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us all . " . ... " The destruction of such high powers of soul is a thing that never , and under no circumstances , can even come into question . Nature is not such a prodigal spendthrift of her capital . Wieland ' s soul is one of Nature ' s treasures—a perfect jewel . What adds to this is , that his long life had increased , not diminished , these noble intellectual endowments . " .... " You havie long known / ' resumed he , ' that ideas which are without a firm foundation in the sensible world , whatever be their value in other respects , bring with them no conviction to me , for that , in what concerns the operations of Nature , I want to know , not merely to conjecture or to believe . With regard to the individual existence of the soul after death , my course has been as follows : —This
hypothesis stands in no sort of contradiction with the observations of many y ears , which I have made on the constitution of our own species , and of all other existencies ; on the contrary , they furnish fresh evidence in its support But how much , or how little , of this individual existence is worthy to endure , is another question , and a point we must leave to the Deity /—vol . i ., p . 67—70 .
After the assertion of the conviction ( so delightful , were it a mere illusion ) of future existence , both individual and conscious , Goethe proceeds to explain his speculations on the possibility of such an existence ; and adopts for the purpose the Leibnitzian language . It is as clear as the subject admits ; and though we cannot follow him in his deduction , we give his preliminary view .
I assume various classes and orders of the primary elements of all existences , as the germs of all phenomena in Nature ; these I would call Souls , since from them proceeds the animation or vivification of the whole , or rather monades . Let us always stick to that Leibnitzian term ; a better can scarcely be found , to express the simplicity of the simplest existence . Now , as experience shows us , some of these monades , or germs , are so small , so insignificant , that they are , at the highest , adapted only to a subordinate use and being . Others , again , are strong and powerful . These latter , accordingly , draw into their sphere all that approaches them , and transmute it into something belonging to themselves , i . e . into a human body , into a plant , an animal , or , to go higher still , into a star . This process they continue till the small or larger world , whose completion lies predestined in them , at length comes bodily into light . Such alone are , I think > properly to be called souls . Hence it follows , that there are monades of worlds , souls of worlds , as well as monades of ants and souls of ants ; and that both are , if not of
identical , of cognate origin Every sun , every planet , bears withm itself the germ of a higher fulfilment , in virtue of which its developement is as regular , and must take place according to the same laws , as the developement of a rose-tree , by means of leaf , stalk , and flower . You way call the germ an idea , or a monade , as you please—I have no objection ; enough that it is invisible , and antecedent to the visible external develo pement . We must not be misled by the larvce , or imperfect forma of the intermediate states , which this idea or germ may assume in its transitions . One and the same metamorphosis , or capacity of transformation in Nature , produces a rose out of a leaf , a caterpillar out of an e and again a butterfly out of the caterpillar . '—voli ., p . 70—72 .
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Characteristics of Go ethe . 174 )
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 179, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/19/
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