Agassiz himself. “When our lectures are over, we meet in the evening
at Braun’s room or mine, with three or four intimate acquaintances,
and talk of scientific matters, each one in his turn presenting a
subject which is first developed by him and then discussed by all.
These exercises are very instructive. As my share, I have begun to
give a course of natural history, or rather of pure zoölogy. Braun
talks to us of botany; and another of our company, Mahir, teaches us
mathematics and physics in his turn; Schimper will be our professor
of philosophy. Thus we shall form a little university, instructing
one another, and at the same time learning what we teach more
thoroughly, because we shall be obliged to demonstrate it.”
From Heidelberg the three companions now transferred their studies
to the new University of Munich, where a far more stimulating
intellectual life awaited them. Here were some of the most celebrated
teachers of the day, and “the city teemed with resources for the
student in arts, letters, philosophy, and science.” A fine spirit
existed between students and professors, and there was constant
opportunity, not only in the classrooms, but beyond their walls, for
the earnest young men to draw on the wells of information which their
brilliant instructors freely afforded them.
With an allowance of only $250 a year, Agassiz’s life was necessarily
simple and severe. But the three companions soon found that their
humble rooms had become the meeting-place of the most brilliant
men in the University. Students and even professors crowded their
simple living quarters, and naturalists of renown came to visit these
extraordinary young men. “Someone was always coming or going; the
half-dozen chairs were covered with books, piled one upon another—the
bed, also, was used as a seat, and as a receptacle for specimens,
drawings and papers.” Specimens of various sorts decorated the walls.
In Agassiz’s own room were several hundred fish, “shut up in a wooden
tub with a cover and in various big glass jars. A live gudgeon with
beautiful stripes is wriggling in his wash-bowl, and he has adorned
his table with monkeys.”
During their vacations the young men made expeditions to see such
museums as were within reach, and to visit any scientific men to
whom they could obtain an introduction. All of southern Germany was
included in their rambles, and their wanderings carried them even
into explorations of extensive tracts of the Alps.
But although Agassiz had come to Munich for the special purpose of
taking the degree of doctor of medicine, his studies soon drifted
from those of a medical student to the studies of a true naturalist.
He had gone to Heidelberg “with a strong taste for natural history;
he left Munich devoted heart and soul to science.” Under these
circumstances it was only natural that his first degree should be
that of doctor of philosophy; but a year later, to fulfill the
desires of his parents, he received the degree of doctor of medicine
and surgery.
Up to this time Agassiz had paid no particular attention to the
study of ichthyology, which was later to become the great occupation
of his life; but in 1829 he was unexpectedly given the opportunity
to prepare a history of the fresh-water fishes of Brazil, from a
collection which had been made by a celebrated scientist who had died
before he could prepare the report covering the collection. Agassiz
threw himself enthusiastically into the work of describing and
figuring these Brazilian fishes, and in 1829 the work was completed
and published with the name of the youthful author on the title-page.
His life-work was begun.
It was at this time that he wrote to his father: “I wish it may be
said of Louis Agassiz that he was the first naturalist of his time, a
good citizen, and a good son, beloved by those who know him.”
In the autumn of 1830 Agassiz left Munich, and after a short visit
in Vienna, where he found himself “received as a scientific man
for whom no letters of recommendation were necessary,” he returned
to Switzerland and the welcome of his proud parents. But it was
hard to adjust himself to the quiet village by Lake Morat, and,
although money was difficult to secure, a visit to Paris was finally
made possible through the generosity of a friend of the family.
Here Agassiz formed important friendships with two of the greatest
scientists of the age: Cuvier, the leading French zoölogist, and
Alexander von Humboldt, the leader of the scientific world.
The years that immediately followed were filled with scientific
progress. The “Brazilian Fishes” had determined Agassiz’s specialty,
and the reputation of the book led him to plan a history of the
fresh-water fishes of Central Europe, including a natural history
of fossil fishes. It was an enormous undertaking, for palæontology
was a new science, involving the study of fossil specimens scattered
through the museums of Europe. But Agassiz foresaw only the value
which science would place on such a work, and the five volumes were
finally published by him, at intervals, from 1833 to 1843.
Life in Paris soon proved difficult for the young scientist, and
his poverty was particularly noticeable, for here there was wealth
and position even among scientific men. He had only forty dollars a
month, and his clothing had become so worn that it was not possible
for him to accept invitations from well-to-do friends. The position
of professor of natural history at Neuchâtel was offered him, and,
although the salary was only $400 a year, it seemed wise to accept.
