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Romantic Empiricism
Romantic Empiricism
Nature, Art, and Ecology from
Herder to Humboldt
DA L IA NA S S A R
1
3
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For Clara
No one is prepared to grasp that, both in nature and in art,
the sole and supreme process is the creation of form.
J. W. von Goethe
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Note on Referencing xvii
Introduction: Finding Romantic Empiricism 1

I .1 The Idea of Romantic Empiricism 1
I.2 Mapping the Terrain: Romantic Empiricism in Context 2
I.3 Romantic Empiricism: Methodology and Goals 5
I.4 Kant and Romantic Empiricism 6
I.5 Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt 9
1. Setting the Stage: Kant and the Critique of the Power
of Judgment 13
1 .1 Reflecting Judgment: A First Look 15
1.2 The Analogical Structure of Teleological Judgment 22
1.3 The Place of Analogy in the Eighteenth Century 28
1.4 Kant’s Critique of Analogy 33
1.5 The Inexplicability of Organization 36
1.6 The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment 43
1.7 Teleological Judgment, Intuitive Understanding, and the
Goals of Science 49
2. The Hermeneutics of Nature: Herder on Animal and
Human Worlds 53
2 .1 The Problem with “Nature” 55
2.2 Nature’s Many Directions 57
2.3 Herder’s Hermeneutics 60
2.4 Human and Animal Languages 67
2.5 The Analogical Structure of Cognition 77
2.6 Herder’s Naturalism 82
2.7 A Dynamic Conception of Nature 84
3. The Science of Describing: Herder, Goethe, and the Hauptform 86
3 .1 Force versus Form: Historical Perspectives 89
3.2 Herder and the Hauptform 91
3.3 Goethe and the Intermaxillary Bone 96
3.4 Description, Explanation, and Necessity 102
x Contents
4. Aesthetic Education and the Transformation of the Scientist 104

4 .1 Problems of Knowledge: A First Look 107
4.2 Goethe’s Aesthetic Education 110
4.3 Naturegemäße Darstellung 116
4.4 The Structure and Aims of The Metamorphosis of Plants 119
4.5 The Question of “Seeing” 127
4.6 Mediating Elements 131
4.7 The Poetic Metamorphosis of the Plant 137
5. Intuitive Judgment and Goethe’s Ethics of Knowledge 146
5 .1 Intuitive Judgment 149
5.2 The Urphänomen 154
5.3 Schiller on the Urphänomen and Rational Empiricism 163
5.4 Goethe’s Environmental Ethics and the Source of Responsibility 166
6. Organism and Environment: The Aesthetic Foundations of
Humboldt’s Ecological Insight 176
6.1 Thinking Observation: Goethe and the Origins of Humboldt’s
Methodology 179
6.2 External Teleology: Kant’s Either/Or 185
6.3 Conditions Rather Than Causes: Goethe’s Critique of
External Teleology 187
6.4 The Urformen of Plants: Capturing the Trees and the Forest 192
6.5 Plant Forms and Contexts 197
6.6 The Physiognomy of Plants: The Physiognomy of Nature 206
6.7 Humboldt’s Ecological Insight 210
7. Embodied Cognition: Humboldt and the Art of Science 212
7 .1 “Truth to Nature”: Humboldt’s Understanding of Truth in Art 217
7.2 Poetry versus Painting: Lessing, Schiller, and Humboldt 223
7.3 Embodied Landscapes: Schiller’s “Walk” and Humboldt’s Views 228
7.4 Steppes, Deserts, Jungles, and Waterfalls: Humboldt’s Embodied
Aesthetics 232
7.5 The Ecological Significance of Embodied Aesthetics 237
7.6 The Moral Significance of Embodied Aesthetics 241
Conclusion: The Relevance of Romantic Empiricism 245
Notes 249
Works Cited 287
Index 299
Acknowledgments
There are many people and organizations who have played a crucial role in
the development of this book. I want first to acknowledge the Australian
Research Council, Discovery Project DP160103769 (2016– 2018), the
Humboldt Foundation grant for experienced researchers (2019–2020), and
the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Council,
Ultimate Peer Review grant (2018).
I also want to acknowledge a number of highly innovative and re-
search initiatives at the University of Sydney, which have allowed me to
deepen and expand my work in unexpected and exciting ways: Sydney
Intellectual History Network, Theories and Conceptions of Life from the
19th Century to the Present, and the Multi-Species Justice research in-
itiative. In this regard, I especially want to thank Danielle Celermajer,
Stephen Gaukroger, Daniela Helbig, Jennifer Milam, Cat Moir, David
Schlosberg, Michelle St. Anne, Dinesh Wadiwel, Thom van Dooren, Anik
Waldow, Christine Winter, and Genevieve Wright. There is no doubt
that this book has been shaped by the workshops, reading groups, and
conversations that I have had with them over the years.
I also wish to thank the many wonderful thinkers from whose work I’ve
learned and whose penetrating feedback has nudged me in new directions:
Iain McCalman, Monica Gagliano, Sebastian Gardner, Moira Gatens,
Craig Holdrege, Nigel Hoffmann, Simon Lumsden, Jennifer Mensch,
Lydia Moland, Paul Redding, Ulrich Schlösser, Niels Weidtmann, and my
friend and coeditor on other projects, Kristin Gjesdal. I want to thank Eric
Watkins and Clinton Tolley and the PhD students in the history of phi-
losophy colloquium at the University of California, San Diego. Their gen-
erous comments on an early version of the manuscript were immense, and
I am grateful for their continued support. And, last—but not least—I want
to thank Margaret Barbour, whose openness and interest have allowed us
to undertake exciting new research together.
xii Acknowledgments
I am also grateful to many friends, with whom I’ve had some of the best
conversations over the past years, especially Enite Giovanelli, Tanja Rall,
Stefan Rall, and Kristin Funke. I want to thank Anselma Murswiek for per-
mission to use her wonderful painting, and my parents, Rosette and Talal
Nassar. I especially want to thank Luke Fischer, my favorite conversation
partner and most incisive editor.
Abbreviations
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
FA Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche (Frankfurter Ausgabe).

Edited by H. Birus et al. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag,
1985–2003.
HA Werke (Hamburger Ausgabe). Edited by E. Trunz et al. Hamburg: Christian
Wegner Verlag, 1949–1971.
LA Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft (Leopoldina Ausgabe). Edited by
D. Kuhn et al. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1947–.
MA Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens (Münchner Ausgabe).
Edited by K. Richter et al. Munich: Carl Hanser, 1985–1998.
TAG Tagebücher. Edited by W. Albrecht and E. Zehm. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000.
WA Goethes Werke (Weimarer Ausgabe). Edited by P. Raabe et al.
Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1887–1919.
Johann Gottfried Herder
FHA Werke in zehn Bänden (Frankfurter Ausgabe). Edited by Jürgen Brummack

and Martin Bollacher. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag,
1985–2000.
HPW Philosophical Writings. Edited and translated by Michael Forster.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
SW Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Bernard Suphan. Berlin: Weidmann,
1877–1913.
SWA Selected Writings on Aesthetics. Edited and translated by Gregory Moore.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Alexander von Humboldt
CE 1 Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Volume 1. Edited

and translated by E. C. Otté, with an introduction by Nicolaas Rupke.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. [Original: London:
Bohn, 1849–1851.]
xiv Abbreviations
CE 2 Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Volume 2.

Edited and translated by E. C. Otté, with an introduction by Michael
Dettelbach. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. [Original:
London: Bohn, 1850].
Edited and translated by E. C. Otté. London: Bohn, 1851.
Edited and translated by E. C. Otté and W. S. Dallas. London: Bohn, 1858.
DA Darmstädter Ausgabe. Edited with commentary by Hanno Beck.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2018.
JB Die Jugendbriefe Alexander von Humboldts 1787–1799. Edited by Ilse Jahn
and Fritz Lange. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1973.
KNS Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. Volume 1: A Critical Edition. Edited
with an introduction by Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Kosmos Kosmos. Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung. Edited by Ottmar
Ette and Oliver Lubrich. Frankfurt am Main: Eichhorn Verlag, 2004.
VN Views of Nature. Edited by Stephen T. Jackson and Laura Dassow
Walls. Translated by Mark W. Person. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2014.
Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland
EGP Essay on the Geography of Plants. Edited with an introduction by Stephen

T. Jackson. Translated (from French) by Sylvie Romanowski. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009.
PNR Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America,
During the Years 1799–1804. Edited and translated by Thomasina Ross.
3 volumes. London: Bohm, 1852–1853.
PNW Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America,
During the Years 1799–1804. Edited and translated by Helen Maria
Williams. 7 volumes. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and
Brown, 1814–1829.
Immanuel Kant
AA Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaft.

Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902–.
Abbreviations xv
Friedrich Schiller
NA Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Edited by Julius Petersen et al. Weimar:

Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1943–2010.
Friedrich von Schlegel
KFSA Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe. Edited by E. Behler, J. J. Anstett, and

H. Eichner. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1958–2006.
Note on Referencing
I have mostly used the FA edition of Goethe’s work, as it is more easily acces-
sible than the other editions. However, references to Goethe’s On Morphology
(Zur Morphologie) are to MA, because in this edition the works appear chron-
ologically, according to their date of publication, and not (as is the case in
FA), according to the date on which they were written. I have also referenced
LA or WA in instances where a work does not appear in FA.
With regard to titles of works, I provide the English and German titles
in my first reference, while in all following references I provide only the
English title. In the case of Humboldt, however, I do the opposite: I refer to
the German title (with an English translation in parentheses at the first men-
tion), and only use the German title thereafter, unless I am specifically citing
an English translation of Humboldt’s works. This has to do with the fact that
Humboldt played a role in translating his work—whether from French to
German, or from German to English—such that some of the translations
often include passages not in the original, use terms that were not employed
in the original, or offer interpretations that further elucidate ideas expressed
in the original.
Introduction
Finding Romantic Empiricism
I.1. The Idea of Romantic Empiricism
Romantic empiricism: two words that are not usually placed side by side,
and that seem to suggest opposing philosophical views and tendencies.
Romanticism is often associated with idealism and taken to imply a turn to
the subject and a focus on the subjective conditions of knowledge. The ro-
mantic approach to nature thus tends to be regarded as a form of subjective
constructivism. Furthermore, romanticism is identified with a strong in-
terest in the arts and aesthetic experience. Empiricism, by contrast, is out-
wardly focused and bottom-up, in its view that all knowledge must begin
with what is seen or experienced. In addition, some forms of empiricism ap-
pear from an idealist perspective to be naive: they underestimate the subject’s
creative role in knowledge, or they do not adequately differentiate between
what is given to the senses and what is known through the understanding.
Finally, contrary to romanticism, empiricism rarely pays attention to the
arts and their epistemic significance. In short: romanticism and empiricism
hardly resemble one another, and to place them side by side is to offer a par-
adox of sorts.
The thesis of this book is that romantic empiricism is not an oxymoron
but refers to a philosophical tradition that deserves renewed attention
today. While the roots of romantic empiricism can be traced back to mid-
eighteenth-century France, the tradition achieved its greatest philosoph-
ical sophistication and rigor in Germany in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Inspired by the questions and concerns articulated
by Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788) and elaborated by Denis
Diderot (1713–1784), thinkers from Johann Gottfried Herder to Alexander
von Humboldt developed a distinctive methodological approach to the study
of nature—an approach that drew significantly on the arts and aesthetic ex-
perience. Through this aesthetic science, the romantic empiricists were able

