The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I was never able to describe the sum of ideas through which I sought to get closer to the universe and its creatures with one of the common expressions such as idealism, realism, Spinozism, pantheism, theism, etc., because I could not admit that the overfull inner life of nature could be measured by one-sided definitions. I did not want to see nature harnessed to abstractions, but to wait and listen until it spoke to me and revealed its secret to me in the form that was appropriate to it.

In the highest form of knowledge, all predetermined methods must give way because nature does not want to be determined by the way in which it reaches us. In any case, however, in that higher listening, space and time cease to play a role; these two lead man astray the longest. For even if we succeed in detaching from the other sensory properties of things and penetrating deeper into their essence, space and time still seem inseparable from things. But anyone who has not made this separation can never come to higher insights. For it is only through ideas that space and time acquire a true meaning. The idea allows everything extended to grow out of its spiritual womb; without idea, a perception of space is impossible. But it is inadmissible to think of the idea itself as temporal/spatial; the idea is a non-spatial and non-temporal, and therefore eternal, reality. So I can very well call my view of things idealism, because I am always trying to grasp the ideas that are only accessible to intuitive, time- and spaceless vision. When I grasp the idea, I feel as if I had immersed myself in the world spirit. A higher life in the world speaks to me. But it does not speak to everyone in this way; those who have not ceased to perceive only with the outer senses and to process only this perceptual material with the mind cannot hear that voice of nature. There is a higher sensuality to which we must first educate ourselves. There is a personality that first comes into being in us and suddenly shows us everything in a new light. We then cease to live in a particular place and at any given time. We live the higher infinite being. But we also cease to be an individual because we are one with the universal spirit. Thus, by working our way up to the highest level of individuality, we transcend it and perceive as with the senses of the world soul. Of course, we do not achieve this through abstract studies or logical rules, but only through constant inner perfection. “Know thyself” is a saying that I have always distrusted. I do not want to know myself, at least not as a finished product; because every dead point in my soul blocks the way for me to open the gates of the universe. As long as I merely recognize myself, I am not willing to approach the higher state of being. I must recreate myself to become perfect; to recognize is to live within nature: we must co-create spiritually if we want to recognize in the higher sense. The metamorphosis is intended to be an example of this. Those who cling to the externals of life and are atomistically minded cannot understand it. In the higher sense, there is nothing in nature that is separate; the divine spark of the infinite lives in everything, and for those who have not seen a thing in its light, it does not exist. You can apply all your efforts to something; if you have not awakened within yourself the gift of listening to that word, through which our intuition suddenly opens up to the inner essence and everything becomes bright, then all knowledge is dead. People believe that they recognize what they only understand; they believe that they understand what they only know.

It seems to me that all previous interpretations of the fairy tale suffer from the mistake of not taking into account one word that is explicitly mentioned in the fairy tale. When the old man with the lamp is asked which of the three secrets he knows is the most important, he answers: the revealed one. And when asked if he does not want to reveal it, he replies: as soon as I know the fourth. But the snake knows this fourth secret and whispers it to the old man. There can be no doubt that the secret that is revealed is the most important secret, for it brings about the state longed for by all the characters in the fairy tale. But since this state of affairs is described to us in great detail at the end, we must see the disclosure of the actual secret in the presentation of the circumstances at the end of the fairy tale. However, we must assume that the old man knows this secret very well, because he is, after all, the only person who is always above the circumstances, who directs and guides everything. And so the question arises, what can the old man learn from the snake? How to achieve what he and everyone else most urgently desire, the snake does not need to tell him, because he knows that himself. But we have seen that the snake is the most important being in the whole process, because only by sacrificing itself can everything be achieved. But it must come to the realization that this is necessary. And the old man cannot know when the time will come when the snake will come to this realization. Because that is up to the snake. The fourth secret is therefore when the snake wants to bring about the salvation of all the other figures through its sacrificial death. That she is willing to do this, she apparently whispers into the old man's ear. And now the latter can speak the word: “The time has come.”

What is now coming to light is the secret hidden in the fairy tale. And we just have to know how to find the crux of the matter, where the solution presents itself within the riddle. The desired goal is achieved in the revival of the youth, his union with the beautiful lily, and then through the fact that both realms, this side and the other side of the river, are connected by the magnificent bridge, on which all people can move freely back and forth as they please. Even though the snake is the originator of it all, she alone could not give the youth the gifts by which he can rule the newly established kingdom. These he receives from the three kings. From the brazen one he receives the sword with the order: “the sword on the left, the right free.”

The silver one gives him the scepter with the remark: “Feed the sheep.” Finally, the golden one places the oak wreath on his head with the words: “Recognize the highest.” Let us try to penetrate the meaning of these symbolic acts. The sword can only signify the power, the physical strength and violence that is given to the new ruler with it. However, he should not wield it in his right hand, where it always indicated a willingness to fight and war, but should hold it in his left hand, thus using it for protection, to ward off evil. The right hand, however, should be free for deeds of genuine humanity. What does the sceptre represent to the youth? The words: feed my sheep, remind us of Christ's command to the apostle: “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep”. Thus, piety and religious purity of heart emanate from this king and are imparted to the youth. Finally, from the third king, the youth is given the oak wreath and the gift of knowing the highest. The three kings are thus the three fundamental powers of the human mind: the will as the founder of power and physical strength and violence; the mind as the promoter of piety; and reason as the source of wisdom. Thus, it is not force, piety and wisdom themselves that are symbolized by the three kings, but the powers from which the latter emanate. Therefore, when the old man calls out the words, “There are three that rule on earth: wisdom, appearance and force,” the three kings each rise when their names are mentioned. There seems to be some ambiguity here in that the second king, the silver one, is presented as the ruler of the realm of appearances, whereas, judging by his words, we can only see in him the guardian spirit of piety. However, this contradiction is immediately resolved when we recall the close relationship that Goethe establishes between aesthetic and religious feelings. We need only think of words such as these: “There are only two true religions: one that recognizes the sacred that dwells in and around us in a completely formless way, and the other that recognizes and worships it in the most beautiful form.” Goethe sees art as only a different form of religion, and that is why he has the bearer of religion called upon here with the words: appearance, that is beautiful appearance. Now that we know the meaning of the kings, it will be possible to draw conclusions about other things that appear in the fairy tale. Above all, we are interested in the king of wisdom. He is made of gold. So we will have to see in gold a symbol of wisdom and everywhere we encounter this metal in the fairy tale, we will have to recognize this highest power of the human soul.

