Translated by Bertha Mueller. The educated world, familiar with Faust, Werther and Wilhelm Meister, is not so generally aware of the scientific achievements of the man who had a genus of plants (Goethea) and a mineral (Goethite) named for him; who coined and first used the word morphology; who contributed to the understanding of the physiology of color; who established the first system of weather stations; who made the first systematic classification of minerals; and who came unwittingly close to achieving the greatest concept in biology - the theory of organic evolution and the descent of man.