'I answered, that perhaps the initiated themselves were never rightly at their ease in it, and that there surely was another way of representing Nature, not separated and disunited, but active and alive, and expanding from the whole into the parts. On this point he requested explanations, but did not hide his doubts; he would not allow that such a mode, as I was recommending, had been already pointed out by experiment. 'We reached his house; the talk induced me to go in. I then expounded to him with as much vivacity as possible, the _Metamorphosis of Plants_,[71] drawing out on paper, with many characteristic strokes, a symbolic Plant for him, as I proceeded. He heard and saw all this with much interest and distinct comprehension; but when I had done, he shook his head and said: "This is no experiment, this is an idea." I stopped with some degree of irritation; for the point which separated us was most luminously marked by this expression. The opinions in _Dignity and Grace_ again occurred to me; the old grudge was just awakening; but I smothered it, and merely said: "I was happy to find that I had got ideas without knowing it, nay that I saw them before my eyes." [Footnote 71: A curious physiologico-botanical theory by Goethe, which appears to be entirely unknown in this country; though several eminent continental botanists have noticed it with commendation. It is explained at considerable length in this same _Morphologie_.]