Goethe's World View
GA 6
Part I.6: The Metamorphosis of World Phenomena
[ 1 ] Goethe's world view attained its highest level of maturity when there arose for him the view of the two great driving wheels of nature: the significance of the concepts of polarity and of enhancement (Steigerung). (See the essay, “Commentary to the Essay Nature.”) Polarity is characteristic of the phenomena of nature insofar as we think of them as material. It consists of the fact that everything material manifests itself in two opposite states, as the magnet does in a north and a south pole. These states of matter either lie open to view or they slumber in what is material and are able to be wakened by suitable means within it. Enhancement belongs to the phenomena insofar as we think them to be spiritual. It can be observed in processes of nature that fall under the idea of development. At the various levels of development these processes show more or less distinctly in their outer manifestation the idea that underlies them. In the fruit, the idea of the plant, the law of vegetation, is only indistinctly manifest. The idea which the spirit recognizes and the perception are not similar to one another. “In the blossoms the law of vegetation comes into its highest manifestation, and the rose would again be but the pinnacle of the manifestation.” What Goethe calls enhancement consists of the bringing forth of the spiritual out of the material by creative nature. That nature is engaged “in an ever-striving ascent” means that it seeks to create forms which, in ascending order, increasingly represent the ideas of things even in outer manifestation. Goethe is of the view that “nature has no secret that it does not somewhere place naked before the eyes of the attentive observer.” Nature can bring forth phenomena from which there can be read directly the ideas applicable to a large area of related processes. It is those phenomena in which enhancement has reached its goal, in which the idea becomes immediate truth. The creative spirit of nature comes to the surface of things here; that which, in coarsely material phenomena, can only be grasped by thinking, that which can only be seen with spiritual eyes, becomes, in enhanced phenomena, visible to the physical eye. Everything sense-perceptible is here also spiritual, and everything spiritual is sense-perceptible. Goethe thinks of the whole of nature as permeated by spirit. Its forms are different through the fact that the spirit in them becomes also more or less outwardly visible. Goethe knows no dead, spiritless matter. Those things appear to be so in which the spirit of nature gives an outer form which is not similar to its ideal being. Because one spirit works both in nature and in man's inner life, man can lift himself to participation in the productions of nature. “... from the tile that falls from the roof, to the radiant lightning of the spirit which arises in you and which you communicate,” everything in the universe is for Goethe an effect, a manifestation of one creative spirit. “All the workings we take note of in experience, no matter what their nature, are interconnected in the most consistent way, pass over into one another; they undulate from the first ones to the last.” “A tile works loose from the roof: we ordinarily say this happens by chance; the tile, after all, certainly strikes the shoulders of a passerby mechanically; only, not altogether mechanically: it follows the laws of gravity and thus works physically. Ruptured bodily organs cease functioning; at that moment the fluids work chemically, the qualities of the elements emerge. But, the interrupted organic life reasserts itself just as quickly and seeks to re-establish itself; meanwhile the human entity is more or less unconscious and psychically disorganized. The person, regaining consciousness, feels himself ethically wounded to the depths; he laments his interrupted activity, no matter of what kind it might be, for no one wants to endure this patiently. Religiously, on the other hand, he can easily attribute this case to a higher destiny and regard it as saving him from far greater harm, as leading him to a higher good. This suffices for the sufferer; but the convalescent rises to his feet highly gifted, trusts God and himself and feels himself saved, really takes up also what happens by chance, turns it to, his advantage, in order to begin an eternally fresh life's cycle.” All things working in the world appear to Goethe as modifications of the spirit, and a person who immerses himself in them and observes them, from the level of chance happenings up to that of genius, lives through the metamorphosis of the spirit, from the form in which this spirit presents itself in an outer manifestation not resembling itself, up to the form in which the spirit appears in its own most archetypal form. In the sense of the Goethean world view all creative forces work in a unified way. They are a totality manifesting in successive levels of related manifoldnesses. But Goethe was never inclined to picture the unity of the world to himself as uniform. Adherents of the idea of unity often fall into the mistake of extending what can be observed in one region of phenomena out over all of nature. The mechanistic world view, for example, is in this situation. It has a particularly good eye and understanding for what can be explained mechanically. Therefore only the mechanical seems to it to be in accordance with nature. It seeks to trace even the phenomena of organic nature back to a mechanical lawfulness. A living thing is for it only a complicated form of the working together of mechanical processes. Goethe found such a world view expressed in a particularly repellent form in Holbach's Systeme de la Nature, which came into his hands in Strassburg. One matter supposedly exists from all eternity and has moved for all eternity, and now, with this motion, supposedly brings forth right and left and on all sides, without more ado, the infinite phenomena of existence. “We would indeed have been satisfied with this, if the author had really built up the world before our eyes out of his moving matter. But he might know as little about nature as we do, for as soon as he has staked up a few general concepts, he leaves nature at once, in order to transform what appears as something higher than nature or as a higher nature in nature, into a nature that is material, heavy, moving, to be sure, but still without direction or shape, and he believes that he has gained a great deal by this” (Poetry and Truth, second book). Goethe would have expressed himself in a similar way if he could have heard Du Bois-Reymond's statement (Limits to Knowing Nature, page 13): “Knowledge of nature ... is a tracing of the changes in the corporeal world back to the movements of atoms which are caused by their central forces, independent of time, or it is a dissolving of all the processes of nature into the mechanics of the atoms.” Goethe thought the different kinds of nature workings to be related to each other and as passing over into one another; but he never wanted to trace them back to one single kind. He was not striving for one abstract principle to which all the phenomena of nature should be traced, but rather he strove for observation of the characteristic way in which creative nature manifested its general lawfulness in particular forms within every single one of its realms. He did not want to force one thought form upon the whole of nature's phenomena, but rather, by living into the different thought forms, he wanted to keep his spirit as lively and pliable as nature itself is. When the feeling of the great unity of all nature's working was powerful in him, then he was a pantheist. “I for myself, with all the manifold tendencies of my nature, cannot get enough from one way of thinking; as poet and artist I am a polytheist, as natural scientist a pantheist, and am one just as positively as the other. If I need a God for my personality as a moral person, that is also already provided for” (to Jacobi, January 6, 1813). As artist, Goethe turned to those phenomena of nature in which the idea is present to direct perception. The single thing appeared here directly as divine; the world as a multiplicity of divine individualities. As natural scientist Goethe had to follow the forces of nature also into phenomena whose idea does not become visible in its individual existence. As poet he could be at peace with himself about the multiplicity of the divine; as natural scientist he had to seek the ideas of nature, which worked in a unified way. “The law, that comes into manifestation in the greatest freedom, in accordance with its most archetypal conditions, brings forth what is objectively beautiful, which, to be sure, must find worthy subjects by whom it can be grasped.” This objectively beautiful within the individual creature is what Goethe as artist wants to behold; but as natural scientist he wants “to know the laws according to which universal nature wants to act.” Polytheism is the way of thinking which sees and reveres something spiritual in the single thing; pantheism is the other way, which grasps the spirit of the whole. Both ways of thinking can exist side by side; the one or the other comes into play according to whether one's gaze is directed upon nature's wholeness, which is life and sequence out of a center, or upon those individuals in which nature unites in one form what it as a rule spreads out over a whole realm. Such forms arise when, for example, the creative forces of nature, after “thousandfold plants,” make yet one more, in which “all the others are contained,” or “after thousandfold animals make one being which contains them all: man.”
[ 2 ] Goethe once made the remark: “Whoever has learned to understand them (my writings) and my nature in general will have to admit after all that he has won a certain inner freedom” (Conversations with Chancellor F. von Mueller, January 5, 1831). With this he was pointing to the working power which comes into play in all human striving to know. As long as man stops short at perceiving the antitheses around him and at regarding their laws as principles implanted in them by which they are governed, he has the feeling that they confront him a! unknown powers, which work upon him and impose upon hill the thoughts of their laws. He feels himself to be unfree with respect to the things; he experiences the lawfulness of nature as rigid necessity into which he must fit himself. Only when man becomes aware that the forces of nature are nothing other than forms of the same spirit which also works in himself does the insight arise in him that he does partake of freedom. The lawfulness of nature is experienced as compelling only as long as one regards it as an alien power. Living into its being, one experiences it as a power which one also exercises in one's own inner life; one experiences oneself as a productive element working along with the becoming and being of things. One is on intimate terms with any power that has to do with becoming. One has taken up into one's own doing what one otherwise experiences only as outer incentive. This is the process of liberation which is effected by the act of knowledge, in the sense of the Goethean world view. Goethe clearly perceived the ideas of nature's working as he encountered them in Italian works of art. He had a clear experience also of the liberating effect whiM the possession of these ideas has upon man. A result of this experience is his description of that kind of knowledge which he characterizes as that of encompassing individuals. “The encompassing ones, whom one in a prouder sense could call the creative ones, conduct themselves productively in the highest sense; insofar, namely, as they take their start from ideas, they express already the unity of the whole, and afterward it is in a certain way up to nature to fit in with this idea.” But Goethe never got to the point of having a direct view of the act of liberation itself. Only that person can have this view who in his knowing is attentive to himself. Goethe, to be sure, practiced the highest kind of knowledge; but he did not observe this kind of knowledge in himself. He admits to himself, after all:
“How did you get so very far?
They say you have done it all wonderfully well!”
My child! In this I have been smart;
I never have thought about thinking at all.
[ 3 ] But just as the creative nature forces, “after thousandfold plants,” make still one more in which “all the others are contained,” so do they also, after thousandfold ideas, bring forth still one more in which the whole world of ideas is contained. And man grasps this idea when, to his perception of the other things and processes he adds that of thinking as well. Just because Goethe's thinking was continuously filled with the objects of perception, because his thinking was a perceiving, his perceiving a thinking, he could not come to the point of making thinking itself into an object of thinking. One attains the idea of freedom, however, only by looking at thinking. Goethe did not make the distinction between thinking about thinking and looking at thinking. Otherwise he would have attained the insight that one, precisely in the sense of his world view, could very well reject thinking about thinking, but that one could nevertheless come to a beholding of the thought world. Man is uninvolved in the coming about of everything else he sees. The ideas of what he sees arise in him. But these ideas would not be there if there were not present in him the productive power to bring them to manifestation. Even though ideas are the conten1 of what works within the things, they come into manifest existence through human activity. Man can therefore know the intrinsic nature of the world of ideas only if he looks at his activity. With everything else he sees he penetrates only into the idea at work in it; the thing, in which the idea works, remains as perception outside of his spirit. When he looks at the idea, what is working and what is brought forth are both entirely contained within his inner life. He has the entire process totally present if his inner life. What he sees no longer appears as brought ford by the idea; for what he sees is itself now idea. To see something bringing forth itself is, however, to see freedom. In observing his thinking man sees into world happening. Here he does no have to search after an idea of this happening, for this happening is the idea itself. What one otherwise experiences as the unity of what is looked at and the ideas is here the experiencing of the spirituality of the world of ideas become visible. The person who beholds this self-sustaining activity feels freedom. Goethe in fact experienced this feeling, but did not express it in its highest form. In his looking at nature he exercised a free activity, but this activity never became an object of perception for him. He never saw behind the scenes of human knowing and therefore never took up into his consciousness the idea of world happening in its most archetypal form, in its highest metamorphosis. As soon as a person attains a view of this metamorphosis, he then conducts himself with sureness in the realm of things. In the center of his personality he has won the true starting point for all consideration of the world. He will no longer search for unknown foundations, for the causes lying outside him, of things; he knows that the highest experience of which he is capable consists of self-contemplation of his own being. Whoever is completely permeated with the feelings which this experience calls forth will gain the truest relationships to things. A person for whom this is not the case will seek the highest form of existence elsewhere, and, since he cannot find it within experience, will suppose it to be in an unknown region of reality. Uncertainty will enter into his considerations of things; in answering the questions which nature poses him, he will continually call upon something he cannot investigate. Because, through his life in the world of ideas, Goethe had a feeling of the firm center within his personality, he succeeded, within certain limits, in arriving at sure concepts in his contemplation of nature. But because he lacked a direct view of his innermost experiences, he groped about uncertainly outside these limits. For this reason he says that man is not born “to solve the problems of the world but in fact to seek where the problem begins, and then to keep oneself within the limits of what is understandable.” He says, “Kant has unquestionably been of most use in his drawing of the limits to which the human spirit is capable of penetrating, and through the fact that he J unsolvable problems lie.” If a view of man's highest experience! had given him certainty in his contemplation of things, then he would have been able to do more along his path than “through regulated experience, to attain a kind of qualified trustworthiness.” Instead of proceeding straight ahead through his experiences in the consciousness that the true has significance only insofar as it is demanded by human nature, he still arrives at the conviction that a “higher influence helps those who are steadfast, active, understanding, disciplined and disciplining, humane, devout” and that “the moral world order” manifests itself most beautifully where it “comes indirectly to the aid of the good person, of the courageously suffering person.”
