1. Goethe is a wholly practical poet. He is in his works — what the Englishman is in his goods — extremely simple, neat, comfortable, and durable. He has done for German literature what Wedgwood has for the English art world. Like the Englishman he has a naturally economical and noble taste acquired through the understanding. Both qualities tolerate each other very well and have a close affinity, in the chemical sense. In his scientific studies it becomes very clear that his inclination is rather to finish completely something insignificant — to give it the greatest polish and case of expression, than to begin a whole world and do something in respect of which one can know in advance that it will not be possible to carry it out completely, that it will probably remain clumsy and that a masterly level of skill will never be achieved in it. In this field too he chooses a Romantic or otherwise nicely convoluted subject. His observations on light, on the transformation of plants and insects are at once confirmations and the most convincing proofs that the perfect didactic essay also belongs to the realm of the artist. One would also be justified in maintaining in a certain sense that Goethe is the first physicist of his age — indeed that his work is epoch — making in the history of physics. There can be no question of the scope of his knowledge, however little any discoveries may determine the rank of the scientist . It is a question of whether one contemplates nature as an artist does antiquity — for nature is nothing other than living antiquity. Nature and insight into nature come into being at the same time, like antiquity and the knowledge of antiquities; for one is greatly in error if one believes that antiquities exist. Antiquity is only now coming into being. It grows under the eyes and soul of the artist. The remains of ancient times are only the specific stimuli for the formation of antiquity. Antiquity is not made with hands. The spirit produces it through the eye — and the carved stone is only the body which first receives meaning through antiquity and becomes its appearance.

As Goethe the physicist is to other physicists, so Goethe the poet is to other poets. Here and there he is surpassed in range, diversity, and profundity, but in the art of creation, who could aspire to be his equal? With him everything is deed — as with others everything is only tendency. He really makes something, while others only make something possible — or necessary. We are all necessary and possible creators — but how few of us are real ones. The scholastic philosopher would perhaps call this active empiricism. We shall content ourselves with contemplating Goethe's artistic talent and casting another glance at his understanding. By this one can come to see the gift of generalization in a new light. He generalizes with a rare exactitude, but never without at the same time representing the object to which the generalization corresponds. This is nothing but applied philosophy — and so in the end we should find him, with more than a little astonishment, to be also a practical philosopher who applies his knowledge, as every true artist after all has always been. Even the pure philosopher will be practical, although the applied philosopher does not need to engage in pure philosophy — for this is an art in itself. Goethe's Meister. The seat of authentic art is solely in the understanding. The latter construed according to a particular concept. Imagination, wit, and judgment arc required only by this. Thus Wilhelm Meister is entirely an art product — a work of the understanding. From this point of view one sees many very mediocre works in the art gallery — on the other hand most works of literature that are considered excellent are excluded. The Italians and the Spanish show talent for art far more frequently than we do — the English have much less and are similar in this respect to ourselves, who also possess talent for art extremely rarely — even if among all nations we arc best and most richly provided with those abilities — which the understanding employs in its works. This excess of the requisite quali­ties for art certainly makes the few artists among us so unique — so outstanding, and we can be sure that the most splendid works of art will be produced among us, for no nation can surpass us in energetic universality. If I understand the most recent admirers of the literature of antiquity correctly, they have with their demand that we imitate the classical writers no other purpose than to cultivate artists for us — to awaken the talent for art in us. No modern nation has possessed the understanding of art in such high degree as the ancients. Everything for them is a work of art — but perhaps it would not be saying too much to assume that it is only for us that they are or can be so. Classical literature is like antiquity; it is not really given to us — it is not present — rather it is to be only now produced by us. Through diligent and inspired study of the ancients, classical literature is only now coming into being for us — a literature that the ancients themselves did not have. The ancients would have had to apply themselves to the contrary task — for he who is only an artist is a one — sided, narrow person. Goethe may well not be the equal of the ancients in rigor — hut he surpasses them in content — which merit however is not his own. His Meister approaches them closely enough — for how very much is it an absolute novel, without any adjective — and how much that is in our time!

Goethe will and must be surpassed — but only as the ancients can be surpassed, in content and energy, in diversity and profundity — not really as an artist — or only by very little, for his rightness and his rigor are perhaps already more exemplary than they appear.

2. Consummate philosophers arrive easily at the principle — that philosophy too is vain — and so too in all branches of learning.

3. A prime minister, a prince, a director of any kind only needs people and artists — knowledge of character and talent.

4. World psychology. It will not he possible to explain the organism without presupposing a world soul, nor the world plan without presupposing a world rational being.

If in explaining the organism no attention is paid to the soul and to the mysterious bond between it and the body, not much progress will be made. Perhaps life is nothing other than the result of this union — the action of this contact.

As light results from the friction of steel against stone, sound from touching the bow and the string, vibration from closing and opening the galvanic chain, so perhaps life results from the awakening (penetration) of organic matter.

