16. Goethe as Thinker and Investigator

We must picture to ourselves where the Goethean world view stood at this time, at the beginning of his study of colour. By this time he had already grasped his magnificent thoughts about the metamorphosis of organic entities. Through his discovery of the intermaxillary bone, a view had already arisen in him of the unity of all natural existence. Each individual thing appeared to him as a particular modification of the ideal principle that holds sway in the whole of nature. In his letters from Italy he had already stated that a plant is only a plant through the fact that it bears within itself the “idea of the plant.” This idea was something concrete for him; it was the unity, filled with spiritual content, in all particular plants. It could not be grasped by the bodily eyes, to be sure, but could very well be grasped by the eye of the spirit. Whoever can see it, sees it in every plant.