August Fried/rich Leopold Weismann. 



XXIX 



University. He retired April 1, 1912, but still continued to reside in 

 Freiburg. 



The happiness of freedom to work at the science he loved was soon 

 clouded by a terrible menace. In the summer of 1864 Weismann's eyes 

 failed him. He suffered as the result of overstrain from hyperemia and 

 great sensitiveness of the retina, which continued for a long time to increase 

 and seemed about to end his whole career. The loving care and continual 

 help of his wife, whom he married in 1867, helped him to bear the burden 

 'and prevented him from giving way to despair. He finally sought and 

 obtained leave of absence from duty for two years (1869-71), determined to 

 avoid all reading and straining of the eyes. He spent the winter of 1869-70 

 with his family in Italy, and there an improvement began and continued on 

 his return, so that he was able to resume his lectures after the interval, 

 and, in 1874, to return to his researches. He speaks with enthusiasm of the 

 joy of renewed work. " I cannot tell you what happiness these labours 

 brought me. It was the greatest pleasure imaginable to sit again at the 

 microscope and study the minute inhabitants of the fresh waters or of the 

 sea in all their wonderful artistic beauty." Weismann also knew well that 

 it was of the utmost importance — and especially for himself with his keen 

 interest in general questions — to provide by a wealth of precise and 

 detailed knowledge the only secure foundation for philosophic thought and 

 speculation. 



After ten years of microscopic research his left eye broke down, becoming 

 not blind but unfit for further work. But by this time he had laid a firm 

 foundation of knowledge and had attracted a band of able pupils through 

 and with whom he could continue to work without endangering the power of 

 his right eye. Chief among those who helped him with the microscope was 

 one of his most gifted pupils, Ischikawa, the eminent Professor of Zoology at 

 Tokio. 



Weismann felt that his life had been controlled and directed by the 

 power of ideals, that power which, in spite of the interference of chance, 

 makes a man strive to use his strength where it can achieve most — in fact 

 to strike and keep the right path in life. He felt that it was certainly not 

 by chance that he gave up Medicine and forsook Chemistry and Botany after 

 having studied them — it was the power of ideals leading him to make the 

 best use of the capacities with which he came into the world. 



Weismann's friends will recall his fine intellectual head, with the tired 

 strained look brought on by the trouble with his eyes. He was tall and 

 strongly built, very fond of walking, and devoted to the country. The love 

 of living things, noticed by his mother in his boyhood, was strong in him 

 throughout life. Weismann was not much of a traveller ; once only he left 

 Europe, and then but for a few hours, when he crossed the Bosphorus to 

 Scutari to enter the celebrated cypress forest, and, from the heights behind 

 the town, to look down on the marvellous pageant of Constantinople. 



