ABSTRACT
In 1852, George Henry Lewes resumed work on his biography of Goethe by inquiring into the poet's influence on the study of comparative anatomy.1 His research produced an article for the Westminster Review, 'Goethe as a Man of Science'. In The Life and Works of Goethe, published in 1855, the Westminster article was rewritten as a chapter entitled, 'The Poet as Man of Science'. In the early version, Lewes defended Goethe's contributions to science against sceptics, complaining that 'professional men, with professional contempt, shrugged their shoulders at the "amateur". They did so then, they do so now' (October 1852, p. 258). In defending Goethe, Lewes defended himself. He would soon, and for the rest of his career, experience 'professional contempt' for the work of the non-professional, and his exclusion from the scientific establishment was a point of identification with Goethe. Whereas Lewes initially presented his cause as one of establishing Goethe's reputation as a scientist, in his rewritten chapter he argued that elitist snobbery on the part of 'professional men' threatened the very vitality of scientific inquiry: 'When the amateur brings forward crudities, which he announces to be discoveries, their scorn may be legitimate enough; but when he happens to bring forward a discovery, and they treat it as a crudity, their
scorn becomes self-stultification'.2 As an amateur and a popularizer with no university education, no institutional support, and no laboratory, Lewes suffered an uncomfortable consciousness of his outsider status.3
