Microbiology

genetic modifications in time. Goethe's true position, the writer of this review feels, might have been recognized more clearly if in the controversy the personal element in Goethe's character had not been neglected unduly. The wholeness of Goethe's personality, so averse to an exclusively centrifugal mode of living, but so wholly given to a combination of highhearted neo-classic idealism and romantic-sensualistic experience, was not exactly fertile ground for the growth of ideologies mathematical rather than qualitative in nature. Art and science were to him mutually beneficial activities, but in times of stress, when "Weltschmerz" almost overwhelmed him, Goethe would seek consolation through the medium of art rather than science; he has said so plainly in his famous "Marienbader Elegie." Ernst Cassirer, well remembered by friends and colleagues at this University, analyzed Goethe's natural science with the philosopher's tools, pointing out important differences between the mathematical approach of Newton and Kant and Goethe's method which has to do with individual, qualitative phenomena and their ideal abstractions, the archetypes. Goethe surely never intended to sacrifice their symbolic value for the mathematical transcriptions and uni-directional series of mechanistic natural science. Meyer-Abich's book (in German), approaching Goethe's natural science from the historical-philosophical point of view, makes this more explicit. He discusses in detail the main differences which exist between ancient and modern natural science, and between the biological concepts of Goethe and his contemporaries, on the one hand, and the majority of present-day biologists, on the other hand. Goethe's idea of nature is essentially a dynamic renaissance of Platonic-Aristotelian principles in modern holistic form. Although at the present time, modern natural science is essentially a mechanistic discipline, basically mathematical, and influenced by certain principles (such as dynamic change and infinite development), it will assume a character increasingly holistic. Goethe in his biology already has fulfilled this promise within the limitations of his time; it is classical-holistic in its theoretical premises, but modern in its empirical approach. In addition to a general introduction, biographical data with portraits, and a section on Goethe's law of compensation, the bulk of the volume consists of selected morphological writings by Goethe (omitting the readily available Plant Metamorphosis and the article on the intermaxillary bone) and of papers by his contemporaries, namely, Forster (A view into the whole of nature); A. v. Humboldt (The vital force or the Rhodian genius) ; Oken (Development of the scientific systematics of animals); C. G. Carus (Which are the prerequisites for a future treatment of the natural sciences?) ; v. Baer (Which concept of living nature is the right one?); and Joh. Muller (Of the need of physiology for a philosophical view of nature).