xm. 



WHEN explanations of natural laws 

 were needed, Agassiz had immediate re- 

 course to tlie creative act or thought of 

 the Deity. He believed that a careful 

 student of the successive variations im- 

 posed on the great primary types of the 

 animal kingdom might trace the work- 

 ings of the divine mind in the same 

 sense in which the processes of a human 

 mind are traced through the various 

 works uttered by a human artificer. 



The mystical half of Agassiz' s expla- 

 nation is easily referred to the former in- 

 fluences of Munich. One cannot under- 

 stand the nature- philosophy then in 

 vogue without remembering the Ger- 

 man school of philosophy proper. Kant, 

 Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had fol- 

 lowed one another rapidly, all at work 

 upon the old question of the reality of 

 the external world, and all with the be- 

 lief in an a priori knowledge indepen- 



