From the SPECTATOR, September 24, 1870.
Professor Tyndall concluded his lecture by a passage on the development theory, in which he contended that if our traditional view of matter had been Goethe’s view, that matter is ‘the living garment of God,’ instead of Young’s, who looked upon it as foreign to mind, and taking all its laws from outside itself, the development theory would not seem to us what we now mean by materialistic. The ‘Pall Mall’ falls severely on Professor Tyndall for misquoting Goethe, and shows that the passage in ‘Faust’ probably referred to, where the Erdgeist speaks of weaving a ‘living garment for the Divinity,’ did not refer to external nature at all. No doubt the special quotation was a little wide of the mark, but does the critic in the ‘Pall Mall’ doubt that Professor Tyndall was interpreting quite accurately Goethe’s conception, as elsewhere expressed with sufficient elaboration? If he does not, his criticism is a cavil. If he does, let him study Goethe more thoroughly—‘Gott und Welt,’ for example, of the proem to which a friend has sent us a faithful version to-day, which we print in another column. What can be stronger than this?—
Was wär’ ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse!
Ihm ziemt’s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen.
A Translation of Goethe’s Proemium to ‘Gott und Welt.’
To Him who from eternity, self-stirred,
Himself hath made by His creative Word!
To him, supreme, who causeth Faith to be,