AGASSIZ AT PENIKESE. 149 



an illustration of divine many-sidedness. To Dar- 

 win these same relations would illustrate the force 

 of heredity acting under diverse conditions of 

 environment. The sufficiency of his own philoso- 

 phy Agassiz never doubted. In this confidence in 

 his own mind and its resources, lay much of his 

 strength and his weakness. 



Agassiz had no sympathy with the prejudices 

 worked upon by weak and foolish men in opposi- 

 tion to Darwinism. He believed in the absolute 

 freedom of science ; that no power on earth can 

 give answers beforehand to the questions which 

 men of science endeavor to solve. Of this I can 

 give no better evidence than the fact that every 

 one of the men specially trained by him has joined 

 the ranks of the evolutionists. He would teach 

 them to think for themselves, not to think as 

 he did. 



The strain of the summer was heavier than we 

 knew. Before the school was closed for the season, 

 those who were nearest him felt that the effort was 

 to be his last. His physician told him that he must 

 not work, must not think. But all his life he had 

 done nothing else. To stop was impossible, for 

 with his temperament there was the sole choice 

 between activity and death. 



And in December the end came. In the words 

 of one of his old students, Theodore Lyman, " We 

 buried him from the chapel that stands among the 

 college elms. The students laid a wreath of laurel 

 on his bier, and their manly voices sang a requiem. 

 For he had been a student all his life long, and 

 when he died he was younger than any of them." 