2 Romantic Empiricism
to deepen and expand their understanding of nature and, as I will show, con-
tribute to the emergence of ecology and ecological thinking more generally.
These thinkers are romantic not only because they were contemporaries
of the Jena romantics, but also, and more significantly, because they de-
veloped an approach to the study of nature in which the arts and aesthetic
experience play a crucial role. They are romantic, in other words, because
they recognized that artistic capacities and devices can transform the way in
which we perceive and think about the world and ourselves within it. They are
empiricist because they emphasize observation and seek to remain with the
phenomena. They are critical of systematic approaches to nature that begin
with an abstract idea or postulate. Instead, they begin with what is seen and
sensed. But they depart from mainstream empiricism in two crucial ways.
On the one hand, like the rationalists, their aim is to arrive at the necessary,
the idea, within the phenomenon. On the other hand, and like the idealists,
they recognize the creative role of the knower.
However, it is important to emphasize that this group of thinkers was not
simply synthesizing various aspects from different philosophical schools or
methodologies. Rather, they developed a coherent approach to the study of
nature, one which does not simply map onto more well-known approaches.
Furthermore, their approach was not only theoretically articulated, but was
also developed through their practice. In fact, their practice often influenced
and transformed their theory. By practice I mean both the study of nature
and their practice as literary critics, artists, appreciators of art, travelers, and
explorers. It would be no exaggeration to describe the romantic empiricists
as thinkers for whom theory and practice were intertwined and deeply
aligned: the one realized in and shaped by the other. Who, then, were the ro-
mantic empiricists?
I.2. Mapping the Terrain: Romantic Empiricism

in Context
Although the nineteenth century is often identified with the exploitation

and destruction of nature and culture (Indigenous cultures in particular),
it also involved what Sankar Muthu has described as a “historically anom-
alous and understudied episode” in social thought, a moment in which
philosophers, artists, and scientists turned a critical eye on the dominant
views of nature and sought to offer alternative accounts of the natural
Introduction 3
world and the human place within it.1 This period of critical engagement,
which reached its apex in Germany, remains singular in both its breadth
and its philosophical rigor. It was a time when philosophers, scientists, and
artists worked together to investigate the metaphysical and epistemological
dimensions of the human relation to the natural world and determine their
ethical implications.
While this focus on the study of nature, and the human place within it,
was defining for German philosophies at the turn of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the methodologies they employed were not always aligned and, in
some instances, radically differed. Friedrich Schelling, for instance, sought
to “construct” nature on the basis of a priori principles, arguing (on system-
atic grounds) that human culture develops out of nature.2 This contrasts
with philosophies that questioned the goal of systematicity and the method-
ology of construction, which are perhaps epitomized in Friedrich Schlegel’s
statement that “it is equally deadly for the spirit to have a system and not
to have one” (KFSA 2, 173, no. 53). And it also contrasts with nonspecula-
tive approaches to nature and mind (culture), which emphasize experience
and observation and seek to understand both nature and culture in light of a
larger (historical) context—as in the work of Herder.
The romantic empiricists, as the name suggests, belonged to the latter
group, and the four figures that this book investigates are Kant (1724–1804),
especially his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), Goethe (1749–1832),
Herder (1744–1803), and Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). The cen-
tral claim of Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and Ecology from Herder to
Humboldt is that these thinkers developed a philosophically sophisticated
empiricist approach to the natural world by working together—sometimes as
rivals, but more often than not as teachers and collaborators. While Herder,
Goethe, and Humboldt clearly belong to the romantic empiricist tradition,
Kant’s place within it is more ambivalent, as I will discuss shortly.
Kant, Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt are widely regarded as major fig-
ures of the late Enlightenment, Weimar classicism, and romanticism.3
While Kant continues to be considered the most important philosopher of
the modern period, over the last few years Herder has received ample at-
tention, leading Marion Heinz to describe the current interest as a “Herder
Renaissance.”4 Similarly, Goethe’s philosophical significance has been re-
cently highlighted—especially by Eckart Förster5—while Andrea Wulf ’s
2015 book on Humboldt is just one example of the works that have drawn
attention to his important philosophical legacy.6
However, these figures are rarely studied side by side and seldom consid-
ered as participating in one philosophical project.7 In fact, the opposite is
usually the case: Kant and Herder are often depicted as rivals,8 while Kant
and Goethe are interpreted as contemporaries who misunderstood one
another’s work.9 Even in the case of Herder and Goethe, who cofounded the
Sturm und Drang movement in the late 1760s, little attention has been paid
to connections in their later writings or the similarities in their approaches
to the natural world.10 In turn, while Humboldt’s link to the others is always
acknowledged, it is seldom comprehensively discussed.11
Why might this be the case? For one, the idea that an empiricist tradi-
tion emerged in the midst of the era of German idealism sounds, at least at
first hearing, odd. Furthermore, although there has been a significant rise
of interest in the philosophies of nature that emerged in Germany around
1800, little work has focused on the methodologies that underpin these philo
sophies. Precisely because we assume that all philosophies in Germany at the
turn of the nineteenth century were idealist in some way, we do not make the
effort to examine their methodologies or consider how their methodologies
may have varied.12
Furthermore, in the history of philosophy, as well as in German studies,
romanticism is typically identified with the Jena romantics—the Schlegel
brothers, their journal, the Athenäum, as well as the regular contributors
to their journal, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich von Hardenberg
(Novalis), Ludwig Tieck, and (sometimes also) Schelling. Thinkers such as
Herder and Goethe—who certainly influenced the romantics13—are usually
regarded as participating in different, sometimes opposed, traditions. This
is above all the case with Goethe, the great representative of Weimar classi-
cism.14 Accordingly, the idea that Goethe—not to mention Kant, Herder, and
Humboldt—was a romantic simply sounds wrong.15
While from one perspective, the identification of romanticism with Jena
romanticism is perfectly acceptable, from another, it is limiting and unneces-
sary. For it implies, first, that romanticism is a historical moment that is long
past and, second, that the ideas that motivated romanticism were only em-
bodied by these few thinkers. Neither claim can withstand scrutiny.
Let us consider Friedrich Schlegel’s famous definition of “the romantic
imperative,” as articulated in Athenäums-Fragment 586. Schlegel writes: “All
nature and science should become art—[and all] art should become nature
and science” (KFSA 16, 134, no. 586). In formulating the romantic impera-
tive, Schlegel was clearly inspired by Herder and Goethe (and perhaps also
Introduction 5
Kant) and can in some sense be regarded as a member of this tradition.16

However, while Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt sought to realize the “ro-
mantic imperative”—before Schlegel had articulated it—through a sustained
engagement with the natural world and the natural sciences, Schlegel’s in-
terest in the study of nature was sporadic. Put differently, while Schlegel is
famous for formulating the romantic imperative, he was neither the first to
establish it as a goal nor the one to bring it to fruition. Rather, and as I hope
to show in the following chapters, “the romantic imperative” was widespread
before Schlegel gave it a name, and it was practiced by Herder, Goethe, and
Humboldt. This is not to say that Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt were the
only romantic empiricists; rather, they are the most exemplary representa-
tives of this tradition.
I.3. Romantic Empiricism: Methodology and Goals
Kant’s, Herder’s, Goethe’s, and Humboldt’s search for a new methodology

was motivated, on the one hand, by the desire to acknowledge nature’s di-
versity and the utter uniqueness of natural phenomena and, on the other, by
the sense that these phenomena are closely interconnected and transform
over time, such that they can only be understood in their (historical and ge-
ographical) relatedness. Thus, their project emerged in response to the per-
ennial philosophical problem of the relation between the one and the many,
unity and diversity, but it had the advantage of hindsight: they agreed that the
two rival schools of philosophy, rationalism and empiricism, had failed to re-
spond to this problem, and only an approach that could wed these two meth-
odologies (i.e., rationalism and empiricism) would have any hope of success.
As I have already noted, their methodological considerations were
not (always) purely theoretical. Goethe and Humboldt were practicing
scientists, who developed their approaches through sustained empirical re-
search and aesthetic experience and education. Herder was a literary critic,
a historian, and perhaps the first anthropologist, whose approach to nature
emerged through his work in hermeneutics. Accordingly, their philosoph-
ical perspectives were not developed in a purely theoretical way, but through
practice and application. They were, moreover, familiar with advances in the
empirical sciences and contributed, theoretically or practically, to method-
ological questions underlying empirical research. All four were innovators
in various empirical fields: Herder and Kant contributed to natural history,
geography, and anthropology, Goethe developed comparative morphology,

and Humboldt founded plant geography. And, as I will argue, they all played
a crucial role in the emergence of ecology, broadly construed.
Specifically, the romantic empiricists’ distinctive approach allowed them
to develop a capacious understanding of nature and natural relations—one
in which natural beings appear as dialogical, sensitive, and responsive, and
in which nature as a whole appears as a dynamic context of ongoing develop-
ment and collaboration. It is this expansive approach to science, which can
be traced back to Herder’s notion of animal “worlds” and Humboldt’s “phys-
iognomy of nature,” that enabled the emergence of the discipline of ecology.
What they saw—and what their predecessors had not seen—was that living
beings both inhabit their world and are inhabited by their world. In other
words, there is a deeply dynamic and reciprocal relationship between a living
being and its environment, one which some two hundred years after the ro-
mantic empiricists we continue to find difficult to understand and convey. As
I will show, the romantic empiricists arrived at these crucial insights through
aesthetic means and methods. In short, the foundations of an ecological un-
derstanding of nature are aesthetic.
Furthermore, the romantic empiricists developed an ecological under-
standing of the enterprise of knowledge. That is, their conceptualization and
practice of knowledge were founded on an ecological model. Knowledge is
dialogical, responsive, context-sensitive, and collaborative. It demands con-
tinuous practice and education and places the knower under significant
obligations. By conceiving of the process of knowledge itself as ecological,
the romantic empiricists challenge us to rethink our ideals and practices of
knowing and to reexamine the relationship between epistemology, ontology,
and ethics. It is here that the contemporary relevance of romantic empiri-
cism lies.
I.4. Kant and Romantic Empiricism
As I indicated previously, Kant can only be regarded as a romantic empiricist

