[...] Well Sir, what I now am going to state, I affirm upon my honour, my conscience and my oath to be exactly true. In the year 1830, as I was going to publish in latin the same treatise, which in German accompanies this letter, I went to Dr. Seebeck, of the Berlin academy, who is universally admitted to be the first natural philosopher (in the English sense of the word meaning Physiker) of Germany, he is the discoverer of thermo-electricity, and of several physical truths. I questioned him on his opinion on the controversy between Goethe and Newton: he was extremely cautious, made me promise that I should not print and publish any thing of what he might say and at last being hard press'd by me, he confessed that in deed Goethe was perfectly right and Newton wrong; but that he had no business to tell the world so. - He died since, the old coward. - [...]