Thoughts and Observations on Goethe as a Naturalist*

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Notes

1 Goethe died in 1832, totally unknown to the greater part of the German people. The anniversary marking one hundred years since his birth (1849) passed unremarked in German culture. At this time Schiller was considered the greatest German writer. It was only on the fiftieth anniversary of Goethe’s death (1882), and even more on the following anniversaries (1899, 1932) that Germans came to understand his global significance. (See Schiller F. in the book Literaturnoe nasledstvo, editions 4–6, (Moscow, 1932), pp. 776ff.)

2 Artistic work creates beauty, at bottom subjective (but only to a certain degree), whereas science creates a truth that is essential to everyone. As Lichtenberger has correctly observed, ‘this distinction is erased or, in any case, is in the most surprising fashion diminished in Goethe’s case.’ Henri Lichtenberger, La Sagesse de Goethe (Paris, 1933), pp. 33, 80; Max Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), p. 342.

3 See Goethe’s conversation with Soret on 17 February 1832, a month (thirty-four days) before his death, in Frédéric Soret, Zehn Jahre bei Goethe (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 628–33.

4 Analogous but not such personal remarks are recorded in 1824–25, seven years before Goethe’s death, by Eckermann and the Weimar Chancellor Friedrich von Müller, in Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe: In den letzten Jahren seines Lebens (Leipzig, 1925), p. 107; and in a conversation with Friedrich von Müller on 8 March 1824, in Goethes Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler F. v. Müller, 2nd edn ([Stuttgart], 1898), p. 139. [Editor’s note: The quotation is an amalgam of remarks recorded by Soret (see previous note). Where Vernadsky has Goethe ask ‘Was ist Goethe?’, Soret actually records: ‘Was bin ich denn selbst?’]

5 All of this is accessible to us thanks to the piety of his grandchildren, who have preserved all that remained of him (Walther Wolfgang and Wolfgang Maximilian von Goethe, who died between 1883–1885), and thanks to the great Duchess of Weimar, Sophie, who organised the scholarly publication of all of Goethe’s compositions (the so-called Weimar edition); all of his rough plans, correspondence, and diaries were part of this. Specialists clearly participated in this work.

6 It is clear that Goethe himself was also aware of the significance of the history of knowledge. For Goethe, the history of knowledge is a vast fugue, where the ‘voices of the people’ chime in, one replacing the other. Henri Lichtenberger, La Sagesse de Goethe (Paris, 1933), p. 80.

7 Goethe began to study natural sciences in his early youth, as is clear from Dichtung und Wahrheit. Goethe wrote on 16 July 1830 in a letter to Count G. v. Cancrin, thanking the latter for the minerals he had sent: ‘For sixty years now, dedicated to natural science and particularly to geology and mineralogy, I have been gathering everything that is significant’ (from W. Goethes Werke: Weimarer Ausgabe, iv, p. 47; ii, pp. 185–87). Goethe would then have been twenty-one years old; perhaps it was at that time that he began to amass the collection of minerals in his study. There is a curious remark about the natural sciences from 1826 which Goethe addressed to Turgenev (according to records in his diary): ‘They found me. It was not me that happened upon them.’ (See Sergey Durylin in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, editions 4–6 (Moscow, 1932), p. 296). Goethe’s work in optics began in 1786 and continued uninterrupted until his death in 1832 (Hippolyte Loiseau, Memoires Academie des Sciences de Toulouse (1930), p. 313). He demonstrated his interest in chemistry, partly in alchemy, and also in chemical experiments in 1769 (Albert Bielschowsky, Goethe: Sein Leben u. seine Werke (Munich, 1928), i, pp. 91–92).

8 Henri Lichtenberger, La Sagesse de Goethe (Paris, 1933), p. 80.

9 On the subject of empirical generalization, see: Vladimir Vernadksy, Biosfera (Leningrad, 1926), pp. 19 and following pages.

