LOUIS AGASSIZ. 247 



settle my affairs completely, but for the time I am horribly cramped, I 

 must say almost paralyzed ; but it is my own fault, aud I must bear pa- 

 tiently the consequences until I can succeed in getting- myself afloat 

 again." " My great regret in the present condition of my affairs is that 

 I am obliged to employ a portion of my time with matters I ought not 

 to have neglected, unO, which occupy me now much more than if I had 

 always attended to them, and then I am obliged to retard some of the 

 publications I greatly desired to make next, but which it would be im- 

 prudent for me to undertake at present, for I should reproduce the em- 

 barrassment from which I only just commence to be relieved if I did not 

 conduct all my enterprises with the utmost circumspection." " My life," 

 he writes again, " is now a vortex, in which the best part of my nature 

 is hardly conscious of its existence, so numerous and i^ressing are the 

 exterior exigencies from which I suffer." 



But how many grand ideas, how many admirable works, would have 

 been lost to science if the young savaut had not been willing in his pub- 

 lications to dispense with the economy he would have been obliged to 

 exercise to keep within his moderate pay as a professor. 



Agassiz was devoted above all things to science ; devoted without re- 

 serve; and he had always great talent in making others share his enthusi- 

 asm. Bringing into contribution the talents of some, the purses of others, 

 adding all his own resources, modest it is true, but also all his time and 

 his genius, he attained a result evident now to every one. A letter he 

 wrote to Professor Silliman, when about to embark for America, shows 

 how entirely he gave himself to science. " In order to pro\ade for the 

 extra exi^ense, I shall be obliged to live very economically and in a man- 

 ner little in accordance with the royal munificence which has furnished 

 the means of making this journey." And, again, " My sphere is entirely 

 circumscribed by the scientific world, and all my ambition is limited to 

 being useful to the branch of science I particularly cultivate. With all 

 this I am no misanthrope; but I learned early that where one has no 

 fortune, one cannot serve science and at the same time live in the world. 

 If I have been able to produce luimerous exi)ensive publications, it has 

 been only by following this system of economy and voluntary seclusion ; 

 and the results which I have obtained thus far have rewarded me so 

 well for the privations which I have suffered, that I have no temptation 

 to adopt another style of life, even should I hereafter, and especially in 

 your country, suffer more trouble than I have had to sustain in my own."* 



Discord, however, had penetrated the scientific coterie of Xeuchatel. 

 Enthusiastic over new ideas, Agassiz entered into them with ardor; 

 when he found them just he developed them and diffused them. Older 

 than his colleagues, more enterprising, already well known in the sci- 

 entific world, he published under his own name the work done in his 



* Letter to Professor Sillimau, October 20, 1845. American Journal of Science: 

 1874. Vol. vii, pp. 78, 79. 