with significant qualification. After all, he is the philosopher of the a priori,
and to describe him as an “empiricist” of any kind would certainly have irked
him. In what sense, then, does he contribute to this tradition?
To begin with, it is important to highlight that it is specifically Kant’s
Critique of the Power of Judgment that can be regarded as part of this tradition.
Introduction 7
However, even in that work, Kant makes statements that appear to challenge
the view—which I have identified with romantic empiricism—that art has
the power to transform and enrich knowledge. After all, Kant agrees with
Edmund Burke’s distinction between aesthetic pleasure and cognition. Both
argue (for different reasons) that aesthetic pleasure is noncognitive, and thus
cannot contribute to our understanding of nature. To this end, they contend
that as soon as we have cognitive insight into nature (as a botanist does in re-
lation to a plant), the experience of aesthetic pleasure disappears.
Despite Kant’s ambivalence toward romantic empiricism, in the third
Critique he takes a significant step in that direction. In so doing, he
explicates the reasons behind this step as well as the challenges of taking it.
He articulates these challenges in both methodological and epistemolog-
ical terms, homing in on a problem that Buffon had formulated some two
decades earlier.
In 1766, Buffon explained that a key problem facing the student of nature
lies in a dissonance between our cognitive faculties and the processes of na-
ture. While our intellect proceeds linearly—we apprehend one object, then
another, then another, and so on—nature does not. Rather, Buffon writes,
nature “does not take a single step except to go in all directions; in marching
forward, she extends to the sides and above.”17 We see objects as separate and
grasp relations along a linear causal nexus: one thing moves and causes an-
other to move. In nature, however, objects are interrelated, and relations are
manifold and multidirectional. How are we to overcome this epistemological
incommensurability?
Kant rearticulated this difficulty in the third Critique, arguing that the
reason we fail to understand living beings has to do with the character of
our cognitive faculties. The fact that we proceed from one object to the next
means that we can only grasp a certain kind of whole, a whole that is made up
of separate, preexisting parts. A clock is one such whole: the bits and pieces
that make up the clock are produced separately. When they are put together,
we have a clock.
Living beings are not wholes of this sort. Their various parts—the heart,
lungs, veins, and so on—do not emerge separately from one another. Rather,
they emerge in relation to one another and as parts of a living body. This
reveals a certain circularity in the structure of living beings: the parts exist
only through the whole and the whole exists only through the parts. And
this circularity, Kant concludes, makes it impossible for us to properly
grasp them.
In this way Kant (and Buffon before him) explicated how and why our
cognitive tendencies lead us to apprehend the world as composed of separate
objects, whose relations are exclusively linear. He also explicated the kind of
unity that we appear to be incapable of grasping. In so doing, Kant laid out
the epistemological and methodological challenges facing any attempt to
grasp nature as an integrated unity—challenges that the romantic empiricists
sought to overcome.
But Kant did more than simply point to challenges. By placing “beauty and
biology” side by side in the third Critique, he drew a connection between aes-
thetic experience and the study of nature, locating this connection in the re-
flecting form of judgment.18 The implication is that the same form of judging
that we employ in our aesthetic encounter with nature is also at work in our
cognitive encounter with nature. When reflecting judgment turns to under-
standing the natural world, however, it does not result in pleasure (as it does
in aesthetic experience). Still, like the noncognitive (i.e., aesthetic) form of
reflecting judgment, it does not proceed from the a priori concept or prin-
ciple to the observed object. Rather, as Kant puts it, reflecting judgment seeks
to “find the universal for the particular” (AA 20, 211). Its procedure, then,
embodies the bottom-up approach to the study of nature that underlies ro-
mantic empiricism.
Importantly, when applied to the study of nature, reflecting judgment
becomes analogical. This is because it proceeds on the assumption that na-
ture is a work of art, or, as Kant famously puts it, it proceeds by regarding
nature as if it were a work of art. In other words, reflecting judgment (in this
mode) compares nature with art, and in so doing, sees the one in and through
the other, sees nature as art. Only in this way, Kant contends, can we begin to
order the natural world (arrive at a “system” of nature) and grasp the struc-
ture of organized beings.
Underlying Kant’s turn to the analogy between nature and art is the view
that we can discern organization in nature only if we conceive of nature in
terms of forms. After all, the work of comparing requires forms to com-
pare, forms through which we can discern similarities and distinctions, and
thereby draw connections. Furthermore, by regarding organized beings as
forms in the way that artworks are forms (expressions of a coherent unity), we
are able to see them not as outcomes of contingently connected parts, but as
integrated unities, which—like a piece of music—are inseparable from their
various parts (tone, rhythm, tempo, etc.) but which are also irreducible to
these parts (a piece of music is not reducible to any of its tones, for instance).
Introduction 9
The different parts, in turn, are only meaningful within this unity—as parts
of this whole. Accordingly, the analogy with art enables a new way of seeing
nature—a way that aims to overcome the challenges that Kant (and Buffon)
had outlined.
While Kant’s move to develop a methodology based on analogy and form
was hesitant and one that he did not clearly embrace,19 his contemporaries—
schooled in the works of Buffon and others in the French tradition—had
already for some time been concerned with the questions that prompted
Kant’s introduction of reflective judgment: how can we develop a natural
history that takes account of nature’s diversity without overlooking the sig-
nificant relations between various beings? And how can we grasp organiza-
tion within nature?
I.5. Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt
In the 1770s, Herder came to the same conclusions that Kant would later
reach: it is only via analogy that we can discern unity in diversity, because
it is only by seeing one thing through another that we can see how it is both
like and unlike the other. Herder, however, took his argument on the role of
analogy further, claiming that cognition itself is analogical. Specifically, he
contends that the relationship between our various cognitive faculties (sensi-
bility, imagination, and understanding) is analogical: they not only work to-
gether, but also intimate, anticipate, and approximate one another. His claim
is that it is only if what is given to sensibility implicitly contains the image of
the imagination, and it is only if the image similarly implicitly contains the
concept of the understanding, that we can properly grasp what is before us
and develop a concept that is not separate from the image or the phenom-
enon—a concrete concept as opposed to an empty universal.
Herder designated this concrete concept Hauptform (main form) and
argued that it is only through the Hauptform that we can discern relations
within nature across vast geographical and historical distances. Importantly,
Herder did not regard the Hauptform as a Kantian regulative ideal, because
it is realized in the world—even if never completely—and it is through its
material expressions that we can grasp it. The question then is, how do we
grasp the Hauptform? Herder’s answer, as we will see, was both illuminating
and surprising—and, like Kant’s turn to art and analogy, points to the signifi-
cance of artistic capacities and devices in the study of the natural world.
Like Herder and Kant, Goethe sought to discern unity in nature through
a comparative approach—one that takes account of both similarities and
differences, and that aims to grasp the form of living beings in relation to
their larger context. Underlying Goethe’s interest in the notion of form was
the view that form is neither a static object nor something that can be simply
seen with the physical eyes. Rather, as Goethe came to formulate it, it must
be discerned with the mind’s eye, or what he called “intuitive judgment
[anschauende Urteilskraft].”
Goethe first articulated the idea of intuitive judgment in response to Kant’s
claim in the third Critique that our discursive form of understanding cannot
proceed intuitively. In contrast, Goethe remarked that he had practiced in-
tuitive judgment throughout his work, both in his comparative anatomy and
in his study of plant metamorphosis. It is through intuitive judgment that he
was able to discover the intermaxillary bone, and it is through intuitive judg-
ment that he grasped the internal coherence of the plant. What makes a judg-
ment intuitive, Goethe explains, is its ability to discern how the sequences
within nature are part of one process of formation. In other words, unlike our
usual procedures of knowing, intuitive judgment can see how what appears
as a merely sequential relation is not only sequential, but is also an expres-
sion of other, nonsequential relations. A plant, for instance, does not develop
only sequentially, from seed to fruit (and finally to seed), but also simultane-
ously, and in two senses: its various parts grow at the same time (as the stem
grows, so do the leaves), and the parts emerge in relation to one another. Thus
although the fruit is the last stage of development, all preceding stages are
working toward achieving it. Accordingly, one can say that the fruit is “al-
ready” in the seed, in the flower, in the root, and that the relation between
fruit and flower, fruit and seed, or fruit and root is not purely sequential, but
also nonsequential and nonlinear.
This nonsequential unity can be discerned, Goethe contends, by
observing the forms of the plant’s different parts—the way in which each of
the plant’s parts expresses its place within the whole and thus its relation to
what precedes and what follows it. This is particularly evident in transitional
stages of development, where aspects of the preceding stage are “carried for-
ward” into the following stage, or vice versa, where aspects of the following
stages are anticipated by what preceded them. For instance, the first petals
that appear might be green—recalling the green of the stem leaves—or leaves
can become increasingly complex on some trees, approaching the shape of a
Introduction 11
branch. By assuming the form of what precedes or follows them, these parts
offer clues to the observer, clues for how to look and what to look for.
While in his early works Goethe had simply spoken of observation, fol-
lowing his encounter with philosophy—in particular his reading of Kant and
friendship with Schiller—he developed a nuanced epistemology and meth-
odology, which was based on his distinction between, as he put it, “seeing
and seeing”—that is, the difference between seeing with the physical eye
alone, and seeing with the physical eye and the mind’s eye simultaneously. To
achieve this second form of seeing, however, requires education. More spe-
cifically, and as I will argue, it requires an aesthetic education in both senses
of the term: an education of our aesthetic or perceptual capacities and an
education in the arts. Intuitive judgment can only be achieved through this
education.
This means that we are not born with intuitive judgment. After all, as
Buffon and Kant had noted, our natural tendency is to judge things in a non-
intuitive way—to regard parts or objects as separate and static, and to see
their relations in purely linear terms. Intuitive judgment is thus a task that
stands before us, and it is our responsibility as knowers to educate our cogni-
tive capacities so that they become intuitive. This responsibility, as I argue, is
not only epistemic, but also ethical, in that how we know—the capacities and
devices we invoke in our attempt to investigate a phenomenon—determines
how the phenomenon will appear to us. In turn, the manner in which the
phenomenon appears—whether it is appears as a machine or as a sentient
being—will inform our behaviors and actions toward it.
Among the four figures, Humboldt is the thinker who is most clearly iden-
tifiable as a “scientist.”20 He is perhaps also the thinker who most vehemently
argued for the significance of art and aesthetic experience. He contended,
for instance, that in order to grasp living beings in their context, the student
of nature must learn to regard nature as a landscape painter. Furthermore,
Humboldt devoted part of the second volume of his five-volume Kosmos
(Cosmos) (1845–62) to tracing the development of science in relation to the
arts. In this way, he both preceded recent efforts in the history of science to
demonstrate the significance of the arts (widely construed) for the develop-
ment of natural-scientific disciplines and practices and offered one of the
first integrated histories of knowledge.21 In turn, although among the four
Goethe is the only figure recognized as an artist, Humboldt was, in a signifi-
cant sense, also an artist.
Humboldt composed essays which he called Naturgemälde (nature

paintings), and which might best be described as scientific works of art—as
contradictory as that term might sound. These essays, which draw on feeling,
impression, and mood to give the reader an embodied sense of what a part
icular place is like, challenge distinctions between art and science, and be-
tween feeling and understanding. In them, Humboldt not only develops a new
genre, but also shows how in order to know nature we must invoke feeling,
sensibility, and imagination, and anchor knowledge in lived experience. Only
in this way can we cultivate knowledge that moves and motivates us, that
inspires ethical action. Only in this way can knowledge be transformative.
Just as Goethe’s understanding of intuitive judgment as a task requires us
to think differently about the ideals and practices of knowing, so Humboldt’s
realization of knowledge as embodied demands that we rethink our usual
oppositions between subjective and objective, between feeling and knowing.
Both offer important challenges—as well as clues—for how to think about
our obligations as knowers, and what is involved in knowing well. These
challenges and clues, I believe, remain relevant today, giving us excellent
reasons for turning to study the romantic empiricists.
1
Setting the Stage
Kant and the Critique of the Power of Judgment
It might seem peculiar to begin a book about an understudied philosoph-

ical tradition, distinguished as romantic and empiricist, with Kant. Kant
is by no means understudied, and his thought is rarely regarded as either
empiricist or romantic. Rather, Kant is most well-known as the philoso-
pher of the a priori, the philosopher who identifies the empirical with the
merely contingent, and who seeks to construct nature through the “leg-
islative” power of the understanding. As he puts it in the Critique of Pure
Reason (1781; 1781), “without understanding there would not be any na-
ture at all” (A125–26). And while he grants a significant role to sensibility,
he insists that knowledge in general and knowledge of nature in particular
must always be based on the a priori rules provided by the pure concepts of
the understanding.
In turn, Kant’s connections to romantic empiricism are not entirely
straightforward. While his Critiques impacted the questions the romantic
empiricists posed, and the ways in which they sought to answer them, Kant’s
conclusions often appear to stand at the opposite end of the spectrum to
those of Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt. The most relevant example for our
discussion is the view elaborated in the first part of the Critique of the Power
of Judgment that aesthetic judgments are noncognitive, i.e., that they cannot
yield insight into an object, and only pertain to the feelings that emerge
within the subject.
But this is precisely where the understudied part of the story comes in.
Kant was not only a philosopher of the a priori, and in the third Critique
he turns his attention to those aspects that he had neglected in his earlier
work: the contingent, empirical, and underdetermined. Furthermore, the
book’s dual focus—aesthetic judgment in the first part, organization in nature
in the second part—suggests a connection between the two, which becomes
increasingly evident in the second part, i.e., the Critique of Teleological
Judgment.

Still, the third Critique might seem like a strange first station in our
story. It was published some five years after the appearance of the first two
volumes of Herder’s Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity [Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit] (1784–1791), and in the same
year as Goethe’s essay Metamorphosis of Plants [Versuch die Metamorphose
der Pflanzen zu erklären]. Furthermore, it is a hesitant text. This wavering is
perhaps most evident in Kant’s claims regarding the scientific status of tele-
ological judgment. On the one hand, he claims that the reality of organized
beings demands that we “subordinate” all mechanism to teleology, and that
teleological judgment is “indispensable” for scientific inquiry (AA 5, 379;
398). On the other hand, he describes teleological judgment as “problem-
atic,” and (just after emphasizing its indispensability) concludes that that we
are under an “obligation” to subordinate teleological judging to judging ac-
cording to mechanical principles (AA 5, 370; 415).
However, it is precisely in this hesitation, in Kant’s small steps forward,
followed by sudden retreats, that both the significance and the radicality
of romantic empiricism becomes evident. For Kant’s hesitation evinces
the challenges facing any attempt to develop a bottom-up account of
nature, which aims to arrive at more than the mere collection of unrelated
data. In the third Critique Kant’s goal was to achieve “interconnected em-
pirical laws,” “interconnected experience,” and an “empirical system of
nature” (AA 20, 204; 217; 215; see also AA 5, 183). Thus, in contrast to
his earlier writings, where the aim was to legislate necessity onto nature,
the third Critique seeks to “find” necessity in nature: discern unity in
the multiplicity, integrity in diversity, coherence in empirical phenomena
(AA 5, 179).
Kant’s hesitations, then, should not throw us off but provide us with illu-
minating insights into the challenges facing the project, and into how it can
potentially succeed. While Kant makes some important headway in this di-
rection, he refuses to take the final step. In his wavering, he stops short of
developing a clear stance regarding the place of organization in nature, and
perhaps more poignantly, of articulating the scientific status of teleological
judging. His contemporaries, by contrast, do take the crucial step of devel-
oping a science inspired and underpinned by the methodologies and insights
of aesthetic forms of judgment. Accordingly, in considering Kant’s relation-
ship to and differences from Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt, we will be
better able to understand how and why they took that final step—and assess
their success in taking it.
Setting the Stage 15
1.1. Reflecting Judgment: A First Look
Kant begins the Critique of the Power of Judgment by pointing to a defi-

ciency on the part of the understanding. “The understanding,” he writes in
the Introduction, “is of course in possession of a priori universal laws of na-
ture, without which nature could not be an object of experience at all; but
still it requires in addition a certain order of nature in its particular rules,
which can only be known to it empirically and which from its point of view
are contingent” (AA 5, 184). This means that the laws of the understanding
cannot legislate the “infinite multiplicity of empirical laws” and the “great
heterogeneity of forms of nature.” In fact, Kant writes in the First (unpub-
lished) Introduction, these empirical laws are “entirely alien to the under-
standing” (AA 20, 203). The pure concepts of the understanding are simply
too general, too underdetermining, to construct experience and nature in all
their empirical distinctiveness. Or, as Kant puts it in the first Critique, the un-
derstanding can only give us “nature in general” (B165). This is because, Kant
explains in 1790, the objects of nature are “determinable in so many ways
apart from . . . what they have in common as belonging to nature in general”
(AA 5, 183). Accordingly, if we are to capture the great heterogeneity of the
forms of nature, “experience must be added” (B165).
The implication is that in the third Critique Kant is approaching nature
in a new way—a way that seeks to account for, rather than overlook, empir-
ical diversity; a way that aims to make intelligible, rather than set aside, the
contingent; a way that regards nature not as something to be legislated or
determined by the understanding, but as “free from all restrictions of our
law-giving faculty of cognition” (AA 20, 210).
But how is this aim to be achieved? How can we move from legislating an
abstract, “general” nature, to experiencing nature in its full diversity? And
more specifically, how can we achieve a rich, heterogeneous, ordered ex-
perience of nature? The goal, after all, is not simply to amass random, dis-
connected images and arbitrary concepts. Rather, the goal is to achieve
“interconnected empirical laws” and “interconnected experience” (AA 20,
204; 217; see also AA 5, 183). How can we arrive at a coherent picture of na-
ture, “a system of experience” and “an empirical system of nature” (AA 5, 181;
AA 20, 215)?
Kant’s answer is reflecting judgment. Unlike determining judgment,
which is the familiar mode of judgment elaborated in the first Critique, re-
flecting judgment does not determine experience in accordance with the
a priori rules provided by the understanding. Rather, reflecting judgment

