breadth of vision equalled by but few of the workers who preceded him. As Osborn states:
"The brilliant early achievements of Goethe in science afford another illustration of the union of imagination and powers of observation as the essential characteristics of the naturalist. When he took his journey into Italy, and the poetic instinct began to predominate over the scientific, science lost a disciple who would have ranked among the very highest, if not the highest. Of this time Goethe says: 'I have abandoned my master Loder for my friend Schiller, and Linnaeus for Shakespeare.' Yet Goethe, in the midst of poetry, never lost his passion or scientific studies. He seems to have felt instinctively that what contemporary science needed was not only observation, but generalization."[1]
Goethe derived much of his inspiration from Buffon and the German natural philosophers. Unfortunately he never discovered the works of Lamarck, although he anticipated that scientist in some of his work with plants. There can be little doubt that, had Goethe discovered the "Philosophie Zoologique," he would have accepted its principal doctrine, and would have proclaimed them with a vigor that would have overcome even the antagonism of Cuvier. As
- ↑ Op. cit., pp. 181–182. The need of which Dr. Osborn speaks was not by any means confined to science of Goethe's time. The great characteristic of modern paleontology, for example, is observation without either generalization or philosophy. It is for this reason that the science of fossils has yielded relatively meagre data on evolution.
