36 



lamented Agassiz, and not long before his own. I report the 

 substance only, not the words. 



Agassiz repeated to me, he said, a remark made to him by 

 Humboldt, to the effect that Cuvier made a great mistake, 

 and missed a great opportunity, when he took the side he 

 did in the famous controversy with Geoffroy St. Hilaire ; he 

 should have accepted the doctrines of morphology, and 

 brought his vast knowledge of comparative anatomy and zo- 

 ology, and his unequalled powers, to their illustration. Had 

 he done so, instead of gaining by his superior knowledge 

 some temporary and doubtful victories in a lost cause, his 

 preeminence for all our time would have been assured and 

 complete. I thought, continued Wyman, that there was a 

 parallel case before me, — that if Agassiz had brought his 

 vast stores of knowledge in zoology, embryology, and palae- 

 ontology, his genius for morphology, and all his quickness 

 of apprehension and fertility in illustration, to the elucidation 

 and support of the doctrine of the progressive development 

 of species, science in our day would have gained much, some 

 grave misunderstandings been earlier rectified, and the per- 

 manent fame of Agassiz been placed on a broader and higher 

 basis even than it is now. 



Upon one point Wyman was clear from the beginning. 

 He did not wait until evolutionary doctrines were about to 

 prevail, before he judged them to be essentially philosophical 

 and healthful, " in accordance with the order of Nature, as 

 commonly manifested in her works," and that they need not 

 disturb the foundations of natural theology. 



Perhaps none of us can be trusted to judge of such a 

 question impartially, upon the bare merits of the case; but 

 Wyman's judgment was as free from bias as that of any one 



