INTRODUCTION 



To THIRD EDITION. 



Boston Society of Natural History, 



Boston, Mass., Jan. 2, 1838. 

 The Writers Publishing Company: 



Dear Sirs: Having done me the honor to request 

 that 1 should send you an introduction to your new 

 edition of the Hand -Book of the Agassiz Association, I 

 have written out a few thoughts which I hope will be 

 considered suitable for that purpose. I have also taken 

 the liberty of making an appeal, which you had not re- 

 quested me to do, but which I think ought to be made, in 

 order to secure the future of the Association and the con- 

 tinuance of the good work it has begun. 



If science has any moral strength, it lies in making 

 the fearless pursuit of truth an end in itself, without 

 reference to the ordinary limitations of expediency. 

 Nevertheless, this higher mode of life, when carried to 

 excess, has certain more or less injurious reactions upon 

 the mind. The scientific recluse shut up in his own 

 thoughts, as in a cell, and magnifying the grandeur and 

 importance of his own work at the expense of that of 

 others not exclusively devoted to research, is more nearly 

 a modern imitator of the monastic original than most 

 persons are apt to suppose. 



Three classes of men have been required for the ac- 

 complishment of the greater triumphs of science: the in- 

 vestigators or discoverers of abstract and often appar- 

 ently useless truths, teachers of all grades, and popular- 

 izers. The great man after whom your organization has 

 been named, Louis Agassiz, was in his younger days pre- 

 eminently an investigator; later in life he became, per- 

 haps even more, a teacher, and also a popularizer of 



