Lecture I

The Science of our time makes experiments; having thus studied the phenomena, it then tries to form ideas about the so-called causes that are supposed to be there behind them;—behind the subjective phenomenon of light or colour for example, the objective wave-movement in the ether. Not in this style did Goethe apply scientific thinking. In his researches into Nature he does not try to proceed from the so-called “known” to the so-called “unknown”. He always wants to stay within the sphere of what is known, nor in the first place is he concerned to enquire whether the latter is merely subjective, or objective. Goethe does not entertain such concepts as of the “subjective” phenomena of colour and the “objective” wave-movements in outer space. What he beholds spread out in space and going on in time is for him one, a single undivided whole. He does not face it with the question, subjective or objective? His use of scientific thinking and scientific method is not to draw conclusions from the known to the unknown; he will apply all thinking and all available methods to put the phenomena themselves together till in the last resort he gets the kind of phenomena which he calls archetypal,—the Ur-phenomena. These archetypal phenomena—once more, regardless of “subjective or objective”—bring to expression what Goethe feels is fundamental to a true outlook upon Nature and the World. Goethe therefore remains amid the sequence of actual phenomena; he only sifts and simplifies them and then calls “Ur-phenomenon” the simplified and clarified phenomenon, ideally transparent and comprehensive.