We now encounter gold in the form of the will-o'-the-wisp and the snake. Both relate to it quite differently. While the will-o'-the-wisps know how to acquire it easily everywhere and then throw it around wastefully and arrogantly, the snake only acquires it with difficulty and absorbs it organically, processing it in its body so that it permeates its entire being. So, without doubt, the will-o'-the-wisps are a symbol for all those personalities who gather their wisdom from all sides and then give it out lightly, without permeating themselves with it inwardly. In short, the will-o'-the-wisps represent all unproductive minds that can teach but not create. What they teach is therefore always more or less empty phrases. If these phrases fall on fertile ground, they can still achieve the very best.

A person can communicate a word to another that he does not understand at all and in which the person who hears it recognizes a deep meaning. The truth is expressed by the fact that this gold, which the will-o'-the-wisps only know how to flaunt, is processed by the serpent in the best way. The snake embodies the solid human striving, the strict progression on the path of wisdom, supported by honest work.

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Goethe expresses this by having them translated in the time of twilight on the shadow of the giant. The giant is thus at the same time the symbol of violence, of blind arbitrariness, and his shadow that of the senseless works of this arbitrariness. Arbitrariness acts unconsciously, it is powerless to create things that are preconscious and planned, just as the giant's shadow is not his own work, just as he accompanies it without his conscious intervention. Once we are familiar with the realm of the lily, that on the other side of the river will also be clear to us. It is, of course, that of mere natural, sensual life, where man gives in to his natural instincts, pursues every desire, every passion, and so the realm where not freedom but natural necessity reigns. The river is now what separates the two. What seizes it in its hand becomes arbitrary and that means spiritual death. We are all born to freedom, it is our original home. We all come from the same place, but we cannot return to it without a fundamental transformation of our personality. That is why the ferryman can take any traveler across, but cannot bring anyone across. Everyone can only cross over in the already characterized way. Only when that ideal state has truly been reached, when perfect wisdom, perfect piety and power prevail, then everyone can cross over and back at will, at any moment. That we are right in our assertion that the river is the symbol of the state and of society is proved by the fact that the temple of the ruler is erected above it.

There is also other evidence for this. The ferryman demands fruit of the earth from every traveler he ferries as a reward. These fruits of the earth are simply the duties that the state and society impose on people in return for their legal benefits and protection. When the ferryman rejects the gold pieces of the will-o'-the-wisps, it means that the state can only recognize real services, and will even become displeased if you try to fob it off with mere words. When the old woman has to confess to the river that she owes it by dipping her hand into the water, this also corresponds to reality. Those who refuse to provide the state with the services it prescribes are held liable for it with body and property.

Now let us consider the old man with the lamp. The lamp has the property of shining only where another light is brought to it. Here we must remember how Goethe expresses his own view through the saying of an old mystic: “Were the eye not solar, the sun could never behold it; were not the power of the God within us, how could we be enraptured by the Divine!” Just as the lamp does not shine in the dark, so the higher light of truth does not shine for those who do not have the appropriate organs from which the inner light flows towards the outer. But this higher light of enlightenment is the power that guides everything towards the ultimate goal. Wherever this light shines, everything radiates the gold of truth again. This means that all beings reveal their inner, nobler nature to us. The light of the lamp turns stone into gold, wood into silver, and dead animals into precious stones. It is the higher light that ultimately establishes the right harmony in the work of the three kings. In the past, the fourth king ruled and he was not influenced by the lamp. In him, the three elements, which can only be perfected separately, are in disorderly, chaotic confusion. He does not possess these elements properly, but has only usurped them. He was able to rule as long as there was darkness. When the light appears, his figure disintegrates into nothing. The will-o'-the-wisps lick up all the gold that he has inside him. This means that this unproductive science feeds on the past. It absorbs everything without selection or any sense of inner meaning. Who does not remember those historians and literary historians who absorbed every worthless trifle with [three manuscript pages missing here]

not consumed in activities that befit only the free human spirit, but brought to bear in the development of their powers within strict natural regularity. Man, who is inwardly unfree, will, if his activity[ies] run quite mechanically like clockwork, still prove himself best. —

Thus Goethe embodied his views on the relationship between a person's inner and outer development in this fairy tale.

The parallelism with the ideas that Schiller was actively pursuing at the time and that found expression in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man is striking. Schiller also asked himself how freedom and natural necessity can coexist. And Schiller finds the bridge between the two in beauty and in artistic creation.

When the artist creates his works, he acts freely, but at the same time he unconsciously creates like a “dreamer, like a sleepwalker. In this respect, he is again subject to natural necessity. He is free and at the same time obeys the laws of nature. Indeed, he completely forgets his free self and creates under an irresistible compulsion, like nature. And so Schiller comes to the same conclusion by a completely different route. He also finds that only through an act of complete self-denial, through the sacrifice of the conscious self, can the realm of natural necessity be reconciled with that of freedom. The subject was certainly discussed at length between the two poets, for immediately after the first half of the fairy tale is received, Schiller refers to a conversation he had with Goethe, from which he reports that Goethe wants the highest to emerge from the interaction of all forces. Schiller solved the problem scientifically, Goethe poetically.

Perhaps my explanation will not be shared by many, perhaps it will be corrected or supplemented in some details. But I believe I have shown one thing: that Goethe's deep spirit, borne by the most perfect ideals and the most significant truths, also shines forth from this poem. And it is refreshing to see the two greatest minds of our nation working together in a joint intellectual endeavor on a task that should bring nothing less than the solution to the most serious question of conscience for humanity: How do we achieve perfect, unrestricted freedom? And for this reason, my observation that Goethe understood the realm of freedom to be on the other side of the river seemed to me not unworthy of mention.

Given that Goethe's Gretchen is by no means a dramatic figure, clearly defined by the poet in all her parts, every stage portrayal of Gretchen will have to include something that is not provided for in the poetry itself. Ms. Wiecke-Halberstedt's Gretchen is such a performance that the spectator has to say to himself: those traits of the characterization that come from the actress and not from the poet are so eminently in the spirit of the latter that the whole can only be described as a figure without contradictions. This must be said first, because in our opinion it is the greatest theatrical achievement to round off Goethe's Gretchen, whose entire being the poet only allows to shine through in individual images, into a whole. If we were asked which Gretchen we prefer: the one created by Wessely, who from the outset presented her in a way that bordered on the rapturous, or the one we saw here recently, which initially seemed to us like a meaningfully posed question to the human mind, which only comes to life through its own deep inwardness at Faust's side, we would find it difficult to say. Both views are possible and convincing. Perhaps the second, however, only for Ms. Wiecke, given the depth of her very unique instrument. In any case, Wessely's portrayal would be preferable for those artists who do not have such an instrument at their disposal, one that is capable of imprinting the tone of the meaningful on the naive and simple.

