LECTURE'THE  LOU I SVILLE  LI B ARY  A SO CI ATI-O,
BY
J. P. LUSE,
X)>  ],.:   I    A'  1 fI,  1 87 4.








The Lessons  of His Life.
LECTURE,
I)I  [  I IVE  JZ.D  B'_EFOIRE
THE LOUISVILLE LIBRARY )ASOCIATIO0,
BY
J, P. LUSE,
Ox FEBR.UARY 16, 1874.








A SHORT time before his death Prof. Agassiz, speaking of the laborious work of the naturalist, said, i' I ave
devoted my whole life to the study of nature, and yet a
single sentence may express all that I have done."  Newton thought of himself as a child gathering shells on the
ocean shore.  La Place, whose learning was encyclopcedic, said in his last moments, " what we do know is of
small amount; what we do not know is immense."  And
many a brave, great heart, nearing the end, after a lifetilne of intellectual labor and research, has sighed to
think how scanty the result of all its toil; how vast, and
complex the problems, how  brief the time in which to
solve them.  The delver into tile arcana of nature is appalled as lie advances, and he who goes farthest, is most
oppressed with a sense of his own insignificance.  Profound humility is always the result of profound research
of nature, and he who stands meekest before her majesty
is he who has penetrated deepest into her mystery.
The, world will not accept Agassiz's estimate of his
life-work.  It is not necessary to indulge in fulsome eulogy, or to ignore his mistakes, to reckon him among the
great.  Emerson says, "I count him a great man who
inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men
rise with labor and difficulty.'
Tried by this definition, few will deny Agassiz a place
among the great.  Galton in his' Hereditary Genius "
estimates that but two hundred and fifty men out of every
million attain eminence for unquestioned, native ability.
When then the volume of life of a great man is closed, it
is well to study its lessons.  How is the world better for




4
his having lived in it?  By what process did he arrive
at the altitude from which he shed down his light upon
the undistinguished millions below?  Will that light continue to cheer humanity in the generations to come, or
did it dazzle but to disappoint, leaving the darkness darker?  Was it an ignis fatuis, or a star, which will shine
through the ages?
In view of the great space _Agassiz has held for forty
years in the scientific world, these questions suggest the
appropriateness of' some consideration of his life and its
lessons. But a few weeks hatve passed since that busy life,
twenty-seven years of which were spent among us, came
suddenly to a close.  His last public effort was an address
before the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture on December 2d, where we are told he spoke withl' ease and
unwonted energy.'
Agassiz delivered his fifth lecture on the Amazon in
New York on the evening of the day on which that cityrendered the last honor to Prof. Bache.  He opened his
lecture with an earnest tribute  to  that distinguished
man, which, without the clhange of a word, mav now
be applied to himself.  Said he, " He was one of those
men whom all loved who knlew  him; but while he was
dear to his friends, he was a man of whom  his country
can well be proud.  He has organized in these United
States a work which has made science. as represented and
carried on in  America, respected wherever, science is
cultivated."
The private life and personal character, the every-day
demeanor and home characteri.stics of Prof. Agassiz were
just such as we all love to find joined to high attainments, great genius and world-wide fame.  He was simple, earnest, enthusiastic, kind, genial, sympathetic, full
of magnetism and boyish fervor, too great to obtrude his
greatness, and too good to forget the coulmoni brotherhood
of men.  The trite. quotation has seldom  been so well applied as to hlimn:
His life was simple. and the elements
So mixed- in him that.Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, This was a man.




iHe would not be a hero even to his own valet, if he
ever had one.  With the" fishermen who broulght him rare
shells and odd fish,, the farmers who consulted him about
stock  breeding, the puzzled, amateur naturalists who
besought him  for explanations, the thoughtless students
who wanted hours of his precious time for elementary
matters in science, he was always the kind-hearted helper, adviser, friend, knowing, as'has been said of him, absolutely nothing of social distinction, and only earnest for
the advancement of science and the spread of knowledge.
Hiis hold upon the popular heartu was in great part due to
these traits.  All saw that he was not of that sort of men:
whose visages
Do, cream and mantel like a standing pond,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profbund conceit.
He was accessible to all, and in that most admirably
adapted to the great work of popularizing science.  He
was iln no sense Sir Oracle; no pompous pedant airing his
erudition;  no frigid patrician  shunning  the common
people, but an honest, great-hearted son of the Huguenots,
a Swiss republican, loving the larger liberty and wider
field of America.  To this was due his ability. as Beecher
says, to make straight the path of Tyndall, to create the
demand for Huxley's lectures, and to lay the " cornerstone of our institutes of technology and scientific schools.'
A marked feature of our time is the effort to popularize science.  The activity displayed in it, the sudden
awakening to its importance. the zeal evinced in translai
ting to popular comprehension the abstrusest inductions,
is almost as notable as the' rise of criticism and.the revival of learning in the sixteenltlh century.
Without disparagement of Gray, Youmans, Winchell,
Mitchell and others, it is but justice to say that Agassiz
has almost alone revolutionized public sentiment and practice in the teaching of science, and in popularizing it.
The marked and eager interest of the general public in
scientific subjects is in great part due to him.  He worked
and thouglht, observed and wrote, analyzed and lectured,




6
synthesized and spoke, for all men, of all countries, and
all; time. He united the philanthropist and the philosopher in that he devoted his great ability with marvelous
industry to the education of the people.  Most original
thinkers require translators. They need to be interpreted
to the common mind.  Generations pass away before their
ideas, discoveries, results, reach the people.  Great truths
have thus often lain locked up in technical or learned languages waiting for tllht most useful class, tile middle men.
Often, too, the interpreter has required to be interpreted,
and  the process  has  needed  repetition  many  times
before  tile mind  of the  first great original thinker
reached that of' the mnasses. Just as in recent years, archeologists and philologists have been forced to reach the
forgotten Zend, Vedic and Cuneiform through several languages in different stages of vitality between the living
tongue and the rock entombed dialects of distant ages.
Agassiz was his own interpreter, and delighted to be so.
He never tired in elucidating and explaining to popular
comprehension faicts and processes in science   His faculty that way, almost as rare as that of original research,
was remarkable.  His lectures are models of clearness
when delivered to non-scientific audiences and the nature
of the subject made popular terms possible, needing nothing of the varnish and veneer of scholarship to create interest or secure attention.  In this consists one of his
greatest excellencies.  IHis thought comes to the people
fresh and hot front t.he brain that elaborated it.  It waits
not for the next century for its effect.  It needed not, like
some of the embryos lhe. so astonishingly investigated, to
wait for a process of alternate generation, and to appear
in many dissimilar puzzling formls before bursting into full
and final development.  In one of his books Agassiz explains to us cases in which, as he says, " the offspring not
only do not resemble the parent at birth, but remain different during their whole life, so that their relationship is
not apparent until a succeeding general;ion.  The son does
not resenmble the father, but the grandfather; and in some
cases the resemblance re-appears only at the fourth or




7
fifth generation, and even later.  Among the Aphides it
is sometimes the eight or ninth generation before the perfect animals appear again, and the original ancestor is
able to recognize his descendant by any resemblance to
himself." It must occur to any one that this singular
process would give rise to many mistakes, both in the animal's own family and the family of scientists, awkward
and inconvenient; and the fact is that naturalists in several instances have seized eagerly upon one of the intermediate descendants and have described -and classified him
as a separate, distinct and new animal, to their subsequent confusion and the embarrassment of entomologists
and zoologists.  The thought suggests itself further that
possibly some one of these intermediate links might, under an evolution -inspiration, set-up in business for itself,
and, refusing to take its absolutely necessary step around
and back towards its ancestral model, start a new, odd,
nondescript, unelassifiable, unscientific family of its own,
in contempt of Cuvier, Linnaeus and Von Baer, and in
reckless disregarcl of the abolished number sixth, seventh,
or eighth animal which, by this erratic behavior, never
had a chance to enjoy its hour life of sunlight.  Some
such peril as this does the ultra-technical scientist undergo.  Agassiz avoided it by his clear comprehension of the
popular imind; his remtiarkable faculty for elucidating the
abstrusest subjects, and his scorn of pedantry.  Here is
one of the lessons of his life  a lesson for thinkers -a
lesson for the privileged few who walk upon the mountain tops of thought-a lesson, too, for educated men on
a lower plateau, who yet overlook the great plains wherein crowd and swarm the multitude waiting for signals, for
men of education and culture stand as did the trusted signal keepers two or three centuries ago on the coast of England.  It was their duty, watching on the hill tops, to
kindle great fires on the approach seaward of a strange
fleet, thus warning the country inland, which sent on and
on the warning, till it reached the whole island, when
the dwellers in valleys and lowlands were as well informed as those on -the coast and mountains.




