11. Relationship of the Goethean Way of Thinking to Other Views

Philosophically, Goethe benefited far more from Schiller than from Kant. Through him, namely, Goethe was really brought one stage further in the recognition of his own way of viewing things. Up to the time of that first famous conversation with Schiller, Goethe had practiced a certain way of viewing the world. He had observed plants, found that an archetypal plant underlies them, and derived the individual forms from it. This archetypal plant (and also a corresponding archetypal animal) had taken shape in his spirit, was useful to him in explaining the relevant phenomena. But he had never reflected upon what this archetypal plant was in its essential nature. Schiller opened his eyes by saying to him: It is an idea. Only from then on is Goethe aware of his idealism. Up until that conversation, he calls the archetypal plant an experience for he believed he saw it with his eyes. But in the introduction that he later added to his essay on the metamorphosis of the plants he says: “So from now on, I undertook to find the archetypal animal, which means, ultimately, the concept, the idea of the animal.” But we must bear in mind here that Schiller did not provide Goethe with something foreign to him, but rather Schiller, by observing the Goethean spirit, struggled through for the first time to a knowledge of objective idealism. He only found the right term for the way of viewing things that he recognized and marveled at in Goethe.