I go 



Louis Agassiz. 



forms lie prostrate within the water, having no 

 higher aspiration than the desire for food ; and we 

 cannot understand the possible degradation and 

 wretchedness of man, without knowing that his physi- 

 cal nature is rooted in all the material characteristics 

 that belong to his type and link him even with the 

 Fish. The moral and intellectual gifts that dis- 

 tinguish him from them are his to use or to abuse ; 

 he may, if he will, abjure his better nature and be 

 Vertebrate more than man. He may sink as low as 

 the lowest of his type, or he may rise to a spiritual 

 height that will make that which distinguishes him 

 from the rest far more the controlling element of his 

 being than that which unites him with them.'* 



\ In another place Agassiz says, in referring to 

 Darwin's suggestion that man in breeding animals 

 simply takes the place of certain happenings in nature : 

 Nature holds inviolable the stamp that God has set 

 upon his creatures ; and if man is able to influence 

 their organisation in some slight degree, it is because 

 the Creator has given to his relations with the animals 

 he has intended for his companions the same plasticity 

 which he has allowed to every other side of his life, 

 in virtue of which he may in some sort mould and 

 shape it to his own ends, and be held responsible 

 also for its results. 



The common-sense of a civilised community 

 has already pointed out the true distinction, in ap- 

 plying another word to the discrimination of the 

 different kinds of domesticated animals. They are 

 called Breeds, and Breeds among animals are the 

 work of man : species were created by God." 



