PORTRAIT OF THE PHYSICIST AS A YOUNG MAN 39aims to overthrow authority. Rather, he was so free that any form of authority
but the one of reason seemed irresistibly funny to him. On another issue, his brief
religious ardor left no trace, just as in his later years he would often wax highly
enthusiastic about a scientific idea, then drop it as of no consequence. About his
religious phase, Einstein himself later wrote, 'It is clear to me that [this] lost reli-
gious paradise of youth was a first attempt to liberate myself from the "only-
personal"' [E3], an urge that stayed with him all his life. In his sixties, he once
commented that he had sold himself body and soul to science, being in flight from
the T and the 'we' to the 'it' [E4]. Yet he did not seek distance between himself
and other people. The detachment lay within and enabled him to walk through
life immersed in thought. What is so uncommon about this man is that at the
same time he was neither out of touch with the world nor aloof.
Another and most important characteristic of Einstein is already evident in the
child quietly at play by itself: his 'apartness.' We also see this in the greater
importance of private experience than of formal schooling and will see it again in
his student days, when self-study takes precedence over class attendance, and in
his days at the patent office in Bern when he does his most creative work almost
without personal contact with the physics community. It is also manifested in his
relations to other human beings and to authority. Apartness was to serve him well
in his single-handed and single-minded pursuits, most notably on his road from
the special to the general theory of relativity. This quality is also strongly in evi-
dence during the second half of his life, when he maintained a profoundly skeptical
attitude toward quantum mechanics. Finally, apartness became a practical neces-
sity to him, in order to protect his cherished privacy from a world hungry for
legend and charisma.
Let us return to the Munich days. Hermann's business, successful initially,
began to stagnate. Signer Garrone, the Italian representative, suggested moving
the factory to Italy, where prospects appeared much better. Jakob was all for it;
his enthusiasm carried Hermann along. In June 1894, the factory in Sendling was
liquidated, the house sold, and the family moved to Milan. All except Albert, who
was to stay behind to finish school. The new factory, 'Einstein and Garrone,' was
established in Pavia. Some time in 1895, Hermann and his family moved from
Milan to Pavia, where they settled at Via Foscolo 11 [S3].
Alone in Munich, Albert was depressed and nervous [M4]. He missed his fam-
ily and disliked school. Since he was now sixteen years old, the prospect of military
service began to weigh on him.* Without consulting his parents, he decided to join
them in Italy. With the help of a certificate from his family doctor attesting to
*By law, a boy could leave Germany only before the age of seventeen without having to return for
military service. Einstein's revulsion against military service started when, as a very young boy, he
and his parents watched a military parade. The movements of men without any apparent will of
their own frightened the boy. His parents had to promise him that he would never become a soldier
[R4].