10 The foundations of this concept have been remarked on by me in my lectures at Moscow University at the start of our century. V. Vernadksy, O nauchnom mirovozzrenii: Ocherki i rechi (St Petersburg, 1922), book 2, edition 2.

11 On the subject of the biosphere, see: V. Vernadksy, Biosfera; V. Vernadsky, Biogeokhimicheskie ocherki 1922–1931 (Moscow, 1940) amongst others.

12 Goethe at one point composed a plan for a poem about nature in the spirit of Lucretius; for information on this, see: G. H. Lewes, Zhizn’ I. Vol’fganga Gete (St Petersburg, 1867), part I, p. 235.

13 Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (London, 1893). There are a series of Russian translations, but these are, unfortunately, very old.

14 The botanist V. M. Arnoldi (1871–1924), who died young, published in 1916 a fantastic book, Along the Islands of the Malay Archipelago (Moscow, 1923), about his travels sixty years later in the same place Wallace had been in 1856. This historical document is of the utmost significance. In the intervening period, another significant and interesting scientist, the zoologist V. N. Davydov, had been there too and allegedly travelled the same route.

15 One of the tasks we have is the publication of materials relating to the history of the biosphere in the past of our country, descriptions of its nature, starting from the eighteenth century and, where possible, earlier (Beauplan, for example, worked in the seventeenth century in Ukraine; he died in 1673). Unfortunately, this field of huge significance has been totally overlooked by our publishers. It is essential to force our publishers to fill this gaping hole, one that is so important for our burgeoning generations.

16 On Goethe and Leonardo da Vinci, see: A. G. Stoletov, Obshchedostupnye lektsii i rechi (Moscow, 1897), p. 237.

17 On the subject of Goethe’s connection with Russia, see literature and data in the works of S. Durylin (in the books: Literaturnoe nasledstvo, publication 4–6 (Moscow, 1932), pp. 83–504; V. Zhirmunskii, Gete v russkoi literature (Leningrad, 1937)).

18 Unfortunately, the significant figure Rouillier, one of the wonderful Russian scientists, has still not been appreciated as his significance demands. His manuscripts have not been assessed, and his printed publications have been distorted by censorship. The large and conscientious work produced by A. P. Bogdanov (K. F. Rouillier and his Predecessors in the Department of Zoology at the Imperial Moscow University (Moscow, 1885)) cannot be considered exhaustive, since he too had to reckon with censorship and he did not use all the printed material that was available to him at that time, not to mention the manuscript material. It is essential to properly catalogue the archives of K. F. Rouillier and A. P. Bogdanov that have been preserved.

19 On the circumstances surrounding Goethe’s election as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences in Petersburg, see: S. Durylin’s article in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, editions 4–6 (Moscow, 1932), p. 211 and following pages), and also the article by L. B. Modzalevskii in the collection Gete: 1832–1932 (Leningrad, 1937), p. 93.

20 Ia. Borzenkov, Chtenia po sravnitel’noi anatomii (Moscow, 1884), p. 85.

21 V. O. Likhtenshtadt, Gete: Bor’ba za realisticheskoe mirovozzrenie. Iskania i dostizhenia v oblasti izuchenia prirody i teorii poznania (St Petersburg, 1920); on V. O. Likhtenshtadt, see: I. I. Ionov, V. O. Likhtenshtadt. Nekrolog (St Petersburg, 1921)

22 [Translator’s note: Between 1823 and 1825 eight writers and intellectuals formed a literary-philosophical circle in Moscow. The archaic word ‘liubomudry’ (Любомудры) was the appellation they gave themselves. It has a meaning similar to ‘philosopher’ but, unlike the standard Russian word for ‘philosopher’, which is the borrowing ‘filosof’ (философ), ‘любомудры’ is formed of Russian roots: ‘люб-’ (love) and ‘мудр-’ (wise).]

