The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On Morphology I

[Introduction to the readings, Volume 6, pp. 367-371:]

The sixth volume opens the series of Goethe's works relating to organic nature. It includes the botanical essays from the first one, which appeared in 1790 under the title “Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants.” These were followed by everything that served to supplement, explain, or provide even deeper justification for the views presented there. In this way, the volume was able to be shaped into a self-contained, completely organic whole. Goethe's writings on botany prior to 1790 do not yet reflect the full extent of his views; they were therefore excluded from this volume and reserved for the next. Similarly, writings that do not follow directly on from the 1790 work but are influenced by external ideas, such as the essays on the spiral tendency of plants, were also excluded. Of course, this cannot refer to those of Goethe's remarks where he was inspired by the communication of facts or opinions to express a thought already established in his teaching. Here, no new component was added to the body of ideas, but only a conclusion was drawn to which there was immediate cause. This is the case with the ideas on plant deformities (169-186) or those that follow on from “Schütz, Zur Morphologie” (206-222). What belongs to practical botany, such as an essay on viticulture, was also not considered appropriate for this volume.

The principle behind the compilation of this volume is therefore to present the entire structure of Goethe's ideas, insofar as they relate to botany and were established in 1790, with all the consequences drawn by the founder himself. This principle was also adhered to in particular when deciding which of the numerous unpublished essays and drafts should be included. The greater or lesser formal perfection, which must be considered first and foremost in artistic achievements, took a back seat here to the necessity of including everything in the scientific field that belonged to Goethe's body of thought, regardless of the form in which it had been developed. Fragments were not excluded if they added something new to Goethe's view or showed thoughts expressed elsewhere in a new context. The scientific significance of a person is determined by the sum of the ideas he has expressed and the context in which he has placed them within his overall world view. Whether time and circumstances were favorable for him to present everything in finished works is only of secondary importance.

The arrangement of the as yet unpublished essays was done in such a way that it is immediately apparent to the reader: Goethe wanted to establish a doctrine of organic beings as morphology. Morphology is not intended here as a doctrine of external form, but as a universal science of the organic, which as such also encompasses physiology and developmental history. The information provided also gives an idea of the structure of this science as Goethe conceived it. It is only through the unpublished treatises and sketches that Goethe's morphological view appears in its inner wholeness and coherence. It can be said that Goethe's morphological achievements are now being presented in their full scope for the first time. In the edition of the “posthumous works” edited by Riemer and Eckermann, the knowledgeable reader had to piece them together into a whole by inserting hypotheses.

In one single case, the principle of not including anything written before 1790 was deviated from: in essay 312-319. However, this was done for important reasons. The essay shows a side of Goethe's methodology that dominates all his works, giving them their distinctive character, but which Goethe himself never expressed so sharply again. Goethe did not want to explain the real, empirical world by basing his explanation on a single established view (hypothesis) and then attempting to explain it from that point of departure. Instead, he considered all the possibilities of how a particular individual phenomenon could arise. One can always think of several different ways in which a given phenomenon could have been caused and come into being. Indeed, two facts that are in reality completely identical can have different causes. However, it is most likely that none of the possible causes of a phenomenon has been exclusively responsible for its origin, but that all of them have had a greater or lesser influence. When Goethe approached a fact of reality, he used the individual hypotheses previously worked out by the intellect in their theoretical purity to explain the individual by combining them. This is implicitly contained in all of Goethe's scientific works as a methodological principle, but it is only explicitly stated in the essay in question. It is therefore justified to make the exception indicated in his case.

