THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 183 



princely rulers ever gave a refuge to free speech 

 and have linked their names for ever with the 

 reform movement, the golden age of German 

 poetry, I was able to work in association with thee. 

 Here we built up our common structure of science 

 in the happiest division of labour, teaching and 

 learning cordially from each other, in the very 

 rooms in which Goethe began his studies of * the 

 morphology of organisms ' a half-century before, 

 and partly with the same scientific means, the germs 

 of comparative and philosophic science that he 

 had scattered. We have shared with each other as 

 brothers the happiness and the sorrow that came 

 in the hard struggle for life, and our scientific 

 efforts have been so intimately blended and so 

 mutually helpful, through our daily working and 

 talking together, that it would have been impossible 

 for either of us to determine the particular share 

 of each in our spiritual communism. I can only 

 say in a general way that the little my restless and 

 impulsive youth could offer thee here and there 

 is out of all proportion to the enormous amount I 

 have received from thee, eight years my senior, a 

 more experienced and mature man." 



Goethe stood behind the friends as the quiet 

 genius loci, giving his blessing to all who worked 

 in his spirit on the old spot. Nor was the place 

 itself without influence. *' Much," Haeckel writes, 

 *^ may have been even the outcome of the common 

 uplifting enjoyment of nature that was afforded us 

 by the artistic lines of the Jena hills, as they 

 brought before us once more at sunset the magic 



