The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Died on August 8, 1897

A man with the rarest of spiritual gifts passed away these days. Jacob Burckhardt, the incomparable performer of the Renaissance, died on August 8. He was to us what few writers can be to us. For few possess the power to resurrect an age before our souls with such grandeur as Burckhardt was able to do in his work "The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy" (1860). Anyone who has absorbed this book in the way it deserves according to its value must count it among the most important means of his education. The intellectual forces of the Renaissance are portrayed in simple, broad lines, and the great figures are described vividly and with profound insight. When you immerse yourself in Burckhardt's book, you live in the ideas, in the feelings of that mighty time. No feeling, no thought, no excess seems incomprehensible when you have followed the explanations of this brilliant man. He recreates in the best sense of the word what excited the Renaissance, what it lived out in deeds. He describes with dramatic power. He knows what moves the time, what moves the people of the time in their innermost being. People who know Burckhardt as a teacher assure us that he was captivating in his oral presentations, that he was able to bring past times to life in a marvelous way before his listeners. Anyone who delves into his writings will readily believe and understand this. What can be said of so many historians, it is basically the spirit of their masters in which the times are reflected: it has no application to Burckhardt. He knows how to awaken the spirit of the times in its very own form.

The tremendous effect Burckhardt was able to exert on receptive minds is best demonstrated by the effect he had on Friedrich Nietzsche. The times in which the great individuals flourished: they were Nietzsche's spiritual home. And no one knew how to lead him to them better than Burckhardt. He acknowledged with words of the greatest enthusiasm how Nietzsche came to life in the great historian's expositions, how he found in him the spiritual air that he most liked to breathe. Nietzsche counted the fact that he found Jacob Burckhardt in Basel when he came to the city as a young professor and was able to befriend him as one of the good gifts granted to him by fate. And the way in which Burckhardt approached the young genius speaks for the great trait in his personality. From the very beginning, he had the right sense of the intellectual power that was working its way to the surface in the young philosopher. Even then, he understood him like few others. It always speaks for the greatness of a mind when it is able to immediately recognize another great man as such.

Dr. Viktor Meyer, one of the most important chemists of our time, from whom science still expected much, ended his life on August 8. The news is shocking, because everything that has recently become known about the outstanding researcher suggests that he was working with all his might towards the goal that he often declared to be the next frontier of contemporary chemistry: the decomposition of substances that are now known as elements into simpler materials. With admirable energy and a great sense of purpose, he devised experimental methods to solve the task he had set himself. How natural bodies are composed and what their simple components are: these questions preoccupied him. He wanted to solve them by conducting laboratory experiments under the most difficult conditions. The complicated way in which simple bodies form the compounds that organic chemistry has to deal with appealed to his spirit of research. The fact that he discovered new substances, aldoximes and thiophene, appears to be a side effect of his research. This research itself aimed to fathom the constitution of matter by experimental means. It is deeply regrettable that he felt compelled to discontinue his beautiful work. There is much to do in the field that he has made his own.

Describing the significance of the physiologist Rudolf Heidenhain, who died a few days ago, for his discipline is not one of the tasks of this weekly publication. However, it should not remain unconsidered that Heidenhain's work was carried out in the Wroclaw University Laboratory, which is important for anyone who has a need for a general understanding of the world. In our age of specialization, the results of scholarly individual work do not easily penetrate the general consciousness of the educated. It is partly due to this circumstance that Heidenhain's investigations into the life of the cell have not had the influence on our modern world view that they should have had by their very nature. However, there is something else that I will mention later.

Our view of nature clearly strives towards the goal of explaining the life of organisms according to the same laws. organisms according to the same laws by which the phenomena of inanimate nature must also be explained. Mechanical, physical and chemical laws are sought in the animal and plant body. The same kind of laws that govern a machine should also be at work in the organism, only in an infinitely complicated and difficult to recognize form. Nothing should be added to these laws to make the phenomenon we call life possible. They are supposed to be able to do it alone in a manifold concatenation. This mechanistic view of the phenomena of life is gaining more and more ground. However, it will never satisfy those who are capable of taking a deeper look at natural processes. Such a person will recognize that laws of a higher order are at work in the organism than in lifeless nature. It will become clear to him that only he who does not see such laws can deny them. The person who sees more deeply will not like to argue with anyone about the laws of organic life, just as the person who sees colors will not argue with the color-blind person about colors. Such a deep seer knows that even in the smallest cell laws of a higher kind are at work than in the machine.

