'Always Stand by Form'
Immediacy of approach to certain essentials of nature as a result of
their religious or artistic experience of the sense-world, is the
characteristic of two more representatives of British cultural life.
They are Luke Howard (1772-1864) and John Ruskin (1819-1900), both true
readers in the book of nature. Like those discussed in the previous
chapter they can be of especial help to us in our attempt to establish
an up-to-date method of apprehending nature's phenomena through reading
them.
At the same time we shall find ourselves led into another sphere of
Goethe's scientific work. For we cannot properly discuss Howard without
recognizing the importance of his findings for Goethe's meteorological
studies or without referring to the personal connexion between the two
men arising out of their common interest and similar approach to
nature. We shall thus come as a matter of course to speak of Goethe's
thoughts about meteorology, and this again will give opportunity to
introduce a leading concept of Goethean science in addition to those
brought forward already.
Of Ruskin only so much will appear in the present chapter as is
necessary to show him as an exemplary reader in the book of nature. He
will then be a more or less permanent companion in our investigations.
The following words of Ruskin from The Queen of the Air reveal him at
once as a true reader in the book of nature:
'Over the entire surface of the earth and its waters, as influenced by
the power of the air under solar light, there is developed a series of
changing forms, in clouds, plants and animals, all of which have
reference in their action, or nature, to the human intelligence that
perceives them.' (II, 89.)
Here Ruskin in an entirely Goethean way points to form in nature as the
element in her that speaks to human intelligence - meaning by form, as
other utterances of his show, all those qualities through which the
natural object under observation reveals itself to our senses as a
whole.
By virtue of his pictorial-dynamic way of regarding nature, Ruskin was
quite clear that the scientists' one-sided seeking after external
forces and the mathematically calculable interplay between them can
never lead to a comprehension of life in nature. For in such a search
man loses sight of the real signature of life: form as a dynamic
element. Accordingly, in his Ethics of the Dust, Ruskin does not answer
the question: 'What is Life?' with a scientific explanation, but with
the laconic injunction: 'Always stand by Form against Force.' This he
later enlarges pictorially in the words: 'Discern the moulding hand of
the potter commanding the clay from the merely beating foot as it turns
the wheel.' (Lect. X.)
In thus opposing form and force to each other, Ruskin is actually
referring to two kinds of forces. There exist those forces which
resemble the potter's foot in producing mere numerically regulated
movements (so that this part of the potter's activity can be replaced
by a power-machine), and others, which like the potter's hand, strive
for a certain end and so in the process create definite forms. Ruskin
goes a step further still in The Queen of the Air, where he speaks of
selective order as a mark of the spirit:
'It does not merely crystallize indefinite masses, but it gives to
limited portions of matter the power of gathering, selectively, other
elements proper to them, and binding these elements into their own
peculiar and adopted form. ...
'For the mere force of junction is not spirit, but the power that
catches out of chaos, charcoal, water, lime and what not, and fastens
them into given form, is properly called "spirit"; and we shall not
diminish, but strengthen our cognition of this creative energy by
recognizing its presence in lower states of matter than our own.' (II,
59.)1
When Ruskin wrote this passage, he could count on a certain measure of
agreement from his contemporaries that the essence of man himself is
spirit, though certainly without any very exact notion being implied.
This persuaded him to fight on behalf of the spirit, lest its activity
on the lower levels of nature should not be duly acknowledged. To-day,
when the purely physical conception of nature has laid hold of the
entire man, Ruskin might have given his thought the following turn:
'... and we shall certainly attain to no real insight into this
creative force (of the spirit) at the level of man, unless we win the
capacity to recognize its activity in lower states of matter.'
What Ruskin is really pointing towards is the very thing for which
Goethe formed the concept 'type'. And just as Ruskin, like Goethe,
recognized the signature of the spirit in the material processes which
work towards a goal, so he counted as another such signature what
Goethe called Steigerung, though certainly without forming such a
universally valid idea of it:
'The Spirit in the plant - that is to say, its power of gathering dead
matter out of the wreck round it, and shaping it into its own chosen
shape - is of course strongest in the moment of flowering, for it then
not only gathers, but forms, with the greatest energy.' It is
characteristic of Ruskin's conception of the relationship between man's
mind and nature that he added: 'And where this life is in it at full
power, its form becomes invested with aspects that are chiefly
delightful to our own senses.' (II, 60.)
