The Metamorphosis of Plants (3 page)

In the middle of April of this year he went to Belvedere for the express purpose of reaching conclusions as to his uncertainties and questions, and on May 15, he sent the following message to Frau von Stein: “I cannot tell you how legible the book of nature is becoming for me.
My long continued deciphering, letter by letter, has helped, and now all of a sudden it works, and my quiet joy is inexpressible.”
A short time before this he even wished to write a brief botanical treatise for Knebel in order to win him for this science.
Botany attracted him so strongly that a trip to Karlsbad, which he began on June 20, 1785, in order to spend the summer there, became a botanical excursion.
Knebel accompanied him.
In the neighborhood of Jena they met a seventeen-year-old youth, Dietrich, whose botanizing box showed that he had just come home from a botanical excursion.
We learn more about this interesting journey from Goethe's
Geschichte meines botanischen Studiums
,
^†
and from certain reports from Cohn, in Breslau, which he was able to obtain from a manuscript of Dietrich's.
In Karlsbad, conversations on botany now frequently afforded pleasant entertainment.
Upon returning home, Goethe devoted himself very energetically to the study of botany; in connection with Linne's
Philosophia
, he made certain observations in regard to mushrooms, mosses, lichens and algae, as we see from his letters to Frau von Stein.
Only now, since he has himself thought and observed a great deal, does Linne become more useful to him; through him he
finds information in regard to many details which aid him in progressing with his combinations.
On November 9, 1785, he reported to Frau von Stein: “I go on reading Linne; I have to, since I have no other book with me.
It is the best way to read a book conscientiously, which I must practice more frequently, since I do not easily read a book through to the end.
This book was not made for reading, but for recapitulation, and it has done me the most valuable service, since I have thought about most of the points.”

During these studies, it became more and more clear to him that
what appears in the endless multiplicity of single plant individuals is, after all, only one basic form; and this basic form itself became more and more manifest.
He recognized, furthermore, that
this basic form possesses the capacity for endless modifications, whereby manifoldness is created out of unity.
On July 9, 1786, he wrote to Frau von Stein:
“It is a becoming aware of the form with which nature, so to speak, always plays, and in playing brings forth manifold life.”
What he now needed primarily to do was to develop into a plastic image in its details this enduring, constant element, this primal form with which, so to speak, nature plays.
For this there was needed an opportunity to distinguish the truly constant, enduring element in the plant from the changing, unstable element.
For observations of this kind Goethe had as yet investigated only a limited region.
He had to observe one and the same plant under varied conditions and influences, for only thus does the changeable element become obvious.
It is less easily observed in connection with plants of various kinds.
All of this was afforded by the fortunate journey into Italy, which he began on September 3, from Karlsbad.

Even in connection with the flora of the Alps, many observations were made.
He found there not only new plants which he had never seen, but also such as he already knew, but
modified.
“Whereas in the lower regions, the branches and stalks were stronger and more massive, the buds closer together, and the leaves broad, higher in the mountains the branches and stems were more delicate, the buds farther apart, so that a greater space occurred from joint to joint and the leaves took on a more spear-like shape.
I noticed this in the case of a willow and a gentian, and was convinced that they were not different kinds.
Also by Walchensee I noticed longer and slenderer rushes than in the lowlands.”
Similar observations occurred repeatedly.
In Venice, he noticed by the sea various plants which showed characteristics that only the ancient salt in the sandy soil, but still more the salt air, could give them.
There he found a plant which appeared to him like our “harmless coltsfoot,” but armed with sharp weapons and with leaves like leather; the seed capsule also and the stalk were massive and fat.
There Goethe saw the instability, the
changeableness of all the external characteristics of plants, everything that belongs to their appearance.
From this he drew the conclusion that the nature of the plant is not to be found in these characteristics, but must be sought at a deeper level.

It was from observations similar to those of Goethe that Darwin also proceeded when he asserted his doubt as to the constancy of the external forms of genera and species.
But the conclusions which the two thinkers reached were entirely unlike.
Whereas Darwin considered that the whole nature of the organism was, in fact, comprised in these characteristics, and came to the conclusion, therefore, that there is nothing constant in the life of the plant, Goethe went deeper and drew the inference that, since those characteristics are not constant, what is constant must be sought in something else which lies beneath changeable externalities.
To give form to this latter element became Goethe's goal, whereas Darwin's efforts were directed toward searching into and explaining in detail the causes of that changeableness.
Both methods of observation are necessary; they supplement each other.
It is utterly erroneous to suppose that Goethe's greatness in organic science is to be found in the conception that he was a mere forerunner of Darwin.
His mode of observation is far more comprehensive; it embraces two aspects: 1.
the Type—that is, the entity of law manifest in the organism, the animality in the animal, the life evolving out of itself, which has the power and capacity, through the potentialities existing in it, to evolve in manifold external forms (species, genera); 2.
the reciprocal action between the organism and inorganic nature, and between organisms among themselves (adaptation and the struggle for existence).
Only the latter aspect of organics was developed by Darwin.
It cannot be said, therefore, that Darwin's theory was the development of Goethe's basic ideas; it was the development of only one aspect of these ideas.
It views only those facts which cause the world of living entities to evolve in a certain way, but not that “something” upon which those facts act determinatively.
If only one aspect of the problem is inquired into, this can never lead to a complete theory of organisms.
The inquiry must really be pursued in the spirit of Goethe; it must be supplemented and deepened through attention to the other aspect of this theory.

