Genocracy is distantly related to the so-called archetype as a model of thought and perception. We normally associate Carl Gustav Jung with it, but Goethe was in that sense Jung's forerunner even more than Schiller. Goethe presented the concept of Urpflanze, a primordial plant which contained every conceivable aspect of botanic development, much to Schiller's amazement, as an experience. As a Kantian, Schiller saw in this notion, rather, the expression of a philosophical principle. 

The reason why Goethe could justifiably argue for the Urpflanze being an experience and not an idea can be found in his advocacy of metamorphosis, which entails both process and experience. Metamorphosis in Goethe's terms implied the unfolding of the potential contained in the Urpflanze. Judging by their correspondence, Schiller was distinctly ill at ease with the notion of metamorphosis. In fact, the very concept is conspicuously absent from his theoretical writings.

It is assumed that Schiller found the notion of metamorphosis too deterministic and restricting. Interestingly, he made this very point through the character of the Marquis de Posa in the famous tenth scene of the third act of Don Carlos: "Look all around at nature's mastery, / Founded on freedom. And how rich it grows, / Feeding on freedom." Even though de Posa emphatically denies that nature is subjected to restrictions of any kind, he nonetheless speaks of particular "laws" that only "a free mind can see". Moreover, the "free mind" will, according to de Posa, wrap itself into such laws. 

Perhaps Schiller was reminded of de Posa's words when he encountered Goethe's conception of metamorphosis, in a sense one "law of nature" perceived by a truly free mind. And yet, the dichotomy between obvious evidence for law-bound phenomena in nature, whether gravity or metamorphosis, on the one hand and, on the other hand, the feeling of freedom that we associate with being in nature remained, for Schiller, unresolved. It was evidently not easy for him, the dedicated Kantian, to reject this particular aspect of the philosopher's system of thought, namely that Man was evil by nature and that ethics was a prime instrument to ensure that he could overcome his natural dispositions. Schiller argued, with Rousseau, that freedom came first, which meant that man was free to act in a good or evil manner.

It is therefore less surprising that de Posa's best-known phrase in relation to freedom is also his most ambiguous, for it amounts to a problem of logic that Schiller's philosophical master, Kant, would not have condoned. Schiller's Marquis suggests to the King of Spain: "A single word of yours can suddenly / Create the world anew. Give us the freedom / To think." The freedom of thought, however, cannot be challenged anyway. People can only be deprived of the freedom of speech that is actual utterances, or enactions, of freedom. Therefore, in the catalogue of human rights freedom of thought does not feature, but only what can be taken away or, alternatively, guaranteed. Even the seemingly almighty Philip II cannot actually give "the freedom to think". But why, then, does Schiller give this phrase to de Posa? Perhaps because he wanted to illustrate flaws in the character's way of thinking. De Posa is, in a sense, too clever for his own good. He intends to set up a secret game that involves Carlos plotting against his own father from his presumed base in Flanders. De Posa thinks that he is acting freely, but for that thought and supposed freedom he has to pay with his life.