One thing more I have to bring forward from this period.  Up till now my life had met with no sympathetic recognition other than the esteem which I had enjoyed of the country physician during my apprenticeship—­he who encouraged me to study natural science, and smoothed away for me many a difficulty.  But now such sympathy was destined to offer itself as a means of education and improvement.  For there were in Jena just then two scientific associations, one for natural history and botany, the other for mineralogy, as it was then called.  Many of the young students, who had shown living interest and done active work in natural science, were invited to become members by the President, and this elevating pleasure was also offered to me.  At the moment I certainly possessed few qualifications for membership; the most I could say was that my faculty for arranging and classifying might be made of some use in the Natural History Society, and this, indeed, actually came to pass.  Although my admission to this society had no great effect upon my later life, because it was dissolved at the death of its founder, and I did not keep up my acquaintance with the other members afterwards, yet it awakened that yearning towards higher scientific knowledge which now began to make itself forcibly felt within me.

During my residence at the university I lived in a very retired and economical way; my imperfect education, my disposition, and the state of my purse alike contributing to this.  I seldom appeared at places of public resort, and in my reserved way I made my brother (Traugott) my only companion; he was studying medicine in Jena during the first year of my residence there.[22] The theatre alone, of which I was still passionately fond, I visited now and then.  In the second year of this first studentship, in spite of my quiet life, I found myself in an awkward position.  It began, indeed, with my entrance into the university, but did not come to a head till my third half-year.  When I went to the university, my father gave me a bank draft for a small amount to cover my expenses, not only for the first half-year, but for the entire residence, I think.  My brother, who, as I said, was with me at Jena for the first year, wished me to lend him part of my allowance, all of which I did not then require, whereas he was for the moment in difficulties.  He hoped soon to be able to repay me the money.  I gladly gave him the greater part of my little draft; but unfortunately I could not get the money back, and therefore found myself in greater and greater difficulties.  My position became terribly urgent; my small allowance had come to an end by the close of the first year, but I could not bring myself to leave the university, especially now that a yearning for scientific knowledge had seized me, and I hoped for great things from my studies.  Besides, I thought that my father might be induced to support me at the university another half-year.

My father would hear nothing of this so far as he was concerned; and my trustee would not agree to the conditions offered by my father (to cover an advance); so I had to pay the penalty of their obstinacy.