(ed.), F. W. J. Schelling. Briefe und Dokumente, 3 vols. to date (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1962B), 1: 176-77: “A short while back he [Goethe] spent several weeks here. I was with him for a long time every day, and had to read aloud my work on Naturphilosophie and explained it to him. What a florescence of ideas these conversations have produced for me, you can well imagine.” 37
Friedrich Schelling, Einleitung zu dem Entwurf eines Systems der
Naturphilosophie, in Schellings Werke (Münchner Jubiläumsdruck), ed. Manfred Schröter, 12 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1927B1959) 2: 278 (III: 278). 38
Goethe to Jacobi (17 October 1796), in Goethes Briefe, 2: 240.
39
Goethe’s diary indicates they met several times during Schelling’s first year
(1798) in Jena, and at the end of May, they performed those optical experiments mentioned above. See, Goethe, Tagebücher (28-30 May 1798), in Werke (Weimar Ausgabe), III, 2: 109. 40
Ibid (7-8 June), pp. 110-11.
41
Goethe, Tag-und Jahres-Hefte 1798, in Sämtliche Werke, 14: 58.
42
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Weltseele, in ibid., 6.1: 53-54: “Ihr greifet rasch
nach ungeformten Erden/ Und wirket schöpfrisch jung/ Dass sie belebt und stets belebter werden,/ Im abgemess’nen Schwung.” The exact date of the poem is uncertain, but it seems to have come from sometime in 1798-1799. 41