LOUIS AGASSIZ ON DARWINISM. 12 



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ourselves at all about the attacks of theologians and other un- 

 scientific men, who really know nothing whatever of nature. 



The only eminent scientific adversary who still remains 

 opposed to Darwin and the whole theory of development is 

 Louis Agassiz ; but the principle of his opposition in reality 

 deserves notice only as a philosophical curiosity. In a 

 French translation of his " Essay on Classification," ^ which 

 we have spoken of before, published in Paris in 1869, 

 Agassiz has most formally announced his opposition to 

 Darwinism, which he had previously expressed in many 

 ways. To this translation he has appended a treatise of 

 sixteen pages, bearing the title, " Le Darwinisme. Classifi- 

 cation de HaeckeL" This curious chapter contains the most 

 wonderful things; as, for example, "Darwin's idea is a 

 conception d priori. Darwinism is a burlesque of facts. 

 Science would renounce the claim which it has hitherto 

 possessed to the confidence of earnest minds if such sketches 

 were to be accepted as indications of a true progress." The 

 following passage, however, is the climax of this strange 

 polemic : " Darwinism shuts out almost the whole mass of 

 acquired knowledge in order to retain and assimilate to 

 itself that only which may serve its doctrine." 



Surely this is what we may call turning the whole afiair 

 topsy-turvy ! The biologist who knows the facts must be 

 astounded at Agassiz's courage in uttering such sentences- 

 sentences without a word of truth in them, and which he 

 cannot himself believe ! The impregnable strength of the 

 Theory of Descent lies just in the fact that all biological 

 facts are explicable only through it, and that without it 

 they remain unintelligible miracles. All our "laborious 

 knowledge" in comparative anatomy and physiology — in 