“ascends from the particular in nature to the universal.” Thus, instead of
applying rules given by a priori concepts, it “finds” them (AA 20, 210; AA 5,
179). Reflecting judgment is a mode of discovery, which proceeds through
comparing and holding together. As Kant explains, “to reflect is to com-
pare and hold together given representations either with others or with
one’s faculty of cognition, in relation to a concept thereby made possible”
(AA 20, 211).
However, reflecting judgment does not only compare and behold. For,
again, Kant notes, it could run the risk of failing to discern connections in
experience and between forms of nature. Simply comparing, in other words,
could end up with unrelated images and concepts. In order to achieve an in-
terconnected experience, reflecting judgment must proceed in accordance
with a crucial assumption: that there is unity in nature’s diversity (AA 20,
203), or as he puts it in the (published) Introduction, that nature is “pur-
posive” (AA 5, 180).
In the First Introduction Kant is clear about what this involves: to regard
nature as a unity is to regard “nature as art” (AA 20, 204). In other words,
in comparing natural phenomena, in regarding empirical representations as
belonging together, reflecting judgment proceeds on the assumption that na-
ture is a work of art. On the basis of this assumption, reflecting judgment
begins to discern forms and relations among these forms, which it would
otherwise overlook. Through the analogy with art, then, reflecting judgment
sees nature differently: with greater specificity and concreteness, but also
with greater focus on forms and the relations between them.
While this analogy with art is central to the First Introduction, it is pushed
to the side in the published Introduction, where Kant’s mentions of nature in
relation to art appear largely negative—distinguishing nature from art, rather
than asking his readers to regard nature as art. Thus speaking of the con-
cept of purpose in nature, he writes, “This concept is also entirely distinct
from that of practical purposiveness (of human art [menschliche Kunst] as
well as of morals), although it is certainly conceived of in terms of an analogy
with that” (AA 5, 181).1 In turn, instead of claiming that reflecting judgment
is driven by the analogy between nature and art, that is, that this analogy
provides reflecting judgment with its fundamental principle, Kant places
greater emphasis on understanding. Accordingly, when he explains the
origins of the assumption (that nature is a unity), Kant writes that it is given
to judgment by “an understanding (even if not ours),” “in order to make
possible a system of experience in accordance with particular laws of nature”

(AA 5, 180).
It is important to take note of these differences because they point to the
diverging ways in which Kant conceptualizes reflecting judgment and its
procedure. On the one hand, the First Introduction’s emphasis on art, on
seeing nature as art, suggests not an analogy between nature and any form
of end-oriented productivity (artistic or moral). Rather, it suggests that the
analogy is specific to art, inclining us to think carefully about the distinc-
tive character of both artistic productivity and the work of art. On the other
hand, the published Introduction connects unity and purpose in nature with
practical purposiveness (as end-oriented activity) and the idea of “an under-
standing (even if not ours).” Kant is here alluding to his later discussion (in
Sections 76 and 77) of “intuitive understanding,” which contrasts with our
discursive understanding. The implication is that the idea of an intuitive un-
derstanding, introduced late in Kant’s writing of the third Critique, replaces
the analogy with art.2
My interest in pointing out these differences is not historical—I do not
aim to add to the work done by scholars to determine the genesis of the third
Critique. Rather, what I find most significant is the fact that Kant replaces the
analogy between nature and art with intuitive understanding. Whatever his
reasons were for doing so, Kant’s replacement gives us important clues con-
cerning the nature of intuitive cognition, and, as we shall see, its connection to
art, symbol, and analogy—all of which are crucial for the activity and proce-
dure of reflecting judgment in its cognitive mode (i.e., teleological judgment).
Before turning to these points, let us consider the analogy between na-
ture and art that Kant invokes in the First Introduction. As noted, he uses
this analogy to explicate the assumption according to which reflecting judg-
ment must proceed. If reflecting judgment is to proceed in a directed and
coherent way, it must assume unity in nature. Only on this assumption, Kant
contends, are we able to “classify the whole of nature according to empirical
differences.” However, he importantly adds, “classification is not a common
experiential cognition, but an artistic one.” This is because it discerns simi-
larities and draws connections between forms. Thus, if we are to assume that
nature can be classified, then we must also assume that nature’s forms share
common features—i.e., that there is a formal unity within nature. In other
words, we must assume that nature is a composition, whose various parts
(forms) relate to one another. Or, as Kant puts it, we must assume that nature
“specifies” itself—brings its products forth—“as art” (AA 20, 215).
What does the analogy with art imply? It implies, first, intention, purpose,
or idea. A work of art is brought forth with a purpose or idea in mind. This
idea grants it unity. Thus to ask readers to conceive of nature as art is to ask
them to regard nature as if it were unified through an idea or intention.
But this is not all, and, as I will argue, it is not the crucial element in the
analogy between nature and art. For a work of art is a composition. This
means, first, that each of its parts is essential to the whole. We cannot take a
chord out of a symphony and expect that it will be the same symphony. Each
part, in other words, is necessary. And its necessity is connected to its dis-
tinctiveness. We cannot replace one chord with another. Accordingly, each
chord—in its singularity—plays an essential role. This shows that a work of
art involves a certain kind of togetherness of its parts: each, in its distinctive
way, works with all the other parts to bring about the whole.
The work of art is thus the outcome of its distinctive, conjoined, and nec-
essary parts. But the reverse is also true. For although the parts make up the
whole, they do not exist outside of or prior to the whole. A chord in a sym-
phony assumes a distinctive meaning in relation to the (idea of the) whole, as
part of the whole. The same holds for colors or shapes in a painting. Just as the
painting depends on its specific colors, lines, shapes, so also these colors, lines,
and shapes depend on the whole painting. This dependence is both metaphys-
ical and epistemological: the parts assume a specific meaning in light of (the
idea of) the whole; and they can only be understood in relation to the whole.
Following his claim that nature should be regarded as art, Kant goes on to
say that this idea gives us a “maxim by which to observe nature and to hold
its forms together [die Formen der Natur damit zusammen zu halten]” (AA
20, 205). The implication is that by regarding nature as art, the crucial aim is
not so much to see nature as the realization of an intention or purpose, but
rather to hold the forms of nature together. This, after all, is what is required
for grasping a work of art.
When we view a painting, we do not consider the different parts that make
up the whole in isolation (the colors, shapes, lines, brushstrokes, etc.). Rather,
we see them in their relation to one another; we hold them together, and
thereby discern how each part—in its distinctive way—works with the other
parts and contributes to the whole. Similarly, when we listen to a piece of
music, we do not hear one sound, irrespective of what precedes or follows it.
Rather, again, we hold the parts together. The listener hears every part as part
of the whole. Each phrase is heard both in its distinctiveness and in its rela-
tion to the whole. Otherwise, the phrase would be mere noise. Accordingly,
the listener must hear every phrase as an expression of the whole, which
means that in listening to the particular, one is also listening to the whole—
beholding the whole. Put differently, the listener must hear the whole in every
one of the piece’s phrases. The whole thus emerges in and through the parts,
even though it underpins the parts and their relations. It does not exist be-
yond or outside of them, but only in them and their relations.
The same, Kant suggests, is necessary for grasping nature as a unity. To
discern nature’s unity requires us to consider the different parts of nature not
only as individuals, but also as members of an integrated whole to which they
contribute in distinctive but related ways. It also requires us to see how the
whole (nature) emerges in and through the parts. In other words, it demands
that we regard the different parts of nature as expressions of nature’s unity.
By invoking an analogy between nature and art, then, Kant is asking his
readers to see nature differently—to see nature’s parts as expressions of unity,
and to see this unity as emerging in and expressed through the various parts.
In viewing nature as art, we seek to discern the ways that different beings
exhibit a structural similarity, and how this similarity points to an integrity
in nature. This implies that what we are looking for are not mere parts, so to
speak, but expressions or forms—parts that manifest the whole through their
distinctive form, in the same way that a phrase in a piece of music expresses
and points to the whole work.
This, I suggest, is the crucial element of the analogy between nature and
art in the First Introduction. And while this analogy is not prominent in
the published Introduction, the emphasis on form and structure remains
throughout the Critique of Teleological Judgment. In the opening section
(Section 61), for instance, Kant invokes the “structure [Bau] of a bird” in
order to introduce the reader to teleological judgment. For, he explains, it
is the bird’s structure that cannot be grasped through efficient causality and
mechanical principles. He writes:
if one adduces, e.g., the structure of a bird, the hollowness of its bones,
the placement of its wings for movement and of its tail for steering, etc.,
one says that given the mere nexus effectivus in nature, without the help
of a special kind of causality, namely that of ends (nexus finalis), this is all
in the highest degree contingent [zufällig]: i.e., that nature, considered as
mere mechanism, could have formed itself in a thousand different ways
without hitting precisely upon the unity in accordance with such a rule,
and that it is therefore only outside the concept of nature, not within it,
that one would have even the least ground a priori for hoping to find such
a principle. (AA 5, 360)
Kant’s claim is that from the perspective of efficient causality and mechan-
ical physics, the structure of the bird appears “contingent.” In other words,
from that perspective there is nothing necessary about the different parts
that make up the bird. In the Introduction, Kant had articulated the problem
that the third Critique aims to address in terms of contingency in nature, and
the need to make the contingent appear lawful—i.e., necessary (AA 5, 176).
While there he did not mention efficient causality and mechanism, but fo-
cused on the a priori laws of the understanding, here he is pointing to “certain
things” that appear contingent from the perspective of mechanical physics
and efficient causality.3 Furthermore, while in the Introduction, Kant iden-
tifies contingency with the fact that the a priori laws of the understanding
cannot legislate for every empirical law, here he is specifically speaking of
mechanism and efficient causality. The question is: what is the precise rela-
tionship between the a priori laws of the understanding and mechanism and
efficient causality?
This question has been hotly debated in the literature, and for good
reason. On the one hand, Kant identifies efficient causality and mechanism
with the a priori laws of the understanding at various points in the text.
In Section 70, for instance, he notes that the mechanical principle “is pro-
vided . . . by the mere understanding a priori.” In Section 71, he states that
mechanism follows the order of the “sensible world,” which is furnished
by the transcendental structures of experience (AA 5, 389).4 On the other
hand, mechanism and efficient causality appear to be far more determining,
far more concrete, than the a priori laws of the understanding.5 While this
may be the case, Kant’s claims imply that mechanism and efficient causality
go hand in hand with the a priori laws of the understanding, such that even
if they do tell us a lot more about empirical nature, their foundation is—ul-
timately—a priori.
Nevertheless, even if a priori and empirical laws (i.e., the laws of the un-
derstanding and mechanism and efficient causality, respectively) work hand
in hand, they remain insufficient to explain all aspects of nature, in that they
leave certain parts of nature underdetermined or contingent. This brings us
back to Kant’s claim that the bird’s structure has been left underdetermined,
not simply by the laws of the understanding, but also by efficient causality
and the mechanical laws of motion. What does this tell us about the meaning
of contingency?
It tells us that it is the structure of the bird that is contingent. In other words,
it points us to the unity between the various parts of the bird—its tail, the
placement of its wings, the hollowness of its bones, and so on—and claims
that, from the perspective of efficient causality and mechanism, this unity is
highly unlikely. From that perspective, the specific parts of the bird and their
relations appear entirely accidental. There is nothing necessary about these
particular parts, or about their relationship. In the place of the specific bone
structure, or the tail, or the wings, something else—entirely different—could
have emerged. Ultimately, then, Kant’s claim is that if we consider the bird’s
structure according to efficient causality and the laws of mechanics, we find
nothing necessary in either these parts, or in their relation and specific com-
bination, i.e., in the whole. They could have been otherwise.
However, to simply state that this combination is highly unlikely does not
tell us much about the bird—its structure, its parts, their various functions
and relations, its health and well-being, its connection to other beings, its
connection to its context, and so on. Thus, while regarding it as “contingent”
may be appropriate from one perspective (that of general mechanics), it is
inappropriate from another perspective: the perspective that seeks to order
and classify nature. If our goal, in other words, is to discern relations between
nature’s parts, see connections between forms, then efficient causality and
mechanism are of no use.
This is precisely where reflecting judgment becomes crucial. By seeing
the bird as a work of art, reflecting judgment considers the bird’s various
parts as expressions of an integrated unity. From this perspective, they ap-
pear interconnected, with each part playing a distinctive role in the bird as
a whole. The hollowness of the bird’s bones, the specific placement of its
wings, its feathers, its size and overall structure, all appear to be variations
on a theme, parts of one whole. In other words, when considered in light of
the whole, the hollowness of the bird’s bones appears to be essential, just like
its wings—both of which clearly go hand in hand. As such, the various parts,
and their placement, no longer appear contingent or arbitrary. Rather, they
appear to be working together to enable the bird to achieve flight. In this
way, reflecting judgment begins to discern a necessity in the parts, to regard
them not as accidental, but as essential, to the bird. (It is as if the bird has
been purposively constructed to achieve the end of flight.)
There are, of course, significant differences between a work of art and

