68 HAECKEL 



your echinoderm-larva in this way or that ; whether 

 you beUeve your star to be a sun or a burnt-out 

 cinder ; whether you conceive God in this way or 

 another — you shall feel that the bridge is there 

 in absolutely everything. Every glance into the 

 microscope is a service of God. It was Goethe's 

 deepest sun that threw a great, radiant spark out 

 of this curious, dark, angular, unintelligible jewel. 



Such a man was bound to be more than Kolliker, 

 Virchow, and Gegenbaur to Haeckel. Miiller was 

 still teaching at Berlin, and Haeckel's best star 

 brought him to sit in reality at the feet of the 

 great teacher, who could so well speak soul to 

 soul to him. 



At the Easter of 1854 Haeckel returned from 

 Wiirtzburg to Berlin. He was now twenty years 

 old, and it was at this juncture that, to use his 

 own phrase, the vast impression of Miiller fell on 

 him. A portrait of Miiller still hangs over the 

 desk in his study in the Zoological Institute at 

 Jena. '^ If I ever become tired at my work," he 

 says, '*! have only to look at it to get new 

 strength." The influence of the much older man, 

 who, however, died at a far earlier age than 

 Haeckel will do, only lasted for a short time. But 

 Haeckel has preserved a memory of him that is 

 only eclipsed by the memory of one other man — 

 Darwin. Miiller did not live to read Darwin's 

 decisive work, so that these two great ideals of 

 Haeckel's never crossed each other, either for good 

 or evil. He himself felt that there was a pure 

 evolution from one to the other in his mind. 



