728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



He often talked to us of the Darwinian theory, to which in all 

 its forms he was most earnestly opposed. Agassiz was essentially 

 an idealist. All his investigations were to him not studies of ani- 

 mals or plants as such, but of the divine plans of which their 

 structures are the expression. " That earthly form was the cover 

 of spirit was to him a truth at once fundamental and self-evi- 

 dent." The work of the student was to search out the thoughts 

 of God, and as well as may be to think them over again. To 

 Agassiz these divine thoughts were especially embodied in the 

 relations of animals to each other. The species was the thought- 

 unit, the individual reproduction of the thought in the divine 

 mind at the moment of the creation of the first one of the series 

 which represents the species. The marvel of the affinity of struct- 

 ure — of unity of plan in creatures widely diverse in habits and 

 outward api^earance — was to him a result of the association of 

 ideas in the divine mind, an illustration of divine many-sidedness. 

 To Darwin these same relations would illustrate the force of he- 

 redity acting under diverse conditions of environment. 



Agassiz had no sympathy with the prejudices worked upon by 

 weak and foolish men in oiDposition to Darwinism. He believed 

 in the absolute freedom of science ; that no power on earth can 

 give answers beforehand to the questions which men of science 

 endeavor to solve. Of this I can give no better evidence than the 

 fact that every one of the men specially trained by him has joined 

 the ranks of the evolutionists. He would teach them to think 

 for themselves, not to think as he did. 



The strain of the summer was heavier than we knew. Before 

 the school came to an end, those who were nearest him felt that 

 the effort was to be his last. His physician told him that he must 

 not work, must not think. But all his life he had done nothing 

 else. To stop was impossible, for with his temperament there 

 was the sole choice between activity and death. 



And in December the end came. In the words of one of his 

 old students, Theodore Lyman, " We buried him from the chajDcl 

 that stands among the college elms. The students laid a wreath 

 of laurel on his bier, and their manly voices sang a requiem. For 

 he had been a student all his life long, and when he died he was 

 younger than any of them." 



The next summer, the students of the first year came together 

 at Penikese, and many eager new faces were with them. Wise and 

 skillful teachers were present, but Agassiz was not there, and the 

 sense of loss was felt above everything else. The life was gone 

 out from Penikese, and at the end of the summer the authorities 

 of the museum closed the doors of the Anderson School forever. 

 The buildings stand on the island, just as we left them in 1874, a 

 single old sea-captain in charge of them all these years, until last 



