Alexander von Humboldt.* 



By LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



I am invited to an tin wonted task. 

 Thus far I have appeared before the 

 public only as a teacher of Natural 

 History. To-day, for the first time in 

 my life, I leave a field in which I am 

 at home, to take upon myself the 

 duties of a biographer. If I succeed 

 at all, it will be because I so loved 

 and honored the man whose memory 

 brings us together. 



Alexander von Humboldt was 

 born in Berlin in 1769, — one hundred 

 years ago this day, — in that fertile 

 year which gave birth to Napoleon, 

 Wellington, Canning, Cuvier, 

 Chateaubriand, and so many other 

 remarkable men. All America was 

 then the property of European raon- 

 archs. The first throb of the Amer- 

 ican Revolution had not yet disturbed 

 the relations of the mother country 

 and her colonies. Spain held Florida, 

 Mexico, and the greater part of South 

 America ; France owned Louisiana ; 

 and all Brazil was tributary to Por- 

 tugal. What stupendous changes 

 have taken place since that time in 

 the political world ! Divine right of 

 possession was then the recognized 

 law on which governments were based. 

 A mighty Republic has since been 

 born, the fundamental principle of 

 which is self-government. Progress 

 in the intellectual world, the world of 

 thought, has kept pace with the ad- 

 vance of civil liberty ; reference to 

 authority has been superseded by free 

 inquiry; and Humboldt was, one of 

 the great leaders in this onward 



* An address delivered at the Centennial 

 Anniversary of the birth of Alexander von 

 Humboldt, under the auspices of the Boston 

 Society of Natural History, (Sept. 14, 1869). 



movement. He bravely fought the' 

 battle for independence of thought 

 against the tyranny of authority. 

 No man impressed his century intel- 

 lectually more powerfully, perhaps no 

 man so powerfully as he. Therefore 

 he is so dear to the Germans, with 

 whom many nations unite to do him 

 honor to-day. Nor is it alone be- 

 cause of what he has done forscience, 

 or for anyone department of research, 

 that we feel grateful to him, but 

 rather because of that breadth and 

 comprehensiveness of knowledge 

 which lifts whole communities to 

 higher levels of culture, and impres- 

 ses itself upon the unlearned as well 

 as upon students and scholars. 



To what degree we Americans are 

 indebted to him, no one knows who is 

 not familiar with the history of learn- 

 ing and education in the last century. 

 All the fundamental facts of popular 

 education in physical science, beyond 

 the merest elementary instruction, we 

 owe to him. We are reaping daily 

 in every school throughout this broad 

 land, where education is the heritage 

 even of the poorest child, the intellec- 

 tual harvest sown by him. See this 

 map of the United States ; — all its- 

 important traits are based upon his in- 

 vestigations ; for he first recognized 

 the essential relations which unite the 

 physical features of the globe, the 

 laws of climate on which the whole 

 system of insothermal lines is based, 

 the relative height of mountain chains 

 and tablelands, the distribution of 

 vegetation over the whole earth. 

 There is not a text-book of geography 

 or a school-atlas in the hands of our 

 children to-day which does not bear,. 