Through investigations such as Heidenhain's, the ideas about special laws of organisms gain specific content in detail. This researcher has shown that the cells of the salivary glands are in a state of living activity when the secretion product of the same is produced. Thus secretion is not brought about by mere physical causes, but by the active life of the small organs. Heidenhain has demonstrated something similar for the cells of the kidney and the intestinal walls. It is not the mere mechanical blood pressure or the chemical forces in question that are solely active, but special organic driving forces. Under certain conditions, these driving forces can work alone, independently of mechanical effects, under certain other conditions in combination with those others.

It remains characteristic of the way modern natural scientists think that Heidenhain himself did not draw the conclusion from his experiments that the life of cells obeys higher laws than the things of inorganic nature. He lived under the delusion that the life he perceived in the cells could still be explained by physical and chemical processes. Here one encounters a way of looking at things that immediately seems to lapse into mysticism when it leaves the ground of the simple laws according to which a stone falls to earth or according to which two liquids mix. One believes to enter the realm of miracles, of lawlessness, when one steps out of the realm of the purely mechanical laws of nature. This is the second reason why Heidenhain's experiments did not have a sufficient effect on the world view of the time. The natural scientists of today are too cowardly in their thinking. When they run out of wisdom in their mechanical explanations, they say: the matter cannot be explained for us. The future will bring enlightenment. They do not venture further than they can penetrate with the poor laws of mechanics, physics and chemistry. Bold thinking rises to a higher way of looking at things. It attempts to explain what is not mechanical according to higher laws. All our scientific thinking lags behind our scientific experience. The scientific way of thinking is highly praised today. It is said that we live in a scientific age. But basically this scientific age is the poorest that history has to record. It is characterized by a clinging to mere facts and mechanical explanations. Life is never comprehended by this way of thinking, because such a comprehension requires a higher level of imagination than the explanation of a machine.

On his seventieth birthday

On December 6, Karl Frenzel celebrated his seventieth birthday. I don't like to publish the usual birthday articles on days like this. But I also don't like to keep quiet when my feelings want to speak out. I am not the right person to write a monograph or even a brief, accurate characterization of Karl Frenzel. Nevertheless, I believe that at the present moment I should offer Karl Frenzel the birthday greeting of this organ in the "Magazin für Literatur". He has grown together with the literary development of Germany like few others. We younger people have a very special relationship with writers like him. We have learned a great deal from them. We owe them the greatest gratitude. We feel that. And yet we cannot follow in their footsteps. We are their wayward sons. The fathers scold us. We love them, but we do not obey them. We are naughty and deserve the rod according to them. But we hope that our fathers will see that we will become something after all. I would also like to wish Karl Frenzel that he may be allowed to enjoy us. That may take a long time. But that he will still experience it, that is precisely what I wish for him.

I have benefited enormously from Frenzel's essays. I was often pleased with the directional critic. This joy was always mixed with something like envy. But envy is not the right word. But there is no better one. The critics of his generation knew what they wanted from an early age. They have "principles" that they apply to everything. We present-day people live from today to tomorrow. What we believe today, we will have overcome tomorrow. And what we said yesterday, we hardly understand today. Frenzel's contemporaries were settled people who had a fixed point of view from which they did not deviate one step to the right or left. We jump from point of view to point of view. We are seekers, doubters, questioners. They had a certain certainty. They knew the right path in art, in philosophy, in science, in politics. They were able to classify every new talent. We can't do all that. We hardly know any more whether a new book we read is important or not. We look at every talent from all sides, and then we usually know nothing at all. We have fallen into a real anarchy. We each have a different opinion about our greatest contemporaries.

Even when we are united in our admiration for a contemporary, we argue. One looks for meaning in this, the other in that.

I still remember how I looked up to Friedrich Theodor Vischer as a young man. Each of his sentences drilled into my soul like an arrow. And now I read him with completely different feelings. He only interests me now, but he no longer warms me. He has become a stranger to me.

