requirements if he trusts his senses, and so develops them as to make
them worthy of trust'.

There is no contradiction in the statement that we have to trust our
senses, and that we have to develop them to make them trustworthy. For,
'nature speaks upwards to the known senses of man, downwards to unknown
senses of his'. Goethe's path was aimed at wakening faculties, both
perceptual and conceptual, which lay dormant in himself. His experience
showed him that 'every process in nature, rightly observed, wakens in
us a new organ of cognition'. Right observation, in this respect,
consisted in a form of contemplating nature which he called a
're-creating (creating in the wake) of an ever-creative nature'
(Nachschaffen einer immer schaffenden Natur).

*

We should do Goethe an injustice if we measured the value of his
scientific work by the amount of factual knowledge he contributed to
one or other sphere of research. Although Goethe did bring many new
things to light, as has been duly recognized in the scientific fields
concerned, it cannot be gainsaid that other scientists in his own day,
working along the usual lines, far exceeded his total of discoveries.
Nor can it be denied that, as critics have pointed out, he occasionally
went astray in reporting his observations. These things, however, do
not determine the value or otherwise of his scientific labours. His
work draws its significance not so much from the 'what', to use a
Goethean expression, as from the 'how' of his observations, that is,
from his way of investigating nature. Having once developed this method
in the field of plant observation, Goethe was able, with its aid, to
establish a new view of animal nature, to lay the basis for a new