140 ALEXANDEE VON HUMBOLDT. 



the meetings. In the assemblies there is generally too great 

 a preponderance of medical men ; no one being excluded from 

 the Association who has published a book of twenty sheets. 

 The real object of the Society is not to be interpreted by the 

 papers read at the public meetings. The inestimable advan- 

 tage afforded by such an association is the personal intercourse 

 secured to the scientific men of Germany, Sweden, Denmark, 

 and Holland, whereby they are enabled in the course of three 

 weeks to learn more from the discussions held there than could 

 otherwise be obtained from prolonged journeys. There are 

 sections devoted to physiology, zoology, and botany, where dis- 

 cussions may take place and drawings and objects of interest 

 be exhibited. These sectional meetings or scientific reunions 

 excited great interest at Berlin, and have left their impress 

 upon the minds of those who are capable of entering into a 

 discussion without employing a despotic spirit in the search 

 after truth. Many individuals hitherto unknown, though 

 deserving of public attention, are by this means brought before 

 the scientific world. . . . The meeting here received addi- 

 tional lustre from the interest shown by Government, the 

 beauty of the rooms appropriated to the meetings, the presence 

 of the king and the royal family, and the large concourse of 

 remarkable men who otherwise might perhaps never have met.' 

 Though Humboldt endeavoured by this brilliant description 

 to entice his Parisian friends to attend the next meeting at 

 Heidelberg, he yet discountenanced sending any official invita- 

 tions, and instanced in support of his opinion the unsolicited 

 attendance of most of the noted men of science from the 

 northern nations of Europe. 



To Humboldt the bright side of the picture gradually faded 

 as the dark side came more prominently into view. Though 

 at first frequently prevented from attending the meetings of 

 the Association by visits to Paris, and in 1829 by his expedition 

 to Asia, he was present at Breslau in 1834, at Jena in 1836, 

 and at Gottingen in 1839, in order to ' exhibit his marionettes,' 

 U as he termed the papers he prepared for these meetings ; the 

 meeting at Gottingen was the last that he attended, partly on 

 account of increasing age, and partly through a diminished 

 interest in the Society. As early as 1832, he remarks in a 