Some may find it irreverent that I am offering these words as a birthday greeting to the septuagenarian. But there is something that unites us in that we understand each other: that is mutual sincerity. We want to be true to each other. We don't want to delude ourselves with phrases. We want to tell our fathers that we honor them, that they inspire the highest respect in us. But we also want to tell them that we want to go other ways. Piety is certainly a virtue, but it sucks the strength out of people. And we need the strength because we see new tasks ahead of us.

It was a beautiful time when Karl Frenzel was working; a time full of mature ideas, full of perfect art. Those with whom he experienced his manhood were self-contained, harmonious natures. They were also happier than we are because of this. They expected more from their ideals than we do from ours. They derived more happiness from these ideals. They were greater idealists. We are as afraid of ideals as we are of deceptive illusions. We no longer utter the soothing words: the idea must triumph!

Leipzig 1898

Under the title "Graphologie und gerichtliche HandschriftenUntersuchungen" Hans Busse has published a little book (by Paul List, Leipzig) which, through its reference to the Dreyfus affair, is capable of arousing current interest and, through its clear discussion of the nature and significance of graphology, of arousing deeper interest. The time has passed when one could simply shrug one's shoulders about the justification of this branch of knowledge. Two important psychologists, Benedict and Ribot, have recently declared that the character of the personality is expressed in the writing. Scientific, experiential research into the connection between these traits and the character of the personality will yield insights that are as attractive as they are useful. Graphology must become an important chapter in psychology. The individual character of a person must be expressed in his writing to a much greater extent than in his facial features. For facial features can only remain flexible within the limits set by nature in order to adapt themselves to the changes of human nature. Writing is not subject to such limits. A crisis in the development of a personality will always bring about a change in his writing. The freer and more autocratic a person is, the more powerfully he will know how to express his character in writing. Unfree natures will remain subject to certain written forms that they have been taught. An average person will always be recognized by the fact that his writing is not individual, but that of his writing teacher. Writing, like style, is the character of a person.

Emile Rigolage has just published the second volume of his carefully crafted excerpt from Auguste Comte's writings under the title "La Sociologie par Auguste Comte" (Bibliothöque de Philosophie contemporaine, Paris, Felix Alcan). The first edition of the book was published 15 years ago and has been translated into German by Kirchmann. Compte is a thinker who must be known as an example of a personality without ideas. Comte has no idea that the content of philosophy is ideas. No ideas flash through his mind when he contemplates the things of the world. That is why his so-called philosophy is the distorted image of all true and genuine philosophizing. The philosophers of all times have written down in their works what they have thought about the world: They have always gone beyond mere observation. This observation is a matter for the empirical sciences. Philosophy has no justification alongside these individual disciplines if it does not seek out the deeper, the ideal core of things. But Comte knows nothing of such a core. He is without any intuition or imagination. That is why he is of the opinion that philosophy has nothing of its own to add to the individual sciences, but merely to compile and bring into a systematic order what has been recognized by these individual sciences. To philosophize in Comte's sense would mean the bankruptcy of philosophy. Everything one needs to know in order to gain an insight into and overview of Comte's utterly barren and unfruitful "system" can be found in exemplary form in the above-mentioned excerpt. The author of the text has thoroughly familiarized himself with Comte's views and was therefore able to highlight the significant things that matter. It is particularly difficult to summarize Comte in this way. Because everything falls apart precisely because leading basic ideas are completely missing.

I think that the book could be useful right now. Other philosophers are also striving more and more to give philosophy a character that makes it similar to the individual sciences. There is even talk of exact philosophy. We can learn from Comte where we end up when such exactitude is taken to extremes. The result is un- and counter-philosophy. And since the harmfulness of an activity is best recognized by following it to its extremes and observing its excesses, Comte's philosophizing is recommended to contemporaries as a cautionary example. They may learn from him how not to do it if something fruitful is to be achieved in this field.

I believe that we are approaching a time in which philosophical endeavor will once again have the respect it deserves. The unfruitful attempts of Comte and others had to be made because one must first err in order to arrive at the truth later.

