EARLY YOUTH 23 



and so we still find amongst jurists the most 

 extraordinary views as to the freedom of the will, 

 responsibility, and so on. " Most of our legal 

 students pay no attention to anthropology, psy- 

 chology, and evolution, the first requisites for 

 a correct appreciation of human nature. They 

 ' have no time ' for it. It is unfortunately all 

 absorbed in a profound study of beer and wine and 

 the ' noble art ' of fencing ; and the rest of their 

 valuable time is taken up in learning some 

 hundreds of paragraphs from the books of law, 

 the knowledge of which is supposed to qualify the 

 jurist to fill any position whatever in the State.'* 



The student of psychology, however, cannot 

 fail to see that the disposition that led so many 

 members of Haeckel's family into the legal 

 profession was also developed in himself to some 

 extent. There is perhaps no other scientist of 

 his time with such an imperious craving for clear- 

 ness, for clean lines and systematic arrangement. 

 At least in the whole of the Darwinian period 

 no other has made so great an effort to convert 

 the scattered flight of phenomena in the realm of 

 life into the even course of so many fixed " laws." 

 In many of his writings this tendency to formulate 

 laws is so pronounced that the layman instinctively 

 has an impression of dogmatism on the part of 

 the author. This has been grossly misunderstood, 

 and made to play an important part in the con- 

 troversial work of his opponents. The truth is 

 that this sharp outlook and pronounced tendency 

 to formulate clear and unambiguous " laws " in 