Indirect construction. Right appears of itself if the conditions for its appearance occur. A mechanical operation relates entirely to the higher result as steel, stone, and contact relate to the spark. Free joint action.

Every action is accompanied by a higher genius.

The individual soul should be in agreement with the world soul. Mastery of the world soul and joint mastery of the individual soul.

5. On the diverse ways to have effect or to stimulate — (through intervention, thrust, contact, immediate contact, pure existence, possible existence, etc.)

6. Dramatic kind of story telling. Fairy tales and Meister. Toujours en état de Poésie.

7. High value of mathematics as active science. Preeminent interest of mechanics. (Study of contact. Acoustics). Various kinds of contacts — and tangents. Active and passive tangents. Angle of contacts. Speed of the contacts or beats. Series or sequences of heats. Line beats. Point beats. Surface beats. Mass beats. Persistent beats.

8. Foundations of geology and mineralogy. Critique of the criteria.

9. Theory of instruments — or organology.

10. Light is certainly action — light is like life, effective effect — something which reveals itself only on the conjunction of appropriate conditions. Light makes fire. Light is the genius of the fire process.

Life, like light, is capable of intensification and weakening and gradual negation. Does it also break up into colors as light does? The process of nutrition is not the cause but only the result of life.

11. All effect is transition. In chemistry both of these merge into the other and change it. That is not the case with what is called mechanical influence.

12. Characteristic of illness — the instinct for self-destruction. So it is with everything imperfect — so it is even with life — or better, with organic matter.

Dissolution of the difference between life and death. Annihilation of death.

13. Ought not all changes which bodies mutually produce in each other to he merely changes in capacity and excitability, and all chemical operations and influences to he generally uniform in that they modify the excitability and capacity of every kind of matter. Thus, for example, oxygen has this effect in the combustion process. All chemical elements are indirectly in accord. The characteristics and appearances of each substance depend on its excitability. All changes in compounds refer to the capacity and excitability of the bodies. Bodies differ as a result of their diverse excitability.

Or could it be said that bodies would most naturally be classified as a result of their diverse relations to excitability, as stimuli?

All this fits very well with galvanism. Chemistry is already galvanism — galvanism of inorganic nature. Fire is merely an aid — a learned means for the chemist.

Spontaneous combustion is galvanization. The calces of metals have not yet been used enough in medicine.

Does heat have a chemical effect? Not in the stricter sense — it only furthers galvanizations.

14. Cold is an indirect stimulus — in healthy bodies it entices more warmth to be produced. Nothing keeps a quite healthy person in a state of lively activity as much as alternating deficiency and excess of stimuli. The deficiency stimulates him to replace it — the excess causes him to moderate and confine the function, excess determines him to diminish activity. Deficiency brings about activity in the healthy person — excess brings out rest. Might works of art not be products of healthy inactivity?

15. The instinct for organization is the instinct to transform everything into tool and means.

16. Joumals are really communal books. Writing in a social group is an interesting Symptom — which hints at a further great development of the writing business. Perhaps sometime people will write, think, and act en masse — whole communities, even nations will undertake a work.

17. Every person who consists of persons is a person to the second power — or a genius. In this respect one may well say that there were no Greeks but only a Greek genius. An educated Greek was his own work only in a very mediated way and to a very slight extent. This explains the great and pure individuality of Greek art and science, while it cannot be denied that on some flanks Egyptian and oriental mysticism attacked and modernized it. In Ionia the softening influence of the warm Asiatic sky could be noticed, just as on the other hand in the earliest Dorian mass one become became aware of the mysterious reserve and severity of the Egyptian gods . Later writers have often taken up this old style as a result of the Rom antic and modern instinct; they have animated these crude figures with a new spirit, placing them among their contemporaries, in order to bring them to a halt in the facile progress of civilization and turn their attention hack to the sacred objects that have been abandoned.

18. In earlier times only nations lived — or geniuses. Genius to the second power. Hence, the ancients must be regarded en masse.

19. The question of the reason, the law of a phenomenon etc. is an abstract one, that is, it is a question directed away from the object toward the spirit. It has to do with appropriation, assimilation of the object. Through explanation the object ceases to be strange.

The spirit strives to absorb the stimulus. What is strange stimulates it. Transformation of what is strange into one's own; thus, appropriation is the ceaseless business of the spirit. One day there is to be no stimulus and nothing strange any more — the spirit is to be strange and stimulating to itself, or will be able to make it so intentionally. Now the spirit is spirit out of instinct — a nature spirit. It is to be a rational spirit, to be spirit out of reflection and art.

Nature is to become art and art is to become second nature.

20. The matter of dispute between pathologists of the humors and the nerves is a matter of dispute in common among the physicists. This dispute touches on the highest problems of physics.

The pathologists of the humors correspond to those who seek to multiply matter — the prophets of matter. The pathologists of the nerves correspond to the atomistic, mechanical prophets of form. True actionists, like Fichte etc., unite both systems. One can call these last creative observers, creators of seeing. These two are those who arc directly and indirectly inert — liquid and solid ones.

