The Agassiz Memorials. 257 



plains of existence and look up to those vast 

 mountain ranges whose solitary summits attest 

 man's intellectual and moral grandeur, and the 

 permanence of truth ! It is the felicity of the scien- 

 tific man, that the truth he seeks is cosmopolitan. 

 It knows not state or nation, tribe or race, but is 

 world-truth and world-law. The distinguished rep- 

 resentatives of that truth have a clear atmosphere, 

 and if their moral nature is strong enough to sustain 

 itself in those rarified heights, they lead a life of 

 singular dignity and freedom, their minds dashed 

 with no colour of prejudice or passion — seeking what 

 is. To know what is in the world of things, is the 

 vocation of the man of science. His reputation is 

 the reputation of truth, strong and still as the sun ; 

 and his name is the property of mankind. In the 

 enthusiasm of admiring grief, we accord to our late 

 illustrious fellow-citizen and cosmopolite such a 

 place and such a name. 



Far back, ascending the centuries, in the very 

 horizon of man's intellectual history, is Aristotle, in 

 whose mind the seeds of the universe were planted, 

 who compassed all the knowledge of his time, and 

 gave the hint to future ages. Two thousand years 

 later is Humboldt, who, with matchless wonder of 

 comprehension and penetration — with a persistency 

 of purpose and idea, pursued, without a parallel in 

 the life of man, through a period of nearly seventy 

 years of original research — constructed a Cosmos," 

 the science of the relation of things, which is perhaps 

 the source of more of the knowledge of the modern 



time than has come from any other single mind. In 

 17 



