October, 11, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



455 



To live life to the full, as Goethe expressed 

 it; to develop all his inherent powers; to 

 take as comprehensive a view as possible of 

 all fields of learning, these were his guiding 

 principles. In the house of this unusually 

 talented musician were heard artistic ren- 

 derings of the chamber-music of Beethoven 

 and Schubert, while as an accomplished 

 linguist he made finished translations of 

 Spanish dramas. Far and wide he was 

 known as an entomologist, as well as the 

 founder and director of an influential ento- 

 mological journal published in Stettin. 

 These and other undertakings enlivened an 

 immense correspondence which he carried 

 on with a circle of prominent men, and 

 such relationships were further developed 

 by frequent journeys to Italy, which coun- 

 try of all others gave the greatest pleasure 

 to this man, fascinated by the beauties of 

 nature, antiquities and the charm of 

 Italian life. 



In such surroundings, with three equally 

 gifted brothers and a sister, Anton Dohrn 

 grew to manhood, and those who knew him 

 well recognized in him many of the quali- 

 ties possessed by the father. At seventeen 

 years of age, this precocious youth (who 

 had already passed without difficulty 

 through the gymnasium) published ar- 

 ticles in entomological periodicals. We 

 can imagine him on the threshold of the 

 university, full of strength and love of life, 

 abounding in enthusiasm for a multiplicity 

 of interests, developed under the father's 

 influence, and by unusual teachers. The 

 world as Goethe saw it was his confession 

 of faith. Dohrn himself regarded it as an 

 accident that with his traits he should in 

 those times have become a zoologist. The 

 entomological leanings of the father, who 

 had interested his three sons while yet boys 

 in the art of collecting insects, gave the first 

 impulse in this direction, but his real in- 

 terest was not yet aroused. What could 



zoology as it was taught in his student 

 years, in the early sixties in Konigsberg, 

 Bonn and Berlin, offer to his hungry mind ? 

 Disappointed at the time already lost, he 

 had the notion of giving up his studies and 

 becoming a publisher, when the appearance 

 of Darwin's work brought an illuminating 

 ray suddenly into his life. When we con- 

 sider how many of us have been drawn into 

 biology, from widely separated fields of 

 interest, by the doctrine of descent looming 

 up before our minds, we can easily imagine 

 what an anchor of safety was offered by 

 this vision to a young zoologist of Dohrn 's 

 temperament and education, already de- 

 spairing of his ground. Here was the 

 turning point in the life of one who scien- 

 tifically was in despair. At one bound zool- 

 ogy took for him its place as the central 

 point of all knowledge. What had ap- 

 peared to his mind as without continuity, 

 suddenly became most perfectly connected. 

 Like many others of his time and later, he 

 had the feeling that here if anywhere the 

 riddle of our being must find a solution. 

 Without doubt the manner in which the 

 new teachings were presented by Haeckel 

 and Gegenbauer must have had great influ- 

 ence on this revolution of his thought proc- 

 esses. Following the advice of these two 

 men, he matriculated in 1868 at Jena, and 

 it appeared at first as if his life too would 

 find its aim and end in the chair of a pro- 

 fessor of zoology, but Dohrn 's personality 

 forced itself out from this career and cre- 

 ated a new sphere of existence. Later he 

 gave two reasons for breaking away from 

 the academic career. Often when working 

 by the sea he had felt the great need of 

 laboratory facilities. A profitable field of 

 activity in Jena hardly seemed longer pos- 

 sible, as a result of an increasing diverg- 

 ence of his scientific views from those of 

 Gegenbauer and Haeckel. Little as we can 

 doubt the strong influence of these motives. 