Obviously, a mind capable of looking at nature in this way could not
accept such a picture of evolution as was put forward by Ruskin's
contemporary, Darwin. So we find Ruskin, in The Queen of the Air,
opposing the Darwinistic conception of the preservation of the species
as the driving factor in the life of nature:
'With respect to plants as animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the
object of life were only the bequeathing of itself. The flower is the
end and proper object of the seeds, not the seed of the flower. The
reason for the seed is that flowers may be, not the reason of flowers
that seeds may be. The flower itself is the creature which the spirit
makes; only, in connection with its perfectedness, is placed the giving
birth to its successor.' (II, 60.)
For Ruskin the true meaning of life in all its stages lay not in the
maintenance of physical continuity from generation to generation, but
in the ever-renewed, ever more enhanced revelation of the spirit.
He was never for a moment in doubt regarding the inevitable effect of
such an evolutionary theory as Darwin's on the general social attitude
of humanity. Men would be led, he realized, to see themselves as the
accidental products of an animal nature based on the struggle for
existence and the preservation of the species. Enough has been said to
stamp Ruskin as a reader in the book of nature, capable of deciphering
the signature of the spirit in the phenomena of the sense-world.
*
Outwardly different from Ruskin's and yet spiritually comparable, is
the contribution made by his older contemporary, Luke Howard, to the
foundation of a science of nature based on intuition. Whereas Ruskin
throws out a multitude of aphoristic utterances about many different
aspects of nature, which will provide us with further starting-points
for our own observation and thought, Howard is concerned with a single
sphere of phenomena, that of cloud formation. On the other hand, his
contribution consists of a definite discovery which he himself
methodically and consciously achieved, and it is the content of this
discovery, together with the method of research leading to it, which
will supply us ever and again with a model for our own procedure. At
the same time, as we have indicated, he will help us to become familiar
with another side of Goethe, and to widen our knowledge of the basic
scientific concepts formed by him.
Anyone interested to-day in weather phenomena is acquainted with the
terms used in cloud classification - Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, and
Nimbus. These have come so far into general use that it is not easy to
realize that, until Howard's paper, On the Modification of Clouds,
appeared in 1803, no names for classifying clouds were available.
Superficially, it may seem that Howard had done nothing more than
science has so often done in grouping and classifying and naming the
contents of nature. In fact, however, he did something essentially
different.
In the introduction to his essay, Howard describes the motives which
led him to devote himself to a study of meteorological phenomena:
'It is the frequent observation of the countenance of the sky, and of
its connexion with the present and ensuing phenomena, that constitutes
the ancient and popular meteorology. The want of this branch of
knowledge renders the prediction of the philosopher (who in attending
his instruments may be said to examine the pulse of the atmosphere),
less generally successful than those of the weather-wise mariners and
husbandmen.'
When he thus speaks of studying 'the countenance of the sky', Howard is
not using a mere form of speech; he is exactly describing his own
procedure, as he shows when he proceeds to justify it as a means to
scientific knowledge. The clouds with their ever-moving, ever-changing
forms are not, he says, to be regarded as the mere 'sport of the
winds', nor is their existence 'the mere result of the condensation of
vapour in the masses of the atmosphere which they occupy'. What comes
to view in them is identical, in its own realm, with what the changing
expression of the human face reveals of 'a person's state of mind or
body'. It would hardly be possible to represent oneself more clearly as
a genuine reader in the book of nature than by such words. What is it
but Ruskin's 'Stand by Form against Force' that Howard is here saying
in his own way?
*
Before entering into a further description of Howard's system, we must
make clear why we disregard the fact that modern meteorology has
developed the scale of cloud-formation far beyond Howard, and why we
shall keep to his own fourfold scale.
It is characteristic of Goethe that, on becoming acquainted with
Howard's work, he at once gave a warning against subdividing his scale
without limit. Goethe foresaw that the attempt to insert too many
transitory forms between Howard's chief types would result only in
obscuring that view of the essentials which Howard's original
classification had opened up. Obviously, for a science based on mere
onlooking there is no objection to breaking up an established system
into ever more subdivisions in order to keep it in line with an
increasingly detailed outer observation. This, indeed, modern
meteorology has done with Howard's system, with the result that,
to-day, the total scale is made up of ten different stages of
cloud-formation.