[ 4 ] Because Goethe did not know the innermost human' experience, it was not possible for him to attain the ultimate thoughts about the moral world order which necessarily belong to his view of nature. The ideas of the things are the content of what works and creates within the things. Man experiences moral ideas directly in the form of ideas. Whoever is able to experience how, in his beholding of the world of ideas, the ideal element itself becomes content, fills itself with itself, is also in a position to experience the production of the moral within human nature. Whoever knows the ideas of nature only in their relation to the world we behold will also want to relate moral concepts to something external to them. He will seek for these concepts a reality similar to that which is present for concepts won from experience. But whoever is able to view ideas in their most essential being will become aware, with moral ideas, that nothing external corresponds to them, that they are directly produced as ideas in spiritual experience. It is clear to him that neither a divine will, working only outwardly, nor a moral world order of a like sort are at work to produce these ideas. For there is in them nothing to be seen of any relation to such powers! Everything they express is also contained within their spiritually experienced pure idea-form. Only through their own content do they work upon man as moral powers. No categorical imperative stands behind them with a whip and forces man to follow them. Man feels that he himself has brought them forth and loves them the way one loves one's child. Love is the motive of his action. The spiritual pleasure in one's own creation is the source of the moral.
[ 5 ] There are people who are unable to produce any moral ideas. They take up into themselves the moral ideas of other people through tradition, and if they have no ability to behold ideas as such, they do not recognize the origin, experienceable in the spirit, of the moral. They seek it in a supra-human will outside themselves. Or they believe that there exists, outside the spirit world which man experiences, an objective moral world order from which the moral ideas stem. The speech organ of that world order is often sought in the conscience of man. As with certain things in the rest of his world view, Goethe is also uncertain in his thoughts about the origin of the moral. Here also his feeling for what is in accord with ideas brings forth statements which are in accord with the demands of his nature. “Duty: where one loves what one commands oneself to do.” Only a person who sees the foundations of the moral purely in the content of moral ideas should say: “Lessing, who resentfully felt many a limitation, has one of his characters say, ‘No one has to have to.’ A witty jovial man said, ‘Whoever wants to has to.’ A third, admittedly a cultivated person, added, ‘Whoever has insight, also wants to.’ And in this way it was believed that the whole circle of knowing, wanting, and having to had been closed. But in the average case, man's knowledge, no matter what kind it is, determines what he does or doesn't do; for this reason there is also nothing worse than to see ignorance in action.” The following statement shows that in Goethe a feeling for the true nature of the moral held sway, but did not rise into clear view: “In order to perfect itself the will must, in its moral life, give itself over to conscience which does not err ... Conscience needs no ancestor; with conscience everything is given; it has to do only with one's own inner world.” To state that conscience needs no ancestor can only mean that man does not originally find within himself any moral content; he gives this content to himself. Other statements stand in contrast to these, setting the origin of the moral into a region outside man: “Man, no matter how much the earth attracts him with its thousand upon thousand manifestations, nevertheless lifts up his gaze longingly toward heaven ... because he feels deeply and clearly within himself that he is a citizen of that spiritual realm which we are not able to deny nor give up our belief.” “We leave to God, as the all-determining and all-liberating Being, what is totally insoluble.”
[ 6 ] Goethe lacks the organ for the contemplation of man's innermost nature, for self-perception. “I hereby confess that from the beginning the great and significant sounding task, Know thou thyself, has always seemed suspect to me, as a ruse of secretly united priests who wanted to confuse man with unattainable demands and to seduce him away from activity in the outer world into an inner false contemplation. Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world which he becomes aware of only within himself and himself only within it. Every new object which we really look at opens up a new organ within us.” Exactly the reverse of this is true: man knows the world only insofar as he knows himself. For in his inner life there reveals itself in its most archetypal form what is present to view in outer things only in reflection, in example, symbol. What man otherwise can only speak of as something unfathomable, undiscoverable, divine, comes into view in its true form in self-perception. Because in self-perception he sees what is ideal in its direct form, he gains the strength and ability to seek out and recognize this ideal element also in all outer phenomena, in the whole of nature. Someone who has experienced the moment of self-perception no longer thinks in terms of seeking some “hidden” God behind phenomena: he grasps the divine in its different metamorphoses in nature. Goethe remarked, with respect to Schelling: “I would see him more often if I did not still hope for poetic moments; philosophy destroys poetry for me, and does so for the good reason that it drives me to the object because I can never remain purely speculative but must seek right away a perception for every principle and therefore flee right away out into nature.” He was in fact not able to find the highest perception, the perception of the world of ideas itself. This perception cannot destroy poetry, for it only frees one's spirit from all supposition that there might be an unknown, unfathomable something in nature. But for this reason it makes him capable of giving himself over entirely, without preconceptions, to things; for it gives him the conviction that everything can be drawn from nature that the spirit can ever want from it.
[ 7 ] But this highest perception liberates man's spirit also from all one-sided feeling of dependency. He feels himself, through having this view, to be sovereign in the realm of the moral world order. He knows that the driving power which brings forth everything works in his inner life as within his own will, and that the highest decisions about morality lie within himself. For these highest decisions flow out of the world of moral ideas, in whose production the soul of man is present. Even though a person may feel himself restricted in part, may also be dependent upon a thousand things, on the whole he sets himself his moral goal and his moral direction. What is at work in all other things comes to manifestation in the human being as idea; what is at work in him is the idea which he himself brings forth. In every single human individuality a process occurs that plays itself out in the whole of nature: the creation of something actual out of the idea. And the human being himself is the creator. For upon the foundation of his personality there lives the idea which gives a content to itself. Going beyond Goethe one must broaden his principle that nature is “great enough in the wealth of its creation to make, after thousandfold plants, one in which all the others are contained, and to make, after thousandfold animals, one being that contains them all: man.” Nature is so great in its creation that it repeats in every human individual the process by which it brings forth freely out of the idea all creatures, repeats it through the fact that moral actions spring from the ideal foundation of the personality. Whatever a person also feels to be an objective reason for his action is only a transcribing and at the same time a mistaking of his own being. The human being realizes himself in his moral actions. Max Stirner has expressed this knowledge in lapidary words in his book, The Single Individual and What Is His Own. “It lies in my power to be my own person, and this is so when I know myself as a single individual. Within the single individual even someone who is his own person returns to the creative nothingness out of which he is born. Every higher being over me, be it God or man, weakens the feeling of my singleness and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I base my affairs upon myself, the single individual, then they rest upon their own transitory mortal creator, who devours himself, and I can say that I have based my affairs upon nothing.” But at the same time one can tell this Stirnerian spirit what Faust told Mephistopheles: “In your nothingness I hope to find my all,” for there dwells in my inner life in an individual form the working power by which nature creates the universe. As long as a person has not beheld this working power within himself, he will appear with respect to it the way Faust did with respect to the earth spirit. This working power will always call out to him the words, “You resemble the spirit that you can grasp, not me!” Only the beholding of one's deepest inner life conjures up this spirit, who says of itself:
In the tides of life, in action's storm,
Up and down I wave,
To and fro weave free,
Birth and the grave,
An infinite sea,
A varied weaving,
A radiant living,
Thus at Time's humming loom it's my hand that prepares
The robe ever-living the Deity wears,
(Priest's translation)
[ 8 ] I have tried to present in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity how knowledge of the fact that man in his doing is based upon himself comes from the most inward experience, from the beholding of his own being. In 1844 Stirner defended the view that man, if he truly understands himself, can see only in himself the basis for his activity. With Stirner, however, this knowledge does not arise from a beholding of his innermost experience but rather from the feeling of freedom and independence from all world powers that require coercion. Stirner stops short at demanding freedom; he is led in this area to put the bluntest possible emphasis upon the human nature which is based upon itself. I am trying to describe the life in freedom on a broader basis, by showing what man sees when he looks into the foundation of his soul. Goethe did not go as far as to behold freedom, because he had an antipathy for self-knowledge. If that had not been the case, then knowledge of man as a free personality founded upon himself would have had to be the peak of his world view. The germ of this knowledge is to be found everywhere in his works; [ 9 ] it is at the same time the germ of his view of nature. In his actual nature studies Goethe never speaks of unexplorable foundations, of hidden driving Powers of phenomena. He contents himself with observing the phenomena in their sequence and of explaining them with the help of those elements which, during observation, reveal themselves to the senses and to the spirit. In this vein he writes to Jacobi on May 5, 1786 that he has the courage “to devote his whole life to the contemplation of the things which he can hope to reach” and of whose being “he can hope to form an adequate idea,” without bothering himself in the least about how far he will get and about what is cut out for him. A person who believes he can draw near to the divine in the individual objects of nature no longer needs to form a particular mental picture for himself of a God that exists outside of and beside the things. It is only when Goethe leaves the realm of nature that his feeling for the being of things no longer holds up. Then his lack of human self-knowledge leads him to make assertions which are reconcilable neither with his inborn way of thinking nor with the direction of his nature studies. Someone who is inclined to cite these assertions might assume that Goethe believed in an anthropomorphic God and in the individual continuation of that life-form of the soul which is bound up with the conditions of the physical bodily organization. Such a belief stands in contradiction to Goethe's nature studies. They could never have taken the direction they did if in them Goethe had allowed himself to be determined by this belief. It lies totally in the spirit of his nature studies to think the being of the human soul such that, after laying aside the body, it lives in a supersensible form of existence. This form of existence requires that the soul, because of different life requirements, also take on a different kind of consciousness from the one it has through the physical body. In this way the Goethean teaching of metamorphosis leads also to the view of metamorphoses of soul life. But this Goethean idea of immortality can be regarded correctly only if one knows that Goethe had not been able to be led by his world view to an unmetamorphosed continuation of that spiritual life which is determined by the physical body. Because Goethe, in the sense indicated here, did not attempt to view his life of thought, he was also not moved in his further life's course to develop particularly this idea of immortality which would be the continuation of his thoughts on metamorphosis. This idea, however, would in truth be what would follow from his world view with respect to this region of knowledge. Whatever expression he gave to a personal feeling about the view of life of this or that contemporary, or out of any other motivation, without his thinking thereby of the connection to the world view won through his nature studies, may not be brought forward as characteristic of Goethe's idea of immortality.