With consummate mastery, we found in Ms. Wiecke's portrayal: the prayer before the Mater Dolorosa and the dungeon scene. If the loud exclamations in the latter, which sometimes sounded unpleasant, could be improved, then we would have no reason, even with the greatest conscientiousness, to find fault with these two scenes, which we have seen as among the greatest artistic achievements. We also feel that the scene with Lieschen at the well and the first one in Martha's garden are happy ones. When the shrine is opened and she sees the casket, it must be made very clear, in our opinion, that Gretchen is filled with astonishment and curiosity and not a trace of fright. At the end of the monologue spoken at this point, it must not be overlooked that a certain resigned tone softens Gretchen's words: “Oh, we poor things!” so that the spectator is not left with the impression that she is truly overcome by envy of those blessed with happiness. In the fifth line from the end, I think the correct emphasis is:

“But one leaves it all too.”

It seems important to us to give the scene in the garden shed such a character that one recognizes from Gretchen's expressions exactly: she sees the story with the sleeping draught as a wrong, but she cannot refuse Faust even that which seems wrong to her. The passage in the second part, “die sich einmal nur vergangen” (she who once committed a transgression), points to this. It cannot be the surrender that took place in full love that is this wrong, but the offense against the mother.

But it seems even more significant to me that the religious conversation on Gretchen's part is conducted in such a way that it shows that in this case she, in her positive faith, is superior to Faust. This scene in particular is misunderstood everywhere. Faust's words: “Who may call him?” to: “Umnebelnd Himmelsglut.” everywhere as something particularly profound, while they are nothing but phrases spoken with beautiful words, hollow and shallow. This is the language of the man who has cast off scholasticism and has exchanged nothing better for it in the realm of ideas. The words are beautiful, but shallow. Gretchen senses this and therefore she says:

That is all very well and good;
the parson says something similar,
only with a few different words.

She does not know it quite, but she stands with her positive Christianity much higher than Faust with his phrases, which “seem tolerable”, but with which it is nevertheless “crooked”.

We must not forget that the Faust who stands before Gretchen here is a thoroughly worthless and wicked fellow, and that it is only the pain of the wrong he has done to her and his own healing nature that raise him to a higher plane in the second part. What attracts Gretchen to Faust is the rest of the significant human being that Faust always was, and which comes gloriously to the fore when Faust is completely absorbed in his love for the girl. In all other respects, however, Faust has been degraded during the tragedy of Gretchen, has become unhealthy and degenerate. Gretchen does not know what to make of Faust's hollow talk about God. In her innocence she sees something momentous in it, because she assumes that only the momentous can be in Faust; but in all of it she must be utterly amazed at the words, which are unconvincing to her in the face of her ideas about God. And in her correct instinct, she attributes them to the influence of the evil spirit. Gretchen must act throughout the scene in such a way that it is clear that she senses something special about Faust that she cannot explain rationally, but which makes her uncomfortable because it seems wrong to her. This trait sheds a very unique light on all the following scenes, preparing the mood that the audience must have at the end of the first part: Faust alone is to blame for Gretchen's moral and physical downfall, but this guilt is his fate. It is a psychologically profound trait in Gretchen's nature that after the fall, and in the knowledge of her wrongdoing, something like faith takes root in her soul, that something must not be right after all, and so she searches Faust's mind; this is how the religious conversation is motivated. From the words, “If one hears it that way, it seems tolerable,” the mood must already be announced in Gretchen's soul, which leads her from

doubt through guilt to madness. I would just like to emphasize in closing that I am far from believing that these objections must be binding. There is even a general lack of clarity regarding the religious dialogue, and the commentators on Faust – with the exception of Vischer – are completely wrong in their interpretation. But an excellent actress like Mrs. Wiecke could contribute a great deal to a better understanding of Faust by taking these objections into account. R. Steiner.

We have found the completion of the world process in knowledge. All events are expressions of the laws that operate in the things of the world. But it would remain forever a mere appearance if human consciousness did not confront things and in it the laws would enter into existence in their very own form.

At the beginning of the process of knowledge, we feel ourselves to be outside of things, alien to them; at the end of it, we have lived ourselves into them.

Our own actions are only a special case of general world events. When we have recognized their lawfulness, then our actions are also our work. We have become one with world lawfulness. It is not outside of us, but within us. The end of knowledge is identical with merging into the world's lawfulness. But this merging also means at the same time that we have mastered the process that we ourselves have initiated. As long as the world's lawfulness is something outside of us, it rules us; what we accomplish happens under its compulsion. If it is within us, then this compulsion ceases. For what was compelling has become our own nature. It no longer rules over us, but in us over everything else. The realization of an event by virtue of a law external to the realizer is an act of unfreedom; that by the realizer is an act of freedom. The process of knowledge is the development of the human personality towards freedom.

Where is the psychology here? The author addresses anthropological, ethical and metaphysical questions. His style is critical. This essay is not psychological like, for example, Saitschick's treatment of Dostoyevsky. Despite many apt remarks, it does not do justice to Nietzsche because the author shows only a limited understanding of him. From many parts of the book, I would conclude that Weigand was highly talented. But a series of trivialities astonishes me. Anyone who wants to understand Nietzsche psychologically must realize that in this man certain intuitions appear through the medium of a grotesquely distorting mind. A Nietzschean psychology would have the task of laying bare those intuitions and then showing the way in which Nietzsche's mind distorts them.

General discouragement in the field of philosophy – cowardice of thought – Volkelt as an example -—. It was he who, in the introduction to his “Traumphantasie” (1875), sharply criticized the only apparent resignation, but in truth half-heartedness and discouragement of thought, which no longer wants to boldly tackle the central problems of existence. (1884), Basel inaugural address: On the Possibility of Metaphysics. The expression of this despondency is the emergence of the many epistemologies - Lotze's saying about sharpening knives - but the knives have remained blunt - epistemology has not grasped the actual fundamental philosophical task - Lasalle's saying: “Philosophy can be nothing but the consciousness that the empirical sciences attain of themselves.”

All our philosophical science is under the spell of Kantianism. Since Otto Liebmann (1865) proclaimed the motto “back to Kant”, it has not been abandoned by research. Our most important natural scientists are subject to it.