Valuable as this tenfold scale may be for certain practical purposes,
it must be ignored by one who realizes that through Howard's fourfold
scale nature herself speaks to man's intuitive judgment. Let us,
therefore, turn to Howard's discovery, undisturbed by the extension to
which modern meteorology has subjected it.
Luke Howard, a chemist by profession, knew well how to value the
results of scientific knowledge above traditional folk-knowledge. He
saw the superiority of scientifically acquired knowledge in the fact
that it was universally communicable, whereas folk-wisdom is bound up
with the personality of its bearer, his individual observations and his
memory of them. Nevertheless, the increasing mathematizing of science,
including his own branch of it, gave him great concern, for he could
not regard it as helpful in the true progress of man's understanding of
nature. Accordingly, he sought for a method of observation in which the
practice of 'the weatherwise mariner and husbandman' could be raised to
the level of scientific procedure. To this end he studied the changing
phenomena of the sky for many years, until he was able so to read its
play of features that it disclosed to him the archetypal forms of
cloud-formation underlying all change. To these he gave the now
well-known names (in Latin, so that they might be internationally
comprehensible):
Cirrus: Parallel, flexuous or divergent fibres extensible in any and
all directions.
Cumulus: Convex or conical heaps, increasing upwards from a horizontal
base.
Stratus: A widely extended, continuous, horizontal sheet, increasing
from below.
Nimbus: The rain cloud.
Let us, on the background of Howard's brief definitions, try to form a
more exact picture of the atmospheric dynamics at work in each of the
stages he describes.2
Among the three formations of cirrus, cumulus and stratus, the cumulus
has a special place as representing in the most actual sense what is
meant by the term 'cloud'. The reason is that both cirrus and stratus
have characteristics which in one or the other direction tend away from
the pure realm of atmospheric cloud-formation. In the stratus, the
atmospheric vapour is gathered into a horizontal, relatively arched
layer around the earth, and so anticipates the actual water covering
below which extends spherically around the earth's centre. Thus the
stratus arranges itself in a direction which is already conditioned by
the earth's field of gravity. In the language of physics, the stratus
forms an equipotential surface in the gravitational field permeating
the earth's atmosphere.
As the exact opposite of this we have the cirrus. If in the stratus the
form ceases to consist of distinct particulars, because the entire
cloud-mass runs together into a single layer, in the cirrus the form
begins to vanish before our eyes, because it dissolves into the
surrounding atmospheric space. In the cirrus there is present a
tendency to expand; in the stratus to contract.
Between the two, the cumulus, even viewed simply as a form-type,
represents an exact mean. In how densely mounded a shape does the
majestically towering cumulus appear before us, and yet how buoyantly
it hovers aloft in the heights! If one ever comes into the midst of a
cumulus cloud in the mountains, one sees how its myriads of single
particles are in ceaseless movement. And yet the whole remains
stationary, on windless days preserving its form unchanged for hours.
More recent meteorological research has established that in many
cumulus forms the entire mass is in constant rotation, although seen
from outside, it appears as a stable, unvarying shape. Nowhere in
nature may the supremacy of form over matter be so vividly observed as
in the cumulus cloud. And the forms of the cumuli themselves tell us in
manifold metamorphoses of a state of equilibrium between expansive and
contractive tendencies within the atmosphere.
Our description of the three cloud-types of cirrus, cumulus and
stratus, makes it clear that we have to do with a self-contained
symmetrical system of forms, within which the two outer, dynamically
regarded, represent the extreme tendencies of expansion and
contraction, whilst in the middle forms these are held more or less in
balance. By adding Howard's nimbus formation to this system, we destroy
its symmetry. Actually, in the nimbus we have cloud in such a condition
that it ceases to be an atmospheric phenomenon in any real sense of the
word; for it now breaks up into single drops of water, each of which,
under the pull of gravity, makes its own independent way to the earth.
(The symmetry is restored as soon as we realize that the nimbus, as a
frontier stage below the stratus, has a counterpart in a corresponding
frontier stage above the cirrus. To provide insight into this upper
frontier stage, of which neither Howard nor Goethe was at that time in
a position to develop a clear enough conception to deal with it
scientifically, is one of the aims of this book.)
