LOUIS AGASSIZ ON DARWINISM. 123 
ourselves at all about the attacks of theologians and other un- 
scientific men, who really know nothing whatever of nature. 
The only eminent scientific adversary who still remains 
opposed to Darwin and the whole theory of development is 
Louis Agassiz; but the principle of his opposition in reality 
deserves notice only as a philosophical curiosity. In a 
French translation of his “ Essay on Classification,” > which 
we have spoken of before, published in Paris in 1869, 
Agassiz has most formally announced his opposition to 
Darwinism, which he had previously expressed in many 
ways. To this translation he has appended a treatise of 
sixteen pages, bearing the title, “Le Darwinisme. Classifi- 
cation de Haeckel.” This curious chapter contains the most 
wonderful things; as, for example, “Darwin’s idea is a 
conception @ priori. Darwinism is a burlesque of facts. 
Science would renounce the claim which it has hitherto 
possessed to the confidence of earnest minds if such sketches: 
were to be accepted as indications of a true progress.” The: 
following passage, however, is the climax of this strange 
polemic : “Darwinism shuts out almost the whole mass of 
acquired knowledge in order to retain and assimilate to 
itself that only which may serve its doctrine.” | 
Surely this is what we may call turning the whole affair 
topsy-turvy! The biologist who knows the facts must be 
astounded at, Agassiz’s courage in uttering such sentences— 
sentences without a word of truth in them, and which he 
cannot himself believe! The impregnable strength of the 
Theory of Descent lies just in the fact that all biological 
facts are explicable only through it, and that without it 
they remain unintelligible miracles. All our “laborious. 
knowledge” in comparative anatomy and physiology—in 
