ut it was more particularly
at Havelberg, later on, that Bauer and I struck up a friendship
together, which has ever since endured. Even when we have not been
together in outward life, we have always remained one in our endeavours
after the highest and best. Bauer closed the narrow circle of my
friends amongst our companions in arms.[81]

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