16. Goethe as Thinker and Investigator

But no one is able to construct, from the idea alone, the manifoldness that arises before the outer senses. The intuitive spirit is able to know the idea. The particular configurations are accessible to him only when he directs his senses outward, when he observes, looks. The reason why a modification of the idea arises in sense-perceptible reality in precisely this and not in another way cannot be thought up, but rather must be sought in the realm of reality.