His acceptance, and with it the close of his year in Paris, marks the
end of his boyhood and student days. A new period awaited him.
The college of Neuchâtel was small and unimportant. The chair of
natural history was new, and there was no scientific apparatus,
museum, or lecture-room. But this mattered little to the young
professor. Soon after his arrival he founded a Natural History
Society among the leading citizens of the town; his lectures were
given in the city hall, and his own collection formed the nucleus of
a natural history museum.
As in college, so in the quiet Swiss village, Agassiz soon gathered
about him a group of scientific men as his students and assistants,
many of whom in later life became themselves naturalists of
reputation. It was a “scientific factory” of which Agassiz was the
mainspring. He was poor, but somehow he managed to go on, supporting
many of his staff in his own house, printing and lithographing his
own publications, and supporting his own family as well, for his
marriage had now brought additional responsibilities upon his broad
shoulders. It was an unstable basis, but in one way or another
Agassiz found the means to proceed. Money was but the means to an
end, never the end itself. “I cannot spend my time in making money!”
he once said when a profitable business offer was made to him. The
remark expressed clearly his firm devotion to his chosen profession.
It was during this period of his life that Agassiz added to
scientific knowledge the proof that at some remote time in the
earth’s existence vast glaciers, moving fields of ice miles in area
and often hundreds of feet in thickness, had played a part in the
earth’s formation almost as important as the recognized agents, fire
and water. It was a geological discovery the proof of which, although
indisputable, seemed so startling, that it was with difficulty that
it was accepted even by the best scientific minds of the day.
In the Alpine country had been found great boulders dropped
apparently by some strange force in fields far from the quarries of
native rock from which they had been torn. Here also were moraines
and dikes, great piles of loose gravel deposited by some unknown
agency; and here also, where the bedrock was visible, could be seen
deep furrows and scratches on the polished stone as if chiseled by a
giant tool.
Glaciers existed in the Alps, but it was hard for men to believe
that glaciers had once existed where now were green fields and
meadows. But Agassiz was not the man to endeavor to found a belief on
unsupported theory, and only after six years of study of the glaciers
and glacial traces in the Alps and actual observations on the glacier
of the Aar, was he prepared to give his proofs of the theory to the
scientific world.
Basing his demonstration on this accumulated evidence, Agassiz
proved that at one time glaciers had covered a large part of the
now civilized world. The great boulders had been scooped up by them
in their progress, and perhaps some thousands of years later had
been dropped a hundred miles away by the melting ice-sheet. So also
had the masses of gravel been carried far from their sources, to
form strange new glacial deposits. And on the scarred and grooved
rocks was the final evidence; for these deep scratches had surely
been ground by the advancing glacier as it slowly and silently moved
onward. “The idea that such phenomena were not restricted to regions
where glaciers now are found, but that traces of glacial action
could be seen over enormous tracts of the earth’s surface, perhaps
including regions in the tropics, and that in countries now temperate
there might be discovered, not only the remains of tropical fauna and
flora, but also distinct indications of a period of arctic cold—this
was as new as startling.”
During the years of his professorship at Neuchâtel, Agassiz published
many important contributions to scientific knowledge in those
particular departments of natural science to which he had devoted
himself. At the same time came also many honors, including offers of
professorships from the universities of Geneva and Lausanne, and the
award of the Wollaston Medal by the Geographical Society of London.
But the second period in Agassiz’s life was drawing to a close: a
great country beyond the Atlantic would soon be ready to receive him.
Agassiz, the student and now the discoverer, was about to begin his
final great activity as the pioneer and teacher of natural history
to a strange people in a foreign land. Each year at Neuchâtel had
plunged Agassiz deeper and deeper into debt; his situation had
passed from bad to well-nigh hopeless. Then, unexpectedly, help was
offered. The King of Prussia offered him three thousand dollars, to
be spent in travel for scientific purposes; and at the same time
came an invitation from the Lowell Institute of Boston to visit the
United States. Agassiz could not refuse. It was a solution of all his
immediate difficulties; a wide horizon in the eager young republic
spread before him. In September, 1846, Agassiz sailed for Boston.
He had left behind him all that is wealth to a scientific man.
