XX EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 



of fossil remains." '^ Americans could hardly ask more of their lead- 

 ing interpreter of nature. 



In the Essay Agassiz attempted to write a modern version of Cu- 

 vier's taxonomy. He set himself the task of determining whether 

 systems of classification from Aristotle forward to the 1850's were 

 "true to nature." The result was almost foreordained. After ap- 

 praising many prior efforts at classification, Agassiz announced: 



I am daily more satisfied that the primary divisions of Cuvier are true to nature, 

 and that never did a naturalist exhibit a clearer and deeper insight into the 

 most general relations of animals than Cuvier. . . . (pp. 146-147) 



But the Essay was not a work reflecting the simple adulation of a 

 student for a teacher. Agassiz set out to demonstrate that the concept 

 of classification central to the philosophy of special creationism was 

 objectively valid and not merely a product of subjective human in- 

 vention. Cuvier was elevated to the highest rank among taxonomists, 

 not because he was Cuvier, but because his system reflected the 

 reality of nature itself. 



Agassiz began this demonstration by posing a question as funda- 

 mental for modern zoology as for his own time. Was zoological classi- 

 fication an artificial effort by the naturalist to impose his own sub- 

 jective values upon nature? Or was there, instead, an objective basis 

 for the work of the taxonomist that would give his findings the val- 

 idity of natural law? As he phrased the problem: 



Are these divisions artificial or natural? Are they the devices of the human 

 mind to classify and arrange our knowledge ... or have they been instituted 

 by the Divine Intelligence as the categories of his mode of thinking? (p. 8) 



In this contrast of values idealism was classed as objective and the 

 finite operations of the human mind as mere approximations of truth. 

 The task of the modern naturalist, therefore, was to contrive to re- 

 flect in his descriptions and classifications the reality of the natural 

 world that comprised the operations of the Deity. He did this by 

 understanding the fundamental rationality of a divinely ordained 

 world, planned in perfect fashion from the beginning, always ex- 

 emplifying the wisdom of the creative intention. Understanding 

 came through the intensive application of intellect; such rationality 



'^ Contributions to the Natural History of the United States (4 vols., Boston, 1857- 

 1862), I, viii-x. 



