1092 Reviews to obtain it), and the archetypes of other scientists of the age, nor between Goethe's talk of Bildungstrieb and Kraft?which he used ironically 'um des Vortrags willens'? and other contemporary notions of life forces (presented, with all their differences,in the second part of Richards's book) on the one hand, and Darwin's natural selection, an ultimately statistical theory, on the other. Hardly anyone would deny that Darwin's theory of evolution owes a lot to earlier developmental thinking, but in Richards's argument the difference between develop? ment and evolution (the nineteenth-century sense of the word) simply disappears; and along with it the difference between Goethe's methodology based on the senses and setting out from observable phenomena, and that of nineteenth-century science based on deduction and setting out from principles. Darwin, like many others, is interesting because he helped to bring about the movement from the one to the other, and it was this movement which accompanied the transition from natural history to a history of nature. Along the way, and throughout at least the nineteenth century, old ideas had to patch up what the new type of science could not explain: for ex? ample, why cats with blue eyes are always deaf. But ifDarwin therefore invoked some idea of interactive harmony within nature, this should not distract from the fact that the ontology of his thought, like that of Helmholtz, was fundamentally mechanistic, atomistic, and quantitative. Similarly, no great scientist, including Darwin, has ever denied the importance of the imagination for scientific thought, and its role, includ? ing associated rhetorical strategies, has by now received considerable attention. Still, there remains a crucial difference between talking of 'castles in the air' as preparing scientific ground (context of discovery), as Darwin did (p. 536), and saying that they 'not only aided him in the discovery of natural selection, but also deeply structured that discovery', as Richards does (ibid.). Richards's intentions in writing this book are very much to be welcomed: it puts the fingeron a large number of questions that are central to the history of science and philosophy. His answers, however, too often depend on equivocations which, paradoxically , reinstate old dichotomies, rather than resolving them. There are parts of the study that will read like a textbook to those familiar with the subject matter. But then there are excellent passages in which Richards performs high-quality detective work and makes important and subtle points: for example, the British reception of Goethe's inclusive archetype through Oken's and Carus's version of it, where there is one element, vertebra, or leaf, from which all else is derived (pp. 442-44, p. 453); a meticulous chronological reconstruction of the Goethe-Oken controversy over priorityconcerning the vertebral theory ofthe skull, showing that Oken could not possibly have stolen the idea from Goethe (pp. 497-502); and the discovery, on the flyleafof Darwin's copy of Richard Owen's On the Nature of Limbs, of a handwritten remark, saying that he takes Owen's archetypes not as ideas but as real (p. 532). The Romantic Conception of Life, one feels, is the work of someone whose real strength lies in analysis and detail, rather than synthesis and overview. In any case, it seems to be a project which calls for the collaboration of philosophers, historians of science, and literary scholars. University of Sussex Daniel Steuer Italy in the German Literary Imagination: Goethe's 'ltalian Journey' and its Reception by Eichendorff,Platen, and Heine. By Gretchen L. Hachmeister. (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2002. xii + 2i7pp. ?45; $65. ISBN 1-57113-326-0. Travel and travel writing are usually regarded as pleasant but intellectually less im? portant activities. However, some literaryjourneys have been highly influential, such MLRy 99.4, 2004 1093 as Goethe's ltalian journey in 1786. In 1816, many years afterhis return to Germany, Goethe immortalized it in his Italienische Reise. Here he celebrates Italy as a place where he overcame a personal and creative crisis; Rome is the city where the poet was reborn. Although the Italienische Reise was not meant as a travelogue, but...