LOUIS AG A SSI Z. 485 



away by it, — probably because they were such keen and con- 

 scientious observers, and were kept in close communion with 

 work-a-day Nature. As Agassiz intimates, they had to resist 

 " the temptation to impose one's own ideas upon Nature, to 

 explain her mysteries by brilliant theories rather than by 

 patient study of the facts as we find them," and that " over- 

 bearing confidence in the abstract conceptions of the human 

 mind as applied to the study of nature ; " although, indeed, he 

 adds, " the young naturalist of that day who did not share, in 

 some degree, the intellectual stimulus given to scientific pur- 

 suits by physio-philosophy would have missed a part of his 

 training." That training was not lost upon Agassiz. Although 

 the adage in his last published article, " A physical fact is as 

 sacred as a moral principle," was well lived up to, yet ideal 

 prepossessions often had much to do with his marshaling of 

 the facts. 



Another professor at Munich, from whom Agassiz learned 

 much, and had nothing to unlearn, was the anatomist and 

 physiologist Dollinger. He published little ; but he seems to 

 have teen the founder of modern embryological investigation, 

 and to have initiated his two famous pupils, first Von Baer, 

 and then Agassiz, into at least the rudiments of the doctrine 

 of the correspondence between the stages of the development 

 of the individual animal with that of its rank in the scale of 

 being, and the succession in geological time of the forms and 

 types to which the species belongs : a principle very fertile 

 for scientific zoology in the hands of both these naturalists, 

 and one of the foundations of that theory of evolution which 

 the former, we believe, partially accepted, and the other wholly 

 rejected. 



The botanical professor, the genial Von Martius, should 

 also be mentioned here. He found Agassiz a student, barely 

 of age ; he directly made him an author, and an authority in 

 the subject of his predilection. Dr. Spix, the zoological com- 

 panion of Martius in Brazilian exploration, died in 1826 ; the 

 fishes of the collection were left untouched. Martius recog- 

 nized the genius of Agassiz, and offered him, and indeed 

 pressed him to undertake their elaboration. Agassiz brought 



