No. 375.] AGASSIZ’S WORK ON FOSSIL FISHES. 185 
so fittingly summarized by Le Conte! that we cannot do better, 
in conclusion, than heartily to indorse the following sentiments: 
“« There is something to us supremely grand in this refusal of 
Agassiz to accept the theory of evolution. The opportunity to 
become a leader of modern thought, the foremost man of the 
country, was in his hands, and he refused, because his reli- 
gious, or perhaps better, his philosophic intuitions forbade. . . 
A lesser man would have seen less clearly the higher truth, 
and accepted the lower. A greater man would have risen 
above the age, and seen that there was no conflict [between 
the theory of descent and still more certain truth], and so 
accepted both.” 
1 Joseph Le Conte, Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, p. 45. 
New York, 1888. 
