Another, and very different, work was published in this edition—“Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (“The Metamorphosis of Plants”). In this famous essay Goethe expounds the theory that the foliar organs of flowering plants are all to be regarded as various forms of the leaf. To this discovery he had been led by prolonged and delicate observation. The idea seems to have dawned upon him before he went to Italy, but it was in Italy, where he had many opportunities of studying plants he had not formerly known, that he became conscious of its full significance. The doctrine has long been accepted by botanists, and it acquired fresh importance when it came to be associated, as it is now associated, with the general law of evolution. Goethe delighted in the conception, not only for its own sake, but because it seemed to him a most striking illustration of the principle that in organic nature all things are created in accordance with enduring types. The doctrine of the metamorphosis of plants had been set forth, thirty years before Goethe’s treatise was written, by K. F. Wolff. Goethe afterwards learned this, and was in no way disturbed by the fact that he had been anticipated. That the theory had suggested itself to two minds working independently gave him hearty pleasure as welcome evidence of its truth.
Early in 1790 Goethe was summoned to Venice to meet the Duchess Dowager, who, having travelled for some time in Italy, was now about to return to Weimar. Her coming was long delayed, and, being restless and impatient, he occupied himself in writing a series of rather bitter epigrams. After six weeks’ absence he was delighted to find himself again in Weimar, for now his home was doubly dear to him, a son having been born on Christmas Day of the previous year. The child was baptized by Herder, and received the name Julius August Walther. Afterwards three children were born dead, and a fourth died in infancy. On each of these occasions Goethe suffered poignant grief, and wholly lost his self-control.
His second visit to Venice was made memorable by an important scientific discovery. He was standing with his valet Seidel in the Jews’ cemetery, when Seidel lifted a piece of a sheep’s skull, and handed it to Goethe, pretending that it was the skull of a Jew. As Goethe looked at it, it suddenly occurred to him that the bones of which the skull is composed are not essentially different from vertebræ, but are, in fact, vertebræ transformed. The idea corresponds exactly with his conception of the foliar organs of flowering plants as transformed leaves. Goethe did not mean that in the course of long ages vertebræ had been developed into the bones of the skull, but simply that Nature, in creating these bones, modifies vertebræ to suit special needs. Like his earlier discoveries, however, this theory—which is only another application of his general doctrine of types—becomes thoroughly intelligible only when the facts to which it relates are explained by the law of evolution. It is the supreme merit of Goethe’s contributions to biology that they all pointed in the direction of evolution, and were among the influences that made the recognition of it, sooner or later, inevitable.
About this time Goethe interested himself in the study of Newton’s theory of colours, and, that he might understand it more fully, borrowed some prisms. When the owner asked that they should be returned, he thought he would like to try one of them again before sending them back. The result was that he began to suspect that Newton’s doctrine was not true, and in this suspicion he was confirmed by further research. This subject had an extraordinary fascination for Goethe, and almost to the end of his life he worked at it at intervals, firmly convinced, not only that Newton was wrong, but that he himself had discovered the true scientific significance of colours; and he attributed vast importance to his own doctrine. In old age he even told Eckermann one day that he did not at all pride himself on his poetry, but that his theory of colours did seem to him something to be proud of. Unfortunately, Goethe here dealt with problems for the solution of which he had not been adequately prepared. The subject appeared to him less complicated than it really is, and his conclusions have been unanimously rejected by men of science. His writings about it, however, have a certain interest, not merely because of their lucid style, but because he brings together much curious information relating to the history of opinion on the question, and also because it is hardly less instructive to understand the intellectual influences by which a great man is misled than to understand those by which he is guided to truth.
In 1791 the Duke established a Court Theatre in Weimar, and asked Goethe to undertake the direction of it. Goethe consented, and for many years this was one of the duties to which he devoted most attention. His aim was to provide representations that should appeal to, and delight, a really cultivated taste, and he was almost as anxious that the acting should be maintained at a high level as that the dramas acted should be good. He took immense pains to realize his ideal, and under his control the Weimar Theatre ultimately became famous. All over Germany it was recognized as the theatre in which most was done for the development of a great school of dramatic art.
The Duke, anxious to find some fitting way of expressing to Goethe his gratitude for the services he had rendered, presented him, in 1792, with the house in which he spent the rest of his life. Goethe changed it to suit his own ideas, and made it the handsomest and pleasantest private dwelling in Weimar. In altering it he received much help from his friend Meyer, the Swiss artist whose acquaintance he had made in Rome. Meyer had come to Weimar at Goethe’s urgent request, and for several years lived as a guest in his house. He painted for Goethe a portrait of Christiane with her little boy in her arms in the position of the “Madonna della sedia.” This portrait was always kept under a curtain, and Goethe counted it among the most precious of his treasures.
We must think of Goethe at this time as often directing his attention gravely and anxiously to the progress of events in France, where the movement of thought by which he had been so profoundly influenced in youth had at last led to its logical issues in action. Some of the best of Goethe’s contemporaries in Germany hailed the French Revolution as the beginning of a new and glorious era for humanity. Their rejoicings were not shared by Goethe. He knew well, indeed, the sufferings of the oppressed population, not only of France, but of other countries, his own included; and he was eager that their condition should be improved by just and wise government. But he found it impossible to believe that the end could be attained by violence, and he had no doubt that the tendency of the Revolution would be to check for many a day every great and noble movement in art, literature, and science. He fully recognized, however, that the events he deplored were in the last resort due, not to self-seeking agitators, but to the abuses of a thoroughly corrupt society. Long afterwards he said to Eckermann that if he detested revolutionists, he detested not less strongly the people who made revolutions inevitable; and that this was his feeling from the beginning is distinctly indicated by several of his writings. “Gross-Cophta,” a prose play written in 1791, deals with the story of the diamond necklace, with which the impostor Cagliostro was intimately connected. The play is not artistically important, but it shows how dark a view Goethe took of some elements of the social life of France in the period immediately preceding the Revolution. In “Die Aufgeregten,” an unfinished prose play belonging to the same time, he represents the peasantry of a French estate as rising in revolt against the countess to whom they owe allegiance. The countess, being a woman of enlightened opinions, does not dispute that they have solid grievances, and readily meets them half way. The moral evidently is that if the French nobles as a class had possessed her elevation of character, the peril of violent change might without difficulty have been averted.
In 1792 began the long series of revolutionary wars. The Duke of Weimar served as a general in the Prussian army, and at his request Goethe accompanied him during the campaign in Champagne. Here Goethe realized for the first time the terrible nature of the forces which the Revolution had let loose on the world. During the cannonade of Valmy, anxious to know what the “cannon-fever” was really like, he rode to a spot exposed to the enemy’s fire. On the evening of this memorable day, when the French gained their first success, Goethe wrote in his tent: “From this place, and to-day, begins a new epoch in the history of the world, and you may say that you were there.”
On his return, after an absence of four months, he wrote in hexameters, as a satire on the political follies of the day, his admirable version of the old Low Dutch tale, “Reineke Fuchs.” Next year, 1793, he was again with the Duke, this time before Mainz, which the Prussians were trying to recapture from the French. When the town was given up, Goethe felt that he had had enough, and more than enough, of war, and went back with relief to his home and his studies at Weimar.