The concept of action can be divided into the concepts of matter and movement (thrust). Thus the actionist divides into the humoralists and the neurotomists. They are its closer elements — its nearest components.

21. Similarity of historical geology and mineralogy to philology.

22. Sciences divide into sciences — meanings into meanings. The more limited and determined, the more practical. On the tendency of scholars to universalize their science. Diverse objects become one object because of the fact that different meanings become one.

23. Representation of an object in series — (series of variations — modifications etc.). Such for example is the representation of the characters in Meister. In self-reflection — in things at first-, second-, third-hand, etc. Such is for example a historical series, a collection of engravings from the crudest beginning of the art until its perfection and so on — of the forms from the frog to Apollo etc.

24. Poetry is the truly absolute real. This is the heart of my philosophy.

The more poetic the more true.

25. On the sensations of thinking in the body.

26. Antiquities. 8 The Madonna. The human being is a self-given historical individual. Gradual humanity. If humanity has reached the highest stage, then the higher one will reveal itself and continue of itself. View of the history of humanity — the mob — the nations — societies — individual people. Elevation of mechanics. Fichte's intellectual chemistry. Chemistry is passionate ground. Chemistry is the crudest and earliest formation. Descriptions of paintings etc. On landscape painting — and in general painting as against sculpture. Everything must be able to be squared and not squared at the same time. Utilization, use is infinitely gradual — so too measurement. Landscapes — surfaces — structures — architectonic structures. Cave landscapes. Atmospheres, cloud landscapes. The whole landscape is to form one individual — vegetation and inorganic nature — liquid, solid nature — male — female. Geological landscapes. Nature variations. Must not sculpture and painting be symbolic. The art gallery is a storeroom of indirect stimuli of all kinds for the poet. Necessity of all works of art. Every work of art has an ideal a priori — it has a necessity of itself to exist. Only through this does a true critique of painters become possible. Suite of madonnas. Suite of heroes. Suite of wise men. Suite of geniuses. Suite of gods. Suite of human beings.

One is compelled by the antiquities to treat them as sacred objects.

Particular kinds of souls and spirits. Which live in trees, landscapes, stones, paintings. One must look at a landscape as one looks at a dryad and an oread. One should feel a landscape as one does a body. Every land­scape is an ideal body for a particular kind of spirit. The sonnet. Wit. Sense of the ancient world — awakened by the antiquities.

27. The poet borrows all his materials other than images.

28. Perpetual virgins — born women. Fichte's apotheosis of Kantian philosophy. Thinking about thinking indeed teaches us to gain power over our thinking — because we learn thereby to think how and what we will. Inner, immensely wide, infinite universe — analogy with the external world — light — gravity.

29. Must then all people be people, beings quite other than people can exist in human form. That educators should be virtuous is the indirectly positive principle of the art of education. Universal skill of writing. On those who think many things — and those who think one thing — for example, Friedrich Schlegel and Fichte.

Trivialization of the divine and apotheosis of the commonplace. We have emerged from the period of generally valid forms. Influence of the material of sculpture on the figure — and its effect. Should the more attractive and the stronger effect of finer and rarer materials not be galvanic? Compulsion is a stimulus for the spirit — compulsion has something absolutely stimulating for the spirit. Medical application of happiness and unhappiness. On neutralization — complicated illness — local complaints — systems of procreation. All doubt, all need for truth — dissolution. Knowledge is the result of rawness and overdevelopment — a symptom of an imperfect constitution. All scientific education therefore tends toward making one clever — practice. All scientific healing tends toward restitution of health, where one has no scientific needs.

30. All that is visible clings to the invisible. That which can be heard to that which cannot — that which can be felt to that which cannot. Perhaps the thinkable to the unthinkable.

The telescope is an artificial, invisible organ. Vessel.

The imagination is the marvelous sense that can replace all senses for us — and which already is so much directed by our will. If the external senses seem to be entirely governed by mechanical laws — then the imagination is obviously not bound to the present and to contact with external stimuli.

31. The unity of the image, the form, of picturesque compositions rests on fixed relations, like the unity of musical harmony. Harmony and melody.

32. Our body is a part of the world — or better, a limb: It already expresses the independence, the analogy with the whole — in short, the concept of the microcosm. This limb must correspond to the whole. As many senses, as many modes of the universe — the universe is a complete analogue of the human being in body, mind, and spirit. The latter is the abbreviation, the former the elongation of the same substance.

In general, I neither ought nor want to act at will on the world — for that purpose I have the body. Through modification of my body I modify my world for myself. Through not acting on the vessel of my existence I likewise shape my world indirectly.

33. The tree can become for me a blossoming flame — the human being a speaking one — the animal a walking flame.

34. Everything that is perceived is perceived in proportion to its power of repulsion.

Explanation of the visible and the illuminated — on the analogy of perceptible heat. So also with sounds. Perhaps too with thoughts.