In Agassiz's life of sixty-seven years, one trait that
cannot fail to strike us is his persistent cultivation of the
homely old virtue of industry.  In this he was not excelled by Humboldt, Cuvier, or Franklin.  Who has ever
reached eminence in the field of science without it?
How  often does close examination prove that, after all,
a great reputation is due more to honest, persistent, hard
work than any special talent or genius.  We so like to
picture the hero and demigod in man that we are prone
to forget the scholar in his long vigils, the student in his
years of silent toil up the steep and rugged ascent, preferring to believe that genius at a bound compassed the
long road and the lofty eminence.  The fact is the hardest workers ale men like Agassiz, driven through life by
an enthusiasm that will suffer no rest, and, too often, like
him into an untimely grave, sustained only by an undying and sleepless love of truth, coupled with a desire to
leave the world better for having lived in it.  To his students he said, " It must not discourage us, that the process of microscopic examination is a slow and laborious
one, and the results of one life-timne after all very small"
In one of his lectures on classification of animals he says,
" In one instance I had an ovarian egg of a white fish for
sixty-three consecutive days, daily for several hours under
the microscope, following without interruption all its
changes till the fish was hatched."  Is it any wonder
that he died with a mortgage on his house? Think of
such a man, with such an eye, and such a brain behind
it, watching a minute fish egg through a microscope for
over two months-long enough time to have made forty
able political speeches.  Such men are driven to their
work by a quenchless thirst for knowledge almost incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.  Most of us are content
to think with Dean Swift that a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey:
And these have smaller still to bite'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum,
We take our knowledge of natural history, microscopy and
the underworld at second hand, but Agassiz saw gran



9
deur and sublimity even in an ovarian egg scarcely perceptible to the naked eye.  Hear him on microscopic examination:of the formation of an ovarian egg: " The process,"
he says. "is very difficult to follow, and in watching
it one is rernminded of what astronomers tell us of distant
bodies in space, which, when observed with the highest
magnifying power, appear only like irregular clouds of
dust, while others are circumscribed in definite areas, and
seem more like neaaer celestial bodies with which we are
familiar   We deal, as it were, with the nebular world
of animal structures.  The mysteries of cell formation are
indeed as difficult to trace as the nebule of the astronomer."
And again in his "Method of study of Natural History"
he says, " One ca.n hardly conceive the beauty of the egg
as seen through the microscope at this period of its
growth, (the first change) when the volk is divided, with
the dark granules on one side: while the other side,
where the trasparent, halo of the vesicle is seen, is brilliant with light.  With the growth of the egg these granules enlarge,' become more distinct, and under the microscope some of them appear to be hollow.  They are not
round in form, but rather irregular, and under the effect
of light they are exceedingly brilliant.  Presently, instead of being scattered equally over the space they occupy, they form. clusters,-constellations, as it were,  and
between these clusters are clear spaces produced by the
separation of albumen from the oil.  At this period of its
growth there is a wonderful resemblance between the appearance of the egg, as seen under the microscope and the
firmament with the celestial bodies. The little clusters
or constellations are unequally divided.  Here and there
thev are two and two like double stars, or sometimes in
threes or fives,. or in sevens, recalling the Pleiades; and
the clear albumen tracks between are like the empty
spaces separating the stars."
The Pleiades in an ovarian turtle egg, notlarger than
a pin's head! There are people who can
Gaze upon those isles of light
So wildly, spiritually bright,




IO
yet see no sublimity in the firmament with its " Datines
of bright gold."  Such are not expected to appreciate the
exacting labors, the enthusiasm, nor the sense of beauty
of the philosopher who sees in a minute spherule the orderly march of the starry hosts. who hears in its tiny
cell a music akin to that of the spheres, and who bows
earnestly before the sublime mystery of creation, whether
dimly hinted in a microscopic vesicle or grandly displayed
in heaven's " majestical roof, fretted with golden fire."
A  philosopher of our day affirms that " the reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be quoted to
prove its barbarism." If so, that of Agassiz will not be
omitted.  When he came among- us twenty-seven years
ago the American Journal of Science says "this country
was without a museum of Natural History, a Zoological
laboratory, or a well organized scientific school, and of
course without the interest necessary to establish them,
and hence, as the next century may say, was barbarous.
The tireless industry of Agassiz was not confined to Embryology, " The huge Ammonites and first bones of time"
equally elicited his enthusiasm  and his genius.  His activitv was'wonderful. After scouring Europe for proofs of
the glacial theory which, lie developed, and which required
research and observation totally different from, and unlike, that just, referred to, he sailed for America. He said
somewhat naively, " In 1846 I camle to this continent,
and the first walk I took in Nova Scotia, a few hours after the arrival of the steamer on which I was a passenger,
at Halifax, I saw the well known tracks of glacier marks
all over the hills."  His recreation was research.  That
first walk over the hills of Nova Scotia was the commencement of tours which encompassed the continent.
Along the coast of North America, in the Lake Superior
region, up the Amazon, around the Cape, along the South
Pacific coast, into the Golden Horn, and across the continent that never resting, indefatigable, ever buoyant, and
always genial student of nature went, ever
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shale, and hornblend, rag, and trap and tuff
Amygdaloid and trachyte.




His " Contributions to the Natural History of the United
States," in four large volumes, are a monument of his industry, llis accuracy of observation, and vast range of
scientific knowledge, in which the young men of this and
after time may see written admonition and encouragement to high endeavor and lofty purpose.  They "are
foot-prints in the sands of time" which the tide of centuries in their ebb and flow may not erase, but the impression deeper make, renminding the struggling and aspiring
however hard the road'and long the way, we can " make
our lives sublime."'
The limits of a lecture would scarcely suffice for a
brief mention of the writings of Agassiz.  Several works
written in Europe on the glacial theory and that on fossil fishes, which Humboldt calls a masterly work, have
never yet been translated.  His monographs, lectures, addresses, magazine articles, are very numerous, and yet he
found time for his larger works, for scientific excursions,
for lectures, teaching, laboratory work and long microscopic investigations.  His mental activity unquestionably
hastened his death, otherwise he might have lived as long
as HEumboldt, and at ninety continued to turn the leaves
of the great open book of nature.  Yet, like Goethe, he
thought " a useless life an early death," and compared
with common men he lived for centuries.  In a letter to
Prof. Silliman, before he came to this country, he said
"My sphere is entirely circumscribed by the scientific
world, and all lmy ambition is limited to being useful to
the branch of science which I particularly cultivate."  The
key to his after life is in this sentence.  He was no bookworm, no closet student, no recluse scholar, no aristocrat
in science, delving and digging for the selfish love of that
occupation. Nor was he a one-idead enthusiast chasing a
pet theory into a hole and there nursing it lest others
should claim it.  Usefulness to science and thus to all
mankind expressed his full ambition and ennobled his
whole life. He aptly expressed in one of his books his
idea of the sphere of purely scientific men and the duty
of the public towards them in these words  " Let me say