[ 10 ] For the evaluation of a Goethean statement within the total picture of his world view there also comes into consideration the fact that his mood of soul in his different stages of life gives particular nuances to such statements. He was fully conscious of these changes in the form of expression of his ideas. When Foerster expressed the view that the solution to the Faust problem is to be found in the words, “A good man is in his dim impulse well aware of his right path,” Goethe responded, “That would be rationalism. Faust ends up as an old man, and in old age we become mystics.” And in his prose aphorisms we read, “A certain philosophy answers to each age of man. The child appears as realist; for he finds himself as convinced of the existence of pears and apples as of his own. The youth, assailed by inner passions, must take notice of himself, feel his way forward; he is transformed into an idealist. On the other hand the grown man has every reason to become a skeptic; he does well to doubt whether the means he has chosen for his purpose are indeed the right ones. Before acting and in acting he has every reason to keep his intellect mobile, so that afterward he does not have to feel badly about a wrong choice. The old man, however, will always adhere to mysticism; he sees that so much seems to depend upon chance; what is unreasonable succeeds; what is reasonable goes amiss; fortune and misfortune turn unexpectedly into the same thing; it is so, it was so, and old age attains peace in what is, what was, and will be.”
[ 11 ] I am focusing in this book upon the world view of Goethe out of which his insights into the life of nature have grown and which was the driving force in him from his discovery of the intermaxillary bone in man up to the completion of his studies on color. And I believe I have shown that this world view corresponds more perfectly to the total personality of Goethe than does any compilation of statements in which one would have to take into account how such thoughts are colored by the mood of his youthful period or by that of his old age. I believe that Goethe in his studies of nature, although not guided by a clear self-knowledge in accord with ideas, was guided by a right feeling and did observe a free way of working which flowed from a true relationship between human nature and the outer world. Goethe is himself clear about the fact that there is something incomplete about his way of thinking: “I was aware of having great and noble purposes but could never understand the determining factors under which I worked; I was well aware of what I lacked, and likewise of what I had too much of; therefore I did not cease to develop myself, outwardly and from within. And still it was as before. I pursued every purpose with earnestness, force, and faithfulness; in doing so I often succeeded in completely overcoming stubborn conditions but also often foundered because I could not learn to give in and to go around. And so my life went by this way, in doing and enjoying, in suffering and resisting, in the love, contentment, hatred, and disapproval of others. Find yourself mirrored here whoever's destiny was the same.”
Die Metamorphose der Welterscheinungen
[ 1 ] Den höchsten Grad der Reife erlangte Goethes Weltanschauung, als ihm die Anschauung der zwei großen Triebräder der Natur: die Bedeutung der Begriffe von Polarität und von Steigerung aufging. (Vgl. den Aufsatz: Erläuterung zu dem Aufsatz «Die Natur». Kürschner Band 34, S. 63 f.) Die Polarität ist den Erscheinungen der Natur eigen, insofern wir sie materiell denken. Sie besteht darin, daß sich alles Materielle in zwei entgegengesetzten Zuständen äußert, wie der Magnet in einem Nordpol und einem Südpol. Diese Zustände der Materie liegen entweder offen vor Augen, oder sie schlummern in dem Materiellen und können durch geeignete Mittel in demselben erweckt werden. Die Steigerung kommt den Erscheinungen zu, insofern wir sie geistig denken. Sie kann beobachtet werden bei den Naturvorgängen, die unter die Idee der Entwicklung fallen. Auf den verschiedenen Stufen der Entwicklung zeigen diese Vorgänge die ihnen zu Grunde liegende Idee mehr oder weniger deutlich in ihrer äußeren Erscheinung. In der Frucht ist die Idee der Pflanze, das vegetabilische Gesetz, nur undeutlich in der Erscheinung ausgeprägt. Die Idee, die der Geist erkennt, und die Wahrnehmung sind einander unähnlich. «In den Blüten tritt das vegetabilische Gesetz in seine höchste Erscheinung, und die Rose wäre nur wieder der Gipfel der Erscheinung.» In der Herausarbeitung des Geistigen aus dem Materiellen durch die schaffende Natur besteht das, was Goethe Steigerung nennt. Die Natur ist «in immerstrebendem Aufsteigen» begriffen, heißt, sie sucht Gebilde zu schaffen, die, in aufsteigender Ordnung, die Ideen der Dinge auch in der äußeren Erscheinung immer mehr zur Darstellung bringen. Goethe ist der Ansicht, daß «die Natur kein Geheimnis habe, was sie nicht irgendwo dem aufmerksamen Beobachter nackt vor die Augen stellt». Die Natur kann Erscheinungen hervorbringen, von denen sich die Ideen für ein großes Gebiet verwandter Vorgänge unmittelbar ablesen lassen. Es sind die Erscheinungen, in denen die Steigerung ihr Ziel erreicht hat, in denen die Idee unmittelbare Wahrheit wird. Der schöpferische Geist der Natur tritt hier an die Oberfläche der Dinge; was an den grob-materiellen Erscheinungen nur dem Denken erfaßbar ist, was nur mit geistigen Augen geschaut werden kann: das wird in den gesteigerten dem leiblichen Auge sichtbar. Alles Sinnliche ist hier auch geistig und alles Geistige sinnlich. Durchgeistigt denkt sich Goethe die ganze Natur. Ihre Formen sind dadurch verschieden, daß der Geist in ihnen mehr oder weniger auch äußerlich sichtbar wird. Eine tote geistlose Materie kennt Goethe nicht. Als solche erscheinen diejenigen Dinge, in denen sich der Geist der Natur eine seinem ideellen Wesen unähnliche äußere Form gibt. Weil ein Geist in der Natur und im menschlichen Innern wirkt, deshalb kann der Mensch sich zur Teilnahme an den Produktionen der Natur erheben. «... vom Ziegelstein, der dem Dache entstürzt, bis zum leuchtenden Geistesblitz, der dir aufgeht und den du mitteilst», gilt für Goethe alles im Weltall als Wirkung, als Manifestation eines schöpferischen Geistes. «Alle Wirkungen, von welcher Art sie seien, die wir in der Erfahrung bemerken, hängen auf die stetigste Weise zusammen, gehen ineinander über; sie undulieren von der ersten bis zur letzten.» «Ein Ziegelstein löst sich vom Dache los: wir nennen dies im gemeinen Sinne zufällig; er trifft die Schultern eines Vorübergehenden doch wohl mechanisch, allein nicht ganz mechanisch, er folgt den Gesetzen der Schwere, und so wirkt er physisch. Die zerrissenen Lebensgefäße geben sogleich ihre Funktion auf; im Augenblicke wirken die Säfte chemisch, die elementaren Eigenschaften treten hervor. Allein das gestörte organische Leben widersetzt sich ebenso schnell und sucht sich herzustellen; indessen ist das menschliche Ganze mehr oder weniger bewußtlos und psychisch zerrüttet. Die sich wiedererkennende Person fühlt sich ethisch im tiefsten verletzt; sie beklagt ihre gestörte Tätigkeit, von welcher Art sie auch sei, aber ungern ergäbe der Mensch sich in Geduld. Religiös hingegen wird ihm leicht, diesen Fall einer höheren Schickung zuzuschreiben, ihn als Bewahrung vor größerem Übel, als Einleitung zu höherem Guten anzusehen. Dies reicht hin für den Leidenden; aber der Genesende erhebt sich genial, vertraut Gott und sich selbst und fühlt sich gerettet, ergreift auch wohl das Zufällige, wendet's zu seinem Vorteil, um einen ewig frischen Lebenskreis zu beginnen.» Als Modifikationen des Geistes erscheinen Goethe alle Weltwirkungen, und der Mensch, der sich in sie vertieft und sie beobachtet von der Stufe des Zufälligen bis zu der des Genialen, durchlebt die Metamorphose des Geistes von der Gestalt, in der sich dieser in einer ihm unähnlichen äußeren Erscheinung darstellt, bis zu der, wo er in seiner ihm ureigensten Form erscheint. Einheitlich wirkend sind im Sinne der Goetheschen Weltanschauung alle schöpferischen Kräfte. Ein Ganzes, das sich in einer Stufenfolge von verwandten Mannigfaltigkeiten offenbart, sind sie. Goethe war aber nie geneigt, die Einheit der Welt sich als einförmig vorzustellen. Oft verfallen die Anhänger des Einheitsgedankens in den Fehler, die Gesetzmäßigkeit, die sich auf einem Erscheinungsgebiete beobachten läßt, auf die ganze Natur auszudehnen. In diesem Falle ist z.B. die mechanistische Weltanschauung. Sie hat ein besonderes Auge und Verständnis für das, was sich mechanisch erklären laßt. Deshalb erscheint ihr das Mechanische als das einzig Naturgemäße. Sie sucht auch die Erscheinungen der organischen Natur auf mechanische Gesetzmäßigkeit zurückzuführen. Bin Lebendiges ist ihr nur eine komplizierte Form des Zusammenwirkens mechanischer Vorgänge. In besonders abstoßender Form fand Goethe eine solche Weltanschauung in Holbachs «Systeme de la nature» ausgesprochen, das ihm in Straßburg in die Hände fiel. Eine Materie sollte sein von Ewigkeit, und von Ewigkeit her bewegt, und sollte nun mit dieser Bewegung rechts und links und nach allen Seiten, ohne weiteres, die unendlichen Phänomene des Daseins hervorbringen. «Dies alles wären wir sogar zufrieden gewesen, wenn der Verfasser wirklich aus seiner bewegten Materie die Welt vor unsern Augen aufgebaut hätte. Aber er mochte von der Natur so wenig wissen als wir: denn indem er einige allgemeine Begriffe hingepfahlt, verläßt er sie sogleich, um dasjenige, was höher als die Natur, oder als höhere Natur in der Natur erscheint, zur materiellen, schweren, zwar bewegten, aber doch richtungs- und gestaltlosen Natur zu verwandeln, und glaubt dadurch recht viel gewonnen zu haben. »(Dichtung und Wahrheit, II. Buch.) In ähnlicher Weise hätte sich Goethe geäußert, wenn er den Satz Du Bois-Reymonds («Grenzen des Naturerkennens», S.13) hätte hören können: «Naturerkennen ... ist Zurückführung der Veränderungen in der Körperwelt auf Bewegungen von Atomen, die durch deren von der Zeit unabhängige Zentralkräfte bewirkt werden, oder Auflösung der Naturvorgänge in Mechanik der Atome.» Goethe dachte sich die Arten von Naturwirkungen miteinander verwandt und ineinander übergehend; aber er wollte sie nie auf eine einzige Art zurückführen. Er trachtete nicht nach einem abstrakten Prinzip, auf das alle Naturerscheinungen zurückgeführt werden sollen, sondern nach Beobachtung der charakteristischen Art, wie sich die schöpferische Natur in jedem einzelnen ihrer Erscheinungsgebiete durch besondere Formen ihrer allgemeinen Gesetzmäßigkeit offenbart. Nicht eine Gedankenform wollte er sämtlichen Naturerscheinungen aufzwängen, sondern durch Einleben in verschiedene Gedankenformen wollte er sich den Geist so lebendig und biegsam erhalten, wie die Natur selbst ist. Wenn die Empfindung von der großen Einheit alles Naturwirkens in ihm mächtig war, dann war er Pantheist. «Ich für mich kann, bei den mannigfaltigen Richtungen meines Wesens, nicht an einer Denkweise genug haben; als Dichter und Künstler bin ich Polytheist, Pantheist als Naturforscher, und eines so entschieden als das andere. Bedarf ich eines Gottes für meine Persönlichkeit, als sittlicher Mensch, so ist dafür auch schon gesorgt.» (An Jacobi, 6. Jan. 1813.) Als Künstler wandte sich Goethe an jene Naturerscheinungen, in denen die Idee in unmittelbarer Anschauung gegenwärtig ist. Das Einzelne erschien hier unmittelbar göttlich; die Welt als eine Vielheit göttlicher Individualitäten. Als Naturforscher mußte Goethe auch in den Erscheinungen, deren Idee nicht in ihrem individuellen Dasein sichtbar wird, die Kräfte der Natur verfolgen. Als Dichter konnte er sich bei der Vielheit des Göttlichen beruhigen; als Naturforscher mußte er die einheitlich wirkenden Naturideen suchen. «Das Gesetz, das in die Erscheinung tritt, in der größten Freiheit, nach seinen eigensten Bedingungen, bringt das Objektiv-Schöne hervor, welches freilich würdige Subjekte finden muß, von denen es aufgefaßt wird.» Dieses Objektiv-Schöne im einzelnen Geschöpf will Goethe als Künstler anschauen; aber als Naturforscher will er «die Gesetze kennen, nach welchen die allgemeine Natur handeln will». Polytheismus ist die Denkweise, die in dem Einzelnen ein Geistiges sieht und verehrt; Pantheismus die andere, die den Geist des Ganzen erfaßt. Beide Denkweisen können nebeneinander bestehen; die eine oder die andere macht sich geltend, je nachdem der Blick auf das Naturganze gerichtet ist, das Leben und Folge ist aus einem Mittelpunkte, oder auf diejenigen Individuen, in denen die Natur in einer Form vereinigt, was sie in der Regel über ein ganzes Reich ausbreitet. Solche Formen entstehen, wenn z.B. die schöpferischen Naturkräfte nach «tausendfältigen Pflanzen», noch eine machen, worin «alle übrigen enthalten», oder «nach tausendfältigen Tieren ein Wesen, das sie alle enthält: den Menschen».
