EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xiii 



influences of his German education, the concept of Naturphiloso- 

 phie, that romantic view of organic creation fathered by his 

 teachers, Oken and Schelling. Agassiz suspected the "speculative" 

 tendencies of the doctrine as too threatening to the concept of per- 

 manence in the universe, since it suggested that species bore rela- 

 tionship to one another in some unified order of derivation and 

 development. Instead, study of ancient fishes convinced him that 

 these were "phenomena closely allied in the order of their succession, 

 and yet without sufficient cause in themselves for their appearance." 

 The character of fossil fishes was the result of a "primary plan" in- 

 stituted by a "superior intelligence whose power . . . established 

 such an order of things." 



In still another field Agassiz was able to supply empirical demon- 

 strations for metaphysical assumptions. His notable paper before a 

 local Swiss scientific society announced in 1837 his agreement with 

 the findings of earlier investigators that the peculiar configurations 

 of the land and the placement of boulders and other debris had been 

 the result of ancient glacial action. From this theory Agassiz reasoned 

 that much of northern Europe had known a vast Ice Age in the 

 period of its history immediately prior to the modem epoch. (It is 

 now more accurate to speak of "ice ages," since subsequent study 

 showed that perhaps as many as four or five advances and retreats of 

 ice had occurred with intervening warm interglacial periods.) The 

 glaciers of modern times were contemporary evidence of what had 

 taken place in the recent past. The establishment of the "Eiszeit" 

 concept as the primary force in the natural history of the Pleistocene 

 epoch was another singular landmark in Agassiz's march along the 

 road to becoming the first naturalist of his time. He substantiated 

 his initial analysis by two books published in 1840 and 1847,^ the 

 result of much painstaking investigation in the Alpine regions of 

 his native land and in England, Scotland, and Germany. 



Agassiz's own research in geology would furnish evolutionists with 

 excellent data with which to refute doctrines of special creationism. 

 In the view of men of a different persuasion the advance and retreat 

 of glacial ice in northern regions was shown as a profound influence 

 upon the geographical distribution and zoological character of con- 

 temporary flora and fauna. The movement southward of glacial ice 



"Etudes sur les glaciers (Neuchatel, 1840), and Systeme glaciaire (Paris, 1847). 



