Arnold Guyot. 361 



meet his expenses he accepted the invitation of Herr Miiller, 

 Privy Counsellor of the King of Prussia, to live with him and 

 give his children the benefit of conversation in French. The 

 position brought him into intercourse with the highest of Berlin 

 society, and was in many ways of great benefit to him. 



While pursuing theology in earnest, his hours of recreation 

 found him making collections of the plants and shells of the 

 country and otherwise following his scientific leadings. Hum- 

 boldt introduced him to the Berlin Botanical Grarden, where 

 the plants of the tropics were a source of special gratification 

 and profit. Moreover, other courses of lectures attracted him, 

 as those of Hegel, of Steffens on Psychology and the Philosophy 

 of Nature, Mitscherlich on Chemistry, Hofmann on Geology, 

 Dove on Physics and Meteorology, and especially those of 

 Carl Hitter, the eminent geographer, whose philosophical views 

 were full of delight to his eager mind and touched a sympathetic 

 chord. Under such influence he found his love for nature- 

 science rapidly taking possession of him, and, yielding finally 

 to his mental demands, and to his conscience which would 

 not permit him to enter the ministry with a divided purpose, 

 he determined to drop theology and "make science his chief 

 pursuit. 



Eitter, of all his Berlin teachers, made the profoundest impres- 

 sion on his course of thought; and his biographical sketch of 

 him, presented to the American Geographical Society in 1860, 

 four years after his death, exhibits the admiring affection of a 

 pupil who was like Eitter in his profounder sentiments. A 

 paragraph from the Memoir will show the tenor of Eitter's 

 geographical teaching, and something of the mental affiliation 

 between them. Gruyot says :* 



"Ritter, in the introduction to the ' Erdkunde,' declares that 

 the fundamental idea which underlies all his work, and furnishes 

 him a new principle for arranging the well-digested materials 

 of the science of the globe, has its deep root in the domain of 

 faith. This idea, he adds, was derived from an inward intuition, 

 which gradually grew out of his life in nature and among men ; 

 it could not be, beforehand, sharply defined and limited, but 

 would become fully manifested in the completion of the edifice 

 itself. That noble edifice is now before us, and unfinished 

 though it be, it reveals the plan of the whole and allows us to 

 perceive that fundamental idea on which it rests. It is a strong 

 faith that our globe, like the totality of creation, is a great 

 organism, the work of an all-wise Divine Intelligence, an admirable 

 structure, all the parts of which are purposely shaped and 

 arranged, and mutually dependent, and like organs, fulfill, by the 

 will of the Maker, specific functions which combine themselves 



* Amer. Geographical Soc, ii, p. 48, Feb., 1860. 