12
that the community should foster the purely intellectual
efforts of scientific men as carefully as they do their elementary schools and their practical institutions, generally
considered so much more useful and important to the public.  For from  what other source shall we derive the
higher results that are gradually woven into the practical
resources of our life, except frorm the researches of those
very men who study science, not for it uses, but.for1 itS'
trutA.  It is this that gives it its noblest interest  itl must
be for truth's sake, and not even for the sake of its usefulness to hunmanity, that the scientific man studies nature.  The application of science to thie useful arts requires other abilities, other qualities, other tools than his;
and therefore I say that the man of science who follows
his studies into their practical application is false to his
calling.  The practical man ever stands ready to take up
the work where the scientific man leaves it, and to adapt
it to the material wants and uses of daily life."
In that splendid series of lectures which Prof. Tyndall delivered in this country he expressed the same idea.
He said'There are joys of the intellect as well as joys of
the body.  These pleasures of the spirit constituted the
reward of our great investigators.  Led on by the whisperings of natural truth, through pain and self-denial, they
often pursued their work.  With the, ruling passion strong
in death, some of them, when no longer able to hold a
pen, dictated'to their friends the results of their labors,
and then rested from th.em forever.
Could we have seen. these men at work without any
knowledge of the consequences of their work, what should
we have thought of them? To many of their cotemporaries it would have appeared simply ridiculous to see. men
whose names are now stars in the firmament of science
straining their attention to observe an effect of experiment
almost too minute for detection.  To the uninitiated, they
might well appear as big'children playing with not very
amusing toys. It is so to this hour. Could you watch the
true investigator-your Henry or your Draper, for example-in his laboratory, unless animated by his spirits, you




13
could hardly understand what keeps him  there.  Many
of the objects which rivet his attention might appear to
you utterly trivial; and, if you were to step forward and
ask him what is the use of his work, the chances are that
you would confound him.  He might not be able to express thle use  o.;i:-t; in intelligible terms.  He might
not be able to assure you that it will put a dollar
into the pocket of any human being living or to come.
That scientific discovery may put not only dollars into
the pockets of individuals, but millions into the exchequers of nations, the history of science amply proves; but
the hope of its doing so is not the motive power of the investigator. It never can be his motive power."
This high idea of the dignity of the scientific vocation
is as yet not fully comprehended in oui country, and
hence such really rare men as Kirkwood, the astronomer,
who has across the sea been termed "the Kepler of
America," is forced to earn a beggarly salary by elementary teaching in a western college, though his fine abilities and extraordinary acquirements are needed in a much
wider field. lie has been taught the bitter lesson which
Agassiz early learned when he said before coming to
America, "I learned early that, where one has no fortune, one cannot serve science and at the same time live
in the world."  All honor to the noble men of Boston
who enabled him to live in the world, and for it.
The men who, often in obloquy and poverty, discover
through difficult, intricate, and laborious processes great
laws of nature, are seldom rewarded while living, their monuments and their fame rising only when they have passed
away.  The real pioneers but, "' blaze the way,"' to use a
frontier expression.  When a McAdamized road is built,
and all the world is pleasantly traveling over it, their dangers andlabors are forgotten.  There is no preferred stock
for tlem. and in declaring dividends they are not included. Patents are not granted to, nor privileges conferred on,
men who spend their lives in microscopic -examination of
infusoria, in dissecting animals, resolving nebule or watchinc comets.  As Prof. Youmans has said " The devotion




14
of men of science to the study of Nature is still a popular
puzzle. It is not yet looked upon as the highest occupation of the human mind to extend our knowledge of the
order of things around us.  On the part of classes still
called educated there exists an ill-concealed contempt for
the mental pursuits of mere collectors, observers and experimenters.  It is not now so bad as when in England
Lady Granville's will was attempted to be set aside on
the ground of lunacy, evinced by no other evidence than
a fondness for collecting insects: yet enthusiastic naturalists who ransack field and forest, mountain and sea, are
still regarded as a class apart-as eccentric objects of curiosity, not to be compared in dignitv with the students
of art, literature and metaphysics.  So much of the old
spirit continues that, as objects of thought and in the, education of to-day, the works of man are ranked as superior
to the works of God.  Nor is it by any means considered
so very desirable to know all about nature.  Large numbers of the cultivators of sentimental literature still protest that if the world were once understood, it would no
longer be worth living in.  The heads of college-bred
people are still filled with the old childish fictions which
are fondlv cherished, and science, because it would clear
away the mountains of this rubbish, in which the seekers
after a liberal education are still nmade to delve, is dread-:
ed as a desolating agency that would bereave us of all
that is most ennobling and refining in culture."  Of the
scientist too many are yet apt to say that
Whether he. measure earth, compute the sea,
Weigh sunbeams, carve a fly, or split a flea:
The solemn trifler with his boasted skill
Toils much, and is a solemn trifler still.
The author of Hudibras wrote a satire on the Royal
Society, notwithstanding Newton was a member, and submitted the Principia to it, entitled the Elephant in the
Moon.  This was two hundred years ago, and long before
that solemn body, the Pickwick Club, vet burlesque as it
is, it still to a large extent represents the popular idea of the
scientist's vocation, his mishaps and blunders.
Aoassi zs classical learning was something more than




I 5
rubbish, for inll one of his lectures "on the affinities of animal life," he makes the following statement: " Aristotle
knew more of certain kinds of animals and thleir general
relations than is known now.  Strange to say I have
studied the Selacians on the South American coast by the
light of Aristotle's researches upon them in the MAediterranean Sea made by him  more than 2000 years ago. I
can fairly add that the knowledge of Aristotle on these
topics is so far ahead of the current information recorded
in modern works of natural history that his statements
can only be understood by one who has made a special
study of these animals.  I wish I could handle my subject with Aristotle's mastery."  In the battle raging between the advocates of classical and scientific education
this information may operate to some extent as an argument for truce and compromise, for here is common
ground, a zona libracon which both can stand.
A late writer says of Agassiz, " Not this nation only,
but the world, has suffered a great loss.  More than any
man since Cuvier and Von Humboldt, has he been known
over the whole world.  His fame arose alike from the
great number and value of his original investigations and
publications, from his ability as a philosopher and from
his power of inspiring others with his own enthusiasm
The mention of Humboldt's name recalls the fact that
to him we are indebted for Agassiz. who said " lie (Humboldt) has always treated me as a friend, and his good
counsels have been to me like those of a father."  Thus
thee debt Armerica and the world owes the great German
philosopher is doubled and will go on increasing with
compound interest for many centuries, for through Agassiz to Humboldt we owe the many younger scientists now
in the field and the wonderful scientific interest now exhibited in the country. There was much in the characteristics of the two men and their lives alike.  In dauntless courage and indefatigable energy, wide scope of learning, great ability in generalizing, and acuteness of observation, in willingness to learn from any source and anxiety to impart their knowledge  in the humility of vast




acquirements, in geniality of social intercourse, in utter
carelessness for material gain and indifference to political
preferment, or anything that by any possibility could interfere with devotion to science, they were counterparts.
Beautiful is the friendship of such men.  It was Humboldt who proposed to the king of Prussia to give Agassiz
the necessary funds for a two year's journey on this continent.  It was through Humboldt's influence that the
king, as Agassiz said, "granted in a most generous manner a sum sufficient for the journey."  In Agassiz's address. at the Humboldt Centennial in Boston, in simple and
touching words he again acknowledged his debt of gratitude to Humboldt.  Ile said " His sympathy for all
young students of nature was one of the noblest traits of
his long life.  It may truly be said that towards the close
of his career, there was hardly one prominent or aspiring
scientific man in the world who was not under some obligations to him.  His sympathy touched not only the
work of those in whom he was interested, but extended
also to their material wants and embarrassments.  At.
this period I was twenty-four, lie was sixty-two.  I had
recently taken my degree of Doctor of Medicine, and was
struggling not only for a scientific position but for the
means of existence also.  I have said that he gave me
permission to come as often as I pleased to his room,
opening to me freely the inestimable advantages which
intercourse with such a man gave to a young investigator like myself.  But he did far more than this.  Occupied and surrounded as lie was, he sought me out in my
lodgings.  It was no doubt apparent to him that I was
not familiar with the good things of this world, for shortly afterward I received an invitation to meet him at one
of those restaurants, the tempting windows of which I had
occasionally passed by.  For three hours which passed
like a, dream, I had him all to myself.  How he examined me, and how much I learned in that short time!
How to work, what to do, and what to avoid: how to
live, how to distribute my time, what methods of study
to pursue, these were the things of which he talked to me




