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Louis Agassiz. 



results, i, e.^ results which were not in the mind of 

 Agassiz nor aimed at by him. 



I. Agassiz's work and Agassiz's method prepared 

 the whole ground and laid the whole foundation for 

 the modern doctrine of evolution. The idea of the 

 similarity of the three series mentioned above — the 

 natural history, the embryonic, and the palaeonto- 

 logical — and therefore //^^ light which each sheds on 

 the others^ a view so long insisted on by Agassiz and 

 so tardily and grudgingly accepted by zoologists, 

 forms the whole scientific basis, and comparison in 

 these three series, the whole scientific method, of 

 the theory of evolution. Evolution is development. 

 Evolution of the organic kingdom is development of 

 the organic kingdom through geologic times. No 

 one insisted so long and so strongly on development 

 of the organic kingdom through geologic times, as 

 did Agassiz. All that is grandest and most certain 

 in evolution, viz,: development from lower to higher, 

 from simpler to more complex, from general to 

 special by a process of successive differentiation, has 

 always been insisted on by Agassiz, and until re- 

 cently only grudgingly accepted by English zoolo- 

 gists and geologists. In this sense, therefore, 

 Agassiz is the great apostle of evolution. It was 

 only the present theories of evolution, or evolution by 

 transmutation, which he rejected. His was an evolu- 

 tion not by organic forces ^within, but according to 

 an intelligent plan without — an evolution not by 

 transmutation of species, but by substitution of one 

 species for another. In the true spirit of inductive 

 caution, perhaps of excessive caution, he confined 