*
In order to understand what prompted Goethe to accept, as he did,
Howard's classification and terminology at first glance, and what
persuaded him to make himself its eloquent herald, we must note from
what point Goethe's labours for a natural understanding of nature had
originated.
In his History of my Botanical Studies Goethe mentions, besides
Shakespeare and Spinoza, Linnaeus as one who had most influenced his
own development. Concerning Linnaeus, however, this is to be understood
in a negative sense. For when Goethe, himself searching for a way of
bringing the confusing multiplicity of plant phenomena into a
comprehensive system, met with the Linnaean system, he was, despite his
admiration for the thoroughness and ingenuity of Linnaeus's work,
repelled by his method. Thus by way of reaction, his thought was
brought into its own creative movement: 'As I sought to take in his
acute, ingenious analysis, his apt, appropriate, though often arbitrary
laws, a cleft was set up in my inner nature: what he sought to hold
forcibly apart could not but strive for union according to the inmost
need of my own being.'
Linnaeus's system agonized Goethe because it demanded from him 'to
memorize a ready-made terminology, to hold in readiness a certain
number of nouns and adjectives, so as to be able, whenever any form was
in question, to employ them in apt and skilful selection, and so to
give it its characteristic designation and appropriate position.' Such
a procedure appeared to Goethe as a kind of mosaic, in which one
ready-made piece is set next to another in order to produce out of a
thousand details the semblance of a picture; and this was 'in a certain
way repugnant' to him. What Goethe awoke to when he met Linnaeus's
attempt at systematizing the plant kingdom was the old problem of
whether the study of nature should proceed from the parts to the whole
or from the whole to the parts.
Seeing, therefore, how it became a question for Goethe, at the very
beginning of his scientific studies, whether a natural classification
of nature's phenomena could be achieved, we can understand why he was
so overjoyed when, towards the end of his life, in a field of
observation which had meanwhile caught much of his interest, he met
with a classification which showed, down to the single names employed,
that it had been read off from reality.
*
The following is a comprehensive description of Goethe's meteorological
views, which he gave a few years before his death in one of his
conversations with his secretary, Eckermann:
'I compare the earth and her hygrosphere3 to a great living being
perpetually inhaling and exhaling. If she inhales, she draws the
hygrosphere to her, so that, coming near her surface, it is condensed
to clouds and rain. This state I call water-affirmative
(WasserBejahung). Should it continue for an indefinite period, the
earth would be drowned. This the earth does not allow, but exhales
again, and sends the watery vapours upwards, when they are dissipated
through the whole space of the higher atmosphere. These become so
rarefied that not only does the sun penetrate them with its brilliancy,
but the eternal darkness of infinite space is seen through them as a
fresh blue. This state of the atmosphere I call water-negative
(WasserVerneinung). For just as, under the contrary influence, not only
does water come profusely from above, but also the moisture of the
earth cannot be dried and dissipated - so, on the contrary, in this
state not only does no moisture come from above, but the damp of the
earth itself flies upwards; so that, if this should continue for an
indefinite period, the earth, even if the sun did not shine, would be
in danger of drying up.' (llth April 1827.)
Goethe's notes of the results of his meteorological observations show
how in them, too, he followed his principle of keeping strictly to the
phenomenon. His first concern is to bring the recorded measurements of
weather phenomena into their proper order of significance. To this end
he compares measurements of atmospheric temperature and local density
with barometric measurements. He finds that the first two, being of a
more local and accidental nature, have the value of 'derived'
phenomena, whereas the variations in the atmosphere revealed by the
barometer are the same over wide areas and therefore point to
fundamental changes in the general conditions of the earth.
Measurements made regularly over long periods of time finally lead him
to recognize in the barometric variations of atmospheric pressure the
basic meteorological phenomenon.
In all this we find Goethe carefully guarding himself against
'explaining' these atmospheric changes by assuming some kind of purely
mechanical cause, such as the accumulation of air-masses over a certain
area or the like. Just as little would he permit himself lightly to
assume influences of an extra-terrestrial nature, such as those of the
moon. Not that he would have had anything against such things, if they
had rested on genuine observation. But his own observations, as far as
he was able to carry them, told him simply that the atmosphere presses
with greater or lesser intensity on the earth in more or less regular
rhythms. He was not abandoning the phenomenal sphere, however, when he
said that these changes are results of the activity of earthly gravity,
or when he concluded from this that barometric variations were caused
by variations in the intensity of the field of terrestrial gravity,
whereby the earth sometimes drew the atmosphere to it with a stronger,
and sometimes with a weaker, pull.