a bird—differences which Kant notes, and which lead him to empha-
size the analogical structure of reflecting judgment. For, as he says in the
Introduction, reflecting judgment proceeds “in terms of analogy” with art
and morals. Or, as he puts it later, organized products in nature are an “an-
alogue of art” (AA 5, 374). Accordingly, when reflecting judgment turns its
attention to nature, and to certain entities within nature, it regards them as
something else: as art. In so doing, it also recognizes that they are not art.
This is the essence of analogy.
This provides us with an important clue. When reflecting judgment turns
its attention to nature and its products, it proceeds analogically. Now not all
teleological judging proceeds analogically. The judgment that a cup is for
drinking is teleological insofar as it tells me the end or purpose of a cup. But it
is not analogical, insofar as it determines the nature of its object (the cup). By
contrast, teleological judgment in its reflective (i.e., nondeterminative) mode
follows the as-if structure of reflecting judgment, and is for this reason ana-
logical. It regards nature as if it were a work of art. It does not thereby tell us
that nature is a work of art. Rather, it tells us to reflect on nature in the way
that one reflects on a work of art. This means that teleological judgment is
not only motivated by the assumption that nature is like art, but also that tel-
eological judgment—in its reflecting mode—is itself a form of seeing-as: of
seeing nature, or specific entities within nature, as something else. In other
words, teleological judgment (in this reflective mode) does not schematize
but analogizes. Or, to use the language Kant introduces in Section 59, it is a
“symbolic” mode of knowing, a knowing of something as or through some-
thing else.
1.2. The Analogical Structure of Teleological Judgment
In his first iteration of teleological judgment, Kant speaks of it in terms of

analogy. He writes:
teleological judgment is rightly drawn into our research into nature, at least
problematically, but only in order to bring it under principles of observa-
tion and research in analogy with causality according to ends, without pre-
suming thereby to explain it. (AA 5, 360)
Immediately several crucial aspects of teleological judgment become evi-

dent: it is both justified and problematic. It is problematic because it proceeds
via analogy. This means, Kant continues, that it is nonexplanatory. Instead
of “explaining” its object, teleological judgment brings it under principles of
“observation.” Or, as Kant puts it in the First Introduction, reflecting judg-
ment provides us with “a maxim by which to observe nature and to hold its
forms together” (AA 20, 205). In other words, reflecting judgment—in its
teleological mode—concerns observation, discernment, holding together,
but not explanation.
In Section 59 of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Kant describes cogni-
tion achieved through analogy as “symbolic.” A symbol, he writes, is “a pre-
sentation [Darstellung] in accordance with mere analogy,” and analogy is a
presentation “in which the power of judgment performs a double act.” This
double act involves, first, the application of “the concept to the object of a
sensible intuition,” and then the application of “the mere rule of reflection
on that intuition to an entirely different object, of which the first is only the
symbol” (AA 5, 352). In other words, the work of analogy involves applying
the rule of one object onto a second object. Through this application, the first
object becomes a “symbol” or an “analogue” for the second object.
In the context of Section 59, Kant’s claim is that beauty is a symbol of mo-
rality. Beauty, in other words, is an analogical presentation of morality. To
justify this claim, Kant must demonstrate an analogy between beauty and
morality, which he locates not in beauty and morality as objects (i.e., not by
determining the properties or attributes of beauty and morality and rec-
ognizing a significant similarity between their attributes) but in the way in
which we reflect on beauty and the way we reflect on morality.6
To explain what he means, Kant offers two examples: a constitutional
monarchy governed by the rule of law, which is symbolized by an animate
body, and a monarchy governed by an individual will, which is symbolized
by a hand mill. The constitutional monarchy requires complex collabora-
tion—like the animate body. A monarchy, by contrast, is ruled by a single
will—like the hand mill. The animate body and the hand mill are symbols,
Kant contends, not because they share common properties with the monar-
chies they respectively symbolize, but because of the way in which we reflect
on them.
This might be surprising; after all, one might ask, why would we see the
two as in any way alike if they do not have anything in common? Mustn’t
there be some common ground in order for us to regard the one as a symbol
of the other? Kant’s answer is yes, but his aim is to draw out a form of sym-
bolic representation that has—thus far—been largely ignored. For, as he
explains, “between a despotic state and a handmill there is . . . no simi-
larity” (AA 5, 352). What he means is that there are no shared material
properties between the two: there is nothing in their material makeup that
should lead us to see the one (the hand mill) as a symbol of the other (the
despotic state).
This property-based use of analogy is, of course, the more widely known
form of analogical reflection, and the one that Kant had discussed in his
lectures on logic. In that context, he describes analogy as a form of a poste-
riori knowledge not unlike induction. Induction proceeds by determining
universal characteristics and categorizing particulars under these universal
concepts. Analogical inference, by contrast, proceeds from particular to total
similarity between two things. While inductive inference is based on the prin-
ciple of universalization such that what belongs to many things of the genus
also belongs to the remaining ones, analogical inference is based on the prin-
ciple of specification: it concerns the attributes or properties of two different
entities. In the “Dohnau Logic” (1780s), he puts it in the following way:
I infer according to analogy thus: when two or more things from a genus
agree with one another in as many marks as we have been able to discover,
I infer that they will also agree with one another in the remaining marks
that I have not been able to discover. . . . I infer, then, from some marks to all
the other ones, that they will also agree in these. (AA 24, 772)
In the “Hechsel Logic,” he provides the example of the earth and moon to
explicate this kind of analogy. They are the same kind of entity (i.e., celestial
bodies), and they share several features (e.g., they have valleys and moun-
tains). On this basis, we can go on to infer that they share additional features,
e.g., the earth has water, so the moon may also have water. Of course, this
analogy turned out to be wrong—and this is why analogical inference must
always stand to be corrected.7
As presented in the lectures on logic, then, analogy involves comparing
the attributes or properties of different entities and, on the basis of shared
properties, making an inference to unknown properties. It is this concep-
tion of analogy that Kant wants to depart from in the third Critique when he
claims that there is “no similarity” between the despotic state and the hand
mill. The question then is: on what basis can we draw an analogy?
Kant’s claim is that the similarity has to do with the way we reflect on them.
When we reflect on a constitutional monarchy, we proceed from the whole to
the part, and this permits us to appeal to the symbol of an organized being. In
the case of an individually governed monarchy, by contrast, we proceed from
part to whole, and thereby appeal to the mechanical metaphor of a hand mill.
The symbolic relation, then, is connected to our mode of reflection.
This, Kant contends, is also the case for the relation between beauty and
morality. The symbolic relation between them does not rest on shared prop-
erties; rather, it has to do with our manner of reflecting on them. While our
experience of beauty involves harmony between understanding and imag-
ination, our experience of morality involves harmony between reason and
will. On the basis of the harmony in our experience of the two, Kant argues,
we discern a symbolic relation between beauty and morality—such that
beauty is a symbol of morality.8
While this makes some sense, it does not fully account for why we should
reflect on the objects in the same way. After all, there is a reason behind my
proceeding in a particular way, a reason that has to do with a structural simi-
larity between the despotic state and the hand mill, on the one hand, and the
constitutional monarchy and the animate body, on the other. Accordingly,
although they do not share material properties (as the earth and the moon
do), they do share a crucial structural similarity, and it is this similarity that
permits us to reflect on them in a particular way—and thereby draw an
analogy.
What this means is that symbolic presentation must be connected to
the objects and their respective structures—if not to their material proper-
ties.9 On this basis, Kant goes on to write that analogy is a “carrying over
[Übertragung] of reflection on one object of intuition to another, quite dif-
ferent concept, to which perhaps no intuition can ever directly correspond”
(AA 5, 352–53). In other words, analogy involves “carrying over” the rules
of (reflecting on) one object onto another (perhaps nonpresentable) object,
with the goal of presenting the second object. The analogy is thus based on
the rules of reflecting. However, these rules are connected to the (structure
of the) objects. By applying the rules of reflecting on one object onto another
(lesser known, or perhaps nonpresentable) object, we gain (further) insight
into the second object.
In some ways, this use of analogy approximates the attributive concep-