Leipzig 1898

Under this title, Karl Jentsch has just published a book. The application of the scientific way of thinking of our time to the development of mankind leads to this concept. Just as in the rest of nature those forms are preserved which prove to be the stronger in the struggle for existence, this is also the case in the historical development of man. By applying this concept, one arrives at the overcoming of all purposive causes. In nature today only backward spirits will probably believe in purposive causes. In the views on human development, however, this idea seems to be less easy to eradicate. This is most clearly shown by the author of the above-mentioned book. While others, such as Huxley, Alexander Tille and so on, understand the progress of mankind in the same way as the rest of nature in the sense of Darwinism, Jentsch does not believe he can do without the assumption of a purposeful arrangement of historical facts. But it must be noted: Whoever assumes a purposeful arrangement in nature or the human world must also believe in a wise creator of this arrangement. And whoever does this falls back into old theological prejudices which should have been overcome by the Darwinian view of the world. But it will be a long time before the remnants of the old theological ideas have disappeared from people's minds. They will still haunt us in one form or another.

Stuttgart 1899

This book is one of the literary phenomena that are unfortunately not at all rare in our time, whose authors bear a large part of the blame for the regrettable fact that philosophy is becoming increasingly discredited. A self-evident truth, which no reasonable person doubts, is dealt with in 129 pages of comfortable breadth. What is before everyone's eyes is clothed in the most abstract formulas, and the author has the misfortune of losing his footing in the world of his abstractions and not even suspecting that his "formulations" say nothing at all. He wants to show that in nature, in which everything is connected according to cause and effect, there are also phenomena that are connected in other ways. Cause and effect form a two-part connection. Coßmann seeks to demonstrate tripartite connections within the world of life. The retinal image of the eye arises as the effect of a light stimulus on the eye-gifted organism. We have a two-part connection. The light stimulus acts on the organism and the eyelid is closed to protect against the stimulus. We have a tripartite connection, a connection between the cause - the light stimulus - the effect - the closing of the eyelid - and the purpose, the protection of the organ. Bipartite connections should be called causal, tripartite teleological purposeful. The natural science of the present is reproached for wanting to explain everything from the connections between causes and effects; and the natural science of the future is dreamed of bringing teleology to bear in all its glory. What Mr. Coßmann broadly expounds on his 129 pages can be found in the following eight lines of the book "Die Welträtsel" by Ernst Haeckel, whom our author certainly counts among those who overlook teleological connections: "In the body structure and in the life activity of all organisms we are undeniably confronted with purposeful activity. Every plant and every animal, in its composition of individual parts, appears to be just as equipped for a certain purpose in life as the artificial machines invented and constructed by man, and as long as their life continues, the function of the individual organs is just as directed towards certain purposes as the work in the individual parts of the machine." Coßmann does nothing more than put this undeniable fact into unspeakably pedantic formulas. There is no need to object to such philosophical gimmickry. It should be dealt with by those who find nothing more sensible to do in the world. But if Mr. Coßmann believes that organic natural science should incorporate teleology, he must be told that he does not understand the relationship of modern natural science to teleology. A locomotive is undoubtedly purpose-built, and Mr. Coßmann could attribute its effectiveness to his neat tripartite formula. However, the person who is to build the locomotive is not served by describing its purpose to him in a pure way. He must know the causes by which the purpose is achieved. This is how the naturalist feels about nature. He determines the purposes; but he then seeks to explain the purposeful effects from the causes. As little as a machine can be built according to its purpose, so little can a living being be explained from its purposeful arrangement.

But Mr. Coßmann faces an even more serious reproach. The purpose occurs in the time sequence after the cause. If we now disregard time and merely consider that there is a necessary connection between cause and effect, then we can also derive each cause from its effect just as well as, conversely, the effect from the cause. In a formula of mechanics that derives an effect from the cause, we only need to insert the time with a negative sign, then we have the possibility of deriving the earlier from the later. If the later then appears as a purpose, the causal connection becomes a purposeful one, and Mr. Coßmann's tripartite formula is not needed. Mr. Coßmann would now have a task if he really wanted to prove something. He would have to show that a fact valid within mechanics also corresponds to such a fact in the teleological field. For mechanics, this fact is that we can imagine a process regressing in our thoughts (through the negative sign before time), but that in reality this process cannot take place regressively. In teleology it would have to be shown that the retroactive effect of the purpose which we can imagine is really present. Mr. Coßmann is probably wary of this, because he would then have to come to the only way out that exists for the purpose theorist, to the statement of "wisdom and reason", which have first ordered the organisms as we imagine them afterwards. "Whether there are special final causes, causae finales, apart from, in addition to, beyond the causas efficientibus (forces of nature), which continue to work with blind, unintentional necessity, is a matter of scholastic dispute, and scholastic dispute is possible; but that there is in Natura naturata a purposefulness independent of man, infinitely superior to all his art, is not," says Otto Liebmann in "Gedanken und Tatsachen" (1st ed., 91). Coßmann contributed nothing, absolutely nothing, to the decision on the former; we did not need him to establish the latter. We have before us the work of a dilettante who has acquired the airs and graces of a philosopher.

