MUNICH, November 26, 1830.
. . .When you receive this I shall be no longer in Munich; by means of a last draft on M. Eichthal I have settled with every one, and I hope to leave the day after to-morrow. I fully recognize the justice of your observations, my dear father, but as you start from a mistaken point of view, they do not coincide altogether with existing circumstances. I intend to stay with you until the approach of summer, not only with the aim of working upon the text of my book, but chiefly in order to take advantage of all the fossil collections in Switzerland. For that purpose I positively need a draughtsman, who, thanks to my publisher, is not in my pay, and who must accompany me in future wherever I go. Since there is no room at home, please see how he can be lodged in the neighborhood. I have, at the utmost, to glance each day at what he has done. I can even give him work for several weeks in which my presence would be unnecessary. If there is a considerable collection of fossils at Zurich, I shall leave him there till he has finished his work, and then he will rejoin me; all that depends upon circumstances. In any case he must not be a charge to you, still less interfere with our family privacy. That I may spend all my time with you, I shall at present bring with me nothing that is not absolutely necessary. We shall see later where I shall place my museum. As to visits, they are not to be thought of until the spring. I could not bear the idea of interruption before the first number of my "Fishes" is finished.
The artist in question was Mr. Dinkel. His relations with the family became of a truly friendly character. The connection between him and Agassiz, most honorable to both parties, lasted for sixteen years, and was then only interrupted by the departure of Agassiz for America. During this whole period Mr. Dinkel was occupied as his draughtsman, living sometimes in Paris, sometimes in England, sometimes in Switzerland, wherever, in short, there were specimens to be drawn. In a private letter, written long afterward, he says, in speaking of the break in their intercourse caused by Agassiz's removal to America: "For a long time I felt unhappy at that separation. . .He was a kind, noble-hearted friend; he was very benevolent, and if he had possessed millions of money he would have spent them for his researches in science, and have done good to his fellow-creatures as much as possible."
Some passages from Braun's letters complete the chapter of these years in Munich, so rich in purpose and in experience, the prelude, as it were, to the intellectual life of the two friends who had entered upon them together. These extracts show how seriously, not without a certain sadness, they near the end.
BRAUN TO HIS FATHER.
MUNICH, November 7, 1830.
Were I to leave Munich now, I must separate myself from Agassiz and Schimper, which would be neither agreeable nor advantageous for me, nor would it be friendly toward them. We will not shorten the time, already too scantly measured, which we may still spend so quietly, so wholly by ourselves, but rather, as long as it lasts, make the best use of it in a mutual exchange of what we have learned, trying to encourage each other in the right path, and drawing more closely together for our whole life to come. Agassiz is to stay till the end of the month; during this time he will give us lectures in anatomy, and I shall learn a good deal of zoology. Beside all this one thing is certain; namely, that we can review our medical work much more quietly and uninterruptedly here than in Carlsruhe. Add to this, the advantage we enjoy here of visiting the hospitals. . . The time passes delightfully with us of late, for Agassiz has received several baskets of books from Cotta, among others, Schiller's and Goethe's complete works, the Conversations-Lexicon, medical works, and works on natural history. How many books a man may receive in return for writing only one! They are, of course, deducted from his share of the profits. Yesterday we did nothing but read Goethe the whole day.
A brief account of Agassiz's university life, dictated by himself, may fitly close the record of this period. He was often urged to put together a few reminiscences of his life, but he lived so intensely in the present, every day bringing its full task, that he had little time for retrospect, and this sketch remained a fragment. It includes some facts already told, but is given almost verbatim, because it forms a sort of summary of his intellectual development up to this date.
"I am conscious that at successive periods of my life I have employed very different means and followed very different systems of study. I may, therefore, be allowed to offer the result of my experience as a contribution toward the building up of a sound method for the promotion of the study of nature.
"At first, when a mere boy, twelve years of age, I did what most beginners do. I picked up whatever I could lay my hands on, and tried, by such books and authorities as I had at my command, to find the names of these objects. My highest ambition, at that time, was to be able to designate the plants and animals of my native country correctly by a Latin name, and to extend gradually a similar knowledge in its application to the productions of other countries. This seemed to me, in those days, the legitimate aim and proper work of a naturalist. I still possess manuscript volumes in which I entered the names of all the animals and plants with which I became acquainted, and I well remember that I then ardently hoped to acquire the same superficial familiarity with the whole creation. I did not then know how much more important it is to the naturalist to understand the structure of a few animals, than to command the whole field of scientific nomenclature. Since I have become a teacher, and have watched the progress of students, I have seen that they all begin in the same way; but how many have grown old in the pursuit, without ever rising to any higher conception of the study of nature, spending their life in the determination of species, and in extending scientific terminology! Long before I went to the university, and before I began to study natural history under the guidance of men who were masters in the science during the early part of this century, I perceived that while nomenclature and classification, as then understood, formed an important part of the study, being, in fact, its technical language, the study of living beings in their natural element was of infinitely greater value. At that age, namely, about fifteen, I spent most of the time I could spare from classical and mathematical studies in hunting the neighboring woods and meadows for birds, insects, and land and fresh-water shells. My room became a little menagerie, while the stone basin under the fountain in our yard was my reservoir for all the fishes I could catch. Indeed, collecting, fishing, and raising caterpillars, from which I reared fresh, beautiful butterflies, were then my chief pastimes. What I know of the habits of the fresh-water fishes of Central Europe I mostly learned at that time; and I may add, that when afterward I obtained access to a large library and could consult the works of Bloch and Lacepede, the only extensive works on fishes then in existence, I wondered that they contained so little about their habits, natural attitudes, and mode of action with which I was so familiar.