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 manoeuvres, 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.