7
in that delightful evening.  It was not enough for him to
cheer and stimulate the student.  He cared also to give a
rare indulgence to a young man who could allow himself
few luxuries."  Hamamerton has well said "The Humboldts never are too rich: they possess their gold and are
not possessed by it."
Agassiz's words, recalled now, shed lustre on the memory of two of nature's noblemen.  He continued to pay
his debt of gratitude in benefactions to struggling students
down to the day of his death.  In a lecture delivered by
Prof. Wilder of Cornell University before the American
Institute on " Brain and Mind," he went somewhat aside
to speak thus of Agassiz: " His head is large, and his
brain may be as big as Cuvier's-(long may we wait in
ignorance as to that) bhut whether it is or not, shall we
credit a mass of nervous matter. with the influence this
whole nation has felt from his enthusiasm and devotion to
science?  What is it that has made him  perform  an
amount of intellectual labor that would kill two ordinary
men, and has, in fact, nearly killed him; which has then
led him to forego the increase of his own fame at a most
critical period in scientific progress, and give his energies
to establish a mu-seum whose magnificent collections are
free to any young naturalist who proves his power to use
them  for the advancement of science;  which  has
made him, year after year, a beggar for means to carry
on this museum and pay the workers therein, yet receive
not a dollar for his own services; which has caused him,
thoug] poor himself, never to accept a. single cent for tuition from the scores of young naturalists who owe their
training to him; and which, if I may add my personal
testimony to the general stock, has actuated him in previous years for the investigation of a group of animals which
had an especial interest for him, to appropriate that which
hie had received for public lectures, and then to lead me
into paths promnising far more benefit to me than to his
own work; and now to set apart a liberal sumn from the
museum funds to bring together a collection, the scientifiic results of which are to belono to me and to me alone;




so that I have to thank him, not only for a material, but
for an intellectual, income.  What is the spirit which has
inspired all these things, and which bring not only admiration but love?  Is it a matter of cells and fibers; of fat
and phosphorous; of many and deep cerebral convolutions?  God forbid the thought.  Rather let us believe
that when the heart shall have ceased to beat, and the
brain to suffer its molecular changes, the same great mind
will then, as now, and in Ieaven as upon earth, pursue
the study of spiritual creatures, and direct less gifted ones
into the paths which have already led him to the loftiest
view of Nature and of Nature's God."  Alas! the great
brain of the naturalist has been weighed, although a year
had not passed since these words were spoken.  The
weight of his life-work will not be known till many generations have passed away.
Another student says that " Whenever he saw a student who would study nature, he opened the way for him,
took him into the laboratory, opened his treasures before
him and directed his studies, and this too without any expectation or thought of a pecuniary reward as a return.
I do not know of a single student who ever paid him a
dollar as a tuition for his instruction in natural history
studies.  Young men came and staid and studied as long
as they would, and, as far as tuition was concerned, without money and without price."  It is from such sources
that we get the most accurate idea of the real man.  We
fondly linger over these personal reminiscences because, as
has been said, "good men make the earth wholesome."
It is interesting to know that notwithstanding this
ever open-hearted generosity he suffered no small privations.  When he came to America he was laboring under
a debt of $20,000, incurred by the financial emnbarrassment of a friend who was engaged with him in publishing
his great work on Fossil Fishes.  After his release froli
his engagement by the Prussian Government, he accepted
a professorship at Cambridge at $1500 per year.  Dr.
Loring says of him, " He then commenced his labors at
Cambridge-labors which he has never discontinued, un



19
less checked by ill-health and foreign investigations;casting aside the privileges offered him by Mr. Lawrence,
and devoting himself to the hard work of the professorship in the lecture-room.  Mleantime, owing to his small
salary, and the heavy load of debt which pressed upon
himn, he was obliged to give public lectures constantly,
traveling for that purpose during the intervals of 1his college course.  Commencing his college lectures without
specimens for illustration, he taxed himself to the utmost
to defray the expenses of securing them.  Worn out in
health and exhausted in purse by this constant drain
upon both, in his untiring labors, he established a female
school in his own house, hoping in that way to meet his
family expenses and the constantly increasing cost of his
scientific lectures.  The munificent donation of $50,()00
by the Hon. Francis C. Gray, and the grant of $100,000
by the State, with the outlay of $10,000 by Agassiz himself, from his own purse, gave the museum  its first foundation; and to this work Agassiz has devoted himself
from choice and attachment to our country, and not from
necessity.  During the darkest days of his labors, when
the difficulties of his scientific position were the heaviest,
he received an earnest invitation to the Jarcdin res Plantes, as he did various other offers to return to Europe, and
a strong request to unite himself with the University of
California, at a salary of $20,000 per year.  He was
never tempted, however.  He felt that he had here commenced a work which was to be the success or failure of
his whole life.  Hie was completely identified with it."
Writing of the laborious work of microscopy Agassiz said
"I think people are not generally aware of the difficulties
of microscopic observation, or the amount of painful preparation required to fit the organs of sight and touch for the
work.  In old times men prepared themselves with toil
and vigil for entrance into the temple: and nature does
not open her sanctuary without exacting due penance from
her votaries.  It seems an easy matter for a man to sit
down and look at objects through a glass which enlarges




20
everything to his vision; but there are subjects of microscopic research so obscure that the student must observe a
special diet before undertaking his investigation, in order
that not even the beating of his arteries may disturb the
steadiness of his gaze, and the condition of his nervous
system be so calm  that his whole figure will remain for
hours in rigid obedience to his fixed and concentrated
gaze.
No special diet has ever been discovered that will keep
steady the nerves of a scientist or theologian when the
doctrine of evolution is broached.  Not
AMandragora nor all the drowsy syrups in the world
are able to repress the uproar that ensues in almost any
organization when this apple. of discord is introduced.
Agassiz persistently and emphatically opposed Darwinism, in his last published article reiterating with increased
fervor his arguments against it.  In that he' said " How
tle world originated is the great question, and Darwin's
theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of
life, is thus far merely conjectural.  I believe hehas
not even made the best conjecture possible in the present
state of our knowledge.'  For his opinion on this vexed
question Agassiz incurred nearly all the censure to which
he was ever subjected, yet it must be remembered that
even Darwin spoke of him  as his " most courteous and
most formidable opponent."  Prof. Fiske, of Harvard, in a
late article on Agassiz and Darwinism,  declares that Agassiz is no more competent to grapple with the theorems
of Darwin than a child is qualified for improving the
methods of the integral calculus."  He thinks Agassiz
was "hopelessly behind the age " and never knew wvhat
the Darwinian theoryis. He attributes this to that " rigidity of mind which prevents'the thorough revising of
our opinions and which is sure, sooner or later, to come
upon all of us, and which we ought to dread as we dread
the stagnation of old age or death."  HeT affirms that
Agassiz's mind acquired that rigidity before Darwinism
began to occupy the attention of earnest thinkers. But in
this very article its author says " on evolution ltmy mind




