AGASSIZ AND DARWINISM. 697 



tion, it must always be remembered that he is, above all things, a dev- 

 otee of what is called " natural theology." In his discussions concern- 

 ing the character of the relationships between the various members of 

 the animal kingdom, the foreground of his consciousness is always 

 completely occupied by theological considerations, to such an extent 

 that the evidentiary value of scientific facts cannot always get a foot- 

 ing there, and is, consequently, pushed away into the background. 

 One feels, in reading his writings, that, except when he is narrating 

 facts with the pure joyfulness of a specialist exulting in the exposition 

 of his subject (and, when in this mood, he often narrates facts with 

 which his inferences are wholly incompatible), he never makes a point 

 without some regard to its bearings upon theological propositions which 

 his early training has led him to place paramount to all facts of obser- 

 vation whatever. In virtue of this peculiarity of disposition, Prof. 

 Agassiz has become the welcome ally of those zealous but narrow- 

 minded theologians, in whom the rapid progress of the Darwinian 

 theory has awakened the easily explicable but totally groundless fear 

 that the necessary foundations of true religion, or true Christianity, 

 are imperilled. It is not many years since these very persons re- 

 garded Prof. Agassiz with dread and abhorrence, because of his flat 

 contradiction of the Bible in his theory of the multiple origin of the 

 human race. But, now that the doctrine of Evolution has come to be 

 the unclean thing above all others to be dreaded and abhorred, this 

 comparatively slight iniquity of Prof. Agassiz has been condoned or 

 forgotten, and, as the great antagonist of Evolution, he is welcomed 

 as the defender of the true Church against her foes. 



This preference of theological over scientific considerations once 

 led Prof. Agassiz (if my memory serves me rightly) to use language 

 very unbecoming in a professed student of Nature. Some seven years 

 ago he delivered a course of lectures at the Cooper Union, and in one 

 of these lectures he observed that he preferred the theory which makes 

 man out a fallen angel to the theory which makes him out an improved 

 monkey a remark which was quite naturally greeted with laughter 

 and applause. But the applause was ill-bestowed, for the remark was 

 one of the most degrading which a scientific lecturer could make. A 

 scientific inquirer has no business to have " preferences." Such things 

 are fit only for silly women of society, or for young children who play 

 with facts, instead of making sober use of them. What matters it 

 whether we are pleased with the notion of a monkey-ancestry or not ? 

 The end of scientific research is the discovery of truth, and not the 

 satisfaction of our whims or fancies, or even of what we are pleased to 

 call our finer feelings. The proper reason for refusing to accept any 

 doctrine is, that it is inconsistent with observed facts, or with some 

 other doctrine which has been firmly established on a basis of fact. 

 The refusal to entertain a theory because it seems disagreeable or de- 

 grading, is a mark of intellectual cowardice and insincerity. In mat- 