[ 2 ] Goethe macht einmal die Bemerkung: «Wer sie (meine Schriften) und mein Wesen überhaupt verstehen gelernt, wird doch bekennen müssen, daß er eine gewisse innere Freiheit gewonnen.» (Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler von Müller, . Jan.1831.) Damit hat er auf die wirkende Kraft hingedeutet, die sich in allem menschlichen Erkenntnisstreben geltend macht. Solange der Mensch dabei stehen bleibt, die Gegensätze um sich her wahrzunehmen und ihre Gesetze als ihnen eingepflanzte Prinzipien zu betrachten, von denen sie beherrscht werden, hat er das Gefühl, daß sie ihm als unbekannte Mächte gegenüberstehen, die auf ihn wirken und ihm die Gedanken ihrer Gesetze aufdrängen. Er fühlt sich den Dingen gegenüber unfrei; er empfindet die Gesetzmäßigkeit der Natur als starre Notwendigkeit, der er sich zu fügen hat. Erst wenn der Mensch gewahr wird, daß die Naturkräfte nichts anderes sind als Formen desselben Geistes, der auch in ihm selbst wirkt, geht ihm die Einsicht auf, daß er der Freiheit teilhaftig ist. Die Naturgesetzlichkeit wird nur so lange als Zwang empfunden, so lange man sie als fremde Gewalt ansieht. Lebt man sich in ihre Wesenheit ein, so empfindet man sie als Kraft, die man auch selbst in seinem Innern betätigt; man empfindet sich als produktiv mitwirkendes Element beim Werden und Wesen der Dinge. Man ist Du und Du mit aller Werdekraft. Man hat in sein eigenes Tun das aufgenommen, was man sonst nur als äußeren Antrieb empfindet. Dies ist der Befreiungs-Prozeß, den im Sinne der Goetheschen Weltanschauung der Erkenntnisakt bewirkt. Klar hat Goethe die Ideen des Naturwirkens angeschaut, als sie ihm aus den italienischen Kunstwerken entgegenblickten. Eine klare Empfindung hatte er auch von der befreienden Wirkung, die das Innehaben dieser Ideen auf den Menschen ausübt. Eine Folge dieser Empfindung ist seine Schilderung derjenigen Erkenntnisart, die er als die der umfassenden Geister bezeichnet. «Die Umfassenden, die man in einem stolzern Sinne die Erschaffenden nennen könnte, verhalten sich im höchsten Sinne produktiv; indem sie nämlich von Ideen ausgehen, sprechen sie die Einheit des Ganzen schon aus, und es ist gewissermaßen nachher die Sache der Natur, sich in diese Idee zu fügen.» Zu der unmittelbaren Anschauung des Befreiungsaktes hat es aber Goethe nie gebracht. Diese Anschauung kann nur derjenige haben, der sich selbst in seinem Erkennen belauscht. Goethe hat zwar die höchste Erkenntnisart ausgeübt; aber er hat diese Erkenntnisart nicht an sich beobachtet. Gesteht er doch selbst:
«Wie hast du's denn so weit gebracht?
Sie sagen, du habest es gut vollbracht!»
Mein Kind! Ich hab' es klug gemacht;
Ich habe nie über das Denken gedacht.
[ 3 ] Aber so wie die schöpferischen Naturkräfte «nach tausendfältigen Pflanzen» noch eine machen, worin « alle übrigen enthalten» sind, so bringen sie auch nach tausendfältigen Ideen noch eine hervor, worin die ganze Ideenwelt enthalten ist. Und diese Idee erfaßt der Mensch, wenn er zu der Anschauung der andern Dinge und Vorgänge auch diejenige des Denkens fügt. Eben weil Goethes Denken stets mit den Gegenständen der Anschauung erfüllt war, weil sein Denken ein Anschauen, sein Anschauen ein Denken war: deshalb konnte er nicht dazu kommen, das Denken selbst zum Gegenstande des Denkens zu machen. Die Idee der Freiheit gewinnt man aber nur durch die Anschauung des Denkens. Den Unterschied zwischen Denken über das Denken und Anschauung des Denkens hat Goethe nicht gemacht. Sonst wäre er zur Einsicht gelangt, daß man gerade im Sinne seiner Weltanschauung es wohl ablehnen könne, über das Denken zu denken, daß man aber doch zu einer Anschauung der Gedankenwelt kommen könne. An dem Zustandekommen aller übrigen Anschauungen ist der Mensch unbeteiligt. In ihm leben die Ideen dieser Anschauungen auf. Diese Ideen würden aber nicht da sein, wenn in ihm nicht die produktive Kraft vorhanden wäre, sie zur Erscheinung zu bringen. Wenn auch die Ideen der Inhalt dessen sind, was in den Dingen wirkt; zum erscheinenden Dasein kommen sie durch die menschliche Tätigkeit. Die eigene Natur der Ideenwelt kann also der Mensch nur erkennen, wenn er seine Tätigkeit anschaut. Bei jeder anderen Anschauung durchdringt er nur die wirkende Idee; das Ding, in dem gewirkt wird, bleibt als Wahrnehmung außerhalb seines Geistes. In der Anschauung der Idee ist Wirkendes und Bewirktes ganz in seinem Innern enthalten. Er hat den ganzen Prozeß restlos in seinem Innern gegenwärtig. Die Anschauung erscheint nicht mehr von der Idee hervorgebracht; denn die Anschauung ist jetzt selbst Idee. Diese Anschauung des sich selbst Hervorbringenden ist aber die Anschauung der Freiheit. Bei der Beobachtung des Denkens durchschaut der Mensch das Weltgeschehen. Er hat hier nicht nach einer Idee dieses Geschehens zu forschen, denn dieses Geschehen ist die Idee selbst. Die sonst erlebte Einheit von Anschauung und Idee ist hier Erleben der anschaulich gewordenen Geistigkeit der Ideenwelt. Der Mensch, der diese in sich selbst ruhende Tätigkeit anschaut, fühlt die Freiheit. Goethe hat diese Empfindung zwar erlebt, aber nicht in der höchsten Form ausgesprochen. Er übte in seiner Naturbetrachtung eine freie Tätigkeit; aber sie wurde ihm nie gegenständlich. Er hat nie hinter die Kulissen des menschlichen Erkennens geschaut und deshalb die Idee des Weltgeschehens in dessen ureigenster Gestalt, in seiner höchsten Metamorphose nie in sein Bewußtsein aufgenommen. Sobald der Mensch zur Anschauung dieser Metamorphose gelangt, bewegt er sich sicher im Reich der Dinge. Er hat in dem Mittelpunkte seiner Persönlichkeit den wahren Ausgangspunkt für alle Weltbetrachtung gewonnen. Er wird nicht mehr nach unbekannten Gründen, nach außer ihm liegenden Ursachen der Dinge forschen; er weiß, daß das höchste Erlebnis, dessen er fähig ist, in der Selbstbetrachtung der eigenen Wesenheit besteht. Wer ganz durchdrungen ist von den Gefühlen, die dieses Erlebnis hervorruft, der wird die wahrsten Verhältnisse zu den Dingen gewinnen. Bei wem das nicht der Fall ist, der wird die höchste Form des Daseins anderswo suchen, und, da er sie in der Erfahrung nicht finden kann, in einem unbekannten Gebiet der Wirklichkeit vermuten. Seine Betrachtung der Dinge wird etwas Unsicheres bekommen; er wird sich bei der Beantwortung der Fragen, die ihm die Natur stellt, fortwährend auf ein Unerforschliches berufen. Weil Goethe durch sein Leben in der Ideenwelt ein Gefühl hatte von dem festen Mittelpunkt, innerhalb der Persönlichkeit, ist es ihm gelungen, innerhalb bestimmter Grenzen im Naturbetrachten zu sicheren Begriffen zu kommen. Weil ihm aber die unmittelbare Anschauung des innersten Erlebnisses abging, tastet er außer halb dieser Grenzen unsicher umher. Er redet aus diesem Grunde davon, daß der Mensch nicht geboren sei, die « Probleme der Welt zu lösen, wohl aber zu suchen, wo das Problem angeht, und sich sodann in der Grenze des Begreiflichen zu halten». Er sagt: «Kant hat unstreitig am meisten genützt, indem er die Grenzen zog, wie weit der menschliche Geist zu dringen fähig sei, und daß er die unauflöslichen Probleme liegen ließ.» Hätte ihm die Anschauung des höchsten Erlebnisses Sicherheit in der Betrachtung der Dinge gegeben, so hätte er auf seinem Wege mehr gekonnt als «durch geregelte Erfahrung zu einer Art von bedingter Zuverlässigkeit gelangen». Statt geradewegs durch die Erfahrung durchzuschreiten in dem Bewußtsein, daß das Wahre nur eine Bedeutung hat, insoweit es von der menschlichen Natur gefordert wird, gelangt er doch zu der Überzeugung, daß « ein höherer Einfluß die Standhaften, die Tätigen, die Verständigen, die Geregelten und Regelnden, die Menschlichen, die Frommen» begünstige, und daß sich «die moralische Weltordnung» am schönsten da zeige, wo sie «dem Guten, dem wacker Leidenden mittelbar zu Hilfe kommt».
