LOUIS AGASSIZ 151 



he seems to have been gifted with that rare faculty in the young, 

 of looking ahead. He planned his career and was working up 

 to it with a sagacity that was almost abnormal. He was confined 

 to his books and lectures, yet he did not neglect outdoor life and 

 exercise. He was a skilled fencer; few could tire him in walks over 

 the country, and to this was due his lusty frame and commanding 

 figure and later in life his power to withstand fatigue. 



Perhaps no feature of Agassiz's life has attracted so much atten- 

 tion among laymen as his thoroughly religious feeling and attitude, 

 and this never changed. He possessed it all though life, and in 

 the great intellectual conflicts in which he became engaged in 

 later years, his religious nature was always a dominant factor to 

 be counted with. We find this cropping out in his student life. 

 His home training, the influence of his mother, and the traditions 

 of his family were strong within him, and the "rare comet in the 

 Heidelberg horizon," as Braun describes him at this time, was a 

 student with strong religious proclivities that could not be over- 

 come by even the jokes of his more or less jovial fellows. 



In 1827 Agassiz entered the University of Munich, one of the 

 epochs of his career, accomplished not without a struggle, as his 

 family were people of moderate means, and he was sustained at 

 every step of his career only by the greatest effort. He writes at 

 this period: 



"I cannot review my Munich life without deep gratitude. The 

 city teemed with resources for the student in arts, letters, philos- 

 ophy, and science. It was distinguished at that time for activity 

 in public as well as in academic life. The King seemed liberal; 

 he was the friend of poets and artists, and aimed at concentrating 

 all the glories of Germany in his new university. I thus enjoyed 

 for a few years the example of the most brilliant intellects, and 

 that stimulus which is given by competition between men equally 

 eminent in different spheres of human knowledge. Under such 

 circumstances a man either subsides into the position of a fol- 

 lower in the ranks that gather around a master, or he aspires to 

 be a master himself." 



Already Agassiz's marked personality was making itself felt 

 upon his compatriots. The "Little Academy" came into being, 



