LOVE OF TEACHING. 207 



merely as special or isolated phenomena. 

 From the beginning his success as an instruc- 

 tor was undoubted. He had, indeed, now en- 

 tered upon the occupation which was to be 

 from youth to old age the delight of his life. 

 Teaching was a passion with him, and his 

 power over his pupils might be measured by 

 his own enthusiasm. He was intellectually, 

 as well as socially, a democrat, in the best 

 sense. He delighted to scatter broadcast the 

 highest results of thought and research, and 

 to adapt them even to the youngest and most 

 uninformed minds. In his later American 

 travels he would talk of glacial phenomena 

 to the driver of a country stage-coach among 

 the mountains, or to some workman, splitting 

 rock at the road-side, with as much earnest- 

 ness as if he had been discussing problems 

 with a brother geologist ; he would take the 

 common fisherman into his scientific confi- 

 dence, telling him the intimate secrets of fish- 

 structure or fish - embryology, till the man 

 in his turn grew enthusiastic, and began to 

 pour out information from the stores of his 

 own rough and untaught habits of observa- 

 tion. Agassiz's general faith in the suscepti- 

 bility of the popular intelligence, however un- 

 trained, to the highest truths of nature, was 