Books and collections were the tools of his trade; in his fellow
naturalists he had found help and inspiration. In the United States
bountiful nature had provided a fertile and unexplored field, but
here he must work alone. “He came, perhaps, in a spirit of adventure
and of curiosity; but he stayed because he loved a country where
new things could be built up; where he could think and speak as he
pleased; and where his ceaseless activity would be considered of high
quality.”
On his arrival in Boston Agassiz was cordially received by John A.
Lowell, who, as trustee of the Lowell Institute, had extended to
him the invitation which was in a large measure responsible for his
coming. The course of lectures which Agassiz had planned for the
Lowell Institute was entitled “The Plan of Creation.” His success was
immediate. The people were eager to hear the message of the great
lecturer. A second course, on “Glaciers,” was soon arranged, and in a
few months Agassiz found himself the most popular lecturer in all the
great Eastern cities.
The subjects which he chose were always of a character which made
it possible for large untrained audiences to follow him and clearly
understand the points which he logically developed. His command
of English was at first faulty, but he was never embarrassed, and
his audiences found a peculiar charm in his foreign accent and the
unusual phrases which he so frequently employed. But the blackboard
was his unfailing assistant, and as he talked, his quick hand
illustrated the subject with sketches so simple and so clear that the
lecture could almost have been comprehended by these alone.
He had left his collections behind him, but almost immediately
new collections began to grow, and a new “scientific factory” was
established in his house in East Boston. He always spoke of his
specimens as “material for investigation,” for to Agassiz every stone
and every insect held a story filled with wonder and romance which
only patient study could unfold. His house, his garden, and even
his pockets were filled with “material”; as an illustration may be
mentioned the occasion when Agassiz, on being asked by a lady sitting
beside him at a dinner-party to explain the difference between a toad
and a frog, instantly produced, to the amazement of his companions, a
live frog and a live toad from his pockets.
It was but natural that Agassiz should find in Harvard University,
the oldest and most celebrated seat of learning in the United States,
the congenial atmosphere which his work required. And it is equally
natural that the great University should recognize in Agassiz a
master-teacher who would prove a most desirable addition to its
faculty. Agassiz had already found in the United States a cordial
welcome and a deep appreciation. The year 1848 marks definitely the
beginning of the last phase of his life, for in this year the death
of his wife in Carlsruhe and his acceptance of the chair of zoölogy
and geology at Harvard led him to abandon forever his thought of some
day returning to his native land.
Two years later his marriage to Elizabeth Cabot Cary of Boston bound
him still closer to the land of his adoption, and the remaining years
of his life were years of consistent activity filled with growth and
honor. An expedition to Lake Superior in 1848 was followed by a trip
to study the Florida reefs in 1850 and a visit to the Mississippi
River in 1853. During these years his collections were rapidly
increased, and already he was planning for the establishment at
Harvard of a great Museum of Natural History.
Life in Boston and in the clear atmosphere of the University must
have been highly stimulating to a man of Agassiz’s sensitive
susceptibilities. Emerson, Holmes, Hawthorne, Motley, and Longfellow
were his companions, and a group of brilliant younger minds
surrounded him in his work.
From abroad now came honors the larger part of which Agassiz saw fit
to decline. In 1852 the Prix Cuvier was awarded to him in recognition
of his work on fossil fishes. A call to the University of Zürich
was declined in 1854; and during the four years between 1857 and
1861 he three times declined a call to the chair of palæontology at
Paris, perhaps the highest scientific honor which the world could
afford. But neither honors nor wealth could tempt him. His affection
for America and his love for his work in that appreciative country
held him fast. In 1861 he became a naturalized citizen of the United
States.
Rarely, if ever, was there a man of more lovable and winning
personality. “Everybody sought his society, and no one could stand
before his words and his smile. The fishermen at Nahant would
pull two or three miles to get him a rare fish.” Rich and poor,
the educated and the uneducated, all paid homage to his magnetic
personality. Physically large, his genial countenance and smiling
eyes made friends with everyone. And at the same time those laughing
brown eyes, that seemed made only for pleasure and jollity, “saw
more than did all our eyes put together; for he looked, but we only
stared.”
