Goethean Science
GA 1
13. Goethe's Basic Geological Principle
[ 1 ] Goethe is very often sought where he is absolutely not to be found. Among the many other areas where this has happened is the way the geological research of the poet has been judged. But here more than anywhere it is necessary for everything that Goethe wrote about details to recede into the background before the wonderful intention from which he took his start. He must be judged here above all according to his own maxim: “In the works of man, as in those of nature, it is actually the intentions that are primarily worthy of attention” and “The spirit out of which we act is the highest thing.” Not what he achieved but rather how he strove for it is what is exemplary for us. We are dealing, not with a doctrine, but rather with a method to be communicated. Goethe's doctrine depends upon the scientific means of the times and can be superseded; his method sprang from his great spiritual endowment and stands up even though scientific instruments are being perfected and our experience broadened.
[ 2 ] Goethe was introduced into geology through his occupation with the Ilmenau mine, which was one of his official duties. When Karl August became ruler, he devoted himself with great earnestness to this mine, which had been neglected for a long time. First, the reasons for its decline were to be thoroughly investigated by experts and then everything possible was to be done to revive the operation. Goethe stood by Duke Karl August in his undertaking. He pressed on most energetically with this matter. This led him often into the Ilmenau mine. He wanted to familiarize himself completely with the state of affairs. He was in Ilmenau for the first time in May 1776 and often thereafter.
[ 3 ] In the midst of this practical concern, there now arose in him the scientific need to arrive at the laws of those phenomena which he was in a position to observe there. The comprehensive view of nature that worked its way up in his spirit to ever greater clarity (see his essay Nature) compelled him to explain, in his sense, what was spread out there before his eyes.
[ 4 ] Here right away a deep-lying characteristic of Goethe's nature manifests itself. He has an essentially different need than many investigators. Whereas, for the latter, the main thing is knowledge of the particulars, whereas they are usually interested in an edifice of ideas, in a system, only insofar as it is helpful in observing the particulars, for Goethe, the particulars are only intermediaries to a comprehensive, total view of existence. We read in the essay Nature: “Nature consists solely of children, and the mother, where is she?” We also find in Faust (“See all the working power and seeds”) the same striving to know not only the immediately existing, but also its deeper foundations. In this way, what he observes upon and beneath the surface of the earth also becomes for him a means It of penetrating into the riddle of how the world is formed. What he writes to the Duchess Luise on December 23, 1786, ensouls all his research: “The works of nature are always like a word that has just been spoken by God: and what is experiencable to the senses becomes for him a writing from which he must read that word of creation. In this vein he writes to Frau v. Stein on August 22. 1784: “The great and beautiful writing is always legible and is indecipherable only when people want to transfer their own petty images and their own narrow-mindedness onto the infinite beings.” We find the same tendency in Wilhelm Meister: “But if I were now to treat precisely these cracks and fissures as letters, had to decipher them, were to form them into words, and learned to read them fully, would you have anything against that?”
[ 5 ] Thus, from the end of the 1770's on, we see the poet engaged in an unceasing effort to decipher this writing. The goal of his striving was to work his way up to a view such that what he saw separated would appear to him in inner, necessary relationship. His method was “one that develops and unfolds things, by no means one that compiles and orders them.” It did not suffice for him to see granite here and porphyry there, etc., and then simply to arrange them according to external characteristics; he strove for a law that underlay all rock formation and that he needed only to hold before himself in spirit in order to understand how granite had to arise here and porphyry there. He went back from that which differentiates, to that which is held in common. On June 12, 1784, he writes to Frau v. Stein: “The simple thread that I have spun for myself is leading me beautifully through all these subterranean labyrinths, and is giving me an overview even in the confusion.” He seeks the common principle that, according to the different conditions under which it comes to manifestation, at one time brings forth this kind of rock and another time brings forth that. Nothing in the realm of experience is a constant for him at which one could remain; only the principle, which underlies everything, is something of that kind. Goethe therefore also endeavors always to find the transitions from rock to rock. One can recognize much better from them, in fact, the intention, the tendency of their genesis, than from a product that has already developed in a definite way, where nature in fact reveals its being only in a one-sided way, indeed very often “goes astray into a blind alley by specializing.”