[ 4 ] Weil Goethe das innerste menschliche Erlebnis nicht kannte, war es ihm unmöglich, zu den letzten Gedanken über die sittliche Weltordnung zu gelangen, die zu seiner Naturanschauung notwendig gehören. Die Ideen der Dinge sind der Inhalt des in den Dingen Wirksamen und Schaffenden. Die sittlichen Ideen erlebt der Mensch unmittelbar in der Ideenform. Wer zu erleben imstande ist, wie in der Anschauung der Ideenwelt das Ideelle sich selbst zum Inhalt wird, sich mit sich selbst erfüllt, der ist auch in der Lage, die Produktion des Sittlichen innerhalb der menschlichen Natur zu erleben. Wer die Naturideen nur in ihrem Verhältnis zu der Anschauungswelt kennt, der wird auch die sittlichen Begriffe auf etwas ihnen Äußeres beziehen wollen. Er wird eine ähnliche Wirklichkeit für diese Begriffe suchen, wie sie für die aus der Erfahrung gewonnenen Begriffe vorhanden ist. Wer aber Ideen in ihrer eigensten Wesenheit anzuschauen vermag, der wird bei den sittlichen gewahr, daß nichts Äußeres ihnen entspricht, daß sie unmittelbar im Geist-Erleben als Ideen produziert werden. Ihm ist klar, daß weder ein nur äußerlich wirkender göttlicher Wille, noch eine solche sittliche Weltordnung wirksam sind, um diese Ideen zu erzeugen. Denn es ist in ihnen nichts von einem Bezug auf solche Gewalten zu bemerken. Alles was sie aussprechen, ist in ihrer geistig erlebten reinen Ideenform auch eingeschlossen. Nur durch ihren eigenen Inhalt wirken sie auf den Menschen als sittliche Mächte. Kein kategorischer Imperativ steht mit der Peitsche hinter ihnen und drängt den Menschen, ihnen zu folgen. Der Mensch empfindet, daß er sie selbst hervorgebracht hat und liebt sie, wie man sein Kind liebt. Die Liebe ist das Motiv des Handelns. Die geistige Lust am eigenen Erzeugnis ist der Quell des Sittlichen.
[ 5 ] Es gibt Menschen, die keine sittlichen Ideen zu produzieren vermögen. Sie nehmen diejenigen anderer Menschen durch Überlieferung in sich auf. Und wenn sie kein Anschauungsvermögen für Ideen als solche haben, erkennen sie den im Geiste erlebbaren Ursprung des Sittlichen nicht. Sie suchen ihn in einem übermenschlichen, ihnen äußerlichen Willen. Oder sie glauben, daß eine außerhalb der menschlich erlebten Geistwelt bestehende objektive sittliche Weltordnung bestehe, aus der die moralischen Ideen stammen. In dem Gewissen des Menschen wird oft das Sprachorgan dieser Weltordnung gesucht. Wie über gewisse Dinge seiner übrigen Weltanschauung ist Goethe auch in seinen Gedanken über den Ursprung des Sittlichen unsicher. Auch hier treibt sein Gefühl für das Ideengemäße Sätze hervor, die den Forderungen seiner Natur gemäß sind. «Pflicht: wo man liebt, was man sich selbst befiehlt.» Nur wer die Gründe des Sittlichen rein in dem Inhalt der sittlichen Ideen sieht, sollte sagen: «Lessing, der mancherlei Beschränkung unwillig fühlte, läßt eine seiner Personen sagen: niemand muß müssen. Ein geistreicher, frohgesinnter Mann sagte: Wer will, der muß. Ein dritter, freilich ein Gebildeter, fügte hinzu: Wer einsieht, der will auch. Und so glaubte man den ganzen Kreis des Erkennens, Wollens und Müssens abgeschlossen zu haben. Aber im Durchschnitt bestimmt die Erkenntnis des Menschen, von welcher Art sie auch sei, sein Tun und Lassen; deswegen auch nichts schrecklicher ist, als die Unwissenheit handeln zu sehen.» Daß in Goethe ein Gefühl für die echte Natur des Sittlichen herrscht, welches sich nur nicht zur klaren Anschauung erhebt, zeigt folgender Ausspruch: «Der Wille muß, um vollkommen zu werden, sich im Sittlichen dem Gewissen, das nicht irrt ... fügen ... Das Gewissen bedarf keines Ahnherrn, mit ihm ist alles gegeben; es hat nur mit der innern eigenen Welt zu tun.» Das Gewissen bedarf keines Ahnherrn, kann nur heißen: der Mensch findet in sich keinen sittlichen Inhalt ursprünglich vor; er gibt sich ihn selbst. Diesen Aussprüchen stehen andere gegenüber, die den Ursprung des Sittlichen in ein Gebiet außerhalb des Menschen verlegen: «Der Mensch, wie sehr ihn auch die Erde anzieht mit ihren tausend und abertausend Erscheinungen, hebt doch den Blick sehnend zum Himmel auf... weil er es tief und klar in sich fühlt, daß er ein Bürger jenes geistigen Reiches sei, woran wir den Glauben nicht abzulehnen, noch aufzugeben vermögen.» «Was gar nicht aufzulösen ist, überlassen wir Gott als dem allbedingenden und allbefreienden Wesen.»
[ 6 ] Für die Betrachtung der innersten Menschennatur, für die Selbstbeschauung fehlt Goethe das Organ. «Hierbei bekenne ich, daß mir von jeher die große und so bedeutend klingende Aufgabe: erkenne dich selbst, immer verdächtig vorkam, als eine List geheim verbündeter Priester, die den Menschen durch unerreichbare Forderungen verwirren und von der Tätigkeit gegen die Außenwelt zu einer inneren falschen Beschaulichkeit verleiten wollten. Der Mensch kennt nur sich selbst, insofern er die Welt kennt, die er nur in sich und sich nur in ihr gewahr wird. Jeder neue Gegenstand, wohl beschaut, schließt ein neues Organ in uns auf» Davon ist gerade das Umgekehrte wahr: der Mensch kennt die Welt nur, insofern er sich kennt. Denn in seinem Innern offenbart sich in ureigenster Gestalt, was in den Außendingen nur im Abglanz, im Beispiel, Symbol als Anschauung vorhanden ist. Wovon der Mensch sonst nur als von einem Unergründlichen, Unerforschlichen, Göttlichen sprechen kann: das tritt ihm in der Selbstanschauung in wahrer Gestalt vor Augen. Weil er in der Selbstanschauung das Ideelle in unmittelbarer Gestalt sieht, gewinnt er die Kraft und Fähigkeit, dieses Ideelle auch in aller äußeren Erscheinung, in der ganzen Natur aufzusuchen und anzuerkennen. Wer den Augenblick der Selbstanschauung erlebt hat, denkt nicht mehr daran, hinter den Erscheinungen einen «verborgenen» Gott zu suchen: er ergreift das Göttliche in seinen verschiedenen Metamorphosen in der Natur. Goethe bemerkte in Beziehung auf Schelling: «Ich würde ihn öfters sehen, wenn ich nicht noch auf poetische Momente hoffte, und die Philosophie zerstört bei mir die Poesie, und das wohl deshalb, weil sie mich ins Objekt treibt, indem ich mich nie rein spekulativ erhalten kann, sondern gleich zu jedem Satze eine Anschauung suchen muß und deshalb gleich in die Natur hinaus fliehe.» Die höchste Anschauung, die Anschauung der Ideenwelt selbst, hat er eben nicht finden können. Sie kann die Poesie nicht zerstören, denn sie befreit den Geist nur von allen Vermutungen, daß in der Natur ein Unbekanntes, Unergründliches sein könne. Dafür aber macht sie ihn fähig, sich unbefangen ganz den Dingen hinzugeben; denn sie gibt ihm die Überzeugung, daß aus der Natur alles zu entnehmen ist, was der Geist von ihr nur wünschen kann.
[ 7 ] Die höchste Anschauung befreit aber den Menschengeist auch von allem einseitigen Abhängigkeitsgefühl. Er fühlt sich durch ihren Besitz souverän im Reiche der sittlichen Weltordnung. Er weiß, daß die Triebkraft, die alles hervorbringt, in seinem Innern als in seinem eigenen Willen wirkt, und daß die höchsten Entscheidungen über Sittliches in ihm selbst liegen. Denn diese höchsten Entscheidungen fließen aus der Welt der sittlichen Ideen, bei deren Produktion die Seele des Menschen anwesend ist. Mag der Mensch im einzelnen sich beschränkt fühlen, mag er auch von tausend Dingen abhängig sein; im ganzen gibt er sich sein sittliches Ziel und seine sittliche Richtung. Das Wirksame aller übrigen Dinge kommt im Menschen als Idee zur Erscheinung; das Wirksame im Menschen ist die Idee, die er selbst hervorbringt. In jeder einzelnen menschlichen Individualität vollzieht sich der Prozeß, der im Ganzen der Natur sich abspielt: die Schöpfung eines Tatsächlichen aus der Idee heraus. Und der Mensch selbst ist der Schöpfer. Denn auf dem Grunde seiner Persönlichkeit lebt die Idee, die sich selbst einen Inhalt gibt. Über Goethe hinausgehend, muß man seinen Satz erweitern, die Natur sei «in dem Reichtum der Schöpfung so groß, nach tausendfältigen Pflanzen eine zu machen, worin alle übrigen enthalten sind, und nach tausendfältigen Tieren ein Wesen, das sie alle enthält, den Menschen». Die Natur ist in ihrer Schöpfung so groß, daß sie den Prozeß, durch den sie frei aus der Idee heraus alle Geschöpfe hervorbringt, in jedem Menschenindividuum wiederholt, indem die sittlichen Handlungen aus dem ideellen Grunde der Persönlichkeit entspringen. Was der Mensch auch als objektiven Grund seines Handelns empfindet, es ist alles nur Umschreibung und zugleich Verkennung seiner eigenen Wesenheit. Sich selbst realisiert der Mensch in seinem sittlichen Handeln. In lapidaren Sätzen hat Max Stirner diese Erkenntnis in seiner Schrift «Der Einzige und sein Eigentum» ausgesprochen. «Eigner bin ich meiner Gewalt, und ich bin es dann, wenn ich mich als Einzigen weiß. Im Einzigen kehrt selbst der Eigner in sein schöpferisches Nichts zurück, aus welchem er geboren wird. Jedes höhere Wesen über mir, sei es Gott, sei es der Mensch, schwächt das Gefühl meiner Einzigkeit und erbleicht erst vor der Sonne dieses Bewußtseins. Stell' ich auf mich, den Einzigen, meine Sache, dann steht sie auf dem vergänglichen, dem sterblichen Schöpfer seiner, der sich selbst verzehrt, und ich darf sagen: ich hab' mein Sach' auf Nichts gestellt.» Aber zugleich darf der Mensch zu diesem Stirnerschen Geist, wie Faust zu Mephistopheles sagen: «In deinem Nichts hoff' ich das All zu finden», denn in meinem Innern wohnt in individueller Bildung die Wirkungskraft, durch welche die Natur das All schafft. So lange der Mensch in sich diese Wirkungskraft nicht geschaut hat, wird er sich ihr gegenüber erscheinen wie Faust dem Erdgeist gegenüber. Sie wird ihm stets die Worte zurufen: «Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst, nicht mir!» Erst die Anschauung des tiefsten Innenlebens zaubert diesen Geist hervor, der von sich sagt:
In Lebensfluten, im Tatensturm
Wall' ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her!