The fragment: "Metamorphosis of Plants. Second Attempt“ (279-385) was written shortly after the ”Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants." Probably in 1790, as the paper and external appearance of the manuscripts (Götze's manuscript) indicate, which point to a simultaneous origin with the works on comparative anatomy (1790). “Preliminary work on a physiology of plants” (286-287) with its continuation (288-299) dates from the mid-1890s, when Goethe was still convinced that he would be able to complete the great edifice of morphology, which also includes physiology. Geist's manuscript, in which these works (288-311) are preserved, does not allow for the assumption of an even earlier date of origin. The same applies to pp. 300-312. Schema 319 f. in the manuscript, immediately following 199, was created at the same time as this work. The “draft” S. 321 by Riemer's hand dates from a later period, when Goethe wanted to resume his morphological work, around 1807 or 1816. The same applies to 322 (written by Kräuter's hand). 323-329,2 belongs to a notebook that Goethe intended to use to record some of his explanatory and corrective comments on individual paragraphs of “Metamorphosis.” It bears the title on its blue cover: "Comments on the 15th paragraph of Plant Metamorphosis. Also on the 22nd and 23rd paragraphs.“ 329 f. Buds, Stolons was found in this notebook as an insert and is written by Götze's hand. The works 321-345 (in John's handwriting) were mostly written during the years when Goethe was constantly preoccupied with this science due to the publication of his notebooks ”On Morphology." Goethe wrote the aphorisms at the end while reading De Candolle's Organographie végétale in 1829. We are including them in this volume because they actually make the ideas of the theory of metamorphosis truly understandable and trace them back to their earliest philosophical foundations. In the “Paralipomena,” we present Goethe's preliminary work from 1796-98 on a “Metamorphosis of Insects,” which, as can be seen from 321.11, he would have considered an integral part of the theory of metamorphosis had it been completed. In addition, in the chapter Paralipomena II, we present the most essential parts of the manuscripts that follow on from the text and contribute to its completion as a whole. Given the wealth of material, it was impossible to achieve absolute completeness. However, nothing that could be considered an integral part of the content of the ideas was to be overlooked.

With regard to the part of this volume already printed in the editions, the arrangement as made by Riemer and Eckermann (in the posthumous works) on the basis of Goethe's own notebooks “Zur Morphologie” (On Morphology) has been retained. Only “Zur Verstäubung” (205-206) was added from the manuscript material to the note (204-205) relating to the same subject. 206,10-221,24 was inserted here from “Zur Morphologie, first volume, fourth notebook.” The essay “Wirkung dieser Schrift” (246-278) came about in the following way. Goethe asked Friedrich Sigm. Voigt in Jena and Ernst Meyer in Königsberg for information about how his 1790 work had been received within the scientific community. He then compiled the letters from the two men into the essay, after making only minor stylistic changes to ensure coherence. The surviving letters show that 251.17-253.2; 256.1-258.17; 260.15-261.4; 268.6-13 were written by Voigt (letter from Goethe dated September 1828) and 250.3-12; 253.3-254.9; 254.5-26; 255.5-27; 259.22-260.14; 261.5-12; 263.21-264.17; 270.20-271.5 by Ernst Meyer (letter to Goethe dated April 8, 1829).

The unpublished works appear, as far as possible, in the order in which the individual parts would be arranged in a “system of morphology” as conceived by Goethe, namely 1. On the morphology of plants in general, containing the principles (279-322); 2. Special questions and examples relating to the theory of metamorphosis, elaboration of the basic idea using concrete examples (323-344); 3. Natural philosophical foundations and consequences of the entire theory (345-361); 4. Questions relating to the border areas between morphology and aesthetics (361-363). The editor of this volume is Rudolf Steiner; factual and, in particular, philological questions were continuously dealt with in discussions with the editor of the volume, Bernhard Suphan, who also participated in the preliminary work on all details of the subject, offering advice and assistance.

[Selected texts in the readings:]

[p. 446] Goethe wrote down the following definition of “morphology” in 1807, when he wanted to publish his morphological works. It is written in his own hand on a slip of paper glued to a folio sheet, together with another slip containing the title page of the osteological works and the year 1807. The definition shows that Goethe wanted morphology to be understood as an organic universal science (cf. p. 369 [in the present volume, p. 17 f.]) [Preliminary remark on the first Paralipomenon in the section Paralipomena II for the following text by Goethe: WA II 6,446; LA 10, 128]

[pp. 446-447] The following are special remarks that Goethe made retrospectively on the individual paragraphs of his “Essay [on ‘The Metamorphosis of Plants’]”. These do not follow each other directly, but are spread over many pages, so that there is always more or less blank space between them. One must therefore imagine that Goethe always wanted to note down here the observations he made over time with regard to the views he put forward in his theory of metamorphosis.

[Preliminary remark to the second Paralipomenon in the section Paralipomena II for the following text by Goethe: WA II 6, 447-451; LA II 9B, 59-66 (M 55)]

[pp. 451-452] The following notes arose from Goethe's endeavor to cite examples from the realm of lower animals to prove that the idea of metamorphosis is the fundamental maxim of the entire organic realm of nature.

[Preliminary remark to the third Paralipomenon in the section Paralipomena II for the following text by Goethe: WA II 6, 452; LA II 9B, 58-59 (M 54)]