He was again not departing from the realm of the phenomenal when he
looked round for other indications in nature of such an alternation of
drawing in and letting forth of air, and found them in the respiratory
processes of animated beings. (To regard the earth as a merely physical
structure was impossible for Goethe, for he could have done this only
by leaving out of account the life visibly bound up with it.)
Accordingly, barometric measurements became for him the sign of a
breathing process carried out by the earth.
Alongside the alternating phases of contraction and expansion within
the atmosphere, Goethe placed the fact that atmospheric density
decreases with height. Observation of differences in cloud formation at
different levels, of the boundary of snow formation, etc., led him to
speak of different 'atmospheres', or of atmospheric circles or spheres,
which when undisturbed are arranged concentrically round the earth.
Here also he saw, in space, phases of contraction alternating with
phases of expansion.
*
At this point in our discussion it is necessary to introduce another
leading concept of Goethean nature-observation, which was for him - as
it will be for us - of particular significance for carrying over the
Goethean method of research from the organic into the inorganic realm
of nature. This is the concept of the ur-phenomenon (Urphänomen). In this
latter realm, nature no longer brings forth related phenomena in the
ordering proper to them; hence we are obliged to acquire the capacity
of penetrating to this ordering by means of our own realistically
trained observation and thought.
From among the various utterances of Goethe regarding his general
conception of the ur-phenomenon, we here select a passage from that
part of the historical section of his Theory of Colour where he
discusses the method of investigation introduced into science by Bacon.
He says:
'In the range of phenomena all had equal value in Bacon's eyes. For
although he himself always points out that one should collect the
particulars only to select from them and to arrange them, in order
finally to attain to Universals, yet too much privilege is granted to
the single facts; and before it becomes possible to attain to
simplification and conclusion by means of induction (the very way he
recommends), life vanishes and forces get exhausted. He who cannot
realize that one instance is often worth a thousand, bearing all within
itself; he who proves unable to comprehend and esteem what we called
ur-phenomena, will never be in a position to advance anything, either
to his own or to others' joy and profit.'
What Goethe says here calls for the following comparison. We can say
that nature seen through Bacon's eyes appears as if painted on a
two-dimensional surface, so that all its facts are seen alongside each
other at exactly the same distance from the observer. Goethe, on the
other hand, ascribed to the human spirit the power of seeing the
phenomenal world in all its three-dimensional multiplicity; that is, of
seeing it in perspective and distinguishing between foreground and
background.4 Things in the foreground he called ur-phenomena. Here the
idea creatively determining the relevant field of facts comes to its
purest expression. The sole task of the investigator of nature, he
considered, was to seek for the ur-phenomena and to bring all other
phenomena into relation with them; and in the fulfilment of this task
he saw the means of fully satisfying the human mind's need to theorize.
He expressed this in the words, 'Every fact is itself already theory'.
In Goethe's meteorological studies we have a lucid example of how he
sought and found the relevant ur-phenomenon. It is the
breathing-process of the earth as shown by the variations of barometric
pressure.
*
Once again we find Thomas Reid, along his line of intuitively guided
observation, coming quite close to Goethe where he deals with the
question of the apprehension of natural law by the human mind. He, too,
was an opponent of the method of 'explaining' phenomena by means of
abstract theories spun out of sheer thinking, and more than once in his
writings he inveighs against it in his downright, humorous way.5
His conviction that human thinking ought to remain within the realm of
directly experienced observation is shown in the following words: 'In
the solution of natural phenomena, all the length that the human
faculties can carry us is only this, that from particular phenomena, we
may, by induction, trace out general phenomena, of which all the
particular ones are necessary consequences.'6 As an example of this he
takes gravity, leading the reader from one phenomenon to the next
without ever abandoning them, and concluding the journey by saying:
'The most general phenomena we can reach are what we call laws of
nature. So that the laws of nature are nothing else but the most
general facts relating to the operations of nature, which include a
great many particular facts under them.'
