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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 928 



always the same, possessing a restless im- 

 agination wliich presented in anticipation 

 that which he wished to see accomplished. 

 This was bound up with a passionate en- 

 ergy in carrying out what he believed to be 

 right. But these qualities had one effect, 

 when it was a question of reaching a cer- 

 tain goal, and another, when a scientific 

 problem was to be solved. The conception 

 of creating a Zoological Station of the 

 greatest value to science, and the idea that 

 the esophagus of the ancestors of the verte- 

 brates had first passed through the central 

 nervous system, as mental concepts are per- 

 haps not so very different; but in order 

 that these thoughts should actually become 

 productive of results they require elabora- 

 tion and different attitudes of mind. In 

 the first case a course of action must be fol- 

 lowed. The actual achievement leads to 

 the proposed goal. The question of which 

 one is right or wrong has no significance in 

 this connection, other than the idea as to 

 whether the goal is or is not attainable. In 

 the second ease there is the question of 

 proving that the course followed corre- 

 sponds with the one pictured in the imag- 

 ination. No road is to be made, but one 

 and only one road is to be found. Nothing 

 can stand in sharper contrast than the two 

 ways of working as expressed in the often 

 unrecognized differences between artistic, 

 in its widest sense, and scientific ability. 

 True, both can be found in equally able 

 men, but even in the greatest it seems im- 

 possible for one quality to be combined 

 with the other without loss. Dohrn was 

 undoubtedly more a man of the first type. 

 He was impelled to express something per- 

 sonal, as it were, an image of himself. In 

 most expressive words he once described 

 the Zoological Station as an organized work 

 of art which he wished to create. Can such 

 a man in the usual sense of the word be an 

 investigator? Can he who so often found 



himself a controller of men and situations 

 become a servant such as nature demands 

 of those before whom she is to lay bare her 

 secrets? Did it lie within the power of 

 man to change annelids into vertebrates, 

 possibly Dohrn had been the one to accom- 

 plish even this; but that is quite another 

 question. 



I wish to call attention to another quality 

 which influenced his scientific productions, 

 and to characterize this in his own words. 

 He writes: 



Without doubt it was, and is a peculiarity of 

 mine to take up a new idea with an apparent 

 partisan blindness. This . conception might appear 

 to others absolutely questionable. My lively 

 powers of imagination and the accompanying need 

 of expressing and giving them play might all too 

 easily produce the impression that I looked neither 

 to the right nor to the left, but as it were, hyp- 

 notically controlled, saw only in one direction — 

 before me. But in fact this is not the case, 

 thoughtless as I appear, and carelessly as I may 

 express myself, just so easy is it for me, once this 

 craving for expression is satisfied, and the one- 

 sided conception is followed to its utmost limits, 

 to turn about and to follow in an almost diamet- 

 rically opposite direction, and, if possible, going 

 even further in overthrowing the first conception 

 than my critics. 



These words refer to questions of prac- 

 tical usefulness, and I cite them in order 

 to give an example of the self-analysis used 

 by Dohrn. Does not he who knows Dohrn 's 

 work read in it the same characteristics ? 

 Is not the irrepressible need for expression 

 which must relieve his intellectual tension 

 revealed by writing, before the carefully 

 weighed deliberation upon the other side 

 can come to expression? But notwith- 

 standing the obvious faults connected with 

 his scientific work, the undeniably great 

 personality of the man must be recognized. 

 Dohrn had none of that pride which wishes 

 to write its name in as many as possible of 

 nature's books; his mind was concentrated 

 on one ideal. 