[ 6 ] It is an error to believe that one has refuted this method of Goethe by indicating that present-day geology does not know of any such transition of one rock into another. Goethe, in fact, never maintained that granite actually passes over into something different. What is once granite is a finished, complete product and no longer has the inner driving power to become something else out of itself. What Goethe was seeking, however, is in fact lacking in present-day geology, and that is the idea, the principle that constitutes granite before it has become granite, and this idea is the same one that also underlies all other formations. When Goethe speaks therefore of the transition of one rock into a different one he does not mean by this a factual transformation but rather a development of the objective idea that takes shape in the individual forms, that now holds fast to one form and becomes granite, and then again develops another possibility out of itself and becomes slate, etc. Also in this realm Goethe's view is not a barren theory of metamorphosis but rather concrete idealism. But that rock-forming principle can come to full expression, with all that lies in this expression, only within the whole body of the earth. Therefore the history of the formation of the earth's body becomes the main thing for Goethe, and all the particulars have to fit into it. The important thing for him is the place a given rock occupies in the totality of the earth; the particular thing interests him only as a part of the whole. Ultimately, that mineralogical-geological system seems to him to be the correct one which recreates the processes in the earth, which shows why precisely this had to arise at this place and that had to arise in another. Geological deposits become of decisive importance for him. He therefore criticizes Werner's teachings, which he otherwise reveres so highly, for not arranging the minerals according to the way they are deposited, which informs us about how they arose, but rather according to incidental external features. It is not the investigator who makes the perfect system, but rather nature itself which has done that.
[ 7 ] It should be borne in mind that Goethe saw in the whole of nature one great realm, a harmony. He maintains that all natural things are ensouled with one tendency. What is therefore of the same kind had to appear to him as determined by the same lawfulness. He could not grant that other forces are at work in geological phenomena—which are in fact nothing more than inorganic entities—than in the rest of inorganic nature. The extending into geology of the laws of inorganic activity is Goethe's first geological deed. It was this principle which guided him in his explanation of the Bohemian mountains and in his explanation of the phenomena observed at the temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli. He sought to bring principle into the dead earth crust by thinking of it as having arisen through those laws which we always see at work before our eyes in physical phenomena. The geological theories of a Hutton, an Elie de Beaumont were deeply repugnant to him. What was he supposed to do with explanations that violate all natural order? It is banal to repeat so often the empty remark that it was Goethe's peaceful nature which was repelled by the theory of rising and sinking, etc. No, this theory affronted his sense for a unified view of nature. He could not insert this theory into what is in accordance with nature. And he owes it to this sense that he early on (in 1782 already) arrived at a view that professional geologists attained only decades later: the view that fossilized animal and plant remains stand in a necessary relationship with the rock in which they are found. Voltaire had still spoken of them as freaks of nature, because he had no inkling of the consistency of natural lawfulness. Goethe could make sense of a thing in one place or other only if a simple, natural connection existed between this thing and its environment. It is also the same principle that led Goethe to the fruitful idea of an ice age. (see Geological Problems and an Attempt at their Solution)69Geologische Probleme und Versuch ihrer Auflösung He sought a simple explanation, in accordance with nature, for deposits of granite masses widely separated over large areas. He had indeed to reject the explanation that they had been hurled there by a tumultuous upheaval of mountains lying far behind them, because this explanation did not trace a fact of nature back to the existing working laws of nature but rather derived this fact from an exception, from an abandonment, in fact, of these laws. He assumed that northern Germany had once had, under conditions of extreme cold, a general water level of a thousand feet, that a large part was covered with a layer of ice, and that those granite blocks were left lying after the ice had melted away With this, a view was expressed that is based upon known laws experiencable by us. Goethe's significance for geology is to be sought in his establishment of a general lawfulness of nature. How he explained the Kammerberg, whether or not he was correct in his opinion about the springs of Karlsbad, is unimportant. “It is a question here not of an opinion to be disseminated, but rather of a method to be communicated that anyone may make use of in his own way as a tool” (Goethe to Hegel, October 7, 1820).
