living more than ten years as a well-established tradesman and citizen
in Osterode, amongst the Harz Mountains; head of a quiet,
self-contained, happy family, and father of some fine children. My
previous life and endeavours as an educator had already brought me into
connection with this circle; for I had not failed whenever I found
anything suitable to my brother's needs to let him know of it, as he was
the conscientious teacher and educator of his own children. It was in
this peaceful, active family-circle of an intellectual tradesman's home
that I passed all the vacation time during which the university
regulations released me from vigorous work. It could not prove otherwise
than that such a visit should be of the greatest service to me in my
general development, and I remember it with thankfulness even yet on
that account.

I return now to my university life. Physics, chemistry, mineralogy, and
natural history in general, were my principal studies.

The inner law and order embracing all things, and in itself conditioned
and necessitated, now presented itself to me in such clearness that I
could see nothing either in nature or in life in which it was not made
manifest, although varying greatly according to its several
manifestations, in complexity and in gradation. Just at this time those
great discoveries of the French and English philosophers became
generally known through which the great manifold external world was seen
to form a comprehensive outer unity. And the labours of the German and
Swedish philosophers to express these essentially conditioned
fundamental laws in terms of weight and number, so that they might be
studied and understood in their most exact expression, and in their
mutual interchange and connection, fitted in exactly with my own
longings and endeavours. Natural science and natural researches now