enough of my own; if a man write a book, let him set down only what
he knows." He writes in the plainest and lowest tone, omitting a great
deal more than he writes, and putting ever a thing for a word. He has
explained the distinction between the antique and the modern spirit
and art. He has defined art, its scope and laws. He has said the best
things about nature that ever were said. He treats nature as the old
philosophers, as the seven wise masters did,--and, with whatever loss
of French tabulation and dissection, poetry and humanity remain to us;
and they have some doctorial skill. Eyes are better, on the whole,
than telescopes or microscopes. He has contributed a key to many parts
of nature, through the rare turn for unity and simplicity in his mind.
Thus Goethe suggested the leading idea of modern botany, that a leaf,
or the eye of a leaf, is the unit of botany, and that every part of
the plant is only a transformed leaf to meet a new condition; and, by
varying the conditions, a leaf may be converted into any other organ,
and any other organ into a leaf. In like manner, in osteology, he
assumed that one vertebra of the spine might be considered the unit
of the skeleton; the head was only the uppermost vertebra transformed.
"The plant goes from knot to knot, closing, at last, with the flower
and the seed. So the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes from knot to
knot, and closes with the head. Men and the higher animals are built
up through the vertebrae, the powers being concentrated in the head."
In optics, again, he rejected the artificial theory of seven colors,
and considered that every color was the mixture of light and darkness
in new proportions. It is really of very little consequence what topic
he writes upon. He sees at every pore, and has a certain gravitation
toward truth. He will realize what you say. He hates to be trifled
with, and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable, that has
had possession of men's faith these thousand years. He may as well see
if it is true as another. He sifts it. I am here, he would say, to be