Nature: A Fragment

I am sure I have mentioned over the years that Goethe pops up in the most surprising places. Just the other evening, transiting with a friend the many corridors linking the various city subway lines, we encountered on the walls of the corridor a recognition of Goethe's wisdom: The unnatural -- that too is natural. Goethe, 1749-1832.Goethe is not the only author who is memorialized along this long corridor. Among others are James Joyce, Ovid, and Mother Goose.Joyce: “Beside the rivering waters of ...” Ovid: “Dripping water hollows out a stone” Mother Goose: “Jack and Jill came down the hill ...” But back to Goethe: My friend stood puzzled over what the quote from Goethe meant and asked if I couldn't look it up. I said that Goethe said so many things that have been quoted over the past two and a half centuries that it would probably be difficult to find. But my friend did find a reference, from an essay entitled "Nature: A Fragment," originally published in 1783 in Tiefurter Journal. It…

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