IN THE LAST HALF-CENTURY. 93 



Agassiz, was doomed to help trie cause he 

 hated. Agassiz not only maintained the 

 fact of the progressive advance in organi- 

 sation of the inhabitants of the earth at 

 each successive geological epoch, but he 

 insisted upon the analogy of the steps of 

 this progression with those by which the 

 embryo advances to the adult condition, 

 among the highest forms of each group. 

 In fact, in endeavoring to support these 

 views he went a good way beyond the 

 limits of any cautious interpretation of 

 the facts then known. 



Although little acquainted with bio- 

 logical science, Whewell seems to have 

 taken particular pains with that part of 

 his work which deals with the history of 

 geological and biological speculation ; and 

 several chapters of his seventeenth and 

 eighteenth books, which comprise the his- 

 tory of physiology, of comparative anat- 

 omy and of the palsetiologica! sciences, 

 vividly reproduce the controversies of the 