23 V. Zhirmunskii, Gete v russkoi literature (Leningrad, 1937), pp. 161, 353, 581.

24 At this same time, Goethe struggled with the routine of professors, and with the traditions of this small, local university made up of minor German princedoms. He liked to recall his struggle in old age. See the notes made by Soret in Zehn Jahre bei Goethe (Leipzig, 1929), part 3, p. 401.

25 There is a Russian translation of the book: G. H. Lewes, Zhizn’ Gete (St Petersburg, 1867).

26 As early as 16 September 1829, the talented Russian scientist (archeologist), who died young, N. M. Rozhalin (1805–1834), wrote from Germany: ‘In Germany a strong party has arisen against philosophy … The enemies of philosophy have grouped together under the flag of Goethe and they swear allegiance to this name alone. Goethe alone has understood everything, found everything out, and has solved everything without philosophy.’ See: Russkii arkhiv, 8 (1909), p. 580. On N. M. Rozhalin, see the article by S. Durylin in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, editions 4–6 (Moscow, 1932), pp. 421–77.

27 There was a time when Goethe was interested in Schelling’s concepts of the philosophy of nature and perhaps even took them into account when doing his geological work. (M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), p. 99). But this was a transient interest. In general, he worked as a precise naturalist and excluded abstract and speculative philosophical ideas and conclusions from geology (ibid., p. 248).

28 John Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1903), ii.

29 Goethe and the pantheists’ refusal to accept, among other things, a personal God particularly disturbed his contemporaries. Those close to Goethe tried to establish something that was nowhere to be seen in Goethe’s ideas, namely that he was a pantheist who admitted God in nature, a God that was higher than nature. On this subject, see: A. Bielschowsky, Goethe: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Munich, 1928), ii, p. 445.

30 ‘I have personally always tried to maintain my freedom from philosophy; the point of view of common sense and reason is also my point of view.’ See: J. P. Eckermann, Razgovory s Gete: V poslednie gody ego zhizni (Moscow, 1934), p. 416.

31 There undoubtedly were naturalist-pantheists of Goethe’s type amongst his contemporaries, but they concealed themselves much more with a Christian mask or were infatuated with Christianity. Such was the case with Erasmus Darwin and perhaps Bonnet (1720–1793). On the subject of E. Darwin, see: Ia. Kholodkovskii, Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshchenia (1891), xxxii, p. 1.

32 A significant part of this money came from the Russian court through the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, who was friends with Goethe. She was the wife of the Grand Duke of Weimar. See the article by S. Durlylin in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, editions 4–6 (Moscow, 1932), pp. 83, 133, and others.

33 J. P. Eckermann, Razgovory s Gete (Moscow, 1934), p. 425.

34 F. Soret, Zehn Jahre bei Goethe (Leipzig, 1929). Unfortunately, the published versions are not in the original French but in German translation.

35 The history of Russian amateur mineralogists from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the present day has yet to be written. There were wonderful people in their number; these included noblemen and rich men, peasants who scavenged for rocks, those who served in the mountains, and intellectuals who were not in the gentry. Many new minerals were discovered by them. It is thanks to them that many valuable and important entities of nature have been preserved. Our rich state collections could not have been assembled without them. Before the revolution I met in the Urals with several amateurs of this variety, connoisseur-collectors who were peasants. Unfortunately, this huge and important scientific work of amateurs has now almost died out in our country.

36 Unfortunately, the collections of Goethe and at Jena University, as well as the collections of Golitsyn and others, have not been examined by anyone with a sound knowledge of mineralogy from our country. There may turn out to be unique objects and new deposits in this collection. On my visit to Weimar in 1936, the collection was, due to refurbishments, inaccessible. On the history of Goethe’s collection, see: M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), p. 381. Part of these collections is located in the collection of Jena University; it would seem that it was donated to the university by Goethe (ibid.).

37 See: V. L. Komarov, W. Goethe (1832–1932) (Leningrad, 1932), p. 50. The subsequent fate of the representatives of this family of naturalists is interesting. One of the last Dietrichs worked in the countries of the New World as a naturalist-collector in the twentieth century.

