Before these convictions all considerations gave way, even that of my bodily constitution, which was far too weakly for such a life.
As comrades I selected the Lützowers; and at Eastertide 1813 I arrived at Dresden on my road to join the infantry division of Lützow's corps at Leipzig.[79] Through the retired nature of my self-concentrated life it came about naturally that I, although a regularly matriculated student, had held aloof from the other students, and had gained no settled acquaintance amongst them; thus, out of all the vigorous comrades whom I met at Dresden, many of whom were like myself, Berlin students, I did not find one man I knew. I made but few new friends in the army, and these few I was fated to encounter on the first day of my entrance into my new work of soldiering. Our sergeant at the first morning halt after our march out from Dresden, introduced me to a comrade from Erfurt as a Thüringer, and therefore a fellow-countryman. This was Langethal; and casually as our acquaintance thus began, it proved to be a lasting friendship. Our first day's march was to Meissen, where we halted. We had enjoyed lovely spring weather during our march, and our repose was gladdened by a still lovelier evening. I found all the university students of the corps, driven by a like impulse, collected together in an open place by the shores of Elbe and near a public restaurant; and some old Meissen wine soon served us as a bond of union. We sat about twenty strong in a jolly group at a long table, and began by welcoming and pledging one another to friendship. It was here that Langethal introduced me to a university friend of his at Berlin, the young Middendorff, a divinity student from the Mark.[80] Keeping together in a merry little society till the middle of the lovely spring night, we united again next morning in a visit to the splendid cathedral of Meissen. Thus from the very first did we three join fast in a common struggle towards and on behalf of the higher life, and even if we have not always remained in the like close outward bonds of union, we have from that time to this, now near upon fifteen years, never lost our comradeship in the inner life and our common endeavour after self-education. Both Langethal and Middendorff had a third friend, named Bauer, amongst our comrades of the camp. With him also, as I think, I made acquaintance as early as at Meissen, but it was more particularly at Havelberg, later on, that Bauer and I struck up a friendship together, which has ever since endured. Even when we have not been together in outward life, we have always remained one in our endeavours after the highest and best. Bauer closed the narrow circle of my friends amongst our companions in arms.[81]
I remained true to my previous way of life and thought in the manner in which I viewed my new soldier life. My main care was always to educate myself for the actual calling which at the moment I was following; thus, amongst the first things I took in hand was an attempt at finding the inner necessity and connection of the various parts of the drill and the military services, in which, without any previous acquaintance with military affairs, I managed, in consequence of my mathematical and physical knowledge, to succeed very fairly and without any great difficulty. I was able to protect myself, therefore, against many small reprimands, which fell tolerably frequently on those who had thought this or that instruction might be lightly passed over as too trivial to be attended to. It came about in this way, when we were continually drilling, after the cessation of the armistice, that the military exercises we performed gave me genuine pleasure on account of their regularity, their clearness, and the precision of their execution. In probing into their nature I could see freedom beneath their recognised necessity.
During the long sojourn of our corps in Havelberg previously alluded to, I strengthened my inner life, so far as the military service permitted, by spending all the time I could in the open air, in communion with Nature, to a perception of whose loveliness a perusal of G. Forster's "Travels in Rhineland" had newly unlocked my senses.[82]
We friends took all opportunities of meeting one another. By-and-by we set to work to make this easier by three of us applying to be quartered together.
In the rough, frank life of war, men presented themselves to me under various aspects, and so became a special object of my thoughts as regards their conduct, and their active work, and most of all as to their higher vocation. Man and the education of man was the subject which occupied us long and often in our walks, and in our open-air life generally. It was particularly these discussions which drew me forcibly towards Middendorff, the youngest of us.
I liked well our life of the bivouac, because it made so much of history clear to me; and taught me, too, through our oft-continued and severely laborious marches and military manœuvres, the interchanging mutual relations of body and spirit. It showed me how little the individual man belongs to himself in war time; he is but an atom in a great whole, and as such alone must he be considered.
Through the chance of our corps being far removed from the actual seat of war, we lived our soldier life, at least I did, in a sort of dream, notwithstanding the severe exertions caused by our military manœuvres, and we heard of the war only in the same sleepy way. Now and then, at Leipzig, at Dalenburg, at Bremen, at Berlin, we seemed to wake up; but soon sank back into feeble dreaminess again. It was particularly depressing and weakening to me never to be able to grasp our position as part of the great whole of the campaign, and never to find any satisfactory explanation of the reason or the aim of our manœuvres. That was my case at least; others may have seen better and clearer than I.
I gained one clear benefit from the campaign; in the course of the actual soldier life I became enthusiastic upon the best interests of the German land and the German people; my efforts tended to become national in their scope. And in general, so far as my fatigues allowed, I kept the sense of my future position always before me; even in the little skirmishes that we had to take part in I was able to gather some experiences which I saw would be useful to me in my future work.
Our corps marched through the Mark,[83] and in the latter part of August through Priegnitz, Mecklenburg, the districts of Bremen and Hamburg, and Holstein, and in the last days of 1813 we reached the Rhine. The peace (May 30th, 1814) prevented us from seeing Paris, and we were stationed in the Netherlands till the breaking up of the corps. At last, in July 1814, every one who did not care to serve longer had permission to return to his home and to his former calling. Upon my entrance into a corps of Prussian soldiers I had received, through the influence of some good friends, the promise of a post under the Prussian Government—namely, that of assistant at the mineralogical museum of Berlin, under Weiss. Thither then, as the next place of my destined work, I turned my steps. I desired also to see the Rhine and the Main, and my birthplace as well; so I went by Dusseldorf back to Lünen, and thence by Mainz, Frankfurt, and Rudolstadt to Berlin.