LOUIS AGASSIZ 131 



To-day one of the arguments for evo- 

 lution by descent might run as follows : 

 We have evidence enough to feel cer- 

 tain (1) that no higher form of life 

 comes into existence without parents, 

 and (2) that a given kind of animal or 

 plant came into existence at a time for 

 which we can roughly put upper and 

 lower limits. Hence we conclude that 

 the parents of the first plants or animals 

 of any kind were of some other kind. 

 But what good is such an argument to 

 one who denies our major I The state- 

 ment that an animal does not come into 

 existence without some parent is based 

 on observation. Let reasonable evidence 

 once be brought that the rule is not 

 universal, and the whole subject assumes 

 a different aspect. Cuvier, and after 

 him Agassiz, believed that such evi- 

 dence could be brought, in the reappear- 

 ance of plants and animals, after each 

 cataclysm. 

 According to the geologists of seventy 