13. Das geologische Grundprinzip Goethes
[ 1 ] Goethe wird sehr oft dort gesucht, wo er durchaus nicht zu finden ist. Unter vielen anderen Dingen ist das bei der Beurteilung der geologischen Forschungen des Dichters geschehen. Viel mehr aber als irgendwo wäre es hier notwendig, daß alles, was Goethe über Einzelheiten geschrieben, zurückträte hinter den großartigen Intentionen, von denen er ausging. Er muß hier vor allem nach seiner eigenen Maxime: «In den Werken des Menschen, wie in denen der Natur, sind eigentlich die Absichten vorzüglich der Aufmerksamkeit wert» [«Sprüche in Prosa»; Natw. Schr.., 4. Bd.., 2. Abt., S. 378] und «Der Geist, aus dem wir handeln, ist das Höchste» [Lehrjahre VII, 9] beurteilt werden. Nicht was er erreichte, sondern wie er es anstrebte, ist für uns das Vorbildliche. Es handelt sich nicht um eine Lehrmeinung, sondern um eine mitzuteilende Methode. Die erste hängt von den wissenschaftlichen Mitteln der Zeit ab und kann überholt werden; die letzte ist hervorgegangen aus der großen Geistesanlage Goethes und hält stand, auch wenn die wissenschaftlichen Werkzeuge sich vervollkommnen und die Erfahrung sich erweitert..
[ 2 ] In die Geologie wurde Goethe durch die Beschäftigung mit den Ilmenauer Bergwerken geführt, zu der er amtlich verpflichtet war. Als Karl August zur Regierung kam, widmete er sich mit großem Ernste diesem Bergwerke, das lange vernachlässigt worden war. Es sollten zunächst die Gründe des Verfalls desselben durch Sachverständige genau untersucht und dann alles mögliche zur Wiederbelebung des Betriebes getan werden. Goethe stand dabei dem Herzog Karl August zur Seite. Er betrieb die Angelegenheit auf das energischste. Das führte ihn denn oft in die Bergwerke von Ilmenau. Er wollte sich mit dem Stand der Sache selbst genau bekannt machen. Im Mai 1776 zum erstenmal und dann noch oft war er in Ilmenau.
[ 3 ] Mitten in dieser praktischen Sorge ging ihm nun das wissenschaftliche Bedürfnis auf, den Gesetzen jener Erscheinungen näher zu kommen, die er da zu beobachten in der Lage war. Die umfassende Naturanschauung, die sich in seinem Geiste zu immer größerer Klarheit heraufarbeitete (siehe den Aufsatz «Die Natur»; Natw. Schr., 2. Bd.., S. 5 ff..), zwang ihn, das, was sich da vor seinen Augen ausbreitete, in seinem Sinne zu erklären.
[ 4 ] Es macht sich hier gleich eine tief in Goethes Natur liegende Eigentümlichkeit geltend. Er hat ein wesentlich anderes Bedürfnis als viele Forscher. Während bei letzteren das Hauptsächliche in der Erkenntnis des Einzelnen liegt, während sie gewöhnlich an einem ideellen Bau, einem System nur insoweit Interesse nehmen, als es ihnen beim Beobachten des Einzelnen behilflich ist, ist für Goethe die Einzelheit nur Durchgangspunkt zu einer umfassenden Gesamtauffassung des Seienden. Wir lesen in dem Aufsatz «Die Natur»: «Sie lebt in lauter Kindern und die Mutter, wo ist sie?» Dasselbe Streben, nicht nur das unmittelbar Existierende, sondern dessen tiefere Grundlage zu erkennen, finden wir ja auch in Faust («Schau' alle Wirkungskraft und Samen»). So wird ihm denn auch das was er auf und unter der Erdoberfläche beobachtet, ein Mittel, in das Rätsel der Weltbildung einzudringen. Was er am 23. Dezember 1786 an die Herzogin Luise schreibt: «Die Naturwerke sind immer wie ein erstausgesprochenes Wort Gottes» [WA 8, 98], beseelt all sein Forschen; und das sinnlich Erfahrbare wird ihm zur Schrift, aus der er jenes Wort der Schöpfung zu lesen hat. In diesem Sinne schreibt er am 22. August 1784 an Frau v. Stein: «Die große und schöne Schrift sei immer lesbar und nur dann nicht zu entziffern, wenn die Menschen ihre kleinlichen Vorstellungen und ihre Beschränktheit auf unendliche Wesen übertragen wollen..» [WA 6, 343] Dieselbe Tendenz finden wir im «Wilhelm Meister»: «Wenn ich nun aber eben diese Spalten und Risse als Buchstaben behandelte, sie zu entziffern hätte, sie zu Worten bildete und sie fertig zu lesen lernte, hättest du etwas dagegen?»