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein glühend Leben,
So schaff' ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.
[ 8 ] Ich habe in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» darzustellen versucht, wie die Erkenntnis, daß der Mensch in seinem Tun auf sich selbst gestellt ist, hervorgeht aus dem innersten Erlebnis, aus der Anschauung der eigenen Wesenheit. Stirner hat 1844 die Ansicht verteidigt, daß der Mensch, wenn er sich wahrhaft versteht, nur in sich selbst den Grund für seine Wirksamkeit sehen könne. Bei ihm geht aber diese Erkenntnis nicht aus der Anschauung des innersten Erlebnisses, sondern aus dem Gefühle der Freiheit und Ungebundenheit gegenüber allen Zwang heischenden Weltmächten hervor. Stirner bleibt bei der Forderung der Freiheit stehen; er wird auf diesem Gebiete zu der denkbar schroffsten Betonung der auf sich selbst gestellten Menschennatur geführt. Ich versuche auf breiterer Basis das Leben in der Freiheit zu schildern, indem ich zeige, was der Mensch erblickt, wenn er auf den Grund seiner Seele sieht. Goethe ist bis zu der Anschauung der Freiheit nicht gekommen, weil er eine Abneigung gegen die Selbsterkenntnis hatte. Wäre das nicht der Fall gewesen, so hätte die Erkenntnis des Menschen als einer freien, auf sich selbst gegründeten Persönlichkeit die Spitze seiner Weltanschauung bilden müssen. Die Keime zu dieser Erkenntnis treten uns bei ihm überall entgegen; sie sind zugleich die Keime seiner Naturansicht.
[ 9 ] Innerhalb seiner eigentlichen Naturstudien spricht Goethe nirgends von unerforschlichen Gründen, von verborgenen Triebkräften der Erscheinungen. Er begnügt sich damit, die Erscheinungen in ihrer Folge zu beobachten und sie mit Hilfe derjenigen Elemente zu erklären, die sich den Sinnen und dem Geiste bei der Beobachtung offenbaren. Am 5. Mai 1786 schreibt er in diesem Sinne an Jacobi, daß er den Mut habe, sein «ganzes Leben der Betrachtung der Dinge zu widmen, die er reichen» und von deren Wesenheit er sich « eine adäquate Idee zu bilden hoffen kann», ohne sich im mindesten zu bekümmern, wie weit er kommen werde und was ihm zugeschnitten ist. Wer sich dem Göttlichen in dem einzelnen Naturdinge zu nähern glaubt, der braucht sich nicht mehr eine besondere Vorstellung von einem Gotte zu bilden, der außer und neben den Dingen existiert. Nur wenn Goethe das Gebiet der Natur verläßt, dann hält auch sein Gefühl für die Wesenheit der Dinge nicht mehr stand. Dann führt ihn der Mangel an menschlicher Selbsterkenntnis zu Behauptungen, die weder mit seiner ihm angeborenen Denkweise, noch mit der Richtung seiner Naturstudien zu vereinigen sind. Wer Neigung hat, sich auf solche Behauptungen zu berufen, der mag annehmen, daß Goethe an einen menschenähnlichen Gott und eine individuelle Fortdauer derjenigen Lebensform der Seele geglaubt hat, die an die Bedingungen der physischen Leibesorganisation gebunden ist. Mit Goethes Naturstudien steht ein solcher Glaube im Widerspruch. Sie hätten nie die Richtung nehmen können, die sie genommen haben, wenn sich Goethe bei ihnen von diesem Glauben hätte bestimmen lassen. Im Sinne seiner Naturstudien liegt es durchaus, das Wesen der menschlichen Seele so zu denken, daß diese nach der Ablegung des Leibes in einer übersinnlichen Daseinsform lebt. Diese Daseinsform bedingt, daß ihr durch die andern Lebensbedingungen auch eine andere Bewußtseinsart eigen wird als die ist, die sie durch den physischen Leib hat. So führt die Goethesche Metamorphosenlehre auch zu der Anschauung von Metamorphosen des Seelenlebens. Aber man wird diese Goethesche Unsterblichkeitsidee nur recht ins Auge fassen können, wenn man weiß, daß Goethe zu einer unmetamorphosierten Fortsetzung desjenigen Geisteslebens, das durch den physischen Leib bedingt ist, durch seine Weltanschauung nicht hat geführt werden können. Weil Goethe in dem hier angedeuteten Sinn eine Anschauung des Gedankenlebens nicht versuchte, wurde er auch im Fortgang seiner Lebensführung nicht dazu veranlaßt, diejenige Unsterblichkeitsidee besonders auszugestalten, welche die Fortsetzung seiner Metamorphosengedanken wäre. Diese Idee aber wäre in Wahrheit dasjenige, was in Bezug auf dieses Erkenntnisgebiet aus seiner Weltanschauung folgte. Was er im Hinblick auf die Lebensansicht dieses oder jenes Zeitgenossen, oder aus anderer Veranlassung als Ausdruck einer persönlichen Empfindung gab, ohne dabei an den Zusammenhang mit seiner an den Naturstudien gewonnenen Weltanschauung zu denken, darf nicht als charakteristisch für Goethes Unsterblichkeitsidee angeführt werden.
[ 10 ] Für die Wertung eines Goetheschen Ausspruches im Gesamtbilde seiner Weltanschauung kommt auch in Betracht, daß die Stimmung seiner Seele in seinen verschiedenen Lebensaltern solchen Aussprüchen besondere Nuancen gibt. Dieses Wandels in der Ausdrucksform seiner Ideen war er sich voll bewußt. Als Förster die Ansicht aussprach, die Lösung des Faust-Problems werde sich aus dem Worte ergeben: «Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklen Drange ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewußt» entgegnete Goethe: «Das wäre ja Aufklärung: Faust endet als Greis, und im Greisenalter werden wir Mystiker»(aus Försters Nachlaß, S.216). Und in den Prosasprüchen lesen wir: «Jedem Alter des Menschen antwortet eine gewisse Philosophie. Das Kind erscheint als Realist; denn es findet sich so überzeugt von dem Dasein der Birnen und Äpfel als von dem seinigen. Der Jüngling, von inneren Leidenschaften bestürmt, muß auf sich selbst merken, sich vorfühlen, er wird zum Idealisten umgewandelt. Dagegen ein Skeptiker zu werden, hat der Mann alle Ursache; er tut wohl zu zweifeln, ob das Mittel, das er zum Zwecke gewählt hat, auch das rechte sei. Vor dem Handeln, im Handeln hat er alle Ursache, den Verstand beweglich zu erhalten, damit er nicht nachher sich über eine falsche Wahl zu betrüben habe. Der Greis jedoch wird sich immer zum Mystizismus bekennen; er sieht, daß so vieles vom Zufall abzuhängen scheint; das Unvernünftige gelingt, das Vernünftige schlägt fehl, Glück und Unglück stellen sich unerwartet ins gleiche; so ist es, so war es, und das hohe Alter beruhigt sich in dem, der da ist, der da war und der da sein wird» (Kürschner, Band 36,2 S. 454).
[ 11 ] Ich habe in dieser Schrift die Weltanschauung Goethes im Auge, aus der seine Einsichten in das Leben der Natur hervorgewachsen sind und welche die treibende Kraft in ihm war von der Entdeckung des Zwischenknochens beim Menschen bis zur Vollendung der Farbenlehre. Und ich glaube gezeigt zu haben, daß diese Weltanschauung vollkommener der Gesamtpersönlichkeit Goethes entspricht, als die Zusammenstellung von Aussprüchen, bei denen man vor allem Rücksicht nehmen müßte, wie solche Gedanken gefärbt sind, durch die Stimmung seiner Jugend- oder seiner Altersepoche. Ich glaube, Goethe hat in seinen Naturstudien, wenn auch nicht geleitet von einer klaren, ideengemäßen Selbsterkenntnis, so doch von einem richtigen Gefühle, eine freie, aus dem wahren Verhältnis der menschlichen Natur zur Außenwelt fließende Verfahrungsweise beobachtet. Goethe ist sich selbst darüber klar, daß in seiner Denkweise etwas Unvollendetes liegt: «Ich war mir edler, großer Zwecke bewußt, konnte aber niemals die Bedingungen begreifen, unter denen ich wirkte; was mir mangelte, merkte ich wohl, was an mir zu viel sei, gleichfalls; deshalb unterließ ich nicht mich zu bilden, nach außen und von innen. Und doch blieb es beim alten. Ich verfolgte jeden Zweck mit Ernst, Gewalt und Treue; dabei gelang mir oft, widerspenstige Bedingungen vollkommen zu überwinden, oft aber auch scheiterte ich daran, weil ich nachgeben und umgehen nicht lernen konnte. Und so ging mein Leben hin unter Tun und Genießen, Leiden und Widerstreben, unter Liebe, Zufriedenheit, Haß und Mißfallen anderer. Hieran spiegele sich, dem das gleiche Schicksal geworden.»
