Despite this uninterrupted uniformity, life is anything but tedious owing to nature’s inexhaustible richness which, time and again, produces ever-new, beautiful and fascinating forms that provide new material to speculate and ponder over, to draw and describe. Indeed, this is just the right sort of work for me because, in addition to the scientific element, it involves artistic matters to a large degree. At the same time, I have once again completely reconciled myself to my dear science in loyalty, which shall, throughout my entire life, take the highest priority and which I had seriously begun to doubt owing to your artistic-aesthetic influences.
I heard that Haeckel became a science zealot after his wife died; that it was his love of science that held him together.