All higher thinking of our nation is based on the fundamental tone of Kant's world view. We believe that with Kantianism we have now overcome dogmatism; in truth, we have exchanged nothing but a bad dogma, an article of faith: the belief in Kant's infallibility. Before Kant, there were dualists, monists, and pluralists. There was a limit to science, but not a limit to knowledge. It was Kant who first drew limits to our knowledge. Kant established a dualism, a two-worlds theory, which has forever blocked our access to the foundations of existence. Kant exchanged the certainty and security of our knowledge for its absoluteness.

He examines our cognitive faculty in order to gain an understanding of its capabilities. He finds two roots: sensuality and reason. Our mental organization creates our experience with the material of sensations. Therefore, cognition is limited to the latter. Skimming over experience is impossible because of the nature of the cognitive faculty. The In-Itself is forever unknowable. Theoretical reason only as a regulative. Surrogate practical reason. Ethics of the categorical imperative. Should. Kantianism perfect dualism. Two worlds: the world of the self and the world of experience. Two principles of knowledge: knowledge and belief. The subjectivism that this entails has not been abandoned.

As long as the trick of looking around the corner, i.e. 'without imagining, is not invented, Kant's proud self-modesty will have it that of the being, its that can be recognized, but never its what.

This dogma is the rock on which every opposing opinion is dashed. Otto Liebmann calls the sentence a sacrosanct principle. Hartmann's transcendental realism is based on it. Necessary consequences, e.g. spiritism. Du Bois-Reymond's view. Ignorabism. Subjectivism in modern science a consequence of Kantianism.

But how did the world of ideas come to be indicated? The split into subject and object is a product of our organization. Not a manifold is given to us, but we split the one into a manifold. Not unity is an illusion, but multiplicity. The task of science must therefore be: to overcome the multiplicity in the mind that is caused by our organization and to reshape it into unity. An element of science is only justified if it is split off from the whole of reality somewhere. Science is therefore only ever an association of the elements of reality that have been split up by our organization. The nature of the association must arise from the nature of the elements themselves. Immanent theories. They are contrasted with the transcendent theories. Atomism and metaphysical theories. The hypothesis is justified only insofar as it presupposes things that are relatively inaccessible to us only because of their remoteness in space and time. Metaphysical hypotheses are a non-starter. What matters is not that the consequences of a hypothesis are confirmed, but that the content of a hypothesis can be proven as a fact if the empirical possibility were present. Extension of this principle to inorganic and organic natural sciences. Haeckel's monism is therefore correct in principle. If we understand ourselves correctly, the world does not lead us out of itself. It must be explainable from within itself. There is only one world of experience, but it contains all the elements for its explanation and comprehensibility. There is nothing inexplicable in nature. The things that are supposed to be inexplicable to us must first be invented. Nothing truly real is incomprehensible; only the fantastic entities that humanity has created as reality and beyond that, are incomprehensible. We always remain only before the self-created barriers of knowledge.

Nietzsche admired the greatness of the personalities and the impulsive natures of the ancient philosophers. It took the greatest courage of thought to think the thoughts that were thought in the tragic age of the Greeks: by Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras. No one understands these sages unless they can build up a picture of their personalities from their thoughts. We are not interested in their teachings, but in their characters. We are drawn to explore their questions, to find out what kind of person Heraclitus was, because we have the feeling that his philosophy was only a condition of life that Heraclitus had to create for himself in order to be able to exist. One can wander through dreary stretches of modern philosophical history; nowhere is there such a necessary connection between character and the world of ideas. With most of the philosophers of the present day, one has the feeling that they pursue philosophy as an external business; one can also imagine them without this business. Indeed, the connection between the world of the senses and the personality rarely interests them. They strive for “objective truth,” that is, for that insipid and weak construct that arises from cowardly thinking, because not the whole personality is active when philosophizing. The ancient philosophers before Socrates were artists. And Nietzsche is another such philosophical artist. Only a fool would choose him as a master and swear by his words. Only the artistically sensitive person can gain a relationship with Nietzsche. He created his world of ideas like the ancient philosophers of the tragic age, because he needed it to live. Truth for him is not what can be supported by the strict proofs of school logic, but what proves to him to be life-promoting.

He does not prove his views, he tries them out on his own body to see if he can live with them. His rich, bold, deep nature needed dangerous truths to sustain itself. This is the charm of Nietzsche's writings: they always point us to the great man who creates a zest for life in them. A nature as rare and lonely as Nietzsche's could not easily get along with the world. He erected his thoughts between himself and the world in order to be able to endure the world.

Not the rigid thinking, not the so-called scientific drive, but the mood conjures up Nietzsche's thoughts. They detach themselves from him as products of the personality. All thoughts that go beyond a mere description of actual observation arise in this way. It's just that those who believe in objective truths don't have enough insight to understand this.

Even their most objective truths are the products of subjective personalities, only tailored for a certain average way of life. Objectivity means nothing more than being suitable for a large number of people to live by. But the select personality needs select truths. The more objective a truth is, i.e., the more universally valid it is, the more trite it is. Anyone who demands that we accept their truths must also assume that we are similar personalities to them. It follows that only the most stale truths can be universally valid.

If a god could write a philosophy, it would presumably contain all objective truth; but for us mere humans, it would be irrelevant because we do not see the world from an absolute, divine center, but rather from our own individual vantage point. We would presumably not know what to do with a divine truth that was not tailored to our point of view.

Friedrich Nietzsche by Lic. Dr. Eugen Kretzer. Enthusiastic and understanding approval with regard to the first writings. – Correct insight that “Zarathustra” does not signify a new epoch – no understanding of the second epoch. Everything is explained by illness. A Christian's protest against the Antichrist. The point that matters in Nietzsche's last period is nowhere sharply emphasized; in his last period, Nietzsche is namely the negator of all kinds of knowledge, because he is the affirmator of life. Knowledge presupposes a reality that we do not have, that we strive for. Nietzschean reality is to be within ourselves, to be created by us. We are not to be cognizers, creators; we are to be commanders. This also applies to morality. Anyone who clings to a “should” and wants to recognize good and evil is placing the source of morality outside of themselves. Nietzsche wants to determine morality; to create, not to cognize – and therefore, to be beyond good and evil.

Goethe did not expect any political revolution to happen. He knew that the world of ideas, which still dominated European humanity at the time, was outdated and overripe. The old forms of government and life went together with the old world of thought and feeling. There was a thirst for freedom, a desire to break out of the old forms of life and society; but it could not be done because in feeling and in thinking people still lived deeply in the traditional conceptions.

Hegel was the right philosopher for this old world view. In the Prussian state, this world view found its corresponding realization.

It was not the political revolutions that overthrew the old sentiments; they do not truly revolutionize. And more important than bloodshed and bayonets for the progress of humanity are the spiritual revolutions.