The metamorphosis of world phenomena
[ 1 ] Goethe's view of the world reached its highest degree of maturity when he realized the two great driving forces of nature: the significance of the concepts of polarity and increase. (Cf. the essay: Explanation of the essay "Die Natur". Kürschner vol. 34, p. 63 f.) Polarity is inherent in the phenomena of nature insofar as we think of them materially. It consists in the fact that everything material expresses itself in two opposite states, like the magnet in a north pole and a south pole. These states of matter are either open before our eyes, or they lie dormant in the material and can be awakened in it by suitable means. The intensification occurs in the phenomena insofar as we think of them mentally. It can be observed in the natural processes that fall under the idea of development. At the various stages of development, these processes show the idea on which they are based more or less clearly in their outer appearance. In the fruit, the idea of the plant, the vegetable law, is only indistinctly expressed in its appearance. The idea that the mind recognizes and the perception are dissimilar. "In the blossoms, the vegetable law comes to its highest manifestation, and the rose would only be the peak of the manifestation again." The working out of the spiritual from the material by creative nature is what Goethe calls intensification. Nature is "always striving to ascend", in other words, it seeks to create forms which, in ascending order, increasingly represent the ideas of things in their outer appearance. Goethe is of the opinion that "nature has no secret that it does not somewhere present to the attentive observer naked before his eyes". Nature can produce phenomena from which the ideas for a large area of related processes can be read directly. These are the phenomena in which the increase has reached its goal, in which the idea becomes immediate truth. Here the creative spirit of nature comes to the surface of things; what in the gross material phenomena can only be grasped by the mind, what can only be seen with spiritual eyes, becomes visible to the bodily eye in the heightened phenomena. Everything sensual here is also spiritual and everything spiritual is sensual. Goethe conceives of the whole of nature as spiritualized. Its forms are different in that the spirit in them is more or less externally visible. Goethe does not know a dead, spiritless matter. Those things appear as such in which the spirit of nature gives itself an external form dissimilar to its ideal essence. Because a spirit is at work in nature and within man, man can rise to participate in the productions of nature. "... from the brick that falls from the roof to the luminous flash of spirit that rises up and which you communicate", Goethe regards everything in the universe as an effect, as a manifestation of a creative spirit. "All effects, of whatever kind they may be, which we notice in experience, are connected in the most constant way, merge into one another; they undulate from the first to the last." "A tile detaches itself from the roof: we call this in the common sense accidental; it strikes the shoulders of a passer-by mechanically, but not quite mechanically, it follows the laws of gravity, and so it acts physically. The torn vessels of life immediately give up their function; in an instant the juices act chemically, the elementary properties emerge. But the disturbed organic life resists just as quickly and seeks to restore itself; meanwhile the human whole is more or less unconscious and psychically shattered. The person who recognizes himself feels ethically deeply wounded; he laments his disturbed activity, of whatever kind it may be, but reluctantly man surrenders to patience. Religiously, on the other hand, it becomes easy for him to ascribe this case to a higher destiny, to regard it as a protection from greater evil, as an introduction to greater good. This is enough for the sufferer; but the convalescent rises genially, trusts God and himself and feels saved, seizes even the accidental, turns it to his advantage in order to begin an eternally fresh circle of life." Goethe sees all worldly effects as modifications of the spirit, and the person who immerses himself in them and observes them from the level of the accidental to that of genius, experiences the metamorphosis of the spirit from the form in which it presents itself in a dissimilar external appearance to that in which it appears in its very own form. In Goethe's view of the world, all creative forces are unified. They are a whole that reveals itself in a gradual sequence of related manifoldnesses. Goethe, however, was never inclined to imagine the unity of the world as uniform. The supporters of the idea of unity often fall into the error of extending the lawfulness that can be observed in one area of appearance to the whole of nature. In this case, for example, is the mechanistic world view. It has a special eye and understanding for that which can be explained mechanically. Therefore the mechanical appears to it as the only natural. It also seeks to trace the phenomena of organic nature back to mechanical laws. To her, the living is only a complicated form of the interaction of mechanical processes. Goethe found such a world view expressed in a particularly repulsive form in Holbach's "Systeme de la nature", which fell into his hands in Strasbourg. Matter should be from eternity, and moved from eternity, and should now, with this movement to the right and left and in all directions, produce the infinite phenomena of existence without further ado. "We would even have been satisfied with all this if the author had really built up the world before our eyes from his moving matter. But he might have known as little of nature as we do: for, by piling up a few general concepts, he immediately abandons them in order to transform that which appears higher than nature, or as higher nature in nature, into material, heavy, moving, but nevertheless directionless and formless nature, and thereby believes he has gained quite a lot. "(Dichtung und Wahrheit, II. Buch.) Goethe would have expressed himself in a similar way if he had been able to hear Du Bois-Reymond's sentence ("Grenzen des Naturerkennens", p.13): "Recognizing nature ... is the tracing back of changes in the physical world to movements of atoms, which are brought about by their central forces independent of time, or the resolution of natural processes into mechanics of atoms." Goethe thought of the types of natural effects as related to each other and merging into each other; but he never wanted to trace them back to a single type. He did not seek an abstract principle to which all natural phenomena could be traced, but rather an observation of the characteristic way in which creative nature reveals itself in each of its individual areas of manifestation through particular forms of its general lawfulness. He did not want to impose one thought-form on all natural phenomena, but by living in different thought-forms he wanted to keep the spirit as alive and flexible as nature itself is. If the feeling of the great unity of all natural phenomena was powerful in him, then he was a pantheist. "For myself, with the manifold directions of my being, I cannot have enough of one way of thinking; as a poet and artist I am a polytheist, a pantheist as a naturalist, and one as decidedly as the other. If I need a god for my personality, as a moral man, then that is already taken care of." (To Jacobi, Jan. 6, 1813.) As an artist, Goethe turned to those natural phenomena in which the idea is present in direct perception. Here the individual appeared directly divine; the world as a multiplicity of divine individualities. As a naturalist, Goethe also had to trace the forces of nature in those phenomena whose idea is not visible in their individual existence. As a poet he could rest in the multiplicity of the divine; as a naturalist he had to seek the unified ideas of nature. "The law that enters into appearance, in the greatest freedom, according to its own conditions, brings forth the objective beauty, which of course must find worthy subjects by whom it is perceived." As an artist, Goethe wants to observe this objective beauty in the individual creature; but as a naturalist he wants to "know the laws according to which general nature wants to act". Polytheism is the way of thinking that sees and worships the spiritual in the individual; pantheism is the other, which grasps the spirit of the whole. Both ways of thinking can exist side by side; one or the other asserts itself depending on whether the view is directed towards the whole of nature, which is life and consequence from a central point, or towards those individuals in whom nature unites in one form what it usually spreads over an entire realm. Such forms arise, for example, when the creative forces of nature, after "a thousand and one plants", make another in which "all the others are contained", or "after a thousand and one animals, a being that contains them all: the human being".
[ 2 ] Goethe once remarked: "Anyone who has learned to understand them (my writings) and my nature in general will have to confess that he has gained a certain inner freedom." (Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler von Müller, . Jan.1831.) With this he alluded to the active force that asserts itself in all human striving for knowledge. As long as man continues to perceive the opposites around him and to regard their laws as implanted principles by which they are governed, he has the feeling that they confront him as unknown powers which act upon him and impose the thoughts of their laws upon him. He feels unfree in the face of things; he perceives the laws of nature as a rigid necessity to which he must submit. Only when man realizes that the forces of nature are nothing other than forms of the same spirit that is at work in himself does he realize that he is a partaker of freedom. Natural law is only perceived as a compulsion as long as it is regarded as an external force. If one lives into its essence, then one feels it as a force that one also operates within oneself; one feels oneself as a productively co-operating element in the becoming and being of things. You are you and you with all the power of becoming. You have absorbed into your own actions what you otherwise only experience as an external drive. This is the process of liberation that the act of cognition brings about in the sense of Goethe's world view. Goethe looked clearly at the ideas of the workings of nature as they gazed out at him from the Italian works of art. He also had a clear perception of the liberating effect that the possession of these ideas has on man. One consequence of this feeling is his description of the kind of knowledge he describes as that of comprehensive spirits. "The encompassing spirits, which in a proud sense could be called the creators, behave productively in the highest sense; for by proceeding from ideas, they already express the unity of the whole, and it is, as it were, afterwards the business of nature to fit itself into this idea." Goethe, however, never achieved the direct contemplation of the act of liberation. Only those who listen to themselves in their cognition can have this view. Goethe may have practiced the highest form of cognition, but he did not observe this form of cognition in himself. As he himself admits:
"How did you get so far?
They say you have done well!"
My child! I have done it wisely;
I have never thought about thinking.
[ 3 ] But just as the creative forces of nature produce "after a thousand and one plants", in which "all the others are contained", so also after a thousand and one ideas they produce one in which the whole world of ideas is contained. And man grasps this idea when he adds the idea of thought to the contemplation of other things and processes. Precisely because Goethe's thinking was always filled with the objects of contemplation, because his thinking was contemplation, his contemplation was thinking: that is why he could not come to make thinking itself the object of thinking. But the idea of freedom can only be gained through the contemplation of thinking. Goethe did not make the distinction between thinking about thinking and viewing thinking. Otherwise he would have arrived at the insight that, precisely in the sense of his world view, one could well refuse to think about thinking, but that one could nevertheless arrive at a view of the world of thought. Man is uninvolved in the formation of all other views. The ideas of these views come to life in him. But these ideas would not be there if the productive power were not present in him to bring them to manifestation. Even if the ideas are the content of what works in things, they come into manifest existence through human activity. Man can therefore only recognize the nature of the world of ideas when he looks at his activity. In any other contemplation, he only penetrates the active idea; the thing in which the activity takes place remains outside his mind as a perception. In the contemplation of the idea, the active and the effected are completely contained within him. He has the whole process completely present within himself. The perception no longer appears to be produced by the idea; for the perception is now itself an idea. But this perception of what produces itself is the perception of freedom. In the observation of thought, man sees through world events. Here he does not have to search for an idea of this happening, for this happening is the idea itself. The otherwise experienced unity of perception and idea is here the experience of the visualized spirituality of the world of ideas. The person who looks at this activity resting in itself feels freedom. Goethe experienced this feeling, but did not express it in its highest form. He exercised a free activity in his contemplation of nature; but it never became objective to him. He never looked behind the scenes of human cognition and therefore never absorbed into his consciousness the idea of world events in their most intrinsic form, in their highest metamorphosis. As soon as man arrives at the contemplation of this metamorphosis, he moves securely in the realm of things. In the center of his personality he has gained the true starting point for all observation of the world. He will no longer search for unknown reasons, for causes of things lying outside himself; he knows that the highest experience of which he is capable consists in the self-observation of his own being. Whoever is completely imbued with the feelings that this experience evokes will gain the truest relationship to things. If this is not the case with him, he will seek the highest form of existence elsewhere and, since he cannot find it in experience, will assume it to be in an unknown realm of reality. His contemplation of things will acquire something uncertain; in answering the questions that nature poses to him, he will continually refer to something inscrutable. Because Goethe, through his life in the world of ideas, had a feeling of the fixed center, within the personality, he succeeded in arriving at certain concepts within certain limits in his contemplation of nature. But because he lacked the direct perception of the innermost experience, he groped around uncertainly outside these boundaries. For this reason he says that man was not born to "solve the problems of the world, but to seek where the problem lies, and then to keep within the limits of the intelligible". He says: "Kant has indisputably been of most use by drawing the boundaries of how far the human mind is capable of penetrating and by leaving the insoluble problems behind." If the contemplation of the highest experience had given him certainty in the consideration of things, he would have been able to do more on his way than "arrive at a kind of conditional reliability through regulated experience". Instead of going straight through experience in the awareness that the true only has a meaning insofar as it is demanded by human nature, he nevertheless arrives at the conviction that "a higher influence favors the steadfast, the active, the understanding, the regulated and regulating, the humane, the pious", and that "the moral world order" shows itself most beautifully where it "indirectly comes to the aid of the good, the brave sufferer".
