was so thoroughly made up thirteen years ago, that the 

 discussion of it, as ordinarily conducted, has long since 

 ceased to have any interest for me. I am just as firmly 

 convinced that the human race is descended from lower 

 animal forms, as I am that the earth revolves in an el- 

 liptical orbit about the sun.'' How strange that this au- 

 thor never thinks of his own " rigidity of mind," so evi- 

 dently indicated here. "He that is giddy, thinks the 

 world turns round.'' 



The golden rule of our great American botanist, Prof. 

 Gray, is that upon which the thoughtful will act for many 

 years yet on the question of evolution. He thinks that 

 "Upon very many questions a truly wise man remains 

 long in a state of neither belief nor unbelief, but your 

 short-sighted man is apt to be preternaturally clear-sight- 

 ed, and to find his way very rapidly to one or the other 

 side of every mooted question." The judicial impartiality 

 of Agassiz's mind is evident in almost every sentence he 

 utters. His admonitions to patient and thorough inves- 

 tigation, careful induction and fearless conclusion appear 

 constantly. " He said, " It is a part of true culture to re- 

 frain from judgment and from expression of opinion where 

 observation fails us. What we seek may, perhaps, only 

 be ascertained when better observers and better applian- 

 ces for observation are secured " If " Agassiz's repug- 

 nance to Darwinism grew in great part from his appre- 

 hension of its atheistical tendency," as has been said, he 

 fought it by scientific, not theological, methods. He 

 accepted the views of Herbert Spencer when he said 

 li Fearless inquiry tends continuallv to give a firmer basis 

 to all true religion. The timid sectarian, alarmed at the 

 progress of knowledge, obliged to abandon one by one the 

 superstitions of his ancestors, and daily finding his cher- 

 ished beliefs more and more shaken, secretly fears that 

 all things may some day be explained, and has a corres- 

 ponding dread of science : thus evincing the profoundest 

 of all infidelity — the fear lest the truth be bad. On the 

 other hand the sincere man of science, content to follow 

 wherever the evidence leads him, becomes bv each new 