That such a revolution was announced in the French dispute was felt by Goethe. And he felt it because he himself, in his youth, had confronted the dying ideas with the ideas of the new world order. What Geoffroy proclaimed in France, Goethe proclaimed in Germany 40-50 years earlier.

Goethe felt the need for a worldview. The urge for knowledge dominated his entire being. But it was not the urge for knowledge as most researchers see it. That is something that is learned.

Goethe's personality strove for the all-round development of the personality. Nothing should be missing that belongs to the individual in order to be a whole person. The great fundamental question belongs to this personal wholeness: what is man's relationship to the world? What is his task? How can he fulfill his mission? What is his responsibility? Can he set his own tasks; or does he have to comply with the decrees of a higher being?

Goethe would have liked to have had contemporary philosophers teach him about these questions. He could not find anyone who could have given him an answer to the questions of knowledge that he had to ask. What the philosophers could tell him contradicted his nature. He did not understand his surroundings. This lack of understanding of his surroundings is vividly illustrated in [text breaks off]

Around the same time that the idea that was to become the most important for his scientific thinking took shape in Goethe's mind, he also found the words that sharply characterize his relationship to science. On May 17, 1787, he writes to Herder that he is very close to the secret of plant development; and on Aug. 18, he writes to Knabel:

After what I have seen in Sicily and near Naples of plants and fish, if I were ten years younger, I would be very tempted to make a trip to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at what had been discovered in my own way.

He made it clear that he was not interested in discovering individual facts, but in achieving a conception of nature that was in keeping with his way of thinking. When, after his arrival in Weimar, he began to occupy himself with natural things, driven by inner compulsion and external circumstances, he found the science of these things among his contemporaries in a state that was completely at odds with his way of thinking. This circumstance shaped his entire preoccupation in this direction. He sought enlightenment in the works of naturalists. He always found himself compelled to look at things from points of view that were foreign to the researchers he turned to.

This is most evident in his botanical studies. In this field, Linné was the leading authority at the time. Goethe immersed himself in his writings, but was soon forced into opposition to his way of thinking. Linné sought out the characteristics of the individual plant forms. According to the degree of their relationship, he placed these forms in a systematic series. He does not ask whether there is a natural relationship between the different forms. This is because his conception of nature is dominated by the theological idea of a plan of creation: “We count as many species as different forms have been created in principle.” Anyone who starts from this basic view cannot see what the forms have in common. Rather, he will emphasize the distinguishing features in order to get to know the diversity that lies in the plan of creation. Goethe's way of looking at things was the opposite: “That which he - Linnaeus - sought to keep apart by force, had, according to the innermost need of my being, to strive for union.”

The difference between Goethe's and Linnaeus's approach lies in the fact that Goethe seeks the creative forces within nature itself, which bring the manifold forms of life into existence, while Linnaeus assumes that the creative power exists outside of nature. Therefore, Goethe must seek to immerse himself so deeply in nature until this creative essence becomes visible to him, whereas Linné is content to study the created in its diversity and surrender to the belief that this diversity is based on a wise cosmic plan. It was against Goethe's nature to surrender to such a belief. This nature is characterized by a statement he made to Jacobi:

God has punished you with metaphysics and given you a thorn in the flesh, but blessed me with physics. I follow the atheist's (Spinoza) Verbum Deo caro factum (The Word of God made flesh) and leave to you everything you call and may call religion. You believe in God; I see.

Just as one sees external sensual facts with the eyes of the body, so Goethe wanted to see the deeper-lying facts with the eyes of the spirit, which contain the reasons for those external facts. He searches for an essence that is contained in all plants, because - as he writes down in Palermo on April 17:

There must be such a thing! Otherwise how would I recognize that this or that structure is a plant if they were not all formed according to one pattern.

For Linnaeus and his like-minded colleagues, this question is superfluous, because the common pattern of all plants, in his opinion, does not lie within, but outside of nature in the idea of creation. What is outside of nature cannot be the subject of research.

One can see what is important to Goethe. He includes an element in research that excludes the opposing world view from it. Goethe had the courage to scientifically recognize what others believed should remain a matter of faith: therein lies the essence of his view. Kant found such striving contrary to the human spirit. He believed that our intellect is only called upon to bring the sensual diversity of beings into a conceptual unity. What this unity, which exists only in our minds, corresponds to in reality, we cannot know, he said. Goethe opposed this view. He was convinced that it is possible for the human mind to penetrate to that real unity of things (see the essay “Anschauende Urteilskraft”).

What Goethe calls the primal plant, the primal animal or the type of animal are components of this real unity of nature. These primal plants and animals cannot be perceived by the external senses. They cannot be given to us as sensual, but only as spiritual intuitions. No single actual plant is a primal plant. In this respect, Goethe's view differs from that of contemporary natural science. The latter believes that it has found the original essence when it can point to a single, sensually perceptible organism that has the simplest possible structure and from which more complex living beings have gradually developed. Goethe, on the other hand, says:

But once you have grasped the idea of this type, you will [only] realize how impossible it is to establish a single species as a canon. The individual cannot be a model for the whole, and so we must not look for the model for all in the individual. The classes, genera, species and individuals are related to the law as individual cases are to a law; they are contained in it, but they do not contain and give it.

When we survey the individual classes, genera and species, an ideal form arises in our mind that is not realized anywhere in the senses: and this is the original being in the sense of Goethe's conception. The modern naturalist would call such a form a mere idea, a thought. Goethe, however, sees in it a real being. This is characteristic of him. He regards the ideal as a reality, as truly present in nature.

From this basic view, Goethe's relationship to the modern conception of nature and his significance within it can be seen. This conception of nature differs fundamentally from the one prevailing at the time of Goethe. But it also differs from his own. Under the influence of the research of Lamarck, Darwin and others who followed similar paths, a revolution in natural science took place in the nineteenth century. It was recognized that one organic form can change into another over time. The consequence of this idea is the assumption that one form is not similar to another because it was originally created similarly by a higher being, but because it actually gradually emerged from the other. The forms of predators are no longer seen as similar to each other because they are all originally designed similarly, but because one actually emerged from the other. Thus, the view was arrived at that originally there were only a few or only one organic form, which developed over immeasurably long periods of time into today's diversity. What was previously seen as existing side by side is now seen as emerging from one another in a temporal sequence. This is essentially the difference between the modern conception of nature and that of Goethe's contemporaries.

This modern view of nature is, however, initially nothing more than a description of a state of affairs. And it stops at this description. It differs from the usual approach in inorganic science. When two elastic spheres in motion meet, they both change their motion. Inorganic natural science is not satisfied with describing the process of the change of motion, but seeks a law from which this process can be explained. Once this law has been recognized, the process can be understood. One can develop the process of motion after the encounter from the one before it.

