain its inner structure." [WA 6, 332 and 333] These studies gave rise to the treatise that is reported in the first volume [p. 277] of Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften in Kürschners National-Literatur. Goethen Loder was very helpful in writing it. With his assistance, a Latin terminology was created. Loder also provided a Latin translation. [In November 1784 Goethe sent the treatise to Knebel [WA 6, 389 f.] and already on December 19 to Merck [WA 6, 409 f.], although he still believed shortly beforehand (December 2) that not much would come of it before the end of the year. [WA 6, 400 f.] The work was provided with the necessary drawings. Because of Camper, the Latin translation mentioned was enclosed. Merck was to send the work to Sömmerring. The latter received it in January 1785, from where it was sent to Camper. If we now take a look at the way Goethe's treatise was received, we are confronted with a rather unpleasant picture. At first, no one had the means to understand it except Loder, with whom he worked, and Herder. Merck enjoys the treatise, but is not penetrated by the truth of Asserti. [WA 7, 11 f.] Sömmerring writes in the letter with which he announces the arrival of Merck's treatise: "The main idea had already been Blumenbach." Im, who begins: "There will therefore be no doubt [remaining]," he [Goethe] says, "since the remaining (boundaries) have grown together"; it is only a pity that they were never there. I now have before me jawbones of embryos, from three months to adulthood, and there has never been a boundary to be seen in any of them. And to explain the matter by the urge of the bones against each other? Yes, if nature worked as a carpenter with wedge and hammer!" ^{47Letters to J. H. Merck, p. 438.} On February 13, 1785, Goethe wrote to Merck: "I have a very light letter from Sömmerring . He wants to talk me out of it. Oh dear!" [WA 7, 12] - And Sömmerring wrote to Merck on May 11, 1785: "Goethe, as I see from his letter yesterday, does not yet want to abandon his idea regarding the ossis intermaxillaris." ^{48Ebenda p. 448.}

[ 18 ] And now Camper. ^{49It was previously assumed that Camper had received the treatise anonymously. It came to him in a roundabout way: Goethe first sent it to Sömmerring, the latter to Merck and the latter was supposed to send it to Camper. However, among Merck's letters to Camper, which are still unpublished and the originals of which are in the "Bibliothèque de la société néelandaise pour les progrès la médecine" in Amsterdam, there is a letter dated January 17, 1785 with the following passage (we quote literally): "Monsieur de Goethe, Poète cèlèbre, conseiller intime duc de Weimar, vient de m'envoier un specimen osteologicum, que dost vous être envoié après que Mr. Sömring l'aura vû.... C'est un petit traité sur l'os intermaxillaire, qui nous apprend inter autres la vérité, que le Triche(chus) a 4 dents incisives et que le Chameau a en deux." A letter dated March 10, 1785 indicates that Merck will soon send the treatise to Camper, again explicitly mentioning Goethe's name: "J'aurai l'honneur de vous envoier le specimen osteolog. de Mr. de Goethe, mon ami, par une voie, qui ne sera pas conteuse un de ces jours." On April 28, 1785, Merck expressed the hope that Camper had received the matter, again mentioning "Goethe". There is therefore no doubt that Camper knew the author.} On September 16, 1785 ^{50Letters to J. H. Merck, p. 466.} he informed Merck that the accompanying plates were not drawn according to his method at all. He even found them quite reprehensible. The appearance of the beautiful manuscript was praised, the Latin translation criticized, and the author was even advised to train himself in it. Three days later ^{51Ebenda, p. 469.} he writes that he has made a number of observations about the intermaxillary bone, but that he must continue to maintain that man has no intermaxillary bone. He admits all of Goethe's observations, except those relating to man. On March 21, 1786 ^{52Ebenda p. 481.} he writes once again that from a large number of observations he has come to the conclusion that the intermaxillary bone does not exist in man. Camper's letters clearly show that he had the best will in the world to penetrate the matter, but that he was unable to understand Goethe in the slightest.

[ 19 ] Loder immediately saw Goethe's discovery in the right light. He emphasized it in his "Anatomical Handbook" of 1788 ^{53Goethes Annalen zu 1790.} and from then on treated it in all his writings as a matter fully belonging to science, in which there could not be the slightest doubt.

