EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xxvii 



itself sufficient logical ground on which to deny the possibility of 

 change in the organic world. It was possible to argue, as did sup- 

 porters of the concept of design, that the Deity had created a world 

 whose creatures advanced from simple to complex as the result of in- 

 telligent, initial, divine planning. To Agassiz and other spokesmen 

 for classical biology this was a poverty-stricken view of the creative 

 power. The force responsible for the plan of creation acted as con- 

 sistently in the present as in the beginning. Power of this sort could 

 not be equated with the agencies it had called into being. It could 

 not be made synonymous with physical forces, themselves the prod- 

 uct of immaterial design, acting to "change" the creatures of the 

 organic world that were also examples of divine action. Flora and 

 fauna could not "cause" their own alteration or fate in life. Rather, 

 they existed as representations of creative design and rational cate- 

 gories of thought. It was impossible to conceive of these ideal types as 

 transitory or mutable, since divine thought was permanent 



a power capable of controlling all . . . external influences, as well as regulat- 

 ing the course of life of every being, and establishing it upon such an immuta- 

 ble foundation . . . that the uninterrupted action of . . . [physical] agents 

 does not interfere with the regular order of . . . natural existence. . . . (pp. 

 90-91) 



Since each animal or plant signified a category of thought it was 

 logically impossible for such types to give rise to "varieties" or to 

 change into something else. For Agassiz here was a profound reason 

 to contradict any concept of evolution based on the action of ob- 

 servable secondary phenomena: 



Nothing seems to me to prove . . . more fully the action of a reflective mind 

 . . . than the different categories upon which species, genera, families, orders, 

 classes, and branches are founded in nature and manifested in material reality 

 in a succession of individuals, the life of which is limited ... to comparatively 

 very short periods, (p. 25) 



Thus the taxonomist had to identify the particular role and rank 

 in the everyday world of the multitude of animals and plants whose 

 place and definition had been set forth according to a rational plan 

 in the beginning. Agassiz, therefore, took great pains to establish a 

 system of classification that was "true to nature," namely, one that 

 reflected with greatest accuracy the immaterial plan of the Creator. 

 Because specific designation and identity had to be attributed to 

 animals and plants, he quite properly praised the contributions of 



