1880. | The Critics of Evolution. 331 
explicable. “So far as Agassiz’s work, entitled ‘An Essay on 
Classification,’ pretends to be a scientific history of creation, it is 
undoubtedly a complete failure.’ 
We are indebted to a paper entitled “ Agassiz and Darwinism,” 
by John Fiske, in the Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 111, for most 
of the following remarks upon the cause of Agassiz’s inability to 
perceive the truths of evolution. 
The frequency with which the name of Agassiz has been 
brought before the American people through his contributions to 
geology, palzontology and systematic zodlogy, has rendered his 
name very popular, and given rise to the opinion that he was the 
greatest of naturalists. He by right occupied a very high position, 
but no exceptional supremacy can be rightly claimed for him. 
Both for learning and for sagacity, the names of Asa Gray, Prof. 
Wyman, Huxley, J. D. Hooker, Sir Charles Lyell, Ernst Haeckel 
and Gegenbauer, are quite as illustrious as the name of Agassiz,and 
these are the names of men who openly endorse and defend the 
Darwinian theory. Many imagine that because Agassiz studied 
extinct and living organisms through a life-time of research, 
that his opinions with reference to the relations of present life 
upon the globe to past life, ought to be conclusive. The distin- 
guished Darwinian naturalists above named, are equally well 
qualified to form an opinion, and have arrived at conclusions 
diametrically opposite to those taught by Agassiz. Why this re- 
sult? Not because Agassiz did not possess the power of philoso- 
phizing, but because he philosophized on unsound principles. He 
erred because his philosophy was not the natural outgrowth from 
the facts of nature, which lay at his disposal, but is made up out 
of sundry traditions of his youth, and because he long ago 
brought his mind to acquiesce in various generalizations of a 
thoroughly unscientific or non-scientific character, the further 
maintenance of which appeared to him to be incompatible with 
the Darwinian theory. He also evidently arrived too early at that 
rigidity of mind which prevents us from properly comprehending : 
new theories, and which we should all of us dread as a real evil. 
It has been broadly asserted by a learned writer familiar with the 
Darwinian controversy, that he has never met with any indication 
that Agassiz knew what the Darwinian theory really is! “ Against 
a development as it was taught forty years ago he was fond of 
“The History of Creation,” by Ernst Haeckel. Vol. 1., p. 79. 
