The Quest for the Seeds of Eternal Growth: Goethe and Humboldt’s Presentation of Nature

[G]enau um die Zeit, da Kants Werk vollendet und die Wegekarte durch den kahlen Wald des Wirklichen entworfen war, begann das Goethesche Suchen nach den Samen ewigen Wachstums.¹

Walter Benjamin’s claim brings an important element of Goethe’s work into sharp focus. Debates linger over the value of the scientific side of Goethe’s quest for the “seeds of eternal growth,” with some thinkers casting doubt on his work as a scientist, wondering if we would even bother with Goethe’s science if it were not for his poetry (Charles Sherrington), joining claims that Goethe’s scientific interests were a “real crime against the majesty of his poetic genius” (J. G. Robertson). Some others look most favorably upon Goethe’s contributions to the natural sciences. W. Troll, for example, writes, with no risk of understatement, that “in a fully reasoned study of Goethe’s morphology” we find the “focal point of his whole mental life.”² One thing is clear: Goethe himself did not consider his work in the natural sciences to be a mere hobby. As is well known, Goethe’s trip to Italy (1786–88) opened him to a universe of new flora and fauna—providing him with material that lasted the rest of his life. A particular palm in Padua fascinated Goethe and left its traces in his work for years to come.

An obsession with palms and a serious engagement with the quest for the seeds of eternal growth was shared by a figure who, like Goethe, fused art and science in a seemingly effortless way (and a way that may bewilder scholars in our overspecialized times). While Alexander von Humboldt’s (1769–1859) scientific work does not raise the same sorts of doubts as Goethe’s did (i.e., whether he was a scientist or just a poet who derived pleasure from dabbling in science?), we do find in this “scientist’s” work a unique blend of the aesthetic with the scientific (classifications are always so rigid that they are bound to leave out important elements of a given thinker’s contributions).³ In my view, the quest that Goethe and Humboldt shared, one that Benjamin so nicely captures with the phrase “quest for the seeds of eternal growth,” is a romantic quest, in the Frühromantik sense of this term. A concern with life, with capturing reality in its change, is central to the intellectual project of Frühromantik and to the work of both Goethe and Humboldt. Moreover, this concern for life is carried out in a way that does not rest in any fixed forms. And this rejection of fixed forms places the romantic quest at a measured distance from idealist quests of a similar sort and puts both Goethe and Humboldt in close company to the early German Romantics. Both Goethe and Humboldt are after a method of presentation of nature (Darstellung der Natur) that will enable them to “see” the inner unity of nature, a unity that cannot be captured through the methods of the natural sciences alone. Such a “Blick in die Tiefen des Naturlebens” leads to an aesthetic turn, one more element, as we shall see, that ties both Goethe and Humboldt to the early German Romantics. Let’s begin with the relation between Goethe and Humboldt.

1. The Presentation of Nature in Goethe and Humboldt

In Goethe’s novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften, we find the following expression of enthusiasm for Humboldt in a section from Ottilie’s diary (in chapter 7 of Section 2):

Manchmal, wenn mich ein neugieriges Verlangen nach solchen abenteurlichen Dingen anwandelte, habe ich den Reisenden beneidet, der solche Wunder mit andern Wundern in lebendiger alltäglicher Verbindung sieht. Aber auch er wird ein anderer Mensch. Es wandelt niemand ungestraft unter Palmen, und die Gesinnungen ändern sich gewiß in einem Lande, wo Elefanten und Tiger zu Hause sind.

Nur der Naturforscher ist verehrungswert, der uns das Fremdeste, Seltsamste mit seiner Lokalität, mit aller Nachbarschaft, jedesmal in dem eigensten Elemente zu schildern und darzustellen weiß. Wie gern möchte ich nur...