44 HAECKEL 



proud and handsome figure of the man himself, 

 recalling pleasantly the masters who have stood 

 here before him, the wide hat covering the white 

 hair that is belied by the rosy cheeks ; a straight 

 and strong figure, yet revealing in the finer lines 

 of the face the sensitive, aesthetic temper that 

 does not look on scientific investigation as a brutal 

 power of the dissecting knife, but remembers he is 

 the heir of Goethe, even in the Zoological Institute 

 yonder. Over my mind came the feeling of a 

 strange rebirth of things. I felt that life is an 

 eternally new and mystic resurrection, immeasur- 

 ably more wonderful and profound than all the 

 crude ideas of resurrection that have yet prevailed. 

 A mind such as we love to picture to ourselves in 

 our ideal of the future historian must seek the 

 eternal and constant features in all change, even 

 in two epochs that are so distinct and in the men 

 who have lived in them. It is our incorrigible 

 schoolmaster disposition that divides things. In 

 the real world there must be one straight line of 

 development. To-day the highest is sought in the 

 melody of immortal verse : to-morrow a Zoological 

 Institute rises on the spot where the poet had 

 stood. 



It is said that the boy did not come under the 

 influence of Goethe without some difficulty. His 

 mother did not like Goethe ; she preferred Schiller. 

 Goethe was too great for every true soul to follow 

 him in his arduous path. Weimar itself had more 

 than once been disposed to desert him. How 

 much more the general public in its conventional 