21
was so thoroughly made up thirteen years ago, that the
discussion of it, as ordinarily conducted, has long since
ceased to have any interest for me.  I am just as firmly
convinced that the human race is descended from lower
animal forrns, as I am that the earth revolves in an elliptical orbit about the sun."  How strange that this author never thinks of his own "rigidity of mind," so evidently indicated lhere.  "He that is giddy,. thinks the
world turns round."
Thle golden rule of our great American botanist, Prof.
Grady, is that upon which the thoughtful will act for many.
years yet on the question of evolution.  He thinks that
"Upon very many questions a truly wise man remains
long in a state of neither belief nor unbelief, but your
short-sighted man is apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find his way very rapidly to one or the other
side of every mooted question."  The judicial impartiality
of Agassiz's mind is evident in almost every sentence he
utters.  IIis admonitions to patient and thorough investigation, careful induction and fearless coilclusion appear
constantly.  " He. said, " It is a part of true culture to refrain from judgment and from expression of opinion where
observation fails us.  What we seek may, perhaps, only
be ascertained when better observers and better appliances for observation are secured "  If "Agassiz's repugnance to Darwinism  grew in great part from his apprehension of its atheistical tendency," as has been said, he
fought it by scientific, not theological, methods.  He
accepted the views of Herbert Spencer when he said
"Fearless inquiry tends continually to give a firmer basis
to all true religion.  The timid sectarian, alarmed at the
progress of knowledge, obliged to abandon one by one the
superstitions of his ancestors, and daily finding his cherished beliefs more and more shaken, secretly fears that
all things may some day be explained, and has a corresponding dread of science: thus evincing the profoundest
of all infidelity-the fear lest the trutlh be bad.  On the
other hand the sincere Inan of science, content to follow
wlherever the evidence leads him, becomes bv each new




22
inquiry more profbundly convinced that the universe is an
unsolvable problem."
The deep religious nature of Agassiz continually appears in his writings.  lHe said of Humboldt, who was
accused of scepticism, " A  reverential spirit for everything great and good breathes through all his pages:"-a.
remark equally applicable to his own.  If' its true that
"an undevout astronomer is mad " as Young said, it is
equally true of sciences that came later and lead up, as
Agassiz has expressed it, to an " acquaintance with the
ideas of God himself."
To his religious spirit was joined the widest and most
liberal tolerance.  In his lecture on "Men and Monkeys"
lie said, " It is no longer possible for any man, or any
set of men, to assume that the truth is in them: exclusively.  Men have learned that there is- only one common
foundation for their beliefs, however they may differ from
one another in their religious principles.  Men  have
learned that there is only one source for their knowledge, which is nature, however much they -nay differ in
their interpretation of nature's facts.  There are different
denominations amlkong Christians, and no one has a right
to present his view of the subject as the only correct one."
Prof. Fiske says that " Agassiz had become the welcome ally of those zealous but narrow  minded theologians, in whom the rapid progress of the Darwinian theory has awakened the totally groundless fear that the necessary foundations of true religion, or true christianityv,.are imperiled."  If Agassiz was the ally of the anti-Darwinians he had become such from patient scientific investigation according to scientific processes.: IHe w'as not of
that class of meni who
Prove their doctrine's orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks.
He had " that intellectual fearlessness whichll accepts a
proved fact without reference to its personal or social consequences,' and he believed with the author of "The Intellectual Life" that " the plain course for the preservation
of ourhonesty, which is the basis of truly intellectual think



23
ing, is to receive the truth, wlhetller agreeable or the contrary, with all its train of consequences, however repulsive
or discouraging."  He had himself been the victim of religious intolerance and bigotry.  In one of his lectures on
the " Method of Creation," he said, "When science was
raised above contempt, slhe became the object of a dread
almost. fatal to free development.  Her boundaries were
prescribed by theology and lilmited by the generally accepted creeds.  Indeed thiis phase of persecution has hardly yet passed away.  I remember well, when a young
man, being called before the Board of Education of Neufchatel, thle town wlhere I then taught as professor, to be
reprimanded for inculcating infidel doctrines: aind this because I did not hesitaLte to speak of geology as revealing,
approximately at least, tlhe age of the world, and showing it to be far older than church creeds had supposed."
Agassiz before tlhis little board of bigots reminds us of
Galileo in penitential garb  before the Pope begging pardon for the sin of proving that the earth moved around
the sun.  It recalls Bruno flying fromn  kingdoml to kingdom, seeking safety for a similar heresy-caught at last
and paying for the great crime of Astronomy by death at
the stake.  Hie was burnt at Rorne, February -16, A. D.
1600, two hundred an(d seventy-four years ago to-day, a
victirn of religious intolerance, a martyr to truth.  A historian says that'"withl both present and prophetic truth
lhe nobly responded, when the  atrocious sentence  was
passed upon him:   Perhaps it is with grea-ter fear   that
ye passthlis sentence upon me than I receive it.' "  Science
canonizes no saints and makes no pilgrimiages  lut in
view of the perfect establishlment of the trutlis for which
Rome burnt Bruno, its devotees ti:iglht without muchI) superstition believe that, as was said of another martyr, his
ashes were cast into tlle Tiber. whicl bore ttihem  to the
Tuscan Sea and thle'Fuscan Sea carried thlem to the wide
Ocean, so that his aslhes lifie bins doctrines mighlt be scattered over the wh:lole world.
Agtassiz's arrest also  sugo'oests Coltumbus before  tile
congreglatedl wisdomn of thie fifteentl ecentury at Salal1Ian



24
ca, solemnly admonished to give over the infidel notion
that the earth is round, notwithstanding his vow to make
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and devote a portion of his expected gain from new discoveries to restoring the Holy
City to IMother Church.
Science has been forced to fight nearly every step of
its glorious march against bigotry, prejudice and intolerance.  It has always been compelled to camp on the field
and to sleep on its arms since that grand awakening in
the sixteenth century when, Draper says, " On the ruins
of its ivy-grown cathedrals, Ecclesiasticism  surprised and
blinded by the breaking.day, sat solemnly blinking at
the light and life about it, absorbed in the recollection of
the nighlt that ha's passed, dreaming of new phantoms and
delusions in its wished for return, and vindictively striking its talons at any derisive assailant who approached
too near."
Agassiz incurred the imputation of Atheism in a more
notable instance that he has mentioned; this by his theory of the multiple origin of the human race, which he defended  in an  essay prefixed to Nott and Gliddin's
"Types of Mankind.  He said, "there is no evidence
whatever for the assumption that mankind'originated
from a cormm-on stock and that all the different races with
their peculiarities, in their present distribution, are to be
ascribed to subsequent changes."' Yet he thought that' all our liberty and moral responsibility, however spontaneous are yet instinctively directed by the All-wise and
Omnipotent, to fulfil the great harmonies established
in nature."
In view of Agassiz's position on the three subjects,
the age of the earth, the multiple origin of the human
race and evolution, he has been spoken of by one class as
an "irreligious scientist,;" by another'as a " scientific religionist," accordingly as the speaker adapted his science
to his religion or his religion to his science.  He deserved
neither epithet.  An earnest, yet fearless, student of nature, he followed reverently her teachings, and going to
the limit of established law  waited patiently, hopefully,




25
confidently for more light. When centuries ago navigation extended not beyond the pillars of Hercules, coin of
that time was stampecl with the words " Ne Plus Ultra."
When the Antilles were discovered the word "NVe" was
stricken off, and the inscription read "Plzus Ultra," and
the world waited for the "More Beyond."  This hemisphere has justified that faith.  Agassiz stood upon an outlook few men ever reach, and peering into the unknown
waited meekly, yet confidently for tle " More Beyond."
Can we not all agree with Draper, *who thought that,
Man however learned and pious hlie may be, is not always a reliable interpreter of the ways of God.  In deciding whether any philosophical doctrine is consistent or
inconsistent with the Divine attributes, we are too prone to
judge of those attributes by our own finite and imperfect
standard, forgetting that the only test to which we ought
to resort is the ascertainment if the.doctrine be true.  If
it be true, it is in unison with God."  Eminent scientists
have not always accepted this rule, for Prof. Tyndall says' In one of my latest conversations with Sir David Brewster he said to me that his chief objection to the undulatory theory of light was that lie could not think the Creator guilty of so clumsy a contrivance as the filling of
space with ether in order to produce light. This, I may
say, is very dangerous ground, and the quarrel of science
with Sir David, as with many other persons, is that they
profess to know too milch about the mind of the Creator."
L]a Place was convinced that, if the, Almighty had made
the moon he would have placed it much farther away from
the earth, and otherwise changed its relation to this
planet.  A more modern philosopher has discovered in
the defects of the eye sufficient evidence that the All-wise
optician had nothing to do in its construction.
In his antiquity of man Lyell quotes a saying of
Agassiz'that tersely exhibits the progress of science. He
said that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to
light in science, people first say "it, is not true,' then
that it is contrary to religion," and lastly, " that everybody knew it befo're."  From  the ancient cdtys when it




