E VIDENCES OF E VOL UTION. 101 



Agassiz' Views. 



Yet even in the face of the difficulties which have 

 been referred to, Agassiz persisted, as others still 

 persist, in maintaining that species are entities, real 

 or ideal, which continue to exist from generation to 

 generation. But he went further than this, further 

 even than most of his predecessors had been willing 

 to go. For not only, according to his views, are 

 species unchangeable units, but genera, orders, 

 classes, and the other groups as well, "are founded 

 in nature, and ought not to be considered as arti- 

 ficial devices, invented by man to facilitate his 

 studies." "To me," says Agassiz, "it appears in- 

 disputable, that the order and arrangement of our 

 studies are based on the natural, primitive relations 

 of animal life those systems to which we have 

 given the names of the great leaders of our science 

 who first proposed them, being, in truth, but trans- 

 lations into human language of the thoughts of the 

 Creator." In the opinion of the illustrious Swiss 

 savant, " man has not invented, but only traced, the 

 systematic arrangement of nature." "The relations 

 and proportions which exist throughout the animal 

 and vegetable world, have an intellectual, an ideal 

 connection in the mind of the Creator. The plan of 

 creation, which so commends itself to our highest 

 wisdom, has not grown out of the necessary action 

 of physical laws, but was the free conception of the 

 Almighty intellect, matured in His thought before 

 it was manifested in tangible, external forms." " In 



