Second Lecture

It is therefore understandable that Goethe was particularly impressed when, decades later, he found a description of his special way of thinking in the work of the psychologist Heinroth. Heinroth called Goethe's thinking “objective thinking.” And Goethe was particularly fond of this term, “objective thinking,” appealed to Goethe in particular, because he felt that his thinking in a certain way submerged itself in what it observed, that it connected intimately with what was observed, that it slipped out of subjectivity, so to speak, and slipped into the object, that the objects of perception were completely taken over by the concepts and the concepts in turn completely submerged themselves in the objects of perception. “Objective thinking,” said Heinroth, and Goethe really found in this a characteristic of what lived in his process of cognition.