An unprejudiced view of the world. Leipzig 1898

In 1865, Otto Liebmann demanded in his essay "Kant and the Epigones" that we must return to Kant in philosophy. He saw the salvation of his science in the fulfillment of this demand. In doing so, he was merely expressing the view of the vast majority of philosophers of our time. And many natural scientists, insofar as they are still concerned with philosophical concepts, also see Kant's doctrine as the only possible form of central science. Starting with philosophers and naturalists, this opinion has also penetrated the wider circles of educated people with an interest in philosophy. Kant's view has thus become a driving force in our scientific thinking. Without ever having read a line from Kant or heard a sentence from his teachings, many of our contemporaries view world events in his way. For a century, the proud-sounding word has been uttered again and again: Kant had liberated thinking humanity from the shackles of philosophical dogmatism, which made empty assertions about the essence of things without undertaking a critical investigation into whether the human mind was also capable of making out something absolutely valid about this essence. For many who utter this word, however, the old dogma has been replaced by a new one, namely that of the irrefutable truth of Kant's fundamental views. These can be summarized in the following sentences: A thing can only be perceived by us if it makes an impression on us, exerts an effect. But then it is always only this effect that we perceive, never the thing itself. We cannot form any concept of the latter. The effects of things on us are our perceptions. What we know of the world is therefore not the things, but our ideas of the things. The world given to us is not a world of being, but a world of imagination or appearance. The laws according to which the details of this imaginary world are linked can of course not be the laws of the "things in themselves", but those of our subjective organism. What is to become an appearance for us must obey the laws of our subject. Things can only appear to us in a way that corresponds to our nature. We ourselves prescribe the laws of the world that appears to us - and this alone we know.

What Kant thought he had gained for philosophy with these views becomes clear if we take a look at the scientific currents from which he grew and which he confronted. Before the Kantian reform, the teachings of the Leibniz-Wolff school were the only dominant ones in Germany. The followers of this school wanted to arrive at the fundamental truths about the nature of things by means of purely conceptual thinking. The knowledge gained in this way was regarded as clear and necessary as opposed to that gained through sensory experience, which was seen as confused and random. Only pure concepts were believed to lead to scientific insights into the deeper context of world events, the nature of the soul and God, i.e. to the so-called absolute truths. Kant was also a follower of this school in his pre-critical period. His first writings are entirely in its spirit.

A change in his views occurred when he became acquainted with the explanations of the English philosopher Hume. The latter sought to prove that there was no evidence other than experience. We perceive the sunbeam, and then we notice that the stone on which it falls has warmed up. We perceive this again and again and get used to it. We therefore assume that the connection between the ray of sunlight and the warming of the stone will also manifest itself in the same way in the future. However, this is by no means a certain and necessary realization. Nothing guarantees us that an event which we are accustomed to seeing in a certain way will not take a completely different course at the next opportunity. All propositions in our sciences are only expressions established by habit for frequently noticed connections between things. Therefore, there can be no knowledge about those objects which philosophers strive for. Here we lack experience, which is the only source of our knowledge. About these things man must be content with mere belief. If science wants to deal with them, it degenerates into an empty game of concepts without content. These propositions apply, in the sense of Hume, not only to the last psychological and theological insights, but also to the simplest laws of nature, for example, to the proposition that every effect must have a cause. This judgment, too, is derived only from experience and established by habit. Hume only accepts as absolutely valid and necessary those propositions in which the predicate is basically already included in the subject, as is the case, in his view, with mathematical judgments.