tion of analogy described in the logic lectures. Like attributive analogy, it
illuminates one object through another. However, it differs from it in two
crucial ways. First, it does not concern specific (material) properties. Second,
in this case, the second object might have no adequate intuition and is thus
no “object” at all. In other words, the second object can be an idea of reason.
Accordingly, the work of analogy here does not specifically involve gaining
insight by comparing two objects. Rather, it involves “carrying over” the
rules of (reflecting on) one object onto a second, perhaps otherwise unpre-
sentable, object, and in this way bringing the second object to (some form of)
presentation.
Ideas for which there is no adequate intuition include God, immor-
tality, and the soul, i.e., ideas which cannot be schematized because they are
thought outside of temporal conditions. However, it is not only supersen-
sible ideas that fail to be fully schematized. There are also ideas that are not
supersensible, that fall within the purview of experience, but which cannot
be articulated through schematic presentation. These ideas might thus be
designated as imminent or sensible ideas, to distinguish them from super-
sensible ideas.10
Kant in fact points to these two different kinds of ideas in Section 49. He
writes, “the poet ventures to make sensible [versinnlichen] rational ideas of
invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity,
creation, etc., as well as make that of which there are examples in experience
[in der Erfahrung], e.g., death, envy, and all sorts of vices, as well as love,
fame, etc., sensible beyond the limits of experience [über die Schranken der
Erfahrung hinaus]” (AA 5, 314; emphasis added). In other words, not only
the supersensible ideas of God and immortality (which cannot be schema-
tized at all) but also those ideas which cannot be fully schematized (i.e., which
are left underdetermined by the schematizing of the concepts of the under-
standing) require symbolic presentation. As Kant puts it, we have “examples
in experience” of ideas such as death, envy, love, and fame, but the goal of the
poet is to make them sensible “beyond the limits of experience,” i.e., portray
them in a way that the concepts of the understanding cannot. Although Kant
does not explicitly draw the connection here, the poet’s work involves sym-
bolic presentation. For what the poet is doing is nothing other than “carrying
over” the rules governing reflecting on one object onto another object, and
in this way enabling us to gain (greater) clarity into the second object. Let us
consider some examples.
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much poor and nasty milk in England, that rickets in one shape or
another is so prevalent?
When will mothers arouse from their slumbers, rub their eyes, and
see clearly the importance of the subject? When will they know that
all the symptoms of rickets I have just enumerated usually proceed
from the want of nourishment, more especially from the want of
genuine and of an abundance of milk? There are, of course, other
means of warding off rickets besides an abundance of nourishing
food, such as thorough ablution, plenty of air, exercise, play, and
sunshine; but of all these splendid remedies, nourishment stands at
the top of the list.
I do not mean to say that rickets always proceeds from poorness
of living—from poor milk. It sometimes arises from scrofula, and is
an inheritance of one or of both the parents.
Rickety children, if not both carefully watched and managed,
frequently, when they become youths, die of consumption. A mother,
who has for some time neglected the advice I have just given, will
often find, to her grievous cost, that the mischief has, past remedy,
been done, and that it is now “too late!—too late!”
271. How may a child be prevented from becoming Rickety? or, if
he be Rickety, how ought he to be treated?
If a child be predisposed to be rickety, or if he be actually rickety,
attend to the following rules:
Let him live well, on good nourishing diet, such as on tender
rump-steaks, cut very fine, and mixed with mashed potatoes, crumb
of bread, and with the gravy of the meat. Let him have, as I have
before advised, an abundance of good new milk—a quart or three
pints during every twenty-four hours. Let him have milk in every
form—as milk gruel, Du Barry’s Arabica revalenta made with milk,
batter and rice puddings, suet-pudding, bread and milk, etc.
To harden the bones, let lime-water be added to the milk (a
tablespoonful to each teacupful of milk).
Let him have a good supply of fresh, pure, dry air. He must almost
live in the open air—the country, if practicable, in preference to the
town, and the coast in summer and autumn. Sea bathing and sea
breezes are often, in these cases, of inestimable value.
He ought not, at an early age, to be allowed to bear his weight
upon his legs. He must sleep on a horse-hair mattress, and not on a
feather bed. He should use, every morning, cold baths in the
summer, and tepid baths in the winter, with bay salt (a handful)
dissolved in the water.
Friction with the hand must, for half an hour at a time, every night
and morning, be sedulously applied to the back and to the limbs. It is
wonderful how much good in these cases friction does.
Strict attention ought to be paid to the rules of health as laid down
in these Conversations. Whatever is conducive to the general health
is preventive and curative of rickets.
Books, if he be old enough to read them, should be thrown aside;
health, and health alone, must be the one grand object.
The best medicines in these cases are a combination of cod-liver
oil and the wine of iron, given in the following manner: Put a
teaspoonful of wine of iron into a wineglass, half fill the glass with
water, sweeten it with a lump or two of sugar, then let a teaspoonful
of cod-liver oil swim on the top; let the child drink it all down
together, twice or three times a day. An hour after a meal is the best
time to give the medicine, as both iron and cod-liver oil sit better on
a full than on an empty stomach. The child in a short time will
become fond of the above medicine, and will be sorry when it is
discontinued.
A case of rickets requires great patience and steady perseverance;
let, therefore, the above plan have a fair and long-continued trial,
and I can then promise that there will be every probability that great
benefit will be derived from it.
272. If a child be subject to a scabby eruption about the mouth,
what is the best local application?
Leave it to Nature. Do not, on any account, apply any local
application to heal it; if you do, you may produce injury; you may
either bring on an attack of inflammation, or you may throw him into
convulsions. No! This “breaking-out” is frequently a safety-valve, and
must not therefore be needlessly interfered with. Should the eruption
be severe, reduce the child’s diet; keep him from butter, from gravy,
and from fat meat, or, indeed, for a few days from meat altogether;
and give him mild aperient medicine; but, above all things, do not
quack him either with calomel or with gray powder.
273. Will you have the goodness to describe the eruption on the
face and on the head of a young child, called Milk-Crust or Running
Scall?
Milk-crust is a complaint of very young children—of those who are
cutting their teeth—and as it is a nasty-looking complaint, and
frequently gives a mother a great deal of trouble, of anxiety, and
annoyance, it will be well that you should know its symptoms, its
causes, and its probable duration.
Symptoms.—When a child is about nine months or a year old,
small pimples are apt to break out around the ears, on the forehead,
and on the head. These pimples at length become vesicles (that is to
say, they contain water), which run into one large one, break, and
form a nasty dirty-looking yellowish, and sometimes greenish scab,
which scab is moist, indeed, sometimes quite wet, and gives out a
disagreeable odor, and which is sometimes so large on the head as
actually to form a skull-cap, and so extensive on the face as to form a
mask! These, I am happy to say, are rare cases. The child’s beauty is,
of course, for a time completely destroyed, and not only his beauty,
but his good temper; for as the eruption causes great irritation and
itching, he is constantly clawing himself, and crying with annoyance
a great part of the day, and sometimes also of the night, the eruption
preventing him from sleeping. It is not contagious, and soon after he
has cut the whole of his first set of teeth, it will get well, provided it
has not been improperly interfered with.
Causes.—Irritation from teething; stuffing him with overmuch
meat, thus producing a humor, which Nature tries to get rid of by
throwing it out on the surface of the body, the safest place she could
fix on for the purpose, hence the folly and danger of giving medicines
and applying external applications to drive the eruption in.
“Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth in strange eruptions,”[264]
and cures herself in this way, if she be not too much interfered with,
and if the eruption be not driven in by injudicious treatment. I have
known in such cases disastrous consequences to follow over-
officiousness and meddlesomeness. Nature is trying all she can to
drive the humor out, while some wiseacres are doing all they can to
drive the humor in.
Duration.—As milk-crust is a tedious affair, and will require a
variety of treatment, it will be necessary to consult an experienced
medical man; and although he will be able to afford great relief, the
child will not, in all probability, be quite free from the eruption until
he has cut the whole of his first set of teeth—until he be upwards of
two years and a half old—when, with judicious and careful treatment,
it will gradually disappear, and eventually leave not a trace behind.
It will be far better to leave the case alone—to get well of itself
rather than to try to cure the complaint either by outward
applications or by strong internal medicines; “the remedy is often
worse than the disease,” of this I am quite convinced.
274. Have you any advice to give me as to my conduct toward my
medical man?
Give him your entire confidence. Be truthful and be candid with
him. Tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Have no reservations; give him, as near as you can, a plain,
unvarnished statement of the symptoms of the disease. Do not
magnify, and do not make too light of any of them. Be prepared to
state the exact time the child first showed symptoms of illness. If he
have had a shivering fit, however slight, do not fail to tell your
medical man of it. Note the state of the skin; if there be a “breaking-
out,” be it ever so trifling, let it be pointed out to him. Make yourself
acquainted with the quantity and with the appearance of the urine,
taking care to have a little of it saved, in case the doctor may wish to
see and examine it. Take notice of the state of the motions—their
number during the twenty-four hours, their color, their smell, and
their consistence, keeping one for his inspection. Never leave any of
these questions to be answered by a servant; a mother is the proper
person to give the necessary and truthful answers, which answers
frequently decide the fate of the patient. Bear in mind, then, a
mother’s untiring care and love, attention and truthfulness,
frequently decide whether, in a serious illness, the little fellow shall
live or die! Fearful responsibility!
A medical man has arduous duties to perform; smooth, therefore,
his path as much as you can, and you will be amply repaid by the
increased good he will be able to do your child. Strictly obey a
doctor’s orders—in diet, in medicine, in everything. Never throw
obstacles in his way. Never omit any of his suggestions; for depend
upon it, that if he be a sensible man, directions, however slight,
ought never to be neglected; bear in mind, with a judicious medical
man,—
“That nothing walks with aimless feet.”[265]
If the case be severe, requiring a second opinion, never of your

own accord call in a physician without first consulting and advising
with your own medical man. It would be an act of great discourtesy
to do so. Inattention to the foregoing advice has frequently caused
injury to the patient, and heart-burnings and ill will among doctors.
Speak, in the presence of your child, with respect and kindness of
your medical man, so that the former may look upon the latter as a
friend—as one who will strive, with God’s blessing, to relieve his pain
and suffering. Remember the increased power of doing good the
doctor will have if the child be induced to like, instead of dislike, him.
Not only be careful that you yourself speak before your child
respectfully and kindly of the medical man, but see that your
domestics do so likewise; and take care that they are never allowed to
frighten your child, as many silly servants do, by saying that they will
send for the doctor, who will either give him nasty medicine, or will
perform some cruel operation upon him. A nurse-maid should, then,
never for one moment be permitted to make a doctor an object of
terror or of dislike to a child.
Send, whenever it be practicable, for your doctor early in the
morning, as he will then make his arrangements accordingly, and
can by daylight better ascertain the nature of the complaint, more
especially if it be a skin disease. It is utterly impossible for him to
form a correct opinion of the nature of a “breaking-out” either by gas
or by candle-light. If the illness come on at night, particularly if it be
ushered in either with a severe shivering, or with any other urgent
symptom, no time should be lost, be it night or day, in sending for
him.
WARM BATHS.
275. Have the goodness to mention the complaints of a child for

which warm baths are useful?
1. Convulsions; 2. Pains in the bowels, known by the child drawing
up his legs, screaming violently, etc.; 3. Restlessness from teething;
4. Flatulence. The warm bath acts as a fomentation to the stomach
and the bowels, and gives ease where the usual remedies do not
rapidly relieve.
276. Will you mention the precautions and the rules to be
observed in putting a child into a warm bath?
Carefully ascertain before he be immersed in the bath that the
water be neither too hot nor too cold. Carelessness, or over-anxiety
to put him in the water as quickly as possible, has frequently, from
his being immersed in the bath when the water was too hot, caused
him great pain and suffering. From 96 to 98 degrees of Fahrenheit is
the proper temperature of a warm bath. If it be necessary to add
fresh warm water, let him be either removed the while, or let it not
be put in when very hot; for if boiling water be added to increase the
heat of the bath, it naturally ascends, and may scald him. Again, let
the fresh water be put in at as great a distance from him as possible.
The usual time for him to remain in a bath is a quarter of an hour or
twenty minutes. Let the chest and the bowels be rubbed with the
hand while he is in the bath. Let him be immersed in the bath as high
up as the neck, taking care that he be the while supported under the
armpits, and that his head be also rested. As soon as he comes out of
the bath he ought to be carefully but quickly rubbed dry; and, if it be
necessary to keep up the action on the skin, he should be put to bed,
between the blankets; or, if the desired relief has been obtained,
between the sheets, which ought to have been previously warmed,
where, most likely, he will fall into a sweet refreshing sleep.
WARM EXTERNAL APPLICATIONS.
277. In case of a child suffering pain either in his stomach or in

his bowels, or in case he has a feverish cold, can you tell me of the
best way of applying heat to them?
In pain, either of the stomach or of the bowels, there is nothing
usually affords greater or speedier relief than the external
application of heat. The following are four different methods of
applying heat: 1. A bag of hot salt—that is to say, powdered table salt
—put either into the oven or into a frying-pan, and thus made hot,
and placed in a flannel bag, and then applied, as the case may be,
either to the stomach or to the bowels. Hot salt is an excellent
remedy for these pains. 2. An india-rubber hot water bottle,[266] half
filled with hot water—it need not be boiling—applied to the stomach
or to the bowels will afford great comfort. 3. Another, and an
excellent remedy for these cases, is a hot bran poultice. The way to
make it is as follows: Stir bran into a vessel containing either a pint
or a quart (according to size of poultice required) of boiling water,
until it be of the consistence of a nice soft poultice, then put it into a
flannel bag and apply it to the part affected. When cool, dip it from
time to time in hot water. 4. In case a child has a feverish cold,
especially if it be attended, as it sometimes is, with pains in the
bowels, the following is a good external application: Take a yard of
flannel, fold it three widths, then dip it in very hot water, wring it out
tolerably dry, and apply it evenly and neatly round and round the
bowels; over this, and to keep it in its place and to keep in the
moisture, put on a dry flannel bandage, four yards long and four
inches wide. If it be put on at bedtime, it ought to remain on all
night. Where there are children, it is desirable to have the yard of
flannel and the flannel bandage in readiness, and then a mother will
be prepared for emergencies. Either the one or the other, then, of the
above applications will usually, in pains of the stomach and bowels,
afford great relief. There is one great advantage of the external
application of heat—it can never do harm; if there be inflammation,
it will do good; if there be either cramps or spasms of the stomach, it
will be serviceable; if there be colic, it will be one of the best remedies
that can be used; if it be a feverish cold, by throwing the child into a
perspiration, it will be useful.
It is well for a mother to know how to make a white-bread
poultice; and as the celebrated Abernethy was noted for his poultices,
I will give you his directions, and in his very words: “Scald out a
basin, for you can never make a good poultice unless you have
perfectly boiling water, then, having put in some hot water, throw in
coarsely crumbled bread, and cover it with a plate. When the bread
has soaked up as much water as it will imbibe, drain off the
remaining water, and there will be left a light pulp. Spread it a third
of an inch thick on folded linen, and apply it when of the
temperature of a warm bath. It may be said that this poultice will be
very inconvenient if there be no lard in it, for it will soon get dry; but
this is the very thing you want, and it can easily be moistened by
dropping warm water on it, while a greasy poultice will be moist, but
not wet.”[267]
ACCIDENTS.
278. Supposing a child to cut his finger, what is the best

