— 2 5 — 



His published writings, his private speech and his daily life gave 

 assurance of his faith in a wise and tender Father, but he would 

 not discuss dogmas, and repelled as an impertinence the too com- 

 mon American fashion of inquiring what church a man attends. 

 Twenty five years ago there was much less readily than now ad- 

 mitted to be a distinction between ecclesiastical observance and 

 religious belief so that, while criticised as a bigot by some scien- 

 tists, Agassiz was attacked by some theologians as an infidel, be- 

 cause he could not reconcile the facts of geology with the ordinary 

 interpretation of the literal sense of Scripture. He did not deny 

 that the Bible may be the Divine Word ; he simply confessed his 

 personal inaptitude for unravelling its mysteries; but he did feel 

 that, without presumption and with some hope of success and 

 usefulness, he might devote his life to the exposition of that other 

 revelation of God to man, Nature. 



Did he succeed? Yes, and No. To the truth, the overwhelm- 

 ing truth of the affirmation, your speakers have borne witness to- 

 day, and none will dissent. But can any mortal hope to accom- 

 plish all that he undertakes? If Agassiz was not the leader of 

 zoologists in all things as he was in some, it was, in my humble 

 judgment, because he failed to recognize the compatibility of senti- 

 ments such as he entertained respecting the Creator with an ac- 

 ceptance of the general idea of evolution. The question is too 

 great for discussion now. But perhaps — as one who had imbibed 

 from Agassiz a decided aversion to any derivative hypothesis, and 

 who became an evolutionist only when forced to decide for himself 

 what should be said to earnest and thoughtful students — I may ex- 

 press the belief that, if Agassiz could have taken something from 

 Darwin, or Darwin could have taken something from Agassiz, a 

 perfect and colossal interpreter of Nature would have enlightened 

 the world. Then would the scientific scoffer have speedily be- 

 come extinct, and of working naturalists, the few — the very few, not 

 the ninety-nineout of a hundred as recently claimed by a sensational 

 preacher — who still hesitate, would have been converted long ago 

 to the grand, composite faith, at once natural and spiritual, that, 

 by some kind of evolution, as yet far from fully understood in its 



