He read and spoke
English, and in a general way was interested in biology.

As he read of Darwin's observations and experiments the heavens seemed
to open before him.

Things he had vaguely felt, Darwin stated, and thoughts that had been
his, Darwin expressed. "I might have written much of this book, myself,"
he said.

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 Linnaeus, who fell on his knees on
first beholding the English gorse in