26
was sinful not to believe the earth a flat plain and the sky
a crystalline dome resting over it down to Darwin's Descent of Man, this has been the history of nearly every
great scientific discovery.  There are eminent Christian
scholars who accept tile doctrine of evolution, and others who like Dr. McCosh and Dr. Peabody think Christianity has no vital interest in the question.  In view of
the fact that Christianity has survived the failure of infa llible bulls to banish comets and abolish the heliocen-.
tric theory, and to arrest nearly every great advance made
by science in our knowledge of the laws of nature, it
is not unreasonable to think that it may continue to exist
whether Darwinianisml finally takes rank witl the law of
gravitation., or is consigned, as many visionary hypotheses
have been, to the great lumber rooms of the past. Writing of Agassiz sixteen years ago, VWhipple said that he
"overcame a temptation, rather than yielded to one, when
he broke through the technical limitations of his science
and passed from laws to ideas, and from ideas to God.
The fear of rousing theological prejudice is not the kind
of fear a man of science is now in most danger of regarding. He is more tempted to yield to that refined form
of cowardice which makes him apprehensive of offending
the prejudices of his order.  A theological leaning in his
scientific speculations is likely to expose him to the suspicions of his peers in science and withdraw from him the
signs of that subtle free-masonry by which leading minds
recognize each other."  " There is nothing," said Montaigne, " that I fear so much as fear." The higher kind of
courage implied in this Agassiz had. In the instance
heretofore referred to, he was, as one of his friends said,
"honored with a howl of execration from that large body
of persons who suppose that religion is only safe when it
is under the guardianship of ignorance and unreason."
Later the howls changed to cheers and hle was proclaimed
the " welcome ally of zealous and narrow  minded theologians."  Had he accepted Darwinism, his fame probably would have been greater with that class of people
who claim to be " advanced thinkers," especially in the




27
United States, Germany and England, for in these countries many of the leading scientists have adopted the
theory of evolution.  Lyell, Huxley, Wallace, Lubbock,
Vogt, lIaeckel, Gray, Draper, Wyman and  scores of
others as eminent are Darwinists.
In England, recently, Agassiz has been spoken of as
a " rmere specialist,'' and in this country he has been the
subject of sympathy for " rigidity ofn-mind which preventcd him revising his opinions."
There was a time in France when men of science considered belief in God the mark of a vulgar mind, and when,
as has been said,  infidelity  was prattled by fops just as
superstition was prattled by devotees.:' There yet exists
something of thlat spirit-a relic of the intolerance of the
Middle Ages.  There is a bigotry in science as well as in
religion.  Mlany there yet are, even among the educated,
who upon the announcement of a startling discovery, the
upturning of some old superstition, the proclamation of a
new and plausible theory rush to cry
Eureka, it is clear
When but some false mirage rises near.
In its advlance, science like an al rmy leaves its worn out
material behind it, and here and there a lame veteran,
too old and stiff to keep up with the rear guard, who once
marched at the very head of the column.  The Ptolmaic
theory was better than Atlas with his broad shoulders
standing upon the back of a turtle which floated on a
shoreless ocean.'But Copernicus struggled to tihe front
after great labor and Ptolinev fell behind.  It was better
to have the sun in tlhe centre of our solar system than the
earth, even though Copernicus had a11 the planets moving in circular, instead of elliptical, orbits. Kepler pushed
ahead of Copernicus, then fell behind Newton, and even
Newton made mistakes which later workers have corrected.  So science advances.  Each builder lays his course
in a tower for all the world to look at in after times, but
each in his negligence or ignorance leaves his unused
stone and mortal for the next to clear awvay,-his faults
of unskillful or hasty workmanship for the next to repair




28
before he proceeds with his course.  But the tower still
rises, and already the morning sun gilds its topmost layer
with thle glory of a grander civilization than earth has
ever known, sustained by true science and ennobled by
free religion.  It will yet higher rise for no Babel tower
is this, even though dogmatists in theology or science
howl and chatter about its base in all the jargons known
to philology or commerce;-slowly, it may be, as the
islands rose out of the sea in the upheaval's geology tells
of-yet as surely; and ages hence no doubt marine fossils will be found upon its top, and clinging to its sides,
far above: their native beds.  The use of fossils is one of
the most fortunate discoveries of our era,-thanks to
da Vinci and Lamark.  Many a mollusk and many a man
has been of great service in that shape, whose particular
object in  existence had previously been a profound
mystery.
We glory in the advance of science and we glorify
ourselves thereat, prone to forget the numerous fanciful,
plausible, yet preposterous hypotheses which learning has
introduced into the world;  which have lived out a generation, been condemned, consigned to unhonored graves
and forgotten.  All the patent offices and museums of the
world would not hold the models of abandoned and exploded theories which promised to immortalize their authors and revolutionize the nations.  All of his knowledge did not prevent Liebnitz, the great physicist and
nathematician, from trying to form an universal alphabet with algebraic signs instead of syllables and words.
The philosopher Locke, so far in advance of his time, constructed a mnodel government for North Carolina which,
like many other ideal republics, proved to be a most visionary and impracticable scheme.  How  many inventi.ons for securing perpetual motion, getting power out of
one end of a nmachine without putting it into the other,
hlave delucded their builders.
Yet many a seeker for perpetual motion has stumbled
on a valuable labor saver, as many a hunter for gold has
found a imorde valuable mineral. Chemistrv descended from




29
alchemy, astrology from  astronomy, medicine from sorcery. The long hunt for the philosopher's stone was not
all in vain, for it added much to mineralogy. Bazil
Valentine was not looking for antimony when he found
it.  Had Kepler not cast nativities, told fortunes, and
made horoscopes science might have waited long for his' three laws" and Newton been impossible.  Kepler said
"astrology as the daughter of astronomy ought to keep
her mother.'-an act of filial obedience which in this
case met with its just and promised reward, for the days
of the daughter and her line are likely to be as long as
the earth moves in its orbit.  Out of Darwinism may yet
come a knowledge of biological laws which Darwin
dreams not of.
Both the centripetal and centrifugal forces are needed to keep earth in its orbit. Withdraw one and we
plunge into the sun;-the other, and tangentially we
go darting away into limitless space without even the
comet's consolation.  It is well to make haste, as the
planets do, safely.  There are many theories which, like
the oerolites go plunging lawlessly about into every body's
orbit but their own, creating immense consternation,
dazzling light,-terror to the timid,-sensation to all, only
at last to bury themselves suddenly out of sight. It is unnecessary to imitate Pope Calixtus in fulminating against
these erratic visitors, for even if they rise to the dignity
of comets their course is eccentric, and we may not expect
them again for some hundreds of years.
Lord Bacon accused Copernicus of" introducing fictions into nature" by affirming that the earth moved
around the sun and the moon around the earth.  Sir
Mathew Hale believed in witchcraft and tortured and executed old women accused of it. Richard Baxter wrote
a work in favor of the severest punishments for sorcery
and rmagic.  John Wesley regretted the repeal of laws
for the capital punishment of witches and said " that the
giving up witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible."
Dryden believed conjunctions and oppositions of planets
had a great part in the distribution of good and evil, and




