EARLY YOUTH 47 



suspicion what the name would one day mean to 

 him. Darwin was then regarded as a completed 

 work on which final judgment had been rendered. 

 He was appreciated as a traveller, a student of the 

 geology of South America, and especially as the 

 gifted investigator of the wonderful coral reefs of 

 the Indian Ocean. His name stood thus in all the 

 manuals, close even to that of Humboldt. Pro- 

 bably the young reader thought he had died long 

 before. At all events, no one had a presentiment 

 that this quiet naturalist and student of corals was 

 about to light a torch that would flame over the 

 world. The chief advantage that Haeckel drew 

 from the two works was an ardent desire to see the 

 tropics, with their virgin forests and blue coral 

 seas. It has come to so many after reading these 

 works, and persisted in their lives as the vivid 

 image of a dream, like that which drove Goethe to 

 Italy — the dream of a home of the soul that must 

 one day be sought. 



The third book was Schleiden's The Plant and 

 its Life. Matthias Jacob Schleiden was then in 

 the best of his power, and had an influence that 

 amounted to fascination on many of the younger 

 men. Behind him lay a terrible struggle. He 

 had begun his career as a lawyer, and had been so 

 unfortunate that he even attempted his life. With 

 his interest in botany a new life began, and he 

 worked with the energy of one raised from the 

 dead. He was certainly an original thinker. His 

 name is known to us to-day especially as the 

 founder of the cell-theory. This is the greatest 



