The love of Nature had been upon the young man almost from his babyhood. All children love flowers and mix easily with the wonderful things that are found in woods and fields. At twelve years of age Ernst had formed a goodly herbarium, and was making a collection of bugs, and not knowing their names or even that they had names, he began naming them himself. Later it came to him with a shock of surprise and disappointment that the bugs and beetles had already had the attention of scholars. But he got even by declaring that he would hunt out some of the tiny things the scholars had overlooked and classify them. Every man imagines himself the first man, and to think that he is Adam and that he has to go forth, get acquainted with things and name them, reveals the true bent of the scientist.
Doctor Haeckel was ripe for Darwin's book. He was looking for it, and it took only a slight jolt to dislodge him from the medical profession and allow the Law of Affinity to do the rest.
Wallace had written Darwin's book under another name, and if these men had not written it, Haeckel surely would, for it was all packed away in his heart and head. As Darwin had studied and classified the Cirripedia, so would he write an essay on Rhizopods. Luck was with him—luck is always with the man of purpose. He had an opportunity to travel through Italy as medical caretaker to a rich invalid. Sickness surely has its uses; and rich invalids are not wholly a mistake on the part of Setebos. Haeckel secured the leisure and the opportunity to round up his Rhizopods.
He presented the work to the University of Jena, because this was the University that Goethe attended, and the gods of Haeckel were three—Goethe, Darwin and Johannes Muller.
Muller was instructor in Zoology at Berlin, a man quite of the Agassiz type who made himself beloved by the boys because he was what he was—a boy in heart, with a man's head and the soul of a saint. Some one said of Muller, "To him every look into a microscope was a service to God." In his reverent attitude he was like Linnæus, who fell on his knees on first beholding the English gorse in full flower, and thanked Heaven that such a moment of divine joy was his.
Muller was a Jena man, too, and he gave Haeckel letters to the bigwigs. The wise men of Jena discovered that there was merit in Haeckel's discoveries.
Original investigators are rare—most of us write about the men who have done things, or else we tell about what they have done, and so we reach greatness by hitching our wagon to a star. For the essay on Rhizopods, Haeckel was made Professor Extraordinary of the University of Jena. This was in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two; Haeckel was then twenty-eight years old; there he is today, after a service of forty-nine years.
aeckel is married, with a big brood of children and grandchildren about him. Some of his own children and the grandchildren are about the same age, for Haeckel has two broods, having had two wives, both of whom sympathized with the Teddine philosophy.
With the whole household, including servants, the great scientist is on terms of absolute good camaraderie. The youngsters ride on his back; the older girls decorate him with garlands; the boys work with him in the garden, or together they tramp the fields and climb the hills.