Kant seeks to save absolute knowledge by making it a component of the human mind. Man is organized in such a way that he sees processes in necessary contexts, for example of cause and effect. If they are to appear to man, all things must appear in these contexts. For this reason, however, the whole world of experience is only an appearance, that is, a world that may be as it wishes in itself; for us it appears according to the organization of our mind. We cannot know how it is in itself. Kant sought to save human knowledge from its necessity, its unconditional validity; therefore he gave up its applicability to "things in themselves". H. v. Schoeler stands on Kantian ground. He seeks to prove, with the expenditure of a wealth of knowledge, with a commendable knowledge of the details of the individual sciences, that our knowledge does not reach to the sources of being. Like Kant, he does not seek in knowledge the highest content of man's existence. Kant destroyed knowledge in order to make room for the world that he conjures up from the categorical imperative with the help of faith. Schoeler seeks to show that, independently of all knowledge, goals of existence arise in our souls that make life seem much more worth living than the contemplation of the "crude mechanism of nature" and the "physiological automatism of the body in which our desires are rooted". "The ideality of the emotional life is the saving remedy which preserves our bodily organs from degeneration and keeps our soul healthy and puts it in a position to develop all its powers harmoniously, in the lively activity of which alone, no matter in what field of charitable work, is the purpose of a humane existence. He who has lived the ideals of reason and the cultural aims of humanity has lived for all time; for ability is more important than knowledge - action is the highest." No supporter of the modern scientific world view need contradict this conclusion. For those who understand the modern theory of development, it is a necessary consequence of it. H. v. Schoeler would have found proof of this if he had added to the wealth of knowledge he has acquired the knowledge of my "Philosophy of Freedom" published five years ago. I do not resent him because he has not done so, but I also do not feel obliged to tell him here what he can better read in context in my book.

The rich literature that exists on this relationship proves that the great poet, to whom the capital of Austria has now also erected a monument, had a relationship with the natural sciences that is of profound interest to the natural scientist. A number of the most important natural scientists have endeavored to describe Goethe's significance for their science. One need only recall the relevant writings of Virchow ("Goethe as a natural scientist and in special relation to Schiller", 1861), Helmholtz ("Über Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten" and "Goethes Vorahnungen kommender naturwissenschaftlicher Ideen", 1892), Haeckel ("Goethe, Lamarck and Darwin", 1882) and Cohn ("Goethe as a Botanist", 1881) in order to bring to life the idea of the high value attached to the poet's scientific work by experts in the field. The author of this essay has himself attempted to explain the significance of Goethe's scientific ideas and their position within the scientific development of the nineteenth century in a series of works ("Einleitungen zu Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften" in the Kürschnersche Goethe-Ausgabe, 1883 to 1897, and "Goethes Weltanschauung", 1897). Whatever else one may think about this significance, one thing seems beyond doubt after the above-mentioned works: Goethe was right to say in a review of his scientific endeavors: "Not through an extraordinary gift of the spirit, not through a momentary inspiration, nor unexpectedly and all at once, but through a consequent effort have I finally arrived at such a gratifying result." In Goethe's scientific ideas, we have before us not just flashes of genius, but the results of strictly methodical work. And if we follow Goethe's efforts historically, it is particularly striking how close he was to the spirit of modern scientific methods in the way he worked. This has been shown particularly clearly in the notes published from Goethe's papers left behind (second section of the great Weimar Goethe edition, volumes 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12, edited by Steiner, volume 8, edited by Professor v. Bardeleben). To point out just one thing, let us mention Goethe's notes on the relationship between the bones of the skull and the vertebrae contained in these papers. We know that the natural philosopher Lorenz Oken was the first to draw public attention to this relationship; and anyone who has read Goethe's scientific writings is also aware that he was familiar with this fact, which is so significant in terms of evolutionary history, before Oken. However, it was not until Carl Gegenbaur's investigations "On the head skeleton of the Selachians", published in 1872, that it was given a firm foundation. The aforementioned records now prove that Goethe did not arrive at his theory suddenly, through a brilliant idea, like the naturalist Oken, but through continued methodical work, and indeed through such work that was already moving in the direction that later led Gegenbaur to his important results (cf. the essay by Professor Karl v. Bardeleben "Goethe als Anatom" in the XII. Bande des Goethe-Jahrbuches, 1892). The poet Goethe proceeded much more methodically than the natural scientist Oken.

