JOHANNES MULLER 533 



testimony to that common source of their first stimulus and earliest 

 enthusiasm, Johannes Miiller. 



Look as we will through the history of natural science, we do not 

 find an instance where a single individual, gathering about himself 

 8 body of select disciples, has by the infusion of his spirit of work 

 sent abroad influences that have ruled so large a part of the territory 

 of natural science. No such influence emanated from Haller, busily 

 engaged in his collections and accumulation of the facts and theories 

 of a century of physiological activity. Nor could it come from Cuvier, 

 excluding from his circle of labor, as he did, the whole field of physi- 

 ology and embryology, and preoccupied with his foibles of nobility. 

 Nor was such influence from Darwin, secreted in the recesses of his 

 study, modestly content to think, but not to speak. Nor from the 

 combative Huxley, ever at the cannon's mouth with his evolutionary 

 arguments. Nor yet from our more familiar Agassiz, with his noble 

 retinue of followers, and a leader in our own popular thought of nat- 

 ural history though he was. These men have, it is true, been pillars 

 in the development of the biological structure of the present time; 

 yet their fields of labor have been most limited. But it was the nature 

 of the case that it must be so, for no human individual, coming after 

 Miiller, could have the same grasp on the ever-extending realm of 

 biological knowledge. Since his time there are few who have become 

 masters of even a single territory. 



In these days, when the scientific spirit is throwing its ever- 

 increasing impetus into all lines of human activity, man has little 

 opportunity to look back " to the mountains whence cometh his 

 strength."' The source of his to-day's blessings is either wholly over- 

 looked, or, upon special occasions and anniversaries, is (with that feel- 

 ing which Macaulay has called the " furor biographicus ") made to 

 glow in the colors of the sunset. Having avoided, as it is hoped, both 

 of these extremes, we may quickly summarize what, for Johannes 

 Miiller, must ever stand as the criterion of greatness: With an all- 

 including glance he was a master of the whole realm of natural sci- 

 ence, which he widened until it became too great for its own govern- 

 ment. With the certain power of genius, he studied the field of 

 physiology, cleared away the rubbish, breathed into the earth his own 

 spirit, and, in the end, left in the hands of his followers the thrifty 

 seedling of modern comparative physiology, nurtured in the soil of 

 an exact natural scientific method for the investigation of all life 

 phenomena. 



