In several lessons he discussed subtly and vividly the art of the
Egyptians, mentioning Champollion's deciphering of the hieroglyphics.

This great intellectual achievement awakened my deepest interest. I went
at once to the library, and Unger selected the books which seemed best
adapted to give me further instruction.

I returned with Champollion's Grammaire Hieroglyphique, Lepsius's Lettre
a Rosellini, and unfortunately with some misleading writings by
Seyffarth.

How often afterward, returning in the evening from some entertainment,
I have buried myself in the grammar and tried to write hieroglyphics.

True, I strove still more frequently and persistently to follow the
philosopher Lotze.

Obedient to a powerful instinct, my untrained intellect had sought to
read the souls of men. Now I learned through Lotze to recognize the body
as the instrument to which the emotions of the soul, the harmonies and
discords of the mental and emotional life, owe their origin.

I intended later to devote myself earnestly to the study of physiology,
for without it Lotze could be but half understood; and from physiologists
emanated the conflict which at that time so deeply stirred the learned
world.

In Gottingen especially the air seemed, as it were, filled with
physiological and other questions of the natural sciences.