 Fechner showed great promise from an early age. He could speak Latin even as a boy. He learned quickly and studied avidly. When he was only fifteen, the Rektor of his Gymnasium said to him: “Fechner, you are still very young; you must leave because there is nothing more that we can teach you” (Kuntze 1892: 5). But, simply because he was too young for the university, he had to stay an extra year in the Gymnasium. When he was only sixteen, he went to the University of Leipzig. Since he could receive little help from his family, he had to rely on stipends and to give tutorials. Later Fechner would support himself through translations and literary work. This reliance on hack literary work, as we shall soon see, would prove fateful.