*
It was while on his way with the Grand Duke of Weimar to visit a newly
erected meteorological observatory that Goethe, in the course of
informing his companion of his own meteorological ideas, first heard of
Howard's writings about the formation of clouds. The Duke had read a
report of them in a German scientific periodical, and it seemed to him
that Howard's cloud system corresponded with what he now heard of
Goethe's thoughts about the force relationships working in the
different atmospheric levels. He had made no mistake. Goethe, who
immediately obtained Howard's essay, recognized at first glance in
Howard's cloud scale the law of atmospheric changes which he himself
had discovered. He found here, what he had always missed in the
customary practice of merely tabulating the results of scientific
measurements. And so he took hold of the Howard system with delight,
for it 'provided him with a thread which had hitherto been lacking'.
Moreover, in the names which Howard had chosen for designating the
basic cloud forms, Goethe saw the dynamic element in each of them
coming to immediate expression in human speech.7 He therefore always
spoke of Howard's system as a 'welcome terminology'.
All this inspired Goethe to celebrate Howard's personality and his work
in a number of verses in which he gave a description of these dynamic
elements and a paraphrase of the names, moulding them together into an
artistic unity. In a few accompanying verses he honoured Howard as the
first to 'distinguish and suitably name' the clouds.8
The reason why Goethe laid so much stress on Howard's terminology was
because he was very much aware of the power of names to help or hinder
men in their quest for knowledge. He himself usually waited a long time
before deciding on a name for a natural phenomenon or a connexion
between phenomena which he had discovered. The Idea which his spiritual
eye had observed had first to appear so clearly before him that he
could clothe it in a thought-form proper to it. Seeing in the act of
name - giving an essential function of man (we are reminded of what in
this respect the biblical story of creation says of Adam),9 Goethe
called man 'the first conversation which Nature conducts with God'.
It is characteristic of Goethe that he did not content himself with
knowing the truth which someone had brought forward in a field of
knowledge in which he himself was interested, but that he felt his
acquaintance with this truth to be complete only when he also knew
something about the personality of the man himself. So he introduces
his account of his endeavours to know more about Howard, the man, with
the following words: 'Increasingly convinced that everything occurring
through man should be regarded in an ethical sense, and that moral
value is to be estimated only from a man's way of life, I asked a
friend in London to find out if possible something about Howard's life,
if only the simplest facts.' Goethe was uncertain whether the
Englishman was still alive, so his delight and surprise were
considerable when from Howard himself he received an answer in the form
of a short autobiographical sketch, which fully confirmed his
expectations regarding Howard's ethical personality.
Howard's account of himself is known to us, as Goethe included a
translation of it in the collection of his own meteorological studies.
Howard in a modest yet dignified way describes his Christian faith, his
guide through all his relationships, whether to other men or to
nature.10 A man comes before us who, untroubled by the prevailing
philosophy of his day, was able to advance to the knowledge of an
objective truth in nature, because he had the ability to carry
religious experience even into his observation of the sense-world.
*
In view of all this, it is perhaps not too much to say that in the
meeting between Howard and Goethe by way of the spiritual bridge of the
clouds, something happened that was more than a mere event in the
personal history of these two men.
1 These words should be weighed with the fact in mind that they were
written at the time when Crookes was intent on finding the unknown land
of the spirit by means of just such 'a mere force of junction'.
2 See also Goethe's sketch of the basic cloud forms on Plate IV.
3 Goethe's Dunstkreis - meaning the humidity contained in the air and,
as such, spherically surrounding the earth. I had to make up the word
'hygrosphere' (after hygrometer, etc.) to keep clear the distinction
from both atmosphere and hydrosphere. Except for this term in the first
two sentences, the above follows Oxenford's translation (who, following
the dictionaries, has rendered Goethe's term inadequately by
'atmosphere').
4 We may here recall Eddington's statement concerning the restriction
of scientific observation to 'non-stereoscopic vision'.
5 An example of this is Reid's commentary on existing theories about
sight as a mere activity of the optic nerve. (Inq., VI, 19.)
6 See Inq., VI, 13. This is precisely what Kant had declared to be
outside human possibility.
7 Stratus means layer, cumulus - heap, cirrus - curl.
8 There exists no adequate translation of these verses.
9 Genesis ii, 19, 20.
10 A fact which Howard did not mention, and which presumably remained
unknown to Goethe, was the work he had done as chairman of a relief
committee for the parts of Germany devastated by the Napoleonic wars.
For this work Howard received a series of public honours.