application?
There is nothing better than tying it up with rag in its blood, as
nothing is more healing than blood. Do not wash the blood away, but
apply the rag at once, taking care that no foreign substance be left in
the wound. If there be either glass or dirt in it, it will, of course, be
necessary to bathe the cut in warm water, to get rid of it before the
rag be applied. Some mothers use either salt, or Fryar’s Balsam, or
turpentine to a fresh wound; these plans are cruel and unnecessary,
and frequently make the cut difficult to heal. If it bleed
immoderately, sponge the wound freely with cold water. If it be a
severe cut, surgical aid, of course, will be required.
279. If a child receive a blow, causing a bruise, what had better be
done?
Immediately smear a small lump of fresh butter on the part
affected, and renew it every few minutes for two or three hours; this
is an old-fashioned, but a very good remedy. Olive oil may—if fresh
butter be not at hand—be used, or soak a piece of brown paper in
one-third of French brandy, and two-thirds of water, and
immediately apply it to the part; when dry renew it. Either of these
simple plans—the butter plan is the best—will generally prevent both
swelling and disfiguration.
A “Black Eye.”—If a child, or indeed any one else, receive a blow
over the eye, which is likely to cause a “black eye,” there is no remedy
superior to, nor more likely to prevent one, than well buttering the
parts for two or three inches around the eye with fresh butter,
renewing it every few minutes for the space of an hour or two; if such
be well and perseveringly done, the disagreeable appearance of a
“black eye” will in all probability be prevented. A capital remedy for a
“black eye” is the arnica lotion:
Take of—Tincture of Arnica, one ounce;
Water, seven ounces:
To make a Lotion. The eye to be bathed, by means of a soft piece of linen rag,
with this lotion frequently; and, between times, let a piece of linen rag, wetted
in the lotion, be applied to the eye, and be fastened in its place by means of a
bandage.
The white lily leaf, soaked in brandy, is another excellent remedy
for the bruises of a child. Gather the white lily blossoms when in full
bloom, and pot them in a wide-mouthed bottle of brandy, cork the
bottle, and it will then always be ready for use. Apply a leaf to the
part affected, and bind it on either with a bandage or with a
handkerchief. The white lily root sliced is another valuable external
application for bruises.
280. If a child fall upon his head and be stunned, what ought to be
done?
If he fall upon his head and be stunned, he will look deadly pale,
very much as if he had fainted. He will in a few minutes, in all
probability, regain his consciousness. Sickness frequently
supervenes, which makes the case more serious, it being a proof that
injury, more or less severe, has been done to the brain; send,
therefore, instantly, for a medical man.
In the mean time, loosen both his collar and neckerchief, lay him
flat on his back, sprinkle cold water upon his face, open the windows
so as to admit plenty of fresh air, and do not let people crowd around
him, nor shout at him, as some do, to make him speak.
While he is in an unconscious state, do not on any account
whatever allow a drop of blood to be taken from him, either by
leeches or by bleeding; if you do, he will probably never rally, but will
most likely sleep “the sleep that knows no waking.”
281. A nurse sometimes drops an infant and injures his back;
what ought to be done?
Instantly send for a surgeon; omitting to have proper advice in
such a case has frequently made a child a cripple for life. A nurse
frequently, when she has dropped her little charge, is afraid to tell
her mistress; the consequences might then be deplorable. If ever a
child scream violently without any assignable cause, and the mother
is not able for some time to pacify him, the safer plan is that she send
for a doctor, in order that he might strip and carefully examine him;
much after-misery might often be averted if this plan were more
frequently followed.
282. Have you any remarks to make and directions to give on
accidental poisoning by lotions, by liniments, etc.?
It is a culpable practice of either a mother or nurse to leave
external applications within the reach of a child. It is also highly
improper to put a mixture and an external application (such as a
lotion or a liniment) on the same tray or on the same mantle-piece.
Many liniments contain large quantities of opium, a teaspoonful of
which would be likely to cause the death of a child. “Hartshorn and
oil,” too, has frequently been swallowed by children, and in several
instances has caused death. Many lotions contain sugar of lead,
which is also poisonous. There is not, fortunately, generally sufficient
lead in the lotion to cause death; but if there be not enough to cause
death, there may be more than enough to make the child very poorly.
All these accidents occur from disgraceful carelessness.
A mother or a nurse ought always, before administering a dose of
medicine to a child, to read the label on the bottle; by adopting this
simple plan many serious accidents and much after-misery might be
averted. Again, I say let every lotion, every liniment, and indeed
everything for external use, be either locked up or be put out of the
way, and far away from all medicine that is given by the mouth. This
advice admits of no exception.
If your child has swallowed a portion of a liniment containing
opium, instantly send for a medical man. In the mean time, force a
strong mustard emetic (composed of two teaspoonfuls of flour of
mustard, mixed in half a teacupful of warm water) down his throat.
Encourage the vomiting by afterward forcing him to swallow warm
water. Tickle the throat either with your finger or with a feather.
Souse him alternately in a hot and then in a cold bath. Dash cold
water on his head and face. Throw open the windows. Walk him
about in the open air. Rouse him by slapping him, by pinching him,
and by shouting to him; rouse him, indeed, by every means in your
power, for if you allow him to go to sleep, it will, in all probability, be
the sleep that knows no waking!
If a child has swallowed “hartshorn and oil,” force him to drink
vinegar and water, lemon-juice and water, barley-water, and thin
gruel.
If he have swallowed a lead lotion, give him a mustard emetic, and
then vinegar and water, sweetened either with honey or with sugar,
to drink.
283. Are not Lucifer Matches poisonous?
Certainly, they are very poisonous; it is therefore desirable that
they should be put out of the reach of children. A mother ought to be
very strict with servants on this head. Moreover, lucifer matches are
not only poisonous but dangerous, as a child might set himself on
fire with them. A case bearing on the subject has just come under my
own observation. A little boy, three years old, was left alone for two
or three minutes, during which time he obtained possession of a
lucifer match, and struck a light by striking the match against the
wall. Instantly there was a blaze. Fortunately for him, in his fright, he
threw the match on the floor. His mother, at this moment, entered
the room. If his clothes had taken fire, which they might have done,
had he not thrown the match away, or if his mother had not been so
near at hand, he would, in all probability, have either been severely
burned, or have been burned to death.
284. If a child’s clothes take fire, what ought to be done to
extinguish them?
Lay him on the floor, then roll him either in the rug or in the
carpet, or in the door-mat, or in any thick article of dress you may
either have on, or have at hand—if it be woolen, so much the better;
or throw him down, and roll him over and over on the floor, as by
excluding the atmospheric air, the flame will go out: hence, the
importance of a mother cultivating presence of mind. If parents were
better prepared for such emergencies, such horrid disfigurations and
frightful deaths would be less frequent.
You ought to have a proper fire-guard before the nursery grate,
and should be strict in not allowing your child to play with fire. If he
still persevere in playing with it when he has been repeatedly
cautioned not to do so, he should be punished for his temerity. If
anything would justify corporal chastisement, it would surely be such
an act of disobedience. There are only two acts of disobedience that I
would flog a child for—namely, the playing with fire and the telling of
a lie! If after various warnings and wholesome corrections he still
persists, it would be well to let him slightly taste the pain of his doing
so, either by holding his hand for a moment very near the fire, or by
allowing him to slightly touch either the hot bar of the grate or the
flame of the candle. Take my word for it, the above plan will
effectually cure him—he will never do it again! It would be well for
the children of the poor to have pinafores made either of woolen or
of stuff materials. The dreadful deaths from burning, which so often
occur in winter, too frequently arise from cotton pinafores first
taking fire.[268]
If all dresses, after being washed, and just before being dried,
were, for a short time, soaked in a solution of tungstate of soda, such
clothes, when dried, would be perfectly fire-proof.
Tungstate of soda may be used either with or without starch; but
full directions for the using of it will, at the time of purchase, be
given by the chemist.
285. Is a burn more dangerous than a scald?
A burn is generally more serious than a scald. Burns and scalds are
more dangerous on the body, especially on the chest, than either on
the face or on the extremities. The younger the child, of course, the
greater is the danger.
Scalds, both of the mouth and of the throat, from a child drinking
boiling water from the spout of a tea-kettle, are most dangerous. A
poor person’s child is, from the unavoidable absence of the mother,
sometimes shut up in the kitchen by himself, and being very thirsty,
and no other water being at hand, he is tempted in his ignorance to
drink from the tea-kettle: if the water be unfortunately boiling, it will
most likely prove to him to be a fatal draught!
286. What are the best immediate applications to a scald or to a
burn?
There is nothing more efficacious than flour. It ought to be thickly
applied, over the part affected, and should be kept in its place either
with a rag and a bandage, or with strips of old linen. If this be done,
almost instantaneous relief will be experienced, and the burn or the
scald, if superficial, will soon be well. The advantage of flour as a
remedy is this, that it is always at hand. I have seen some extensive
burns and scalds cured by the above simple plan. Another excellent
remedy is cotton wool. The burn or the scald ought to be enveloped
in it; layer after layer should be applied until it be several inches
thick. The cotton wool must not be removed for several days.[269]
These two remedies, flour and cotton wool, may be used in
conjunction; that is to say, the flour may be thickly applied to the
scald or to the burn, and the cotton wool over all.
Prepared lard—that is to say, lard without salt[270]—is an admirable
remedy for burns and for scalds. The advantages of lard are: (1) It is
almost always at hand; (2) It is very cooling, soothing, and
unirritating to the part, and it gives almost immediate freedom from
pain; (3) It effectually protects and sheathes the burn or the scald
from the air; (4) It is readily and easily applied: all that has to be
done is to spread the lard either on pieces of old linen rag, or on lint,
and then to apply them smoothly to the parts affected, keeping them
in their places by means of bandages—which bandages may be
readily made from either old linen or calico shirts. Dr. John Packard,
of Philadelphia, was the first to bring this remedy for burns and
scalds before the public—he having tried it in numerous instances,
and with the happiest results. I myself have, for many years, been in
the habit of prescribing lard as a dressing for blisters, and with the
best effects. I generally advise equal parts of prepared lard and of
spermaceti cerate to be blended together to make an ointment. The
spermaceti cerate gives a little more consistence to the lard, which, in
warm weather, especially, is a great advantage.
Another valuable remedy for burns is, “carron oil;” which is made
by mixing equal parts of linseed oil and lime-water together in a
bottle, and shaking it up before using it.
Cold applications, such as cold water, cold vinegar and water, and
cold lotions, are most injurious, and, in many cases, even dangerous.
Scraped potatoes, sliced cucumber, salt, and spirits of turpentine,
have all been recommended; but, in my practice, nothing has been so
efficacious as the remedies above enumerated.
Do not wash the wound, and do not dress it more frequently than
every other day. If there be much discharge, let it be gently sopped
up with soft old linen rag; but do not, on any account, let the burn be
rubbed or roughly handled. I am convinced that, in the majority of
cases, wounds are too frequently dressed, and that the washing of
wounds prevents the healing of them. “It is a great mistake,” said
Ambrose Paré, “to dress ulcers too often, and to wipe their surfaces
clean, for thereby we not only remove the useless excrement, which
is the mud or sanies of ulcers, but also the matter which forms the
flesh. Consequently, for these reasons, ulcers should not be dressed
too often.”
The burn or the scald may, after the first two days, if severe,
require different dressings; but, if it be severe, the child ought of
course to be immediately placed under the care of a surgeon.
If the scald be either on the leg or on the foot, a common practice
is to take the shoe and the stocking off; in this operation, the skin is
also at the same time very apt to be removed. Now, both the shoe and
the stocking ought to be slit up, and thus be taken off, so that neither
unnecessary pain nor mischief may be caused.
287. If a bit of quicklime should accidentally enter the eye of my
child, what ought to be done?
Instantly, but tenderly remove, either by means of a camel’s-hair
brush or by a small spill of paper, any bit of lime that may adhere to
the ball of the eye, or that may be within the eye or on the eyelashes;
then well bathe the eye (allowing a portion to enter it) with vinegar
and water—one part of vinegar to three parts of water, that is to say,
a quarter fill a clean half-pint medicine bottle with vinegar and then
fill it up with spring water, and it will be ready for use. Let the eye be
bathed for at least a quarter of an hour with it. The vinegar will
neutralize the lime, and will rob it of its burning properties.
Having bathed the eye with the vinegar and water for a quarter of
an hour, bathe it for another quarter of an hour simply with a little
warm water; after which, drop into the eye two or three drops of the
best sweet oil, put on an eye-shade made of three thicknesses of linen
rag, covered with green silk, and then do nothing more until the
doctor arrives.
If the above rules be not promptly and properly followed out, the
child may irreparably lose his eyesight; hence the necessity of a
popular work of this kind, to tell a mother, provided immediate
assistance cannot be obtained, what ought instantly to be done; for
moments, in such a case, are precious.
While doing all that I have just recommended, let a surgeon be
sent for, as a smart attack of inflammation of the eye is very apt to
follow the burn of lime; but which inflammation will, provided the
previous directions have been promptly and efficiently followed out,
with appropriate treatment, soon subside.
The above accident is apt to occur to a child who is standing near a
building when the slacking of quicklime is going on, and where
portions of lime, in the form of powder, are flying about the air. It
would be well not to allow a child to stand about such places, as
prevention is always better than cure. Quicklime is sometimes called
caustic lime: it well deserves its name, for it is a burning lime, and if
proper means be not promptly used, will soon burn away the sight.
288. “What is to be done in the case of Choking?”
Instantly put your finger into the throat and feel if the substance
be within reach; if it be food, force it down, and thus liberate the
breathing; should it be a hard substance, endeavor to hook it out; if
you cannot reach it, give a good smart blow or two with the flat of the
hand on the back; or, as recommended by a contributor to the
Lancet, on the chest, taking care to “seize the little patient, and place
him between your knees side ways, and in this or some other manner
to compress the abdomen [the belly], otherwise the power of the
blow will be lost by the yielding of the abdominal parietes [walls of
the belly], and the respiratory effort will not be produced.” If that
does not have the desired effect, tickle the throat with your finger, so
as to insure immediate vomiting, and the consequent ejection of the
offending substance.[271]
289. Should my child be bitten by a dog supposed to be mad, what
ought to be done?
Instantly well rub for the space of five of ten seconds—seconds, not
minutes—a stick of nitrate of silver (lunar caustic) into the wound.
The stick of lunar caustic should be pointed, like a cedar-pencil for
writing, in order the more thoroughly to enter the wound.[272] This, if
properly done directly after the bite, will effectually prevent
hydrophobia. The nitrate of silver acts not only as a caustic to the
part, but it appears effectually to neutralize the poison, and thus by
making the virus perfectly innocuous is a complete antidote. If it be
either the lip, or the parts near the eye, or the wrist, that have been
bitten, it is far preferable to apply the caustic than to cut the part out;
as the former is neither so formidable, nor so dangerous, nor so
disfiguring as the latter, and yet it is equally as efficacious. I am
indebted to the late Mr. Youatt, the celebrated veterinary surgeon,
for this valuable antidote or remedy for the prevention of the most
horrible, heart-rending, and incurable disease known. Mr. Youatt
had an immense practice among dogs as well as among horses. He
was a keen observer of disease, and a dear lover of his profession,
and he had paid great attention to rabies—dog madness. He and his
assistants had been repeatedly bitten by rabid dogs; but knowing
that he was in possession of an infallible preventive remedy, he never
dreaded the wounds inflicted either upon himself or upon his
assistants. Mr. Youatt never knew lunar caustic, if properly and
immediately applied, to fail. It is, of course, only a preventive. If
hydrophobia be once developed in the human system, no antidote
has ever yet, for this fell and intractable disease, been found.
While walking the London Hospitals, upwards of thirty-five years
ago, I received an invitation from Mr. Youatt to attend a lecture on
rabies—dog madness. He had, during the lecture, a dog present
laboring under incipient madness. In a day or two after the lecture,
he requested me and other students to call at his infirmary and see
the dog, as the disease was at that time fully developed. We did so,
and found the poor animal raving mad—frothing at the mouth, and
snapping at the iron bars of his prison. I was particularly struck with
a peculiar brilliancy and wildness of the dog’s eyes. He seemed as
though, with affright and consternation, he beheld objects unseen by
all around. It was pitiful to witness his frightened and anxious
countenance. Death soon closed the scene!
I have thought it my duty to bring the value of lunar caustic as a
preventive of hydrophobia prominently before your notice, and to
pay a tribute of respect to the memory of Mr. Youatt—a man of talent
and genius.
Never kill a dog supposed to be mad who has bitten either a child,
or any one else, until it has, past all doubt, been ascertained whether
he be really mad or not. He ought, of course, to be tied up, and be
carefully watched, and be prevented the while from biting any one
else. The dog, by all means, should be allowed to live at least for
some weeks, as the fact of his remaining will be the best guarantee
that there is no fear of the bitten child having caught hydrophobia.
There is a foolish prejudice abroad, that a dog, be he mad or not,
who has bitten a person ought to be immediately destroyed; that
although the dog be not at the time mad, but should at a future
period become so, the person who had been bitten when the dog was
not mad, would, when the dog became mad, have hydrophobia! It
seems almost absurd to bring the subject forward; but the opinion is
so very general and deep rooted, that I think it well to declare that
there is not the slightest foundation of truth in it, but that it is a
ridiculous fallacy!
A cat sometimes goes mad, and its bite may cause hydrophobia;
indeed, the bite of a mad cat is more dangerous than the bite of a
mad dog. A bite from a mad cat ought to be treated precisely in the
same manner—namely, with the lunar caustic—as for a mad dog.
A bite either from a dog or from a cat who is not mad, from a cat
especially, is often venomous and difficult to heal. The best
application is immediately to apply a large hot white-bread poultice
to the part, and to renew it every four hours; and, if there be much
pain in the wound, to well foment the part, every time before
applying the poultice, with a hot chamomile and poppy-head
fomentation.
Scratches of a cat are best treated by smearing, and that freely and
continuously for an hour, and then afterward at longer intervals,
fresh butter on the part affected. If fresh butter be not at hand, fresh
lard—that is to say, lard without salt—will answer the purpose. If the
pain of the scratch be very intense, foment the part affected with hot
water, and then apply a hot white-bread poultice, which should be
frequently renewed.
290. What is the best application in case of a sting either from a
bee or from a wasp?
Extract the sting, if it have been left behind, either by means of a
pair of dressing forceps, or by the pressure of the hollow of a small
key—a watch-key will answer the purpose; then, a little blue (which
is used in washing) moistened with water, should be immediately
applied to the part; or, apply a few drops of solution of potash,[273] or
“apply moist snuff or tobacco, rubbing it well in,”[274] and renew from
time to time either of them: if either of these be not at hand, either
honey, or treacle, or fresh butter, will answer the purpose. Should
there be much swelling or inflammation, apply a hot white-bread
poultice, and renew it frequently. In eating apricots, or peaches, or
other fruit, they ought to, beforehand, be carefully examined, in
order to ascertain that no wasp is lurking in them; otherwise, it may
sting the throat, and serious consequences will ensue.
291. If a child receive a fall, causing the skin to be grazed, can you
tell me of a good application?
You will find gummed paper an excellent remedy; the way of
preparing it is as follows: Apply evenly, by means of a small brush,
thick mucilage of gum arabic to cap paper; hang it up to dry, and
keep it ready for use. When wanted, cut a portion as large as may be
requisite, then moisten it with your tongue, in the same manner you
would a postage stamp, and apply it to the grazed part. It may be
removed when necessary by simply wetting it with water. The part in
two or three days will be well. There is usually a margin of gummed
paper sold with postage stamps; this will answer the purpose equally
well. If the gummed paper be not at hand, then frequently, for the
space of an hour or two, smear the part affected with fresh butter.
292. In case of a child swallowing by mistake either laudanum, or
paregoric, or Godfrey’s Cordial, or any other preparation of opium,
what ought to be done?
Give, as quickly as possible, a strong mustard emetic; that is to
say, mix two teaspoonfuls of flour of mustard in half a teacupful of
water, and force it down his throat. If free vomiting be not induced,
tickle the upper part of the swallow with a feather; drench the little
patient’s stomach with large quantities of warm water. As soon as it
can be obtained from a druggist, give him the following emetic
draught:
Take of—Sulphate of Zinc, one scruple;
Simple Syrup, one drachm;
Distilled Water, seven drachms:
To make a Draught.
Smack his buttocks and his back; walk him, or lead him, or carry
him about in the fresh air; shake him by the shoulders; pull his hair;
tickle his nostrils; shout and holla in his ears; plunge him into a
warm bath and then into a cold bath alternately; well sponge his
head and face with cold water; dash cold water on his head, face, and
neck; and do not, on any account, until the effects of the opiate are
gone off, allow him to go to sleep; if you do, he will never wake again!
While doing all these things, of course, you ought to lose no time in
sending for a medical man.
293. Have you any observations to make on parents allowing the
Deadly Nightshade—the Atropa Belladonna—to grow in their
gardens?
I wish to caution you not on any account to allow the Belladonna—
the Deadly Nightshade—to grow in your garden. The whole plant—
root, leaves, and berries—is poisonous; and the berries, being
attractive to the eye, are very alluring to children.
294. What is the treatment of poisoning by Belladonna?
Instantly send for a medical man; but, in the mean time, give an
emetic—a mustard emetic;—mix two teaspoonfuls of flour of
mustard in half a teacupful of warm water, and force it down the
child’s throat; then drench him with warm water, and tickle the
upper part of his swallow either with a feather or with the finger, to
make him sick; as the grand remedy is an emetic to bring up the
offending cause. If the emetic have not acted sufficiently, the medical
man when he arrives may deem it necessary to use the stomach-
pump; but remember not a moment must be lost, for moments are
precious in a case of belladonna poisoning, in giving a mustard
emetic, and repeating it again and again until the enemy be
dislodged. Dash cold water upon his head and face; the best way of
doing which is by means of a large sponge, holding his head and his
face over a wash-hand basin, half filled with cold water, and filling
the sponge from the basin, and squeezing it over his head and face,
allowing the water to continuously stream over them for an hour or
two, or until the effects of the poison have passed away. This
sponging of the head and face is very useful in poisoning by opium,
as well as in poisoning by belladonna; indeed, the treatment of
poisoning by the one is very similar to the treatment of poisoning by
the other. I, therefore, for the further treatment of poisoning by
belladonna, beg to refer you to a previous Conversation on the
treatment of poisoning by opium.
295. Should a child put either a pea or a bead, or any other
foreign substance, up the nose, what ought to be done?
Do not attempt to extract it yourself, or you might push it farther
in, but send instantly for a surgeon, who will readily remove it, either
with a pair of forceps, or by means of a bent probe, or with a director.
If it be a pea, and it be allowed for any length of time to remain in, it
will swell, and will thus become difficult to extract, and may produce