It can be observed in many cases with Goethe that a seemingly trivial remark in his writings has an enlightening effect on the whole nature of his work in the most eminent sense. One such remark can be found in the "Appendix" that he added in 1817 to the reprint of his work on the "Metamorphosis of Plants". There he considers certain pathological phenomena in the plant kingdom and speaks of them in the following way: "Nature forms normally when it gives countless details the rule, determines and conditions them; but the phenomena are abnormal when the details prevail and stand out in an arbitrary, even seemingly random way. But because the two are closely related and both the regulated and the irregular are animated by one spirit, there is a fluctuation between the normal and the abnormal, because formation and transformation always alternate, so that the abnormal appears to become normal and the normal abnormal. The shape of a plant part can be abolished or obliterated without us wanting to call it deformity... In the plant kingdom the normal in its completeness is rightly called healthy, physiologically pure; but the abnormal is not immediately to be regarded as diseased or pathological." Such a remark shows how Goethe thought about the pathological. He knew the value of considering the pathological for those who want to form an opinion about the laws of the healthy.

It is certainly not wrong to link such a thought of Goethe's with the poet's relationship to medicine. For his scientific ideas were largely influenced by these relationships. One need only follow his own communications in "Dichtung und Wahrheit" to gain an insight into the significant stimuli that Goethe owed to medicine. At the two universities he attended, he felt more attracted to the medical sciences than to the representatives of other subjects. (An interesting clarification of Goethe's relationship to medicine was recently given by Dr. P.H. Gerber, Privatdozent at the University of Königsberg, in his work "Goethes Beziehungen zur Medizin", Berlin 1900). The poet tells us about his stay at the University of Leipzig: "In the manifold dispersion, indeed fragmentation of my being and my studies, it happened that I had lunch with Hofrat Ludwig. He was a physician, a botanist, and the company consisted, apart from Morus, of all aspiring doctors or doctors approaching perfection. During these hours I heard no other conversation than that of medicine or natural history, and my imagination was drawn into quite another field ... The subjects were entertaining and important and held my attention." And later, at the University of Strasbourg, Goethe spent a stimulating time in a circle of doctors. He reported: "Most of my dinner companions were physicians. As is well known, they are the only students who talk about their science, their profession, with liveliness even outside the lessons. This is in the nature of things. The objects of their endeavors are the most sensual and at the same time the highest, the simplest and the most complicated. Medicine deals with the whole person because it deals with the whole person. Everything that the young man learns immediately points to an important, albeit dangerous, but in many ways rewarding practice. He therefore throws himself with passion into what is to be recognized and done, partly because it interests him in itself, partly because it opens up to him the happy prospect of independence and prosperity." But Goethe did not confine himself to such external stimuli in Strasbourg; he also diligently pursued medical and scientific studies himself. He attended lectures on chemistry by Spielmann and on anatomy by one of the most important anatomists of the time, Lobstein. Special circumstances prompted him to take a further interest in certain branches of the medical art. Herder had come to Strasbourg to undergo an eye operation. Goethe, who had formed an intimate friendship with this outstanding mind, was present at the operation and showed himself to be "of service and assistance to his friend in many ways". We also learn from "Dichtung und Wahrheit" how intensely Goethe was interested in these things at the time. He describes an eye operation that was unsuccessful for his friend Jung-Stilling and includes the words: "Usually, and I had watched it myself several times in Strasbourg, nothing seemed easier in the world, as Stilling had also succeeded a hundred times. After a painless incision had been made through the insensitive cornea, the cloudy lens popped out by itself at the slightest pressure, the patient immediately saw the objects and only had to wait blindfolded until a completed cure allowed him to use the delicious organ at will and convenience." The interest Goethe took in medical studies in Strasbourg corresponded to a profound need of his nature. No external circumstances would have been necessary to awaken such an interest in him. For in a certain sense he came to the university well prepared in this direction. The time between his studies in Leipzig and Strasbourg was also filled with reading medical writings. He had studied Boerhave's Compendium and his aphorisms, which formed the basis of medical teaching at the time.

When Goethe was then summoned to Weimar by Duke Karl August in 1775, he immediately entered into relations with the neighboring University of Jena. Once again, it was the physicians from whom he drew his most important inspiration. He studied anatomy in depth under the guidance of Court Councillor Loder. A manuscript he left behind (now published in Volume VIII of the Weimar Goethe Edition) shows how he pursued this science entirely in the spirit of a rational comparative method. One fruit of his studies is his important discovery that humans, like other vertebrates, have an intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw. These studies in Jenens enriched his anatomical knowledge to such an extent that he was able to give anatomical lessons to the students of the Weimar Academy of Drawing. The thoroughness of Goethe's studies is also evidenced by the fact that in the winter of 1781, he worked particularly diligently on the study of ligaments with Hofrat Loder, a subject that was "neglected by the medical youth" at the time.

