Flora Unveiled

Idealism and Asexualism j 457

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a most embarrassing position, and when innocent young souls took textbook in hand

to advance their studies in private, they were unable to conceal their outraged moral

feelings. Eternal nuptials going on and on, with the monogamy basic to our morals,

laws, and religion disintegrating into loose concupiscence— these must remain for-

ever intolerable to the pure- minded!

No doubt referring to Sebastien Vailliant, Erasmus Darwin, and others, Goethe chan-

nels the eighteenth- century critics when he scolds the sexualists for their licentiousness:

one might point an accusing finger at the naturalists when they take as ribald a delight

in Mother Nature as in the goddess Baubo^78 herself— just because they have discov-

ered a few little weaknesses in the good mother. Indeed, we recall having seen ara-

besques in which the sexual relations within a flower calyx were represented in the

manner of the ancients, in an extremely graphic way.

By characterizing plant sexuality as one of the “little weaknesses in the good mother,”

Goethe here seems once again to grudgingly accept the basic tenets of the sexual theory,

contrary to some of his earlier pronouncements. Indeed, a year before his death in 1832,

Goethe wrote that the reception of Schelver’s theory had been extremely negative and had

“degenerated into abuse,” in part because Schelver had “rashly overrated” the work of his

pupil, Henschell, only to distance himself from it shortly afterward. According to Goethe,

Schelver’s mistake was to base his argument on the “impossibility of hermaphrodism in

the individual.” If Schelver had, instead, based his theory entirely on Goethe’s theory of

spiritual anastomosis:

the theory of sexuality in plants would have been rescued, purged, and strength-

ened. Wind and insects would have been abandoned, amply compensated for by

metamorphosis.

Goethe’s final word on plant sexuality retained his original rejection of wind- and

insect- mediated pollination because it violated his concept of plant self- sufficiency.

Because he restricted his idea of the sexual theory to self- pollination, he could see no dif-

ference between reproduction by seed versus vegetative propagation by cuttings or buds.

Perhaps Goethe’s idea of an “asexual sexuality” in plants had a psychological counterpart

in his close attachment to his sister and his many platonic relationships with women.

What Goethe and his peers found most appealing about the theory of metamorphosis

was the neoclassical idea of the spiritual essence of the plant being liberated from its mate-

rial prison. As Goethe grew older, he began to associate pollination with death and spiri-

tual transcendence.

It has often been pointed out that Goethe’s lifetime spanned the period between the

last witch- burning in Europe and the advent of steam locomotives. Tremendous changes

were afoot in society— and in botany as well. During the next few decades, nearly all of

the misconceptions of the nineteenth- century asexualists would be clarified once and

for all.