INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



and comparison of those organic forms which 

 we call forms of literature and works of art. 

 -Yet the notion that a poem or a speech should 

 possess the organic structure, as it were, of a 

 living creature is basic in the thought of the 

 great literary critics of all time. • So Aristotle, 

 a zoologist as well as a systematic student of 

 literature, compares the essential structure of a 

 tragedy to the form of an animal. -And so 

 Plato, in the Phaedrus, makes Socrates say: 

 'At any rate, you will allow that every dis- 

 course ought to be a living creature, having a 

 body of its own, and a head and feet; there 

 should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted 

 to one another and to the whole.' . It would 

 seem that to Plato an oration represents an 

 organic idea in the mind of the human creator, 

 the orator, just as a living animal represents a 

 constructive idea in the mind of God. Now it 

 happens that Agassiz, considered in his philosoph- 

 ical relations, was a Platonist, since he clearly 

 believed that the forms of nature expressed the 

 eternal ideas of a divine intelligence. 



Accordingly, his method of teaching cannot 

 fail to be illuminating to the teacher of litera- 



[3] 