[ 5 ] So sehen wir denn den Dichter vom Ende der siebziger Jahre an unablässig bemüht, diese Schrift zu entziffern. Sein Streben ging dahin, sich zu einer solchen Anschauung emporzuarbeiten, daß ihm das, was er getrennt sah, im inneren, notwendigen Zusammenhang erscheine. Seine Methode war «die entwickelnde, entfaltende, keineswegs die zusammenstellende, ordnende». Ihm genügte es nicht, da den Granit, dort den Porphyr usw. zu sehen, und sie einfach nach äußerlichen Merkmalen aneinanderzureihen, er strebte nach einem Gesetze, das aller Gesteinsbildung zugrunde lag und das er sich nur im Geiste vorzuhalten brauchte, um zu verstehen, wie da Granit, dort Porphyr entstehen mußte. Er ging von dem Unterscheidenden auf das Gemeinsame zurück. Am 12. Juni 1784 schrieb er an Frau v. Stein: «Der einfache Faden, den ich mir gesponnen habe, führt mich durch alle diese unterirdischen Labyrinthe gar schön durch und gibt mir Übersicht selbst in der Verwirrung.» [WA 6, 297 u. 298] Er sucht das gemeinsame Prinzip, das je nach den verschiedenen Umständen, unter denen es zur Geltung kommt, einmal diese, das andere Mal jene Gesteinsart hervorbringt. Nichts in der Erfahrung ist ihm ein Festes, bei dem man stehenbleiben könne; nur das Prinzip, das allem zugrunde liegt, ist ein solches. Er ist daher auch immer bestrebt, die Übergänge von Gestein zu Gestein zu finden. Aus ihnen ist ja die Absicht, die Entstehungstendenz viel besser zu erkennen, als aus dem in bestimmter Weise ausgebildeten Produkt, wo ja die Natur nur in einseitiger Weise ihr Wesen offenbart, ja gar oft bei «ihren Spezifikationen sich in eine Sackgasse verirrt».
[ 6 ] Es ist ein Irrtum, wenn man diese Methode Goethes damit widerlegt zu haben glaubt, daß man darauf hinweist, die heutige Geologie kenne ein solches Übergehen eines Gesteines in ein anderes nicht. Goethe hat ja nie behauptet, daß Granit tatsächlich in etwas anderes übergehe. Was einmal Granit ist, ist fertiges, abgeschlossenes Produkt und hat nicht mehr die innere Triebkraft, aus sich selbst heraus ein anderes zu werden. Was aber Goethe suchte, das fehlt der heutigen Geologie eben, das ist die Idee, das Prinzip, das den Granit konstituiert, bevor er Granit geworden ist, und diese Idee ist dieselbe, die auch allen anderen Bildungen zugrunde liegt. Wenn also Goethe von einem Übergehen eines Gesteins in ein anderes spricht, so meint er damit nicht ein tatsächliches Umwandeln, sondern eine Entwicklung der objektiven Idee, die sich zu den einzelnen Gebilden ausgestaltet, jetzt diese Form festhält und Granit wird, dann wieder eine andere Möglichkeit aus sich herausbildet und Schiefer wird usw. Nicht eine wüste Metamorphosenlehre, sondern konkreter Idealismus ist Goethes Ansicht auch auf diesem Gebiete. Zur vollen Geltung mit allem, was in ihr liegt, kann aber jenes gesteinsbildende Prinzip nur im ganzen Erdkörper kommen. Daher wird die Bildungsgeschichte des Erdkörpers für Goethe die Hauptsache, und jedes Einzelne hat sich derselben einzureihen. Es kommt ihm darauf an, welche Stelle ein Gestein im Erdganzen einnimmt; das Einzelne interessiert ihn nur mehr als Teil des Ganzen. Es erscheint ihm schließlich dasjenige mineralogischgeologische System als das richtige, das die Vorgänge in der Erde nachschafft, das zeigt, warum an dieser Stelle gerade das, an jener das andere entstehen mußte. Das Vorkommen wird ihm ausschlaggebend. Er tadelt es daher an Werners Lehre, die er sonst so hoch verehrt, daß sie die Mineralien nicht nach dem Vorkommen, das uns über ihr Entstehen Aufschluß gibt, als vielmehr nach zufälligen äußeren Kennzeichen anordnet. Das vollkommene System macht nicht der Forscher, sondern das hat die Natur selbst gemacht..