38 A. Bielschowsky, Goethe: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Munich, 1928), i, p. 325.

39 This is largely related to the fact that Napoleon’s continental blockade cut England off from the continent. Lyell remarks that Boué and L. von Buch told him that it was for this reason that they omitted the works of Hutton and Playfair. See: Charles Lyell, Life, Letters and Journals (London, 1881), ii, p. 48.

40 The question was actually not about the interior of the planet, but about the earth’s crust; at that time geologists could not investigate beyond the bounds of the earth’s crust. In Goethe’s time, cosmogonical ideas relating to the interior of the planet played a minute role.

41 On the subject of the unique situation that resulted from this, see: M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes [(Leipzig, 1914)], p. 172. Goethe had his own incorrect working hypotheses, as did Werner. Towards the end of his life, perhaps for reasons related to this, he understood that he had fallen behind and retreated from his interest in living things, focusing instead on geological problems.

42 Latin: ‘the decisive experiment’.

43 M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), p. 49; Goethe, Werke: Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar, 1825), xlvi, p. 280.

44 M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), p. 208.

45 [Editor’s note: It’s not clear what this refers to. One possibility, though it doesn’t strictly fit Vernadsky’s category of ‘posthumous works’, is Goethe’s project to write a Lucretian ‘Roman über das Weltall’, mentioned in his letter to Charlotte von Stein of 7 December 1781 but never carried out (WA, IV, v, p. 232).]

46 Goethe was an honorary member of the Werner Geological Society in Edinburgh (1820), where Hutton lived and created his theory of the Earth. But this society was founded in 1808 by R. Jameson (1774–1854), a student of Werner’s, also a Neptunist. Jameson later accepted Hutton’s ideas. Goethe understood the significance of English geologists, but the blockade cut him off from them. He strived not to miss out on personal communication with them, as is clear from the unrealized but proposed trip that Murchison, Conybeare, Sedgwick and others were to make to Weimar (1816–29). (M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), pp. 214, 342).

47 See, for example, the volcano Kammerbul around Eger (M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), pp. 116, 121, 180). Semper’s book gives the most valuable and recent evaluation of Goethe’s geological work. Semper’s evaluation of the scientific environment at Goethe’s time seems incorrect to me, for he does not take into sufficient account the whole significance of geological work outside Germany. The attempts at an evaluation of natural philosophy can hardly be considered successful. But Semper used data from the Goethe archive in Weimar and presented the full German material in his book.

48 M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), pp. 218–19, 235.

49 See: B. Ticker, Die Naturwissenschaften (Berlin, 1934), xxii, p. 81.

50 John Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1903), ii, p. 482.

51 E. Le Roy, L’Exigence idéaliste et le fait de l’évolution (Paris, 1927); V. Vernadsky, Problemy biogeokhimii (Moscow, 1938), ii; V. Vernadsky, ‘Neskol’ko slov o noosfere’, Uspekhi sovremennoi biologii, 2 (1944), p. 113.

52 V. Vernadsky, Ancient Russia (New York, 1943), i.

53 See the interesting conversation between Goethe and Chancellor von Müller from 17 December 1824 (W. Goethes, Unterhaltungen mit Kanzler F. v. Müller, 2nd edn (Berlin, 1898), p. 165.)

54 J. P. Eckermann, Razgovory s Gete: V poslendie gody ego zhizni (Moscow, 1934), p. 713.

55 The traces of this are evident in his writings and letters. His contemporaries, including those who were close to him, like Soret and Eckermann, are even more explicit in their discussion of this. See: Soret, Zehn Jahre bei Goethe, [(Leipzig, 1929)], pp. 58, 115.

56 In a conversation with Eckermann on 3 May 1827, speaking about the scattered nature of German scientists, Goethe said the following: ‘Each one is separated from their neighbour by a distance of a hundred miles, such that personal connection and personal exchange take place only very rarely indeed. What it could be like I feel acutely when men such as Alexander von Humboldt spend time here en route: in a single day they give me more of what I am looking for and of what I need to know than I could otherwise achieve in years of solitary investigations.’ (J. P. Eckermann, Razgovory s Gete: V poslendie gody ego zhizni (Moscow, 1934), p. 713.)