The corresponding process in organic natural science is that one living form can be developed logically from another in thought. One then not only describes its temporal emergence from this other, but also comprehends it. The means to this comprehension in the organic realm would have to be something like the natural law in the realm of the inorganic.

Goethe strove to discover in organic nature that which corresponds to the law in inorganic nature. And he recognized it in his Primordial Plant and in his Primordial Animal. Through the inorganic laws of nature, an ideal unity is brought into the abundance of mechanical, chemical and physical phenomena; through them we see what is next to each other in a large, structured context; Goethe also wanted to recognize such a unity in the organic world of forms. The extension of the physical-mechanical way of explaining to the whole field of natural science is the characteristic of his view. It must be admitted, however, that modern natural science is moving in a similar direction. But it does so in a fundamentally different way from Goethe. He sought for the organic world something that would explain the diversity just as the laws of nature explain the inorganic phenomena, but which is of a higher nature than the latter. Today, we look for the same laws in the organic realm as we do in the inorganic realm. We imagine that the laws of organic action are actually physical laws, only in complicated combinations that are not easily understood. In exactly the same way, it is thought, as hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water under certain conditions, so under more complicated conditions, carbonic acid, ammonia, water and protein combine to form living substance, without the need to imagine special organic physical-chemical forces in addition to the physical-chemical ones.

This is not Goethe's view. He does not want to see inorganic laws applied to organic life, but he wants to discover new ones for this field that correspond to them. For anyone with a deeper insight, contemporary natural science virtually demands expansion in the direction that Goethe has taken.

When it comes to actual discoveries, one can fully agree with du Bois-Reymond, who said:

Even without Goethe's participation, science would have progressed as far as it has today. ... Sooner or later, others would have made the advances he achieved.

This applies perfectly to the individual facts that Goethe discovered. But these facts are not the essence of his scientific endeavors. This consists in the indicated basic direction of his scientific thinking.

In this respect, it is remarkable how Goethe came to his individual discoveries.

When he set about studying the animal and human organism, he was guided by the idea that both must be based on a common archetype, which appears in man only at a higher stage of development than in animals. This was demanded by his fundamental view of the unity of ideas in nature. However, the most important natural scientists of his time saw a significant difference between the organization of higher mammals and that of humans in that the former have the so-called premaxillary bone in the upper jaw and the latter does not. Goethe could not do anything with this assertion of the natural scientists. He therefore looked for the premaxillary bone in humans and found it. In the embryonic state it is still separate from the laterally adjacent bones, but in the developed human being it has grown together with them. In individual cases, if the development is not quite normal, the separation can remain. So Goethe did not make the discovery of the intermediate bone for its own sake, but to dispel an opinion that contradicted his basic view. It will become clear in what follows that the same applies to the discovery of the vertebral nature of the skull bones.

Fundamental to Goethe's scientific ideas is his concept of the metamorphosis of plants. In this area, he consciously set out to find an ideal form that underlies all the diverse plant forms as a pattern. He felt as if he were studying botany as if he had a text in front of him that he couldn't read at first, but could only look at the individual letter forms. The individual organs of the plant appeared to him as a diversity that must correspond to a unity, and the abundance of plant forms also seemed to point to something that they all have in common. He relentlessly pursued the goal of being able to move from one structure to another in such a way that this transition becomes a continuous unity, as when moving from spelling to reading. And on [June 15, 1786] he was able to report to Frau von Stein: “[...] my long spelling has helped me, now it works all at once, and my quiet joy is inexpressible.” It was, however, a long way from spelling to actual reading. In his estate, which is in the Goethe Archive in Weimar, there are diary-like pages on which he has recorded the individual stages of this journey. (See Goethe's works in the Weimar edition, 2nd section, volume 7, p. 273ff.) They were written during the Italian journey. The opulent world of forms in the south offers him the opportunity to recognize unity in abundance. He is tireless in his efforts to find plant specimens that are suitable for shedding particular light on the laws of germination, growth and reproduction. If he thinks he is on the trail of some law, he first formulates it hypothetically and then tests it for accuracy in the course of further experiences. One such hypothetical law is: “Everything is a leaf, and through this simplicity the greatest diversity becomes possible.” Finally, on May 17, 1787, he writes to Herder about his completed discovery with the words:

It had become clear to me that the true Proteus lies hidden in that organ of the plant that we usually refer to as the leaf, which can hide and reveal itself in all formations. Back and forth, the plant is always only a leaf, so inseparably united with the future germ that one cannot be thought of without the other.

Goethe means that all the organs of the plant, from the germ to the fruit, no longer appear to him as mere diversity, but he can, in the idea, carry out their emergence from one another just as it develops in reality before his eyes. Just as a sentence is formed out of words into a spiritual unity, so all the organs of the plant are united in the ideal image of the primal plant. Therefore, the term “leaf” should not be taken literally either. It is only intended to convey that the unity of the plant's being lives in the other organs as well as in the leaf, only in a modified form. When he set down his idea in the essay “An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants” in 1790, he therefore expresses himself more clearly:

It goes without saying that we would need a general word to describe this organ that has been metamorphosed into such different forms and to compare all the appearances of its shape with it; at present, we have to be content with getting used to holding the appearances backwards and forwards against each other. For we can just as well say that a stamen is a contracted petal as we can say of the petal that it is an expanded stamen; that a sepal is a a stem-leaf that is contracted and approaching a certain degree of refinement, than we can say of a stem-leaf that it is a sepal that has been expanded by the intrusion of rougher juices.

When Goethe speaks of the unified organ that underlies all visible organs, he means an idealized structure that enables the observer to see the sequence of forms present in the plant in a living sequence and development. He has described how the text that he reads from the individual letters is formulated in the aforementioned essay and in the poem 'The Metamorphosis of Plants'.

Does the unity that Goethe perceives in the plant from germination to fruitfulness suddenly come to an end? He answers this with a decisive 'No'. In the fruit, the potential for a new plant is present in the form of the seed. This is a whole plant, only contracted into a sensually simple form. During germination, it undergoes further transformation, and the new plant thus presents itself only as a continuation of the parent plant. Goethe expresses this by saying that procreation is only a growth of the organism beyond the individual. However, since the basic ideal organ is changeable in its sensory appearance, the plant forms that descend in continuous succession from a progenitor can also take on different forms over time. And thus the present-day view that the diversity of forms has gradually developed in a temporal sequence from a few or only one original species is justified by Goethe's view. What is today called the theory of descent thus finds a lawful explanation through Goethe's view.

