THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 187 



nature, far from all the whirl and bustle of the 

 world. Only the deepest and most intimate feelings 

 break out in such moments. And here they have 

 left their monument in a Latin name that science 

 will go on coldly entering in its catalogues for 

 ages to come. It seems to me that this simple 

 fact tells us more of the character of this true- 

 hearted man, in whom nothing human was lacking, 

 than long narratives could. 



When the aged Sethe saw the break-up in 1806 

 of the State of Prussia, in the invulnerability of 

 which he had believed as a gospel, he sought 

 refuge in the comfort of work. "I succeeded in 

 benumbing my mind: I experienced in myself 

 that hard work is a soothing balsam, co-operating 

 with our tardy healing force." The grandson, 

 wounded in a more terrible way and cut to the very 

 heart, tried the same remedy. 



Thirty years afterwards, when crowns were 

 prepared and speeches delivered in honour of 

 Haeckel's sixtieth birthday, when the whole of 

 Jena feted him as their own, and the veil fell from 

 his marble bust in the Zoological Institute, to 

 which seven hundred of the best known names in 

 German and foreign science had contributed, the 

 hero of it all went back to that dark hour. "I 

 thought at the time that I could not survive the 

 blow, thought my life was closed, and purposed to 

 bring together all the new ideas that Darwin's 

 theory of evolution had evoked in me in a last 

 great work. That was the origin, amid bitter 



