Goethe and the Present

GA 68c — 18 June 1901, Berlin

VI. Goethe's View of Nature in the Present Day

Report in the “Berliner Hochschul-Zeitung” of June 25, 1901.

On Tuesday, June 18, the Natural Science Section experienced a momentous evening. Around one hundred people listened to Dr. Rudolf Steiner's lecture on “Goethe's View of Nature and the Present.” The lecture culminated in the answer to the question: To what extent was Goethe a forerunner of the modern materialistic worldview? The whole of Goethe's position in relation to today's natural science, the speaker explained, characterizes the poet's own words: He would most like to take a trip around the world to India, not to make new discoveries, but to look at what had already been discovered from his perspective. It is said that Goethe was incapable of an objective view of nature. This is not true. Goethe proceeded methodically, like any of the modern researchers. And his greatest merit was that the scientific way of thinking led him first to man himself as a creature of nature. His goal was to understand the whole human being as a natural product, and that is what makes Goethe appear to us as imbued with thoroughly modern views of nature. He fought against the outdated theological concept of creation, he fought against Linnaeus' system of classification. He sought to comprehend nature as a whole from a comprehensive point of view. His well-known investigations into the intermediate jaw show us his tireless efforts to remove the last anatomical barrier that was intended to separate man, the highest link in the natural chain of development, from the rest of the animal world. Man is not qualitatively different from the rest of the organic world, only quantitatively; for he is still building a moral world for himself. “Noble, helpful and good should man be,” but he too must bow to the ‘eternal, brazen, great laws.’ What Kant sought in the physical world, Goethe sought in the organic world: the inner connection, the natural lawfulness of all being and all phenomena. This is where Goethe was so infinitely ahead of his time, which makes him appear as the spirit of the new era. If he had known Darwin and Haeckel, he would have said an enthusiastic “Yes” to what they said. His skull studies show how he was the first to consciously enter the field of modern comparative anatomy. As everywhere, Goethe, as a naturalist, consciously pursued a clear idea; it was not accidental lucky discoveries that he made, as one so often wants to reproach him for today.

Goethe was a naturalist through and through, and this is no less evident in his concept of art. That is why the works of Greek art seemed so sublime to him, because they created according to the same laws as nature itself. In his opinion, every artist had to feel the laws of nature before he could form organic figures himself.

And what about Goethe's God? His concept of God was the feeling of a unified world order. Goethe also sought harmony between the inorganic and organic world. Kant had described this striving as an adventure of reason, Goethe dared to persist in it.

Even if one does not want to see Goethe as an important link in the development of natural science, one thing is certain: he was the first to develop within himself the great materialistic-monistic view of nature that was to determine the character of the 19th century. Modern science has confirmed what his genius had anticipated. He initiated the great spiritual revolution, which was called to overthrow old prejudices and evoke a new spirit of the age. We must always look to him when we seek the connection between the phenomena and the great sentiments of the entire world view.

The brilliant words of the proven speaker were followed by stormy applause. After a short discussion, in which Mr. cand. phil. Rehe took the floor, the evening was concluded with the usual cozy part.