It was in Goethe's nature to extend the ideas that had occurred to him for explaining the plant world to the whole of organic natural science. As early as 1786, he wrote to Frau von Stein: he wanted to extend his thoughts about the way in which nature, as it were, plays with a main form to produce the manifold life, to “all realms of nature, to all of her realm”.

Therefore, after his return from Italy, he also eagerly continued his studies of the animal organism, which he had already begun in the mid-1770s and which led him to the discovery of the interosseous bone. In this field, however, he did not succeed in achieving results as perfect as in the science of plants. He was unable to create an ideal structure in this field, as he had done with the “primordial plant”. The essays he wrote in 1795 and 96 (“First Draft of a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, based on Osteology” and “Lectures on the First Three Chapters of the Draft of a General Introduction to comparative anatomy, proceeding from osteology), written in 1795 and 96, as well as the earlier fragment, “On the Form of Animals,” found in his estate and published in the Weimar edition, contain only rudiments and preliminary studies for the general idea of the archetypal animal. Nor is there more to be found in the poem “Metamorphosis of Animals” (AOPOIEMOR). He has only achieved something more important in one detail. He recognized the relationship between the brain and the limbs of the spinal cord, and also that between the bones that enclose the brain and the vertebrae that enclose the spinal cord. Goethe's efforts were obviously aimed at tracing all the organs of the animal body back to an ideal basic form, as he had already done with plant organisms. This is much more difficult for all the organs of the animal form than for plants, because the more perfect a creature of nature is, the more diverse the outward appearance of the organs that are the same in their ideal form. The simplest case is that of the mutual relationship between the spinal cord and the brain and the bones that enclose them. Through his general view of nature, Goethe came to suspect that the bones that enclose the brain are not only spatially adjacent to the vertebral bones of the spinal cord, but are also ideally related to them. Full certainty was brought to him by a chance event that he experienced in 1790 on the dunes of the Lido in Venice. He found a sheep's skull that had so happily disintegrated into its individual bony components that the observer could recognize remodeled vertebrae in the individual pieces. Contemporary science has not entirely confirmed this isolated discovery by Goethe, but it has confirmed it in its essential parts. The anatomist Carl Gegenbaur conducted research on this subject and published his findings. They deal with the head skeleton of the selachians, or ancestral fish. The skull of these animals is clearly the remodeled end part of the backbone and the brain is the remodeled end member of the spinal cord. One must therefore imagine that the bony capsule of the skull of higher animals also consists of remodeled vertebral bodies, which, however, in the course of the development of higher animal forms from lower ones, have gradually shape that is very different from vertebral bodies and that are also fused together in such a way that they have become suitable for enclosing the brain, which also developed from a limb of the spinal cord. Over time, this adhesion has become such a permanent feature of higher animals that a separation into the individual components, as in the case of the interstitial bone, cannot even be observed in the embryonic state in which the organs concerned are still soft. On the contrary, the separation into individual skull bones occurs only at a later stage of development in higher animals today. Initially, they form a continuous cartilaginous capsule.

But this case is characteristic of Goethe. He discovers something that later natural science rediscovers by completely different means, simply because it follows from his general view of nature. Goethe also viewed the relationship between the brain and spinal cord in the same way as the later research mentioned above. In 1790, he made the following entry in his diary:

The brain itself [is] only a large main ganglion. The organization of the brain is repeated in every ganglion, so that each ganglion [is] to be regarded as a small subordinate brain.

Today, when speaking of Goethe's relationship to science, many people feel that the most important question is: Did Goethe believe that over time one species of plant or animal actually transforms into another, or did he not go beyond the observation of the ideal unity? From what has been said so far, it is clear that his approach provides a meaningful explanation for an actual transformation. In contrast to this, it seems completely irrelevant whether he actually spoke about such an actual transformation. One must bear in mind that such an expression was far less necessary in his time than it is today. It would also not have seemed as significant as it did a few decades later. All experiential foundations for how one was to imagine the actual relationships and transformations in detail were lacking. Therefore, the actual science could not do anything with such ideas. It was only when Darwin created scientific foundations for individual thoughts in this direction that one could talk about them. Goethe, according to the state of empirical science at the time, could only form very general concepts. And he spoke about such concepts clearly enough.

But if we consider all forms, especially organic ones, we find that nothing exists, nothing rests, nothing is closed off, but rather everything is in constant motion. (Formation and Transformation of Organic Beings [on morphology). The intention is introduced.

This, then, we have gained, and can claim without fear that all perfect organic natures, including fish, amphibians, birds, mammals, and at the top of the latter man, were all formed according to an archetype, which only tilts more or less back and forth in its [very] constant parts and still daily forms and remodels itself through reproduction.

If Goethe had expressed his view of the transformation of organic nature more clearly than in such phrases, he would have been lumped together with the fantasists who had all kinds of adventurous ideas about the metamorphosis of natural beings. We also have a statement from him about this: “However, the time was darker than one can imagine now,” he writes in retrospect in

For example, it was claimed that it only depends on the person to walk comfortably on all fours, and that bears, if they remained upright for a while, could become people. The audacious Diderot dared to make certain suggestions as to how to produce goat-footed fauns to be placed on carriages in livery, for the special pleasure and distinction of the great and rich.

Just as far as the science of that time was from such ideas, just as close was the un-science to them. He was careful in his indications of an actual tribal or blood relationship of the organic forms, so as not to see his explanations mixed up with the latter.