A simple comparison will make the matter clearer.
Take a piece of lead, reduce it to a fluid by means of heat, and pour it into cold water.
The lead has passed through two successive stages in its state of existence; the first was brought about by a higher temperature, the latter by a lower.
How the two stages take form depends, not only upon the nature of heat, but essentially also upon the nature of the lead.
A different substance, if caused to pass through the same media, would manifest quite different
conditions.
Organisms likewise are subject to being influenced by the surrounding media; they likewise take on, under the influence of these, various states of existence, and this occurs, indeed, in accordance with their nature, with that essential being which makes them organisms.
This essential being is found in Goethe's ideas.
Only one who is equipped with an understanding of this entity will be in a position to understand why organisms respond (react) to specific influences in a certain way and in no other.
Only such a person will be in a position to form the right conceptions concerning the changeableness of the forms in which the organism appears and the laws of adaptation and the struggle for existence connected with these.

The idea of the archetypal plant took on a constantly clearer and more definite form in Goethe's mind.
In the botanical garden in Padua, where he moved about in the midst of a vegetation strange to him, “the thought became more and more alive that it might be possible to develop all plant forms from a single one.”
On November 17, 1786, he wrote to Knebel: “Thus, after all, my little bit of botany gives me real joy for the first time in this land, where a happier, less discontinuous vegetation is at home.
I have already made quite nice observations tending toward generalizations, which will be agreeable to you also later on.”
On February 19, 1787, he wrote in Rome that he was on the way toward “the discovery of new and beautiful relations showing how nature achieves something tremendous that looks like nothing, evolving the manifold out of the simple.”
On March 25 he requested that Herder be informed that he would soon be ready with the archetypal plant.
On April 17 he wrote down in Palermo regarding the archetypal plant the words: “Surely there must be such a thing; how else could I recognize that this or that form is a plant if all were not formed according to a model?”
He had in mind the complex of formative principles which organizes the plant, which makes it what it is, by reason of which we arrive at the idea in regard to a natural object: “This is a plant.”
That is the archetypal plant.
As such, it is something ideal, to be held fast only in the mind, but it acquires form, it acquires a certain shape, size, color, number of organs, etc.
This external form is not fixed, but can undergo endless variations, all of which are in keeping with that complex of formative principles, are derived of necessity from it.
If one has grasped these formative principles, that primal image of the plant, one has laid firm hold in idea of that which nature, as it were, lays at the foundation of every single plant-individual, that out of which she calls it forth and causes it to come into existence as a result of this complex of formative laws.
Indeed, we can ourselves invent plant forms in accordance with this law, which could follow of necessity and exist through the nature of
the plant if the prerequisite conditions should come about.

Goethe thus endeavors, as it were, to reproduce in the mind what nature does in the formation of her entities.
He wrote to Herder on May 17, 1787: “Moreover, I must tell you confidentially that I am very close to the secret of the creation of plants, and that it is the simplest thing one could imagine.
The archetypal plant will be the strangest creature in the world, which nature herself ought to envy me.
With this model and the key to it, one can invent plants endlessly which must be consistent—that is, if they did not exist, yet they could exist, and not some artistic or poetic shadows and appearances but possessing inner truth and inevitability.
The same law can be applied to everything living.”

Here becomes apparent a still further difference between Goethe's conception and that of Darwin—that is, especially when one considers how the latter is generally applied.
Darwin's view assumes that external influences, like mechanical causes, work upon the nature of an organism and modify it accordingly.
To Goethe, the single alterations are various expressions of the archetypal organism (
Urorganismus
), which possesses within itself the capacity to take on manifold forms, and which at a particular time takes on that form which is best suited to the conditions of the external environing world.
These external conditions are merely the occasion for the inner formative forces to come to manifestation in a special way.
These latter alone are the constitutive principle, the creative element, in the plant.
For this reason Goethe called this entity on September 6, 1787, also a
hen kai pan
, a
one and all
of the plant world.

When, now, we consider this archetypal plant itself, the following is to be said about it.
The living entity is a whole enclosed within itself, which produces its state of existence through its own nature.
Both in the juxtaposition of the members and in the chronological succession of the states of existence of a living entity, there is a reciprocal relationship which does not come to manifestation through a determinative influence of the sensible characteristics of the members, through the mechanical-casual determination of the later by the earlier, but is controlled by a higher Principle, belonging above the members and the states of existence.
It is inherent in the nature of the whole that a definite state is fixed as the first and another as the last; and the succession of the intervening states is also determined within the idea of the whole.
The preceding is dependent upon the succeeding and vice-versa.
In short, in the living organism the evolution of one out of the other, the transition of states one into another, is no ready-made, finished existence of the single entity, but a constant
becoming.
In the plant this determination of each single organ by the whole comes to manifestation to the extent that all organs are built
upon the same fundamental model.
On May 17, 1787, Goethe wrote this thought to Herder in the words: “It had occurred to me that in the organ of the plant which we ordinarily designate as
leaf
, the true Proteus lay hidden, who can conceal and reveal himself in all forms.
Forward and backward, the plant is always only leaf, so inseparably united with the future germ that we cannot imagine one without the other.”