As the forces which organize the nature of the plant come into actual existence, they take on a series of structural forms. What was

now needed was the living concept which united these forms backwards and forwards.

 

When we consider Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, as ap. pears from the year 1790, we find that for him this living concept was that of alternate expansion and contraction. In the seed the plant formation is most intensely contracted (concentrated). With the forming of leaves, there follows the first unfolding expansion, of the formative forces. What is pressed together to a point in the seed becomes spatially expanded in the leaves. In the calyx, the forces are again concentrated around an axial point. The corolla is produced by the next expansion. Stamens and pistils come about from the next concentration, the fruit through the last (third) expansion, whereupon the total force of the plant life (this Principle of the entelechy) conceals itself again in the most intensely contracted state in the seed. Although we have thus been able to trace fairly well all the details of the idea of metamorphosis up to its final application in the paper which appeared in 1790, it is not as easy to do the same thing with the concept of expansion and contraction. Yet one will not be going astray in assuming that this idea, deeply rooted anyway in Goethe's mind, was also interwoven already in Italy with the concept of plant-formation. Since the content of this idea is the fact of the greater or lesser spatial unfolding determined by the formative forces-and thus exists in that which is directly manifest to the eye in the plant-the idea would surely most easily arise when one undertakes to draw the plant in accordance with the laws of its natural process of formation. Now, Goethe found in Rome a bush-like carnation plant which revealed metamorphosis especially clearly. About this he wrote: "Seeing at hand no means for preserving this wonder-form, I undertook to sketch it exactly, and while doing this I gained more and more insight into the fundamental concept of metamorphosis." Such sketches were probably often made later and this could then lead to the concept in question.

 

In September 1787, during his second sojourn in Rome, Goethe expounded the matter to his friend Moriz, and discovered how full of life and how manifest it became through such a presentation. He was always writing down how far he had progressed. It seems probable from this passage and some other remarks of Goethe that even the writing down of the theory of metamorphosis, at least sketchily, occurred in Italy. He says further: "In this way [in the presentation to Moriz] I could get something of my thoughts on paper." It is beyond question that the work in the form in which it now exists was written down at the end of 1789 and the beginning of 1790. But to what extent this final composition was only editorial in character and what was added will be difficult to say. A book announced for the next Easter season which might, perhaps, contain the same ideas, induced him in the autumn of 1789 to work at his ideas and to arrange for their publication. On November 20 he wrote to the Duke that he had been stimulated to write down his botanical ideas. As early as December 18 he sent the writing to the botanist Batsch in Jena to be examined; on the 20th he himself went there in order to confer with Batsch; on the 22nd he informed Knebel that Batsch had received the thing favorably. He returned home, worked the article over again, and sent it again to Batsch, who returned it on January 19, 1790. What vicissitudes the manuscript, as well as the printed production, then went through Goethe himself has narrated completely. The great significance of the theory of metamorphosis, as well as the essential nature of the theory in detail, will be discussed later in the section entitled The Nature and Significance of Goethe's Writings on Organic Morphology.

 

The above chapter was reprinted from the book Goethe the Scientist by Rudolf Steiner, published in 1950 by the Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, N. Y. 10977. The material appears with kind permission from the publisher.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Outlines of a PhilosopAy of the History of Mankind. fHistory of My Botanical Study.

 

 

 *The Latest from the World of the Plants.
 Selected Microscopic Discoveries in Connec(ion with Plants.

 

*Karl von Linne, Swedish botanist 1707-1778). Latin name, Linnxus, more commonly used in English.

 *Poetry and Truth, Goethe's autobiography.