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Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and

Ecology from Herder to Humboldt Dalia

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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Introduction: Finding Romantic Empiricism  1

4. Aesthetic Education and the Transformation of the Scientist  104

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

FA Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche (Frankfurter Ausgabe).

Johann Gottfried Herder

FHA Werke in zehn Bänden (Frankfurter Ausgabe). Edited by Jürgen Brummack

Alexander von Humboldt

CE 1 Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Volume 1. Edited

CE 2 Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. Volume 2.

Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland

EGP Essay on the Geography of Plants. Edited with an introduction by Stephen

AA Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaft.

NA Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Edited by Julius Petersen et al. Weimar:

Friedrich von Schlegel

KFSA Kritische Friedrich-​Schlegel-​Ausgabe. Edited by E. Behler, J. J. Anstett, and

I.1. The Idea of Romantic Empiricism

I.2. Mapping the Terrain: Romantic Empiricism

Although the nineteenth century is often identified with the exploitation

Kant) and can in some sense be regarded as a member of this tradition.16

I.3. Romantic Empiricism: Methodology and Goals

Kant’s, Herder’s, Goethe’s, and Humboldt’s search for a new methodology

geography, and anthropology, Goethe developed comparative morphology,

I.4. Kant and Romantic Empiricism

As I indicated previously, Kant can only be regarded as a romantic empiricist

I.5. Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt

Humboldt composed essays which he called Naturgemälde (nature

It might seem peculiar to begin a book about an understudied philosoph-

1.1. Reflecting Judgment: A First Look

Kant begins the Critique of the Power of Judgment by pointing to a defi-

a priori rules provided by the understanding. Rather, reflecting judgment

possible a system of experience in accordance with particular laws of nature”

There are, of course, significant differences between a work of art and

1.2. The Analogical Structure of Teleological Judgment

In his first iteration of teleological judgment, Kant speaks of it in terms of

Immediately several crucial aspects of teleological judgment become evi-

In some ways, this use of analogy approximates the attributive concep-

If the case be severe, requiring a second opinion, never of your

275. Have the goodness to mention the complaints of a child for

WARM EXTERNAL APPLICATIONS.

277. In case of a child suffering pain either in his stomach or in

278. Supposing a child to cut his finger, what is the best

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