[ 7 ] Es ist festzuhalten, daß Goethe in der ganzen Natur ein großes Reich, eine Harmonie sah. Er behauptet, daß alle natürlichen Dinge von einer Tendenz beseelt sind. Was daher gleicher Art ist, mußte für ihn von der gleichen Gesetzmäßigkeit bedingt erscheinen. Er konnte nicht zugeben, daß in den geologischen Erscheinungen, die ja nichts weiter sind als anorganische Wesenheiten, andere Triebfedern geltend sind, als in der übrigen anorganischen Natur. Die Ausdehnung der anorganischen Wirkensgesetze auf die Geologie ist Goethes erste geologische Tat. Dieses Prinzip war es, das ihn bei Erklärung der böhmischen Gebirge, das ihn bei Erklärung der am Serapis-Tempel zu Pozzuoli beobachteten Erscheinungen leitete. Er suchte dadurch Prinzip in die tote Erdkruste zu bringen, daß er sie als durch jene Gesetze entstanden dachte, die wir immer vor unseren Augen bei physikalischen Erscheinungen wirken sehen. Die geologischen Theorien eines [James] Hutton, Elie de Beaumont waren ihm innerlichst zuwider. Was sollte er mit Erklärungen anfangen, die alle Naturordnung durchbrechen? Es ist banal, wenn man so oft die Phrase hört, Goethes ruhiger Natur habe die Theorie des Hebens und Senkens usw. widersprochen. Nein, sie widersprach seinem Sinne für eine einheitliche Naturanschauung. Er konnte sie dem Naturgemäßen nicht einfügen. Und diesem Sinne verdankt er es, daß er frühzeitig (schon 1782) zu einer Ansicht gelangte, zu der sich die Fachgeologie erst nach Jahrzehnten aufschwang: zur Ansicht, daß die versteinerten Tier- und Pflanzenreste in einem notwendigen Zusammenhange mit dem Gestein stehen, in dem sie gefunden werden. Voltaire hatte von ihnen noch als von Naturspielen gesprochen, weil er keine Ahnung von der Konsequenz in der Naturgesetzlichkeit hatte. Goethe konnte ein Ding an irgendeinem Orte begreiflich nur finden, wenn sich ein einfacher natürlicher Zusammenhang mit der Umgebung des Dinges fand. Es ist auch dasselbe Prinzip, das Goethe auf die fruchtbare Idee von der Eiszeit führte (s. «Geologische Probleme und Versuch ihrer Auflösung», Natw. Schr.., 2. Bd., S. 308). Er suchte nach einer einfachen, naturgemäßen Erklärung des Vorkommens der auf großen Flächen weit entfernten Granitmassen. Die Erklärung, daß sie bei dem tumultuarischen Aufstand der weit rückwärts im Lande gelegenen Gebirge seien dahin geschleudert worden, mußte er ja abweisen, weil sie eine Naturtatsache nicht aus den bestehenden, wirkenden Naturgesetzen, sondern durch eine Ausnahme von denselben, ja ein Verlassen derselben, herleitete. Er nahm an, daß das nördliche Deutschland einst bei großer Kälte einen tausend Fuß hohen allgemeinen Wasserstand hatte, daß ein großer Teil von einer Eisfläche bedeckt war, und daß jene Granitblöcke liegengeblieben sind, nachdem das Eis abgeschmolzen. Damit war eine auf bekannte, für uns erfahrbare Gesetze sich stützende, Ansicht gegeben. In dieser Geltendmachung einer allgemeinen Naturgesetzlichkeit ist Goethes Bedeutung für die Geologie zu suchen. Wie er den Kammerberg erklärt, ob er mit seiner Meinung über den Karlsbader Sprudel das Richtige getroffen, ist belanglos. «Es ist hier die Rede nicht von einer durchzusetzenden Meinung, sondern von einer mitzuteilenden Methode, deren sich jeder, als eines Werkzeugs, nach seiner Art, bedienen möge..» (Goethe an Hegel 7. Okt. 1820 [WA 33, 294].)
