INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



and comparison of those organic forms which 

 we call forms of literature and works of art. 

 Yet the notion that a poem or a speech should 

 possess the organic structure, as it were, of a 

 living creature is basic in the thought of the 

 great literary critics of all time. So Aristotle, 

 a zoologist as well as a systematic student of 

 literature, compares the essential structure of a 

 tragedy to the form of an animal. And so 

 Plato, in the Phaedms, makes Socrates say: 

 'At any rate, you will allow that every dis- 

 course ought to be a living creature, having a 

 body of its own, and a head and feet; there 

 should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted 

 to one another and to the whole.' It would 

 seem that to Plato an oration represents an 

 organic idea in the mind of the human creator, 

 the orator, just as a living animal represents a 

 constructive idea in the mind of God. Now it 

 happens that Agassiz, considered in his philosoph- 

 ical relations, was a Platonist, since he clearly 

 believed that the forms of nature expressed the 

 eternal ideas of a divine intelligence. 



Accordingly, his method of teaching cannot 

 fail to be illuminating to the teacher of litera- 



[3] 



