557 



time had now come for choosing his path ; and we are told that it 

 was after three days of anxious communing with himself that he 

 gave up thoughts of the Church, and decided for Medicine. 



He remained three years at Bonn, and took his degree of Doctor 

 in December, 1822; having presented an inaugural dissertation on 

 the laws of animal locomotion *, a subject on which he had already 

 published some observations in 'Oken's Isis.* His career at the 

 university was characterized by intense application to study, but 

 with the constant exercise of independent thought, and by a keen 

 relish for original investigation. Prompted by this, though but in 

 the first year of his studies, he engaged in a series of experiments 

 and observations on the respiration of the fcetus, a subject which had 

 been proposed for a prize question by the university ; and his essay f, 

 distinguished alike by learned research and by original and varied 

 experiment, was declared the successful one. Miiller's scientific 

 tendencies at this period may be also inferred from the fact that he 

 acted as secretary of a Natural History Society established among 

 the students at Bonn, by Nees von Esenbeck. 



But while thus intent on the proper work of a student, Miiller 

 was not indifferent to the general yearning after constitutional free- 

 dom, which, after expulsion of the French, pervaded the liberal 

 mind of Germany ; and we are told that he heartily joined the 

 Burschenschaft, and even took part as a leader in that rather enthu- 

 siastic association, in which, notwithstanding the ban of the Carlsbad 

 decrees, the academic youth still cherished their hopes of German 

 unity, and laid plans for social improvement. 



After taking his degree, Miiller went to Berlin to pass his exami- 

 nations for licence to practise (Staatspriifungen), and continued for a 

 year and a half to prosecute his philosophical and medical studies in 

 that university. He had not gone through his career at Bonn without 

 contracting some leaven of the "Naturphilosophie" with which the 

 leading German schools of biology were then fermenting. Of this 

 however he was radically cleared at Berlin, through the influence of 

 Rudolphi, of whom he became a favourite pupil. Rudolphi was an 

 enemy to subjective speculation in biological science ; he looked on 

 the so-called philosophy as mistaken and futile in its application to 

 the phenomena of the animal economy, and based his physiology 



* Diss. Inaug. de Phoronomia Animalium. Bonnae, 1822. 



t De Respiratione Fcetus. Commentatio physiologica. Lipsiae, 1823. 



