182 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



His success has been great ; and this implies not only 

 the solidity of his work, but the preparedness of the 

 public mind for such a revelation. On this head, a re- 

 mark of Agassiz impressed me more than anything else. 

 Sprung from a race of theologians, this celebrated man 

 combated to the last the theory of natural selection. 

 One of the many times I had the pleasure of meeting 

 him in the United States was at Mr. Winthrop's beau- 

 tiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. Rising from 

 luncheon, we all halted as if by common consent, in 

 front of a window, and continued there a discussion 

 which had been started at table. The maple was in its 

 autumn glory, and the exquisite beauty of the scene 

 outside seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate without 

 disturbance the intellectual action. Earnestly, almost 

 sadly, Agassiz turned, and said to the gentlemen stand- 

 ing round, ' I confess that I was not prepared to see 

 this theory received as it has been by the best intellects 

 of our time. Its success is greater than I could have 

 thought possible.' 



7. 



In our day grand generalisations have been reached. 

 The theory of the origin of species is but one of them. 

 Another, of still wider grasp and more radical signifi- 

 cance, is the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, 

 the ultimate philosophical issues of which are as yet but 

 dimly seen that doctrine which ' binds nature fast in 

 fate,' to an extent not hitherto recognised, exacting 

 from every antecedent its equivalent consequent, from 

 every consequent its equivalent antecedent, and bring- 

 ing vital as well as physical phenomena under the 

 dominion of that law of causal connection which, so far 

 as the human understanding has yet pierced, asserts 