Goethe wanted to extract everything necessary for the explanation of natural phenomena from nature itself. This has been shown by considering his studies of the organic world. This fundamental view of his mind can be observed just as clearly in his theory of colors. In Goethe's time, this field of natural science was built on assumptions that were not taken from nature. And even today it still bears this character. The eye's perception provides light and dark and the variety of colors. The theory of colors seeks to discover the relationships between these elements of perception. Light is the absolute brightness; its opposite is absolute darkness. Goethe, in accordance with his entire nature, had to stop at the sensory perception of light. Newton, the founder of the more recent color theory, did not do that. He was of the opinion that light is something other than what it directly presents to the eye, namely an extremely fine substance. What presents itself to perception as light should be substance in reality outside of perception. And white light, as it reaches the earth from the sun, for example, is said to be a composite substance. This composite substance is broken down into its individual components, which are the seven primary colors, by the prism. So this theory explains a vivid process, namely the appearance of colors in the illuminated space, by means of a non-vivid, hypothetical process. Present-day natural science takes a similar view. It has only replaced the substance with a wave motion of that substance. Goethe could not work with such a view. Within the world of the eye, there are neither substances nor movements, but only qualities of light and color. He wants to work with them alone, not with hypothetical entities that cannot be found within experience. He observes how the sensory elements of perception of the eye relate to each other. He notices that where light and dark meet, color arises when the spot is viewed through a prism or a glass lens. He records this immediately perceptible fact. He conducts experiments that are suitable for elucidating the phenomenon. If a white disc on a black background is viewed through a convex glass lens, it appears larger than it actually is. Through the edges of the enlarged surface, you can see the black background below. The part of it that is covered by the enlarged white disc appears blue. The situation is different when a black disc on a light background is observed in the same way. The edge that appeared blue there now appears yellow. Goethe does not go beyond these perceptible facts. He says: When a light color is moved over a dark one, the blue color arises; when a dark color is moved over a light one, the yellow color arises. These colors also arise in a similar way through the prism. Through the inclination of the prism surfaces against each other, just as through the lens, a dark color is passed over a light color or vice versa, when a point is observed where the dark and light colors meet. A white disc on a black background appears displaced when viewed through the prism. The upper parts of the disk slide over the adjacent black of the background; while on the opposite side the black background slides over the lower parts of the disk. So through the prism you see the upper part of the disk as if through a veil. The lower part, on the other hand, can be seen through the superimposed darkness. The upper edge therefore appears [blue], the lower edge yellow. The blue increases towards the black, a violet tone, the yellow downwards a red tone. With increasing distance of the prism from the observed disc, the edges broaden. At a sufficiently large distance, the yellow from below spreads over the blue from above; and green is created in the middle. To further educate himself, Goethe looks at a black disc on a white background through the prism. This causes a dark color to be pushed over a light color at the top and a light color over a dark color at the bottom. Yellow appears at the top and blue at the bottom. When the prism is removed from the disc, peach blossoms appear in the middle.

If the light is broken up into so many colors there, [I said to myself,] then here, too, darkness must be seen as broken up into colors.

Goethe calls these experiments subjective because the colors do not appear fixed anywhere in space, but only appear to the eye when it looks at an object through a prism. He wants to supplement these experiments with objective ones. To do this, he uses a water prism. He lets the light shine through this prism and catches it behind it through a screen. Because the sunlight has to shine through openings cut out of cardboard, a limited illuminated space is obtained, surrounded by darkness. The limited body of light is deflected by the prism. If this deflected light falls on a screen, an objective image appears on it, which is colored blue at the upper edge and yellow at the lower edge if the cross-section of the prism becomes narrower from top to bottom. Towards the dark space, the blue turns into violet; towards the light center, it turns into light blue; towards the dark, the yellow takes on a red tone. Goethe explains this phenomenon as follows. At the top, the bright mass of light radiates into the dark space; it illuminates a dark area and makes it appear blue. At the bottom, the dark space radiates into the mass of light; it darkens the brightness, which then appears yellow. If the screen is removed from the prism, the edges broaden; and at a sufficiently large distance, the blue in the middle shines into the yellow; and green is created. Through such experiments, Goethe finds the view that he has gained from subjective experiments confirmed by objective ones. In his opinion, colors are therefore produced by the interaction of light and dark. The purpose of the prism is to superimpose light on dark and dark on light. Yellow is light subdued by darkness; blue is darkness attenuated by light. Where yellow is further dimmed by overlying darkness, red arises; where blue is attenuated by darkness, violet appears. These are the basic laws of Goethe's theory of colors. They are nothing more than the expression of the experience given to the eye. And because they are brought about by the simplest conditions, Goethe calls them the archetypal phenomena of the color world. All other phenomena within this world arise when further conditions are added to the simple ones. One then obtains the derived phenomena, which, however, can be traced back to a sum of simple ones. In this way of thinking, Goethe's theory of color remains strictly within the bounds of empirical observation. Because Newton and the physicists did not proceed in the same way, Goethe became their opponent. He attacked Newton so fiercely because he felt that he lived in a completely different conceptual world from his own. However, he did not become fully aware of this fundamental contradiction. Otherwise he would have simply developed his own point of view and ignored the other, which was based on entirely different premises. Instead, he went through each of Newton's experiments individually, seeking to prove the error in each particular case. This is how the “polemical” part of his theory of colors came about.

Goethe's efforts in the fields of mineralogy, geology and meteorology were less successful, although he also tried to penetrate the phenomena of these fields from the point of view of his world view. Here, too, he succeeded in making individual discoveries. But again, the guiding ideas are more important than these individual discoveries, although he remained stuck in the rudiments everywhere. In mineralogy and geology, too, he seeks to explain phenomena by striving to expand the world of concepts. He believes that he can recognize how large inorganic masses are formed during his journeys into the resin. His view that not only the sensually perceptible but also the spiritually perceptible is real is also evident in this area. He imagines the stone masses to be permeated by an ideational lattice work, and indeed a six-sided one. As a result, cubic, parallelepipedal, rhombic and columnar bodies are cut out of the ground mass. This lattice work should not be just an idea, a thought, but a real system of forces at work in the stone mass. This lattice work of forces represents a transitional stage between the inorganic processes and the archetypes that Goethe sees as underlying organic nature. He sees geology as a realm between physics and organic. Therefore, he also rejects the idea that the composite rocks have arisen from their components by aggregation, but believes that these individual components were originally contained in a uniform groundmass and have been separated from each other by internal formative laws. Unfortunately, Goethe did not succeed in applying these fundamental ideas to a larger number of inorganic formations. But from them we can understand his antipathy to the volcano theory of the Earth's formation as defended by Hutton, Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Buch and others. This view explains the development of the Earth's surface in terms of violent revolutions. It is now impossible for a mind like Goethe's, which always adheres to what is empirically given, to assume that at any time in the earth's development forces were present that do not currently fall within the scope of experience. The only natural view is that which derives this development from the forces recognizable by observing the present conditions, from which all earth formations can be explained if one only assumes that these forces were active for a sufficiently long time. To Goethe, nature appeared consistent in all its parts, so that even a deity could not change the laws innate to it and ascertainable through experience. He therefore could not see why these laws should have expressed themselves in the past by “lifting and pushing, hurling and throwing”. The fight against the volcanic theory led him back to individual discoveries, to the one about the origin of the boulders found in some areas, which, based on their composition, must once have belonged to the mass of distant mountains. Volcanism provided the explanation that these “erratic blocks” were hurled to their present location by the tumultuous uprising of the mountains far from their present location. Goethe found an explanation that corresponded to his view in the assumption that [breaks off]