[ 4 ] Because Goethe did not know the innermost human experience, it was impossible for him to arrive at the final thoughts about the moral world order, which necessarily belong to his view of nature. The ideas of things are the content of what is active and creative in things. Man experiences the moral ideas directly in the form of ideas. Whoever is capable of experiencing how, in the contemplation of the world of ideas, the ideal becomes its own content, fills itself with itself, is also in a position to experience the production of the moral within human nature. He who knows the ideas of nature only in their relation to the visual world will also want to relate the moral concepts to something external to them. He will seek a reality for these concepts similar to that which exists for the concepts derived from experience. But he who is able to look at ideas in their most intrinsic essence will realize in the case of moral concepts that nothing external corresponds to them, that they are produced directly in the spirit-experience as ideas. It is clear to him that neither an external divine will nor a moral world order is effective in producing these ideas. For there is nothing to be noticed in them of a reference to such powers. Everything they express is also included in their spiritually experienced pure idea form. Only through their own content do they have an effect on people as moral powers. No categorical imperative stands behind them with a whip and urges man to follow them. Man feels that he has brought them forth himself and loves them as one loves one's child. Love is the motive for action. The spiritual pleasure in one's own product is the source of morality.
[ 5 ] There are people who are incapable of producing moral ideas. They absorb those of other people through tradition. And if they have no ability to perceive ideas as such, they do not recognize the origin of the moral that can be experienced in the spirit. They look for it in a superhuman will that is external to them. Or they believe that an objective moral world order exists outside the humanly experienced spiritual world, from which the moral ideas originate. The organ of speech of this world order is often sought in man's conscience. As with certain things in his other world views, Goethe is also uncertain in his thoughts on the origin of morality. Here, too, his feeling for what is in accordance with ideas drives forth sentences that are in accordance with the demands of his nature. "Duty: where one loves what one commands oneself." Only those who see the grounds of morality purely in the content of moral ideas should say: "Lessing, who felt many a restriction unwillingly, has one of his characters say: No one must have to. A witty, happy-minded man said: He who will, must. A third, admittedly an educated man, added: He who understands, wills too. And so one believed to have completed the whole circle of knowledge, will and must. But on the average, man's knowledge, of whatever kind it may be, determines his actions; therefore nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance at work." The following statement shows that Goethe has a feeling for the true nature of morality, which does not rise to a clear view: "The will, in order to become perfect, must in morality submit to conscience, which does not err ... ... Conscience needs no ancestor, everything is given with it; it has to do only with its own inner world." Conscience does not need an ancestor, it can only mean that man does not originally find any moral content in himself; he gives it to himself. These statements are contrasted with others that place the origin of morality in a realm outside of man: "Man, however much he is attracted by the earth with its thousand and thousand phenomena, still raises his eyes longingly to heaven... because he feels deeply and clearly within himself that he is a citizen of that spiritual realm in which we cannot reject nor give up faith." "What cannot be dissolved at all, we leave to God as the all-conditioning and all-liberating being."
[ 6 ] For the contemplation of the innermost human nature, for introspection, Goethe lacks the organ. "Here I confess that the great and so important-sounding task: know thyself, has always seemed suspicious to me, as a trick of secretly allied priests who wanted to confuse man with unattainable demands and seduce him from activity against the outside world to an inner false contemplation. Man only knows himself insofar as he knows the world, which he is only aware of in himself and only in it. Every new object, well contemplated, opens up a new organ within us." The reverse is true: man only knows the world insofar as he knows himself. For in his inner being is revealed in its most intrinsic form what is present in external things only as a reflection, as an example, as a symbol. What man can otherwise only speak of as unfathomable, inscrutable, divine: this appears to him in true form in self-perception. Because he sees the ideal in direct form in self-perception, he gains the strength and ability to seek out and recognize this ideal in all external appearances, in all of nature. He who has experienced the moment of self-perception no longer thinks of seeking a "hidden" God behind the phenomena: he grasps the divine in its various metamorphoses in nature. Goethe remarked in relation to Schelling: "I would see him more often if I did not still hope for poetic moments, and philosophy destroys poetry for me, and that probably because it drives me into the object, in that I can never remain purely speculative, but must immediately seek an illustration for every sentence and therefore immediately flee out into nature." He was unable to find the highest view, the view of the world of ideas itself. It cannot destroy poetry, for it only frees the mind from all assumptions that there could be something unknown and unfathomable in nature. On the other hand, it enables it to devote itself completely to things without bias, for it gives it the conviction that everything that the mind can desire can be taken from nature.
[ 7 ] However, the highest contemplation also frees the human spirit from all one-sided feelings of dependence. Through its possession he feels sovereign in the realm of the moral world order. He knows that the driving force that produces everything works within him as in his own will, and that the highest decisions about morality lie within himself. For these highest decisions flow from the world of moral ideas, in the production of which the soul of man is present. Man may feel himself limited in individual things, he may be dependent on a thousand things; on the whole he gives himself his moral goal and his moral direction. What is effective in all other things appears in man as an idea; what is effective in man is the idea that he himself produces. In every single human individuality the process takes place that takes place in the whole of nature: the creation of an actuality out of the idea. And man himself is the creator. For at the base of his personality lives the idea, which gives itself content. Going beyond Goethe, we must expand on his statement that nature is "so great in the richness of creation as to make one after a thousand plants in which all the others are contained, and after a thousand animals one being that contains them all, the human being". Nature is so great in its creation that it repeats in every human individual the process by which it freely produces all creatures out of the idea, in that moral actions spring from the ideal ground of personality. Whatever man perceives as the objective ground of his actions, it is all merely a paraphrase and at the same time a misrecognition of his own essence. Man realizes himself in his moral actions. Max Stirner expressed this insight in succinct sentences in his essay "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" (The Only One and His Property). "I am the owner of my power, and I am so when I know myself to be the Only One. In the Only One, even the owner returns to his creative nothingness, from which he is born. Every higher being above me, be it God or man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness and only pales before the sun of this consciousness. If I place my cause on myself, the only one, then it stands on the perishable, the mortal creator of it, who consumes himself, and I may say: I have placed my cause on nothing." But at the same time man may say to this Stirnerian spirit, like Faust to Mephistopheles: "In your nothingness I hope to find the All", for within me dwells, in individual formation, the active force through which nature creates the All. As long as man has not seen this active force within himself, he will appear to it like Faust to the spirit of the earth. It will always call out to him the words: "You are like the spirit you comprehend, not like me!" Only the contemplation of the deepest inner life conjures up this spirit that says of itself:
In floods of life, in the storm of deeds
I wall up and down,
weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
Thus I create on the rushing loom of time
And work the living garment of the Godhead.
[ 8 ] In my "Philosophy of Freedom" I have tried to show how the realization that man is dependent on himself in his actions arises from the innermost experience, from the contemplation of his own being. In 1844, Stirner defended the view that man, if he truly understands himself, can only see in himself the reason for his effectiveness. For him, however, this insight does not emerge from the contemplation of the innermost experience, but from the feeling of freedom and independence from all coercive world powers. Stirner stops at the demand of freedom; in this area he is led to the most abrupt emphasis imaginable on the self-reliant nature of man. I am trying to describe life in freedom on a broader basis by showing what man sees when he looks to the bottom of his soul. Goethe did not arrive at the view of freedom because he had an aversion to self-knowledge. Had this not been the case, the realization of man as a free personality based on himself would have had to form the pinnacle of his world view. We encounter the seeds of this knowledge everywhere in his work; they are also the seeds of his view of nature.
[ 9 ] Nowhere in his actual studies of nature does Goethe speak of inscrutable causes, of hidden driving forces of phenomena. He is content to observe the phenomena in their sequence and to explain them with the help of those elements that reveal themselves to the senses and the mind during observation. On May 5, 1786, he wrote to Jacobi that he had the courage to "devote his whole life to the contemplation of those things which he can reach" and of whose essence he could "hope to form an adequate idea", without worrying in the least how far he would get and what was tailor-made for him. He who believes himself to be approaching the divine in the individual natural thing no longer needs to form a special idea of a God who exists outside and beside things. It is only when Goethe leaves the realm of nature that his feeling for the essence of things no longer holds. Then his lack of human self-knowledge leads him to assertions that can be reconciled neither with his innate way of thinking nor with the direction of his studies of nature. Those who are inclined to refer to such assertions may assume that Goethe believed in a human-like God and an individual continuation of that form of life of the soul which is bound to the conditions of the physical organization of the body. Such a belief is at odds with Goethe's studies of nature. They could never have taken the direction they did if Goethe had allowed himself to be determined by this belief. In the spirit of his nature studies, it is perfectly reasonable to think of the nature of the human soul in such a way that it lives in a supersensible form of existence after shedding the body. This form of existence means that the other conditions of life also give it a different kind of consciousness than that which it has through the physical body. Thus Goethe's theory of metamorphosis also leads to the view of metamorphoses of the life of the soul. But one will only be able to grasp this Goethean idea of immortality properly if one knows that Goethe could not have been led by his world view to an unmetamorphosed continuation of that spiritual life which is conditioned by the physical body. Because Goethe did not attempt a view of the life of thought in the sense indicated here, he was also not prompted in the course of his life to give special form to the idea of immortality, which would be the continuation of his metamorphosis thoughts. This idea, however, would in truth be that which followed from his world-view with regard to this field of knowledge. What he gave with regard to this or that contemporary's view of life, or for other reasons as an expression of a personal feeling, without thinking of the connection with his world view gained from his studies of nature, must not be cited as characteristic of Goethe's idea of immortality.
[ 10 ] For the evaluation of a Goethean statement in the overall picture of his world view, it is also important to consider that the mood of his soul in his various ages gives such statements particular nuances. He was fully aware of this change in the form of expression of his ideas. When Förster expressed the view that the solution to the Faust problem would result from the words: "A good man in his dark urge is well aware of the right path", Goethe replied: "That would be enlightenment: Faust ends up as an old man, and in old age we become mystics" (from Förster's Nachlaß, p.216). And in the prose sayings we read: "Every age of man is answered by a certain philosophy. The child appears as a realist; for he finds himself as convinced of the existence of pears and apples as of his own. The youth, assailed by inner passions, must take notice of himself, feel his way forward, he is transformed into an idealist. On the other hand, the man has every reason to become a skeptic; he does well to doubt whether the means he has chosen for the end is the right one. Before acting, in acting, he has every reason to keep his mind agile so that he does not have to grieve afterwards over a wrong choice. The old man, however, will always profess mysticism; he sees that so much seems to depend on chance; the unreasonable succeeds, the reasonable fails, fortune and misfortune unexpectedly turn out to be the same; so it is, so it was, and old age calms itself in the one who is, who was, and who will be" (Kürschner, vol. 36,2 p. 454).
[ 11 ] In this essay I have in mind Goethe's world view, from which his insights into the life of nature grew and which was the driving force in him from the discovery of the intermaxillary bone in man to the completion of the theory of colors. And I believe I have shown that this view of the world corresponds more perfectly to Goethe's personality as a whole than the compilation of sayings in which one would have to consider above all how such thoughts are colored by the mood of his youth or his old age. I believe that Goethe observed in his studies of nature, if not guided by a clear, idealistic self-knowledge, at least by a correct feeling, a free way of proceeding that flows from the true relationship of human nature to the outside world. Goethe himself is aware that there is something incomplete in his way of thinking: "I was aware of noble, great purposes, but I could never grasp the conditions under which I worked; what I lacked, I realized, what was too much in me, likewise; therefore I did not refrain from educating myself, outwardly and inwardly. And yet things remained the same. I pursued every goal with seriousness, force and loyalty; I often succeeded in completely overcoming stubborn conditions, but I also often failed because I was unable to give in and learn to avoid them. And so my life went on with doing and enjoying, suffering and resisting, with love, satisfaction, hatred and displeasure of others. This is a reflection of the same fate."