The corner-stone of the great Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at
Harvard was laid in 1859, and in the years that have followed, the
collection has grown to proportions which make it a worthy memorial
to its celebrated founder. Into this edifice Agassiz freely poured
the material which he had collected on his many expeditions,
including a wealth of specimens gathered in 1865 and 1866, on an
expedition to Brazil; and in 1871 and 1872, in a specially designed
ship, the Hassler, he rounded the Horn, and with dredging apparatus
collected along both coasts of the South American continent valuable
data concerning the fauna and physical conditions which were found
at great depths. Meanwhile, although constantly neglectful of his
own income, he devoted his rare personal persuasion to the cause of
obtaining the large sum necessary for the building and maintenance of
the Museum. And it is to him alone that credit is due for the money
that was thus raised, at a cost to science of priceless hours of his
own all-too-limited time and energy.
The intellect of Agassiz was gigantic, and yet he combined with his
mighty forces an unfailing patience with dull or ignorant people. His
craving for knowledge was equaled only by his ability in imparting
it to others. Nothing that he achieved was for himself: his all was
attained that he might give it to the world. “Good teachers are not
commonly original investigators; and original investigators often
lack both the will and power to tell other people what they know.”
To this Agassiz was perhaps the greatest exception that the world
has ever seen. The scientific world will ever remember Louis Agassiz
for his discoveries in zoölogy, for his vast researches in the study
of fishes, and for his glacial theories and subsequent revelations
in geology; but the world at large will hold him perhaps more dear
as the master who brought to the United States the old sciences of
an older civilization and, infusing them with his own vitality,
became to the people of America the first and the great teacher of
the history of the mighty book of nature, which before his time had
remained closed to them.
On December 14, 1873, Louis Agassiz died at Cambridge, in the shadow
of the walls of the great University of which he had become so loyal
a member. Above his grave a simple granite boulder from the glacier
of the Aar, sent by loving friends in the land of his birth, gives
in its brief inscription the name of a man whom the United States
proudly claims as citizen, and whom the world honors as a man.
IV
CARL SCHURZ
_Born in Liblar, Germany, 1829_
_Died in New York City, 1906_
There are few Americans who can say that they were born in a castle,
for the castle-born children of Europe of whom history tells us
have been the children of royalty who have by virtue of their birth
inherited the privileges of a ruling clan and have ever handed down
these same privileges to succeeding generations. Europe was for
centuries ruled by the castle-born. Supreme was the tradition of
royalty. And strange in contrast is the story of a baby of humble
parentage who by chance first saw the light through the high windows
of a castle wall, and lived to become an honored citizen of a land
where royalty is unknown and all men are equal.
In the great republic of the United States, men who had become
wearied of the old order of things had built a nation on another
plan. Here there was no royalty; it was not where or how a boy was
born that counted, but what kind of a man he became. To all, equal
opportunities were offered. It was not who you were, but what you
were, that counted; and that is what counts to-day in the United
States.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Pach Brothers_
C. Schurz. (signature)]
The first President, George Washington, was a farmer. Abraham
Lincoln was born in a log-cabin and taught himself to read and
write in the early days of his hard boyhood. Woodrow Wilson was a
schoolteacher. Rich men and poor men have risen to the presidency;
men with the blood of many nations in their veins. The log-cabin or
the castle birthplace has counted little; high posts of honor have
been won by all.
Carl Schurz was born in a castle at Liblar, a small German town a few
miles distant from the great city of Cologne, in the year 1829. But
in spite of his castle birthplace, Carl was not of royal blood, but a
poor boy. Like the fathers of so many other distinguished sons, the
elder Schurz was a schoolmaster; but so small was his pay that he
and his family came to live with his wife’s father, a tenant farmer,
in the ancient castle at Liblar. And in this castle was born the boy
Carl who, in the many years of his useful life, was destined to fill
high places in the great Republic beyond the seas.
Life in the great castle was much the same in 1829 that it had been
for hundreds of years, for changes came slowly in the peaceful,
beautiful German country. At harvest-time the young and old, with
a spirit of mutual helpfulness, gathered the harvest; and at other
times they met for Rhineland festivals, with much happy visiting of
relatives, with games and contests of strength and skill. In the big
stone hall of the castle the “folk” assembled for their meals at long
wooden tables, and ate their soup or porridge out of deep wooden
bowls with wooden spoons. During the day the women spun flax at their
spinning-wheels and the men worked in the shops, the stables, and
the fields.
In the twilight hours the boy listened to stories of the “French
Times,” when the great Napoleon passed through the land with his
mighty army before the Russian campaign, and later returned, his army
shattered and defeated. He heard of the Cossacks, uncouth, dirty,
bearded men on shaggy ponies, who followed Napoleon’s retreating
army, and