divinity somewhere outside the world of man. For Goethe was his own
witness that Kant was mistaken in regarding man's present condition as
his lasting nature. Let us hear how he expresses himself on this fact
at the beginning of his essay written as an answer to Kant's statement:

'It is true, the author here seems to be pointing to an intellect not
human but divine. And yet, if in the moral sphere we are supposed to
lift ourselves up to a higher region through faith in God, Virtue and
Immortality, so drawing nearer to the Primal Being, why should it not
be likewise in the intellectual? By contemplation (Anschauen) of an
ever-creative nature, may we not make ourselves worthy to be spiritual
sharers in her productions? I at first, led by an inner urge that would
not rest, had quite unconsciously been seeking for the realm of Type
and Archetype, and my attempt had been rewarded: I had been able to
build up a description, in conformity with Nature herself. Now
therefore nothing more could hinder me from braving what the Old Man of
the King's Hill2 himself calls the Adventure of Reason.'

Goethe started from the conviction that our senses as well as our
intellect are gifts of nature, and that, if at any given moment they
prove incapable through their collaboration of solving a riddle of
nature, we must ask her to help us to develop this collaboration
adequately. Thus there was no question for him of any restriction of
sense-perception in order to bring the latter in line with the existing
power of the intellect, but rather to learn to make an ever fuller use
of the senses and to bring our intellect into line with what they tell.
'The senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives', is one of his
basic utterances concerning their respective roles in our quest for
knowledge and understanding. As to the senses themselves, he was sure
that 'the human being is adequately equipped for all true earthly