57 As a young man Purkyne published one of his pieces of work in this field without mentioning in the printed version the role of Goethe, whose ideas he was elaborating. This had an effect on their relationship and particularly on Goethe’s relationship to him. I think that Goethe considered him a German.

58 This work of Humboldt’s is worthy of attention even now. It was not embraced and properly evaluated by scientists in the nineteenth century. Much of its contents were discovered again independently in the twentieth century. On the other hand, many of Humboldt’s main conclusions had been reached before him by the Swede Goran Wahlenberg (1780–1851), something Humboldt did not draw attention to.

59 See: N. A. Krylov, Newton: Matematicheskie nachala natural’noi filosofii: Sobr. Trudov (Moscow, 1936), book 7. This is an exceptional translation with commentary; S. I. Vavilov, Isaak N’iuton (Moscow, 1943). This is a wonderful biography.

60 Like the significance that the publication of the forgotten works of Aristotle had in natural sciences in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the discovery and interpretation of the works and theorems of Ancient Greek mathematicians, Archimedes, Apollonius, and others, who had regained their fame, were significant for the development of the new mathematics. Goethe was right to rate highly Aristotle’s work as a naturalist: ‘Aristotle saw nature better than any of the most recent scientists, but he was too quick to form his opinions’ (1 October 1828). See: J. P. Eckermann, Razgovory s Gete: V poslendie gody ego zhizni (Moscow, 1934), p. 390.

61 V. I. Vernadsky, Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii (Moscow, 1905), p. 22 (no. 75). Goethe was aware of these works by Kant. See: Goethe, Wilhelms Meisters Wanderjahre, iii. 18: ‘Aus Makariens Archiv’ (Werke, viii, p. 401); M. Semper, Die geologischen Studien Goethes (Leipzig, 1914), p. 157.

62 What is curious, from this perspective, is the significance that Goethe attributes to crystallography (1821) in the aphorisms that he attached to Wilhelms Meisters Wanderjahre. Here he writes, among other things: “It gives the mind a certain limited satisfaction and is, in its minutiae, so varied that it might even be called inexhaustible, for which reason it captivates even excellent people so emphatically and for so long.” (Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, iii. 18: ‘Aus Makariens Archiv’ (Werke, viii, p. 403).

63 In the notes of Soret (1828), after one of Goethe’s energetic diatribes against Newton (‘This Newton, whom the whole world admires … ’ etc.), Soret observes: ‘As the words inexhaustibly streamed forth with a strength of expression that I could not express, his eyes burned (funkelten) with an extraordinary fire; the glee of victory shone in them, and on his lips there played an ironic smirk and his wonderful head was even more imposing than ever.’ (F. Soret, Zehn Jahre bei Goethe (Leipzig, 1929)).

64 His aphorism (1821) is curious: ‘The microscopes and telescopes actually confound human common sense’ (Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, ii. 12, p. 246).

65 John Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1903), iii, pp. 191, 612.

66 J. P. Eckermann, Razgovory s Gete: V poslendie gody ego zhizni (Moscow, 1934), pp. 558–59.

67 ibid.

68 J. P. Eckermann, Razgovory s Gete: V poslendie gody ego zhizni (Moscow, 1934), p. 559.

69 J. Walther, Goethe als Lehrer und Erforscher der Natur (Leipzig, 1930), p. 301.

70 Three Philosophical Poets (Cambridge, 1910), p. 139.

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Julius Kochan

Julius Kochan is a DPhil student in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on Contemporary Chinese Literature and Visual Culture and on the cultural artefacts produced in areas of Sino-Russian interaction. He translates academic and literary texts from Russian and Chinese into English and has had translations published in academic journals and literary magazines.