356 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



From him came the most notable of all the maxims which illustrate the 

 disinterestedness of the chivalry of science. At the time he was absorbed in 

 some minute investigations in a difficult department of zoology, he received a 

 letter from the president of a lyceum at the West, offering him a large sum for 

 a course of popular lectures on natural history. His answer was : " I can not 

 afford to waste my time in making money." The words deserve to be printed 

 in capitals; but Agassiz was innocently surprised that a sentiment very natural 

 to him should have excited so much comment. He knew that scores of his 

 brother scientists, American and European, would have used the words " afford " 

 and " waste " in the same sense, had they been similarly interrupted in an 

 investigation which promised to yield them a new fact or principle. Still the 

 announcement from such an authority that there was a body of men in the 

 United States who could not " afford to waste time " in making money had an 

 immense effect. It convinced thousands of intelligent and opulent men of 

 business, who had never before thought a moment of time devoted to the making 

 of money could be wasted, that science meant something; and it made them 

 liberal of their money when it was asked for scientific purposes. It did even 

 more than this — it made them honor the men who were placed above the motives 

 by which they themselves were ordinarily influenced. 



Men of proved capacity who are willing to devote themselves to re- 

 search will enter upon it with no selfish motives. They should be 

 classed among the benefactors of mankind, engaged in a useful service. 

 They should be encouraged by men of wealth, by state legislatures and 

 by the establishment of endowments to provide the means of carrying 

 on their researches. There are men of this kind in the State Univer- 

 sity of Iowa ; to the citizens of the state I would say : " These men are a 

 valuable asset to the state/' and to the university authorities I would 

 say : " Honor these men and encourage the pursuit of graduate studies 

 under their direction." To any in the rising generation of students 

 who have the internal leading to follow a career devoted to scientific 

 investigation, if they are gifted and energetic, let them without hesita- 

 tion enter upon this career. The compensations will be chiefly internal. 

 Those who enter upon scientific investigation as a life work must forego 

 certain material prizes in the world that await equally well-directed 

 efforts in other lines of activity, but they will have other kinds of com- 

 pensations — in living close to great truths, and realizing in their dis- 

 coveries that thrill of the searcher when he has found, and after long 

 years feeling the uplift of their occupation. Nevertheless, they must 

 learn to renounce and not be embittered as Eobert Louis Stevenson 

 wrote in that little gem of composition on the attributes of men. 



To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make 

 upon the whole a family happier by his presence, to renounce when that shall 

 be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without 

 capitulation, above all, on the same grim condition to keep friends with himself 

 — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. 



The Doctrine of Organic Evolution. — The crowning service of zo- 

 ology in extending the boundaries of human understanding is found, 

 perhaps, in the doctrine of evolution. The great sweep of this doctrine 