13 Goethe's basic geological principle
[ 1 ] Goethe is very often sought where he is not to be found at all. Among many other things, this has happened in the assessment of the poet's geological research. Much more than anywhere else, however, it would be necessary here for everything Goethe wrote about details to take a back seat to the great intentions from which he proceeded. He must be judged here above all according to his own maxim: "In the works of man, as in those of nature, it is actually the intentions that are most worthy of attention" ["Proverbs in Prose"; Natw. Schr., 4th vol., 2nd section, p. 378] and "The spirit from which we act is the highest" [Lehrjahre VII, 9]. It is not what he achieved, but how he strove for it that is exemplary for us. It is not a matter of a doctrine, but of a method to be communicated. The first depends on the scientific means of the time and can become obsolete; the latter has emerged from Goethe's great spiritual disposition and endures, even if the scientific tools are perfected and experience expands.
[ 2 ] Goethe was led into geology through his occupation with the Ilmenau mines, to which he was officially obliged. When Karl August came to power, he devoted himself to this mine, which had long been neglected, with great seriousness. First of all, the reasons for its decay were to be examined in detail by experts and then everything possible was to be done to revive the operation. Goethe supported Duke Karl August in this endeavor. He pursued the matter with the utmost vigor. This often led him to the mines in Ilmenau. He wanted to familiarize himself with the state of the matter. He visited Ilmenau for the first time in May 1776 and then many more times.
[ 3 ] In the midst of this practical concern, he now had a scientific need to get closer to the laws of the phenomena he was able to observe there. The comprehensive view of nature, which worked its way up to ever greater clarity in his mind (see the essay "Die Natur"; Natw. Schr., 2nd vol., p. 5 ff.), forced him to explain what was unfolding before his eyes in his own terms.
[ 4 ] A peculiarity deeply rooted in Goethe's nature immediately becomes apparent here. He has an essentially different need than many researchers. Whereas for the latter the main thing lies in the knowledge of the individual, whereas they are usually only interested in an ideal structure, a system, to the extent that it helps them to observe the individual, for Goethe the individual is only the point of passage to a comprehensive overall conception of existence. We read in the essay "Nature": "It lives in nothing but children and the mother, where is she?" We find the same striving to recognize not only what exists directly, but also its deeper foundation, in Faust ("Look at all power and seeds"). Thus, what he observes on and below the earth's surface becomes a means for him to penetrate the mystery of the formation of the world. What he wrote to Duchess Luise on December 23, 1786: "The works of nature are always like a first uttered word of God" [WA 8, 98], animates all his research; and the sensually perceptible becomes the scripture from which he has to read that word of creation. With this in mind, he wrote to Frau v. Stein on August 22, 1784: "The great and beautiful writing is always legible and only indecipherable when people want to transfer their petty ideas and their narrowness to infinite beings..." [WA 6, 343] We find the same tendency in "Wilhelm Meister": "But if I now treated these very cracks and fissures as letters, had them to decipher, formed them into words and learned to read them completely, would you have anything against it?"
[ 5 ] So from the end of the seventies onwards, we see the poet constantly striving to decipher this writing. He strove to work his way up to such a view that what he seen separately appeared to him in an inner, necessary context. His method was "the developing, unfolding, by no means the compiling, organizing one". It was not enough for him to see the granite here, the porphyry there, etc., and simply line them up according to external characteristics; he strove for a law that underlay all rock formation and which he only needed to hold up in his mind in order to understand how granite had to be formed here and porphyry there. He went back from the distinctive to the common. On June 12, 1784, he wrote to Frau v. Stein: "The simple thread that I have spun for myself leads me through all these subterranean labyrinths quite beautifully and gives me an overview even in the confusion." [WA 6, 297 and 298] He seeks the common principle which, depending on the different circumstances in which it comes into play, sometimes produces this type of rock, sometimes that type of rock. For him, nothing in experience is a fixed point on which one can stand still; only the principle that underlies everything is such a principle. He therefore always endeavors to find the transitions from rock to rock. From them, the intention is to recognize the tendency of formation much better than from the product formed in a determined way, where nature only reveals its essence in a one-sided way, even often straying into a dead end with "its specifications".
