The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface to the First Edition

[ 1 ] The thoughts that I express in this book are intended to capture the basis that I have observed in Goethe's world view. Over the course of many years, I have looked at the picture of this world view again and again. I was particularly fascinated by the revelations that nature made to Goethe's fine sensory and spiritual organs about its essence and its laws. I learned to understand why Goethe regarded these revelations as such great happiness that he sometimes valued them more highly than his gift for poetry. I empathized with the feelings that ran through Goethe's soul when he said that "nothing causes us to think so much about ourselves as when, after long intervals, we finally see again highly significant objects, especially strikingly characteristic scenes of nature, and compare the impression left behind with the present impression. We shall then notice, on the whole, that the object becomes more and more prominent, that if we formerly felt ourselves in the objects, transferred joy and sorrow, mirth and confusion to them, we now, with subdued independence, do them their due justice, recognize their peculiarities, and appreciate their qualities to a higher degree as far as we penetrate them. That way of seeing is afforded by the artistic eye, this is suited to the naturalist, and I had to praise myself, not without pain at first, but happily at last, that, while that sense threatened to leave me little by little, this one developed all the more vigorously in my eyes and mind." The impressions which Goethe received from the phenomena of nature must be known if the full content of his poetry is to be understood. The secrets that he eavesdropped on the nature and development of creation live in his artistic products and are only revealed to those who listen to the poet's messages about nature. He who is unfamiliar with Goethe's observations of nature cannot dive into the depths of Goethe's art.

[ 2 ] Such feelings urged me to occupy myself with Goethe's studies of nature. They initially allowed the ideas that I shared more than ten years ago in Kürschner's "German National Literature" to mature. What I began then in the first one, I have expanded in the three following volumes of Goethe's natural scientific writings, the last of which is currently being published. The same sentiments guided me when, several years ago, I took on the wonderful task of compiling a part of Goethe's scientific writings for the great Weimar Goethe edition. The thoughts I brought with me to this work and what I conceived during it form the content of the present book. I may describe this content as experienced in the fullest sense of the word. I have tried to approach Goethe's ideas from many starting points. I have called up all the contradictions that lay dormant in me against Goethe's way of looking at things in order to preserve my own individuality in the face of the power of this single personality. And the more I developed my own, self-won world view, the more I believed I understood Goethe. I tried to find a light that would also illuminate the spaces in Goethe's soul that remained dark to him. I wanted to read between the lines of his works, which would make him completely understandable to me. I wanted to discover the forces of his mind that dominated him but of which he himself was not aware. I wanted to see through the essential traits of his soul.

[ 3 ] Our time loves to leave ideas in a mystical semi-darkness where there is talk of psychological observation of a personality. Clarity of thought in such matters is currently despised as sober intellectual wisdom. One believes to penetrate deeper when one speaks of one-sided mystical abysses of the soul life, of demonic forces within the personality. I must confess that this enthusiasm for misguided mystical psychology seems superficial to me. It is present in people in whom the content of the world of ideas does not generate any sensations. They cannot descend into the depths of this content, they do not feel the warmth that emanates from it. Therefore they seek this warmth in obscurity. Those who are able to settle into the bright spheres of the pure world of thought feel in them what they cannot feel anywhere else. You can only recognize personalities like Goethe's if you are able to absorb the ideas that dominate them in their bright clarity. Those who love a false mysticism in psychology will perhaps find my way of looking at things cold. But is it my fault that I cannot regard the dark and indeterminate as one and the same with the profound? As pure and clear as the ideas that have appeared to me as active forces in Goethe, I try to portray them. Perhaps some may find the lines I have drawn, the colors I have applied, too simple. But I think that the best way to characterize the great is to try to depict it in its monumental simplicity. The little flourishes and appendages only confuse the viewer. What matters to me in Goethe is not the incidental thoughts to which he was prompted by this or that experience of secondary importance, but the basic direction of his spirit. This spirit may also take side paths here and there: a main tendency can always be recognized. And I have tried to follow it. Whoever thinks that the regions through which I have passed are icy, I think he has left his heart at home.

[ 4 ] If I am accused of only describing those aspects of Goethe's view of the world to which my own thoughts and feelings point me, I can only reply that I only wish to view a foreign personality as it must appear to me according to my own nature. I do not value the objectivity of those actors who want to deny themselves when they portray foreign ideas. I believe they can only paint dull and colorless pictures. A struggle underlies every true depiction of a foreign world view. And the completely defeated one will not be the best actor. The foreign power must compel respect; but one's own weapons must do their duty. I have therefore stated unreservedly that, in my opinion, Goethe's way of thinking has its limits. That there are areas of knowledge which have remained closed to it. I have shown what direction the observation of world phenomena must take if it is to penetrate into areas which Goethe did not enter, or in which, when he did enter, he wandered uncertainly. As interesting as it is to follow a great mind on its paths, I would like to follow each one only as far as it encourages me. For it is not the contemplation, the knowledge, but the life, one's own activity that is valuable. The pure historian is a weak, ineffective person. Historical knowledge robs us of the energy and vigor of our own work. He who wants to understand everything will be little himself. Goethe said that only what is fruitful is true. Insofar as Goethe is fruitful for our time, we should immerse ourselves in his world of thought and feeling. And I believe that it will become clear from the following account that countless as yet untapped treasures lie hidden in this world of thought and feeling. I have pointed out the places where modern science has lagged behind Goethe. I have spoken of the poverty of the present world of ideas and contrasted it with the richness and abundance of Goethe's world. There are seeds in Goethe's thinking that modern science should bring to maturity. This thinking could be exemplary for it. It has more observational material than Goethe. But it has only interspersed this material with sparse and inadequate ideas. I hope that my remarks will show how little aptitude modern scientific thinking has for criticizing Goethe, and how much it could learn from him.