in the government of sublunary things. Liebnitz, the
great mathematician, rejected the law  of gravitation.
La Place denied the undulatory theory of light.  Lord
Brougham ridiculed Young, who demonstrated that theory twenty years before it was generally accepted. The
Edinburgh Review denounced him as a dreamer, though
Tyndall now declares him one of the most remarkable
men England ever produced.  The reality of witch miracles was affirmed for several centuries, after investigation
by some of the ablest men and the law courts of every
European country. The belief in the power of the king's
touch to cure scrofula flourished in the most brilliant periods of English history, after numerous public experiments.  It was asserted by the privy council, the bishops of two religions, the general voice of the clergy in the
palmiest days of the English Church and the University
of Oxford. It survived, Leckey asserts, the reformation
of Bacon, M1ilton, Hobbes and Locke.
These facts and every page of history teach the same
lesson,-the fallibility of the human understanding,-the
weakness of human judgment,-the strength of human
prejudice and, above all, the wisdom, justice and necessity of liberal tolerance of opinion. Humanity advances
alike in its knowledge of natural and moral law.  It mistakes and corrects-blunders and revises-stumbles and
rises-yet falls forward, and advances.  The Spanish Inquisition and the Ptolmaic theory are together buried.
The misery and mischief which grew out of the endeaver
to enforce'them  by dogma and persecution are warnings
to both scientists and theologians.
Any notice of the life of Agassiz, however brief, would
be incomplete without some reference to his glacial theory.
His name is identified with it, not because he alone originated it, for De Sausure, Rendu, Forbes, Charpentier, and
others were engaged in glacial investigation, before or cotemporary with him.  He went upon the glaciers him_
self, lived upon one for three weeks, crawled into its crev_




ices, crept under it, planted iron rods in straight lines
across it, and with theodolite and assistant engineers ascertained its motion per hour, the relative motion of its
different parts, the effect of that motion upon the rocks
and earth adjacent.  From these long and laborious investigations in the Alps and the Jura, he extended his researches to Britain and afterwards to this continent, commencing, as we have seen, on his first short sojourn at
Nova Scotia, and continuing it wherever he went;  His
theory was that the earth from  each pole to about the
latitude of 32 degrees north and south of the equator was
once enveloped in great sheets of ice thousands of feet
thick, which gradually retired as climates were established,
receding pole-ward  and remaining yet in Greenland,
whence the icebergs come.  Agassiz was always hunting
for evidences of g!acial action, and always finding it, until his theory has become in great part established, though
some of its details even yet remain among the agecnda of
science-things yet to be proven.  The never tiring diligence of Agassiz and the keen insight exhibited in his observations of glacial action, led some one to say that every
boulder would hereafter be his monument.  The immense
rocks often found in this country, frequently on the level
prairie, with generally deep furrows cut upon their surfaces, were as much a puzzle to most people before the
glacial theory as were the marine shells found on mountain tops before Leonardo da Vinci's fossil theory explained them.  It was as reasonable, too, to suppose they
grew by some occult force in nature where they are
found, as was contended by wise men in the case of marine
fossils found many thousands of feet above the level of
the sea. Granite boulders in great numbers are found
hundreds of miles south of any granite stratum, which in
this region does not show itself south of Lake Superior.
They often weigh many tons, are found on or near the
surface, and distant from rock of any kind. It is clear
they mlUt have grown there, or have been carried in glaciers or icebergs, which are floating fragments of glaciers.
Wordsworth refers to these boulders, once regarded with




32
as much awe and mystery as the monuments at Stone
Henge.  IHe says
A large stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence,
Wonder to all who do the same espy
By what means it could thither come and whence,
So that it seems a thing ev-dued with sense,
Like a sea beast crawled forth that on a shelf
Of rock and sand reposeth-there to sun itself.
If Wordsworth's Excursion had been geological he would
probably have understood the boulder better, and then,
the mystery being gone, we might have had an essay on
glacial action instead of a beautiful poem.  Fortunately
we are able to ha've both.  Ignorance and superstition are
no longer considered essential to the highest type of poet
ry or religion, nor a knowledge of physics fatal to either.
Happier than by-gone centuries the nineteenth appreciates
poetry in science as well as science in poetry, and religion in both.  The leading features of the glacial t.heory
may be considered as established, though a feeble fight
is yet kept up against the Glacialists by the Diluvialists,
who attribute the drift beds to Noah's flood.  Its important bearing on all theories of the earth's formation, geologic epochs and time, the beginning and progress of vegetable and animal life, the introduction of man, will readily occur to all.  Theories grow like some scientists say
the earth grew.  At first they are very thin and nebulous. Some, by swift revolution and laws dimly understood, become more and more solid until they harden into
granite.  Others never harden.  They  fade away, become comets or remain cloudy mists through which anybody can see who chooses to look with scientific eyes,
Whatever may become of many hypotheses just now in
their first whirling stage, the boulders are here by millions, often in great groups, forming "lithological parliaments" as an English geologist expresses it, or " stone
mass conventions." as we would say.  They are hard
facts, solid condensed logic, granite syllogisms, which all
the, ologies must consider.. Agassiz's great interest in
them had a foundation, the extent of which becomes evi



33
den.t as science extends its discoveries and widens its field.
lie rather whimsically lamnented that there are no glaciers
in eastern  Northl  America.  His first publications in
Europe were upon glaciers and their action.  He continued his investigations throughout his life, though his special field was nlatural history.  Ile was constantly drawn
firom  embryological and zoological studies to contemplation
of that period in geologic time when those great' plow
shares of God " oving  continents of ice,  were hollowing out the lake beds, smloothling the surface of' the earth
and preparing it by glacial deposit for the coming of man.
With equal facility his great mind turned from investigating the sublimne pilenolmena evident in the building of a
world to a consideration of the structure of the minutest
animalcule that inlhabits it.
There are many. lessons in the life of Agassiz.  Tllere
is one to young men entering upon life with high aspirations and great embarrassments.  He wrote before coming to Amnerica,    I shall be obliged to live very economically.  NMIy work thus far has rewarded me so well
for the privations which I have suffered that I have no
temptation to adopt another style of life, even if I have
more trouble to live in America than in Europe."  We
have seen with what frank gratitude he acknowledged
Humboldt's invitation to a dinner which was'beyond his
straitened means, with what heroic spirit he looked forward to yet greater privations.  We have also:seen him
when his reputation was co-extensive with civilization
and all the>avenues to ease and affluence invitingly open
before him, still pressing on the sam.e earnest, unbribed
student of nature, with " no time to make money."
There is a lesson to educated Amiericans, who seek in
foreign lands the facilities for research and culture in
science which may be better found at home.  Writing to
Prof. Silliman before he had visited this country Agassiz
said " I have truly need to replenish nmyself anew in the
fields and I hope to reap a ric  harvest for science in
America."  The creat nmuseums, libraries, galleries and