[ 6 ] It is a mistake to believe that Goethe's method has been refuted by pointing out that modern geology does not recognize such a transition from one rock to another. Goethe never claimed that granite actually changes into something else. What is once granite is a finished, completed product and no longer has the inner driving force to become something else of its own accord. But what Goethe was looking for is precisely what is missing in today's geology, that is the idea, the principle that constitutes granite before it has become granite, and this idea is the same that underlies all other formations. So when Goethe speaks of a transformation of one rock into another, he does not mean an actual transformation, but rather a development of the objective idea, which forms itself into the individual shapes, now holds on to this form and becomes granite, then again forms another possibility out of itself and becomes slate, and so on. Goethe's view in this area is not a wild theory of metamorphosis, but concrete idealism. However, this rock-forming principle can only come to full fruition with everything that lies within it in the entire body of the earth. Therefore, the history of the formation of the earth's body is the main thing for Goethe, and each individual element must be included in it. What matters to him is the place a rock occupies in the earth as a whole; the individual is of interest to him only as a part of the whole. In the end, the mineralogical-geological system that traces the processes in the earth, that shows why one thing had to form in this place and another in that place, appears to him to be the correct one. The occurrence becomes decisive for him. He therefore criticizes Werner's doctrine, which he otherwise reveres so highly, for arranging the minerals not according to their occurrence, which gives us information about their origin, but rather according to accidental external characteristics. The perfect system is not made by the scientist, but by nature itself.
[ 7 ] It should be noted that Goethe saw a great realm, a harmony in all of nature. He asserts that all natural things are animated by one tendency. What is therefore of the same nature must appear to him to be conditioned by the same law. He could not admit that in geological phenomena, which are nothing more than inorganic entities, other driving forces are at work than in the rest of inorganic nature. The extension of the inorganic laws of action to geology is Goethe's first geological act. It was this principle that guided him in explaining the Bohemian mountains and the phenomena observed at the Serapis temple in Pozzuoli. He sought to introduce principle into the dead crust of the earth by conceiving it as having been formed by those laws which we always see at work before our eyes in physical phenomena. The geological theories of [James] Hutton and Elie de Beaumont were inwardly repugnant to him. What was he to do with explanations that break through all natural order? It is banal to hear so often the phrase that Goethe's calm nature was contradicted by the theory of lifting and lowering, etc. No, it contradicted his sense for nature. No, it contradicted his sense of a unified view of nature. He could not fit it into the natural. And it was thanks to this sense that he arrived early on (as early as 1782) at a view that specialist geology would only reach decades later: the view that fossilized animal and plant remains are necessarily related to the rock in which they are found. Voltaire had spoken of them as plays of nature because he had no idea of the consequences of natural law. Goethe could only find a thing in any place comprehensible if there was a simple natural connection with the surroundings of the thing. It is also the same principle that led Goethe to the fruitful idea of the ice age (see "Geologische Probleme und Versuch ihrer Auflösung", Natw. Schr., 2nd vol., p. 308). He was looking for a simple, natural explanation for the occurrence of granite masses spread over large areas. He had to reject the explanation that they had been hurled there during the tumultuous uprising of the mountains located far back in the country, because it did not derive a natural fact from the existing, effective laws of nature, but from an exception to them, indeed an abandonment of them. He assumed that northern Germany once had a general water level of a thousand feet when it was very cold, that a large part of it was covered by a sheet of ice, and that those granite blocks remained in place after the ice had melted. This was a view based on known laws that we could experience. Goethe's significance for geology is to be found in this assertion of a general law of nature. How he explains the Kammerberg, whether he was right in his opinion about the Karlsbad Sprudel, is irrelevant. "We are not talking here of an opinion to be asserted, but of a method to be communicated, which everyone, as a tool, may use according to his own way..." (Goethe to Hegel Oct. 7, 1820 [WA 33, 294].)