16 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



It is true that in the year 1857 a celebrated and able, 

 but very untrustworthy and dogmatic naturalist, Louis 

 Agassiz, attempted to give an absolute signification to these 

 categories. He attempted this in an "Essay on Classification," 

 in which the phenomena of organic nature were inverted, 

 and in which, instead of explaining these by natural causes, 

 he examined them through the seven-sided prism of theo- 

 logical dreams. Every "good species, or bona species" is, 

 according to him, " an embodiment of a creative thought of 

 God." But this fine phrase is as little able to hold its 

 ground against the criticism of natural science, as all other 

 attempts to preserve an absolute conception of species. I 

 think I have demonstrated this sufficiently in my Generelle 

 Morphologie (vol. ii. pp. 323-402), in the exhaustive critique 

 there given of the morphological and physiological idea of 

 species and of systematic categories. 



Moreover, Agassiz can himself hardly have believed his 

 theosophic phrases. This great American, who, as Carus 

 Sterne rightly said, laid the foundation of much natural 

 science, 39 was, in reality, gifted with too much genius 

 actually to believe in the truth of the mystic nonsense 

 which he preached. Crafty calculation, and well-judged 

 reliance on the want of understanding of his credulous 

 followers, can alone have given him courage to pass the 

 juggler's pieces of his anthropomorphic Creator as true coin. 

 The divine Creator, as represented by Agassiz, is but an 

 idealized man, a highly imaginative architect, who is always 

 preparing new building plans and elaborating new species. 

 (Cf. Chap. III. of the " History of Creation," and also " The 

 Aims and Methods of the History of Evolution." Jena, 

 1875.) 