34
collections of Europe had less attractions for him than the
vast, unexplored regions of America.  Like Humboldt he
fairly reveled in the vegetable and animal wealth of this
continent.  For such men, South America, that land of
wonders and magnificence, with its intricate net work of
rivers, its dense and pathless forests swarming with life
in novel and wondrous shapes, its numerous water courses
crowvded; with aquatic animals unknown elsewhere, and
the very air teeming with myriad shapes, gorgeous and
grotesque, bhad an irresistible attraction.
Agassiz loved the freedom anod unrestraint of our country as well as its newness and its novelty.  He was a
Swiss Etepublican transplanted to a mIore congenial soil.
No doubt lie often thought of the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, which drove his ancestry from France, and
notwithstanding the strong inducements which were held
out to him to return to Europe, well knew that where religion is in- fetters, science is in chains.
The scientific observer should conme to his work the
freest of the free, unshackled by religious, political, social or educational prejudices.  His aim is the truth, regarcdless of: consequences.  There is yet a vast amount of
prejudice and bigotry in the world, standing right across
the path of science and blocking the way of truth.  We
all smile -at the granite bigotry and the adamantine prejudice of our ancestors who battled against truths which all
now adcllmit, but we forget that an hundred years hence
posterity may wonder and smile at us.  How mighty are
the bonds. of prejudice?  Whlo can say he is free from
them?  Who can say he is unfettered, when even yet we
owe the very fashions of our garments, the forms of our
salutations;, the proverbs which rule our common life and
imany of our notions as to the unseen world and the world
to come, to peoples who lived beyond the Ganges before
the pyramids were built?  Who can declare he is free to
accept the truth regardless of consequences  that he would
not have been a Mahomedaan in Arabia  a Buddhist if
reared in China, or a cannibal if his father LhaLd been king
of the Tonoa islanldds.  We absorb fromt birtih,even be



35
fore it, and hourly after, the ideas, traditions, modes of
thought and mental habits of those who went before and
the community about us.  He who boasts he is indeed
free is often most a slave.  The man who can look the
truth squarely in the face with unquailing eye and accept
the full consequence of adopting it, is even yet in this
nineteenth century a rare man.  Oftener he shudders at
some social cross which hi- neighbors keep standing.  He
trem-bles at the outer darkness, against which all his education warns him. He shakes at sight of the Bastile of
which his own friends are the sentries.  He shrugs, subsides, and with bated breath meekly jogs along in the
good, old ways of thought and belief, while Torquemada
rattles his chain, exhibits his thumb screw, counts his
rosary. and gives thanks that he is not as the heathen are.
The lessons of Agassiz's life to his own compeers in
learning, by steadfast pursuit of the truth for the truth's
sake only, and by unceasing effort to make the hitherto
locked up learning of science the common wealth of all
men, are written upon every page of his history.
His lesson to teachers in studying nature from nature's
own open volume, the original author rather than books
by compilers, promises to revolutionize the method of study
so long in vogue in our country, so profitless and barren
in results, so misleading, discouraging and harmful.  The
museum  of comparative zoology at Cambridge and the
school of Natural History at Penikese, so earnestly fostered
by Agassiz, will be nurseries to produce a class of investigators and observers hereafter, competent to render baseless De Tocquiville's fear that America never would send
one great original investigator into the world.
Speaking of Humboldt's religious views and his alleged scepticism, Agassiz said that his great patron and
friend was certainly no materialist, attributing to matter
and force that world which he spoke of reverently as
"God's Majestic realm."  He said further that "it is
impossible to beconme familiar with his writings without
feeling that if Humboldt was not a believer, he was not a
scoffer? "  As much, and more, may be said of Agassiz.




36
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible formns she speaks
A various language.
Perhaps few are privileged to understand this language,
spoken to such high priests of nature as Humboldt, Linnaeus, Newton, Cuvier and Agassiz.  We have learned
firom science that there are sounds too deep for the ordinary hulnan ear, that there are colors which the common
eye cannot see.  The undulatory theory of light has
shown us that the infinitesimal waves of ether or air tare
by wise provision accom-modaated to our commlon hnuman
wants and organs.  Too great keenness of the senses
would result in powers beyond our need and miseries beyond our endurance.  Man wants not the ea-gle's eye, the
vulture's scent, nor the fox hound's ear.  It is said that
the wonderful ability of great cetaceans to communicate
with each other at vast distances under the ocean is owing to their ability to produce and to hear sounds too deep
for human ears.  It would be, no great stretch of imagination to fancy such giants in the wide ocean of thought as
Hlumboldt and Agassiz thus endowed.   Theilr lives and
writings manifest an awe of the Creator, unfelt and not
comprehlended by mnein who have not, like t, heln, been in
the Presence and before the altar.  Such an awe was
that Prof. Tyndall said he always felt when looking upon
the swift crystallization of certain substances into beautiful foirms before his eye, each molecule seeming endowed
with intelligence and evidently obeying an inscrutable
law of a great Tl:liinker.  Such an awe Newton felt when
nearing the end of long, intricate and laborious geometric calculations, the beauty, the symmetry, the order and
the law as manifested in the solar system burst upon him
iin all its magnificence, and lihe was forced by overpowering mental excitelm-ent to employ a friend to finish his
work.  Such an awe the physiologist, Driaper, felt when
investigating the functions of the brain, its hlemispheres
conversino with each other, cerebral sight, and the wonderful organisml   of the nervous ganglia, he entered the
inner sanctumn  of the temple of tlhought and, reasoning, in



37
ductively fromn the facts of his science, demonstrated, as he
believed, the existence and immortality of the soul and
looked upon its seat; this, notwithstanding it, has often
been said that wherever there are three physicians there
are two atheists.  Such an awe Fraunhoffer felt when
the sun first wrote in brilliant colors on the spectrum the
secrets of its elements and told what the stars are made
of.  Such an awe Agassiz felt when in his microscopic labors he traced life down through the embryo, the egg, the
vesicle and the germ, wherein the Creator first hints his
purpose to all anirmal life.  Such an awe Humboldt felt
when returning from his long tour throughl South Amnerica he found thle great city of Caraccas, where the had forrerly pleasantly sojourned, buried in ruins, twelve thousands of its people entombed alive, and churches, palaces
and hovels swallowed up in one common grave.  Looking upon the desolation, he said "Our friends are no
more; the house we lived in is a pile of ruins: the city I
have described no longer exists.  The day had been hot,
the air was close, the sky without a cloud.  It was holy
Thursday: the people were mostly assembled in the
churches.  Nothing seemed to foreshadow the threatening
misfortune.  Suddenly at four o'clock in the afternoon,
the bells, which were kept mute that day, began to toll.
It. was the hand of God, and not the hand of man, which
rang that funeral dirge."
There are Ariels inl the air whose music none but
a Prospero can hear,Sounds, and sweet airs, which give delight and hurt not,
but which are not for ears untutored to their mysterious
imelodies.
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
There is "an electric chain  wherewith we are darkly
bound.'  There is a border-land of science, a dim, mysterious and shadowy realm.  Into it brave spirits are constantly mnaking incursions, and the line between the
known and the unknown, between fact and mnystery, has




38
by their noble audacity been receding for three hundred
years.  Gorgons and chimeras dire that. once threatened
them have vanished into thin air, but other hobgoblins,
with shapes and sounds portentous, still dispute their advance.  Yet the brave band moves on, and never so
bravely as now.  When protoplasm, the nebular hypothesis, evolution, 1,monads and the origin of life have vanished as shadows or are organized into substantial shapes,
there, will be other Gogs and Magogs to dispute the way.
Of this boundary line Agassiz, speaking of Humboldt,
said: "Like a true philosopher he knew tlhat the time had
not yet come for a scientific investigation into the origin
of all things. Before lie attempted to discuss the direct action of a Creator in bringing about the present condition of
the universe, he knew that the physical laws which govern the world must be understood; that it would be a
mnistake to ascribe to the agency of a supreme power occurrences and phenomena which could be deduced from
the continued aogency of natural causes. Until some limit
to the action of these causes has been found, there. is no
place in a scientific discussion. as sucl, for the consideration of the inltervention of a Creator.  But the time is
fast approaching and, indeed, some daring thinkers have
actually entered upon the question.  Where is tle line
between the inevitable action of law lalnd the intervention
of a hligher power?  Where is the limit?'
This solemn question remains unanswered.  But that
fearless band, urrdisma.yed by dogma or tradition, yet in
the reverenlce and awe which Agassiz felt, presses onandt on-and on.  Even now it is in thle cloud that enwraps in 1mystery the imountain tops of thought, from out
of which to us all comes a voice of admonition saying:
"Put off thllv shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou starndest is holy ground."