32 HAECKEL 



yellow centre, clap his little hands and cry out, 

 '^ Now it's all right again." It is a very pretty 

 trait that tradition has preserved. In the play of 

 the child we seem to see the chief lines of the 

 man's character like two branches of a tree ; the 

 analytic work of the scientist and the recon- 

 structive tendency of the artist who restores the 

 dissected world to harmony. 



His excellent training in those early years 

 fostered his feeling for nature and his sense of 

 independence with wise adaptation to the personal 

 character of the boy. The mother gladly culti- 

 vated his love of nature. On the deeper develop- 

 ment of his character a decisive influence was 

 exercised, with every regard for freedom, by a 

 friend of the family, the physician Basedow. His 

 ideal was education without compulsion, by means 

 of a sort of constant artificial selection and culti- 

 vation of the good that grew up spontaneously in 

 the soul of the child. The father, a great worker, 

 was content to give a word of praise occasionally ; 

 to urge him to go to the root of things always, and 

 never to coquet idly with his own soul. If the 

 young dreamer stood at the window and looked up 

 at the clouds, his father would pat him on the 

 shoulder and say, *' Every minute has its value 

 in this world. Play or work — but do something." 

 It was, in a sense, the voice of the restless nine- 

 teenth century itself that spoke. The whole life 

 of the youth and the man was to be an eternal 

 proof that he had heard the message. He has 

 pressed unwearyingly forward, as few other men 



