, 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.

Through the chance of our corps being far removed from the actual seat
of war, we lived our soldier life, at least I did, in a sort of dream,
notwithstanding the severe exertions caused by our military manoeuvres,
and we heard of the war only in the same sleepy way. Now and then, at
Leipzig, at Dalenburg, at Bremen, at Berlin, we seemed to wake up; but
soon sank back into feeble dreaminess again. It was particularly
depressing and weakening to me never to be able to grasp our position as
part of the great whole of the campaign, and never to find any
satisfactory explanation of the reason or the aim of our manoeuvres.
That was my case at least; others may have seen better and clearer than
I.

I gained one clear benefit from the campaign; in the course of the
actual soldier life I became enthusiastic upon the best interests of the
German land and the German people; my efforts tended to become national
in their scope. And in general, so far as my fatigues allowed, I kept
the sense of my future position always before me; even in the little
skirmishes that we had to take part in I was able to gather some
experiences which I saw would be useful to me in my future work.

Our corps marched through the Mark,[83] and in the latter part of August
through Priegnitz, Mecklenburg, the districts of Bremen and Hamburg, and
Holstein, and in the last days of 1813 we reached the Rhine. The peace
(May 30th, 1814) prevented us from seeing Paris, and we were stationed
in the Netherlands till the breaking up of the corps. At last, in July
1814, every one who did not care to serve longer had permission to
return to his home and to his former calling. Upon my entrance into
a corps of Prussian soldiers I had received, through the influence
of some good friends, the promise of a post under the Prussian
Government--namely, that of assistant at the mineralogical museum of
Berlin, under Weiss. Thither then, as the next place of my destined
work, I turned my steps. I desired also to see the Rhine and the Main,
and my birthplace as well; so I went by Dusseldorf back to Luenen, and
thence by Main