It was Goethe's need for a comprehensive view of nature that corresponded to the whole disposition of his mind that drove him to an energetic preoccupation with empirical natural science, which he found best in the circles of medical experts. But this preoccupation also caused the poet to develop a deep understanding of medical science. The nature of this understanding is shown clearly enough by a description he gives in "Dichtung und Wahrheit" of the medical movement of the seventies of the last century. "For a light had dawned on excellent, thinking and feeling minds that a direct, original view of nature and action based on it was the best that man could wish for, and not even difficult to attain. Experience, therefore, was again the general watchword, and every one opened his eyes as well as he could; but it was actually the physicians who had most reason to urge it, and opportunity to seek it.... Because some extraordinary people, such as Boerhave and Haller, had really achieved the unbelievable, it seemed justified to demand even more from their students and descendants. It was claimed that the course was broken, since in all earthly things there can seldom be any question of a course; for just as the water that is displaced by a ship immediately collapses again behind it, so also error, when excellent spirits have pushed it aside and made room for themselves, naturally closes up again very quickly behind them."

In an important matter concerning medical teaching, Goethe even came up with a fruitful practical suggestion. He first presented it as a "semi-fiction" in chapter 3 of "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre". The difficulty of procuring the necessary objects for anatomical teaching led him to the idea of using plastic replicas for educational purposes instead of real organic bodies. He later approached Privy Councillor Beuth in Berlin with a proposal to this effect. A part of the letter to him is printed in Goethe's works under the title "Plastic Anatomy". Here he mentions that this "plastic anatomy" has been practiced in Florence for many years and adds the remark: "But should one not immediately think of Berlin when calling for such a location, where everything - science, art, taste and technology - is together and therefore a highly important, admittedly complicated undertaking could be carried out immediately by word and will?" Goethe has very specific suggestions in this direction: "Send an anatomist, a sculptor, a plaster casterer to Florence to be instructed in the special art in question. The anatomist learns to work out the specimens for his own purpose. The sculptor descends from the surface of the human body deeper and deeper into the interior and lends the higher style of his art to objects that would be repulsive and unpleasant without such ideal assistance. The caster, already accustomed to adapt his skill to more intricate cases, will find little difficulty in disposing of his task; he is no stranger to handling wax of various colors and all kinds of dimensions, and he will soon achieve what is desirable." The fact that such a suggestion for a pedagogical aid, which was later used in so many ways, came from Goethe proves how thoroughly he dealt with the requirements of medical teaching.

When one considers Goethe's close relationship with medicine, it is not unreasonable to say that this spiritual field also plays an important role in his life's poetry, in "Faust". Faust's personality is reminiscent of Paracelsus and other medical scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Goethe put much of his own essence into this figure. And when we read Faust's reflections on his art as a physician, we may remember that similar thoughts often arose in Goethe's own soul. Questions about the significance of medicine for life certainly often occupied Goethe, as he had become acquainted with the art of healing from a more than merely theoretical perspective through his frequent illnesses. After all, it is entirely in the spirit of his world view to think of the physical in full unity with the spiritual. He, to whom everything human was so intimately familiar, had to be led back again and again to the science of which he had gained the conviction in Strasbourg that it deals with the whole human being, because it has to do with the whole human being. But there is also a branch of medical science to which Goethe was particularly close through his artistic work: psychiatry. Even if we cannot claim that Goethe dealt with this field theoretically in the same way as with the purely physical phenomena of the living organism, it is nevertheless extremely interesting to note his keen eye for psychological abnormalities. His Werther, Orest, the harpist in "Wilhelm Meister", his Lila, Mignon and finally Gretchen are exemplary achievements in the depiction of pathological psyches. Gerber ("Goethe's Relations with Medicine") has subtly pointed out that Goethe portrays Mignon's character as it must be due to the girl's descent from her siblings.

Numerous paths led Goethe to medicine. He, who said that true art must be an expression of the highest laws of nature, that poetry rests on the foundations of knowledge, proved through his relationships with medicine that he knew how to assign this spiritual field its rightful place in the totality of the human spirit.