Religious Belief. 183 



to the gradations the present creation shows us in 

 its ascending series, considered as a whole. . . . 

 The most incontestable result of modern palaeonto- 

 logical research, in the examination of the question 

 which at present occupies us, is the fact, now beyond 

 controversy, of the simultaneous appearance of par- 

 ticular types of all classes of invertebrate animals 

 from the earliest development of life upon the 

 surface of the globe. The history of this successive 

 development shows conclusively the impossibility of 

 referring the first inhabitants of the earth to a small 

 number of branches, differentiated from one parent 

 stock by the influence of the modifications of ex- 

 terior conditions of existence.'* This is the keynote 

 of Agassiz's belief regarding the creation and origin 

 of life which he held until the last. 



His ideas on the much discussed subject of classi- 

 fication are well illustrated in the introduction of a 

 wprk entitled Contributions to the Natural History of 

 the United States^ the plan of which was published 

 in 1857. In the beginning of this chapter,'' he 

 says, I have already stated that classification seems 

 to me to rest upon too narrow a foundation when it 

 is chiefly based upon structure. Animals are linked 

 together as closely by their mode of development, by 

 their relative standing in their respective classes, by 

 the order in- which they have made their appearance 

 upon earth, by their geographical distribution, and 

 generally by their connection with the world in which 

 they live, as by their anatomy. All these relations 

 should, therefore, be fully expressed in a natural 

 classification ; and though structure furnishes the 



