was a careful, minute, persevering observer, as well as a deep
thinker; but he was as indolent with his pen as he was industrious
with his brain. He gave his intellectual capital to his pupils
without stint or reserve, and nothing delighted him more than to
sit down for a quiet talk on scientific matters with a few
students, or to take a ramble with them into the fields outside the
city, and explain to them as he walked the result of any recent
investigation he had made. If he found himself understood by his
listeners he was satisfied, and cared for no farther publication of
his researches. I could enumerate many works of masters in our
science, which had no other foundation at the outset than these
inspiriting conversations. No one has borne warmer testimony to the
influence Dollinger has had in this indirect way on the progress of
our science than the investigator I have already mentioned as his
greatest pupil,--von Baer. In the introduction to his work on
embryology he gratefully acknowledges his debt to his old teacher.
"Among the most fascinating of our professors was Oken. A master in
the art of teaching, he exercised an almost irresistible influence
over his students. Constructing the universe out of his own brain,
deducing from a priori conceptions all the relations of the three
kingdoms into which he divided all living beings, classifying the
animals as if by magic, in accordance with an analogy based on the
dismembered body of man, it seemed to us who listened that the slow
laborious process of accumulating precise detailed knowledge could
only be the work of drones, while a generous, commanding spirit
might build the world out of its own powerful imagination. The
temptation to impose one's own ideas upon nature, to explain her
mysteries by brilliant theories rather than by patient study of the
facts as we find them, still leads us away. With the school of the
physio-philosophers began (at least in our day and generation) that
overbearing confidence in the abstract conceptions of the human
mind as applied to the study of nature, which still impairs the
fairness of our classifications and prevents them from interpreting
truly the natural relations binding together all living beings. And
yet, the young naturalist of that day who did not share, in some
degree, the intellectual stimulus given to scientific pursuits by
physio-philosophy would have missed a part of his training. There
is a great distance between the man who, like Oken, attempts to
construct the whole system of nature from general premises and the
one who, while subordinating his conceptions to the facts, is yet
capable of generalizing the facts, of recognizing their most
comprehensive relations. No thoughtful naturalist can silence the
suggestions, continually arising in the course of his
investigations, respecting the origin and deeper connection of all
living beings; but he is the truest student of nature who, while
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