[ 20 ] Herder wrote to Knebel about this: "Goethe has presented us with his treatise on the bone, which is very simple and beautiful; man walks on the true path of nature, and happiness goes towards him". ^{54Knebels Literarischer Nachlaß etc., ed. by Varnhagen v. Ense and Th. Mundt, Leipzig 1835, Vol. II, p.236.} Herder was just able to look at the matter with the "spiritual eye" with which Goethe viewed it. Without this, nothing could be done with it. This can best be seen from the following. Wilhelm Josephi (private lecturer at the University of Göttingen) wrote in his "Anatomy of Mammals" in 1787: "The ossa intermaxillaria are considered to be one of the main signs distinguishing apes from humans; however, according to my observations, humans also have such ossa intermaxillaria, at least in the first months of their existence, but these usually fuse with the real upper jaws at an early stage, namely already in the womb, so that often no noticeable trace of them remains." Here, however, Goethe's discovery is also fully expressed, but not as one demanded by the consistent realization of the type, but as the expression of a fact that immediately catches the eye. If one is merely dependent on the latter, then it depends only on fortunate chance whether one finds just such specimens in which one can see the matter precisely. But if one conceives the matter in Goethe's ideal way, these particular specimens serve merely to confirm the idea, merely to demonstrate openly what nature otherwise conceals; but the idea itself can be traced in any specimen, each showing a particular instance of it. Indeed, if one possesses the idea, one is able to find through it precisely those cases in which it is particularly pronounced. Without it, however, one is at the mercy of chance. One sees indeed that, after Goethe had given the suggestion by his great thought, one has gradually become convinced of the truth of his discovery by observing numerous cases.

[ 21 ] Merck was probably always wavering. On February 13, 1785, Goethe sent him a cracked upper jaw of the man and the trichechus and gave him clues to understand the matter. From Goethe's letter of April 8, it seems that Merck was somewhat won over. However, he soon changed his mind again, for on November 11, 1786, he wrote to Sömmerring: ^{55[Rudolf Wagner, Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring's Life and Intercourse with his Contemporaries, 1st ed.] Briefe berühmter Zeitgenossen an Sömmerring [Leipzig 1844] p. 293.} "Wie ich höre, hat Vicq d'Azyr sogar Goethes sogenannte Entdekkung in seinem Werk aufgenommen."

[ 22 ] Sömmerring did gradually abandon his resistance. In his work "Vom Baue des menschlichen Körpers" he says (p. 160): "Goethe's sensible attempt from the comparative theory of bones, that the intermediate bone of the upper jaw is common to man with the other animals, from 1785, with very correct illustrations, deserves to be publicly known."

[ 23 ] Blumenbach was probably more difficult to win over. In his "Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie", 1805, ^{56Ebenda - s. note 55 -S. 22.} he still made the assertion that humans have no intermediate bones. However, in his essay "Principes de Philosophie Zoologique", written in 1830-32, Goethe can already speak of Blumenbach's conversion. ^{57Natw. Schr., 1st vol., p.405.} He joined Goethe's side after personal contact. ^{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 because of a "very animal-like prominent os intermaxillare". ^{59Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Korrespondenz (1812-1832), ed. by F. Th. Bratranek, vol. 1, p. 51.} We will have to talk about later followers of Goethe's ideas. It should only be mentioned here that M. J. Weber succeeded in separating the intermaxillary bone, which had already grown together with the maxillary bone, using diluted nitric acid. ^{60Froriep, Notizen aus dem Gebiet der Natur- und Heilkunde, vol. 19, 1828, p.283.}

[ 24 ] Goethe continued his bone studies even after completing that treatise. The simultaneous discoveries in botany made his interest in nature even more active. He continually borrowed relevant objects from his friends. On December 7, 1785 ^{61Letters to J. H. Merck, p. 476,} Sömmerring is even annoyed "that Goethe does not send him his heads again". From a letter from Goethe to Sömmerring dated June 8, 1786, we learn that he still had the latter's skulls by then.

[ 25 ] His great ideas also accompanied him in Italy. While the idea of the primordial plant was taking shape in his mind, he also came up with concepts about the form of man. On January 20, 1787, Goethe wrote in Rome: "I am quite prepared for anatomy, and I have acquired knowledge of the human body, up to a certain degree, not without effort. Here one is constantly reminded by the eternal contemplation of statues, but in a higher way. In our medical-surgical anatomy, it is merely a matter of knowing the part, and even a puny muscle serves this purpose. In Rome, however, the parts mean nothing if they do not at the same time present a noble, beautiful form.

[ 26 ] In the great military hospital of San Spirito, a very beautiful muscular body has been prepared for the artists in such a way that its beauty is astonishing. It could really pass for a maltreated demigod, a Marsyas.

[ 27 ] So, according to the instructions of the ancients, the skeleton should not be studied as an artificially assembled mass of bones, but rather together with the ligaments, which give it life and movement." ^{62Italian journey.}

[ 28 ] The main concern of Goethe here was to become acquainted with the laws according to which nature forms organic and especially human forms, the tendency it pursues in shaping them. Just as he seeks out the original plant in the series of infinite plant forms, with which one can still invent plants into infinity, which must be consistent, i.e. which are perfectly in accordance with that natural tendency and which would exist if the appropriate conditions were present; in the same way, Goethe had set out to "discover ideal characters" with regard to animals and man, which are perfectly in accordance with the laws of nature. Soon after his return from Italy, we learn that Goethe is "diligent in anatomicis" and in 1789 he writes to Herder: "I have a newly discovered Harmoniam naturae to present." What was newly discovered here may now be part of the vertebral theory of the skull. However, this discovery was completed in 1790. What he knew until then was that all the bones forming the occiput were three modified vertebrae of the spinal cord. Goethe thought of the matter as follows. The brain represents only one spinal cord mass perfected to the highest level. While the nerves serving the lower organic functions end in the spinal cord and start from there, the nerves serving the higher (mental) functions, preferably the sensory nerves, end and start in the brain. In the brain only appears developed what is possibly already indicated in the spinal cord. The brain is a fully developed medulla, the spinal cord a brain that has not yet fully developed. Now the vertebral bodies of the spinal column are perfectly formed to the parts of the spinal cord, are their necessary enveloping organs. It now appears highly probable that if the brain is a spinal cord of the highest potency, the bones enveloping it are also only more highly developed vertebral bodies. The whole head appears in this way already pre-formed in the lower bodily organs. The forces already active at a subordinate level are also active here, only they develop in the head to the highest potency lying within them. Again, for Goethe it was only a question of proving how the matter actually takes shape according to sensory reality? Goethe says that he recognized these relationships very soon from the occipital bone, the posterior and anterior sphenoid bone; but that the palatal bone, the upper jaw and the intermaxillary bone were also modified vertebral bodies, he recognized on his journey to northern Italy, when he found a cracked sheep's skull on the dunes of the Lido. This skull had fallen apart so happily that the individual vertebral bodies could be recognized in the individual pieces. Goethe reported this beautiful discovery to Frau von Kalb on April 30, 1790 with the words: "Tell Herdern that I have come a whole formula closer to the animal form and its various transformations, and that by the strangest of coincidences." [WA 9, 202]

[ 29 ] This was a discovery of the most far-reaching significance. It proved that all members of an organic whole are identical in idea and that "internally unformed" organic masses open up to the outside world in different ways, that it is one and the same thing that opens up at a lower level as the spinal cord nerve and at a higher level as the sensory nerve to the sensory organs that receive, grasp and comprehend the outside world. Every living thing was thus revealed in its power to form and shape itself from within; it was only now understood as truly alive. Goethe's basic ideas had now also come to a conclusion with regard to the formation of animals. The time had come to work it out, although he had already had the plan for it earlier, as Goethe's correspondence with F. H. Jacobi proves. When he followed the Duke to the Silesian camp in July 1790, he was mainly 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: "In all the turmoil, I began to write my treatise on the formation of animals." [WA 9, 223]

[ 30 ] The poem "The Metamorphosis of Animals", which first appeared in 1820 in the second of the "Morphological Booklets", contains the idea of the animal type in a comprehensive sense. ^{63Cf. Natw. Schr., 1st vol. p. 344ff. where individual details are also given in notes.} In the years 1790-95, Goethe's scientific work was primarily concerned with the theory of colors. At the beginning of 1795, Goethe was in Jena, where the Humboldt brothers, Max Jacobi and Schiller were also present. In this company, Goethe presented his ideas on comparative anatomy. The friends found his presentations so significant that they asked him to put his thoughts down on paper. As can be seen from a letter from Goethe to Jacobi the Elder [WA 10, 232], Goethe immediately complied with this request in Jena by dictating to Max Jacobi the outline of a comparative theory of bones printed in the first volume of Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften in Kürschners National-Literatur [pp. 241-275]. The introductory chapters were further elaborated in 1796 [ibid. p. 325 ff.]. These essays contain Goethe's basic views on animal formation just as much as his essay "Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanze zu erklären" (Attempt to explain the metamorphosis of plants) contains his views on plant formation. In his contact with Schiller - from 1794 onwards - a turning point in his views occurred, in that from then on he took a contemplative approach to his own way of proceeding and research, whereby his way of looking at things became objective to him. After these historical considerations, let us now turn to the nature and significance of Goethe's views on the formation of organisms.