Or, to take another of the broader types of the scientific spirit, perhaps one of the noblest and most luminous that has ever existed, Goethe. Goethe was a half century older than Sainte-Beuve and Darwin, but he lived well down into their period and the clarity of nineteenth century scientific thinking could find no better example than he. His actual scientific work is far from contemptible, and he to some extent anticipated Darwin as to the possibilities of metamorphosis in the natural world. His speculations on the theory of light, in contradiction to those of Newton, show at least the active and energetic intelligence. But Goethe’s value to the scientific spirit rests on far broader grounds than any mere detail of scientific research or experiment. No one cultivated or practiced more than he the attitude of vast, unprejudiced curiosity, of eager search and relish for pure truth, independent of all considerations of party, or consequence, or practical bearing. It is this spiritual latitude which Matthew Arnold means when he calls Goethe the greatest poet of his own time and the greatest critic of all times. The free, broad, ample, mobile working of the human intelligence has never found a more lucid exponent than Goethe, and everywhere through his writings there are passages which will help the lover of truth, while the distilled essence of his mental attitude is to be found in the collection of ‘Maximen und Reflexionen,’ which gives the kernel of wisdom without the somewhat otiose Teutonic wrapping of amplification in which Goethe was often inclined to envelop it. It is in the highest degree curious, remembering the weaknesses of Sainte-Beuve to which I have already alluded, to read all his numerous comments on Goethe, but particularly the following: ‘Goethe understood everything in the universe—everything except perhaps two things, the Christian and the hero. There was a weakness here which belonged to the realm of heart. It seems likely that he considered Leonidas and Pascal, the latter especially, as _monstrosities_ in the order of nature.’[151] And Sainte-Beuve prided himself upon understanding the Christian and the hero both, and it is probable that he did. The interesting point in Goethe, and also in less degree in Sainte-Beuve, as compared with Darwin, is that the full development of the scientific spirit in both of them did not exercise the same sort of spiritual blight with which Darwin thought that it affected him. No human being ever lived who was more susceptible to beauty than Goethe was, and his passion for pure truth did not prevent his retaining the highest sense of artistic ecstasy through his whole long life. With him and with Sainte-Beuve both, it could hardly be said that thinking came before emotion, for both of them adored the incomparable beauty of form and the rapture that came with it up to the very end.