66 HAECKEL 



tion, in which Haeckel was growing, saw the whole 

 previous generation embodied in the single name 

 of Miiller. He seemed to be a kind of scientific 

 Winkelried, except that the fifty spears he bore on 

 his breast were so many lines of progress eman- 

 ating from him alone. 



Johannes Miiller had the great and splendid 

 gift of never lying on the shoulders of his pupils 

 with an Alpine weight of authority. It was a 

 secret of his personality that we admire but can 

 hardly express in words to-day. Everybody learned 

 from him what a great individuality is. He 

 exerted a kind of moral suggestion in teaching men 

 to be free, great, enlightened, and true. His 

 pupils have worked at the development of his ideas 

 with absolute freedom. No part of them was to 

 be regarded as sacred, and, as a matter of fact, 

 in the chief questions no part has remained. 



One approaches the inner life of a man like 

 Miiller with a certain timidity, and asks how he 

 became what he was. There can be no question 

 that the fundamental trait of his character was a 

 peculiarly deep religious feeling. At heart he was 

 a mystic. The whole magic of his personal influ- 

 ence sprang from these depths. By profession he 

 was a physiologist, an exact scientist. Never did 

 he swerve a hair's breadth from the iron laws of 

 research. But beneath it all was a suppressed 

 glow of fervour. Every one who understood him, 

 every one who was a true pupil of his, learned it by 

 a kind of hypnotism. Externally he was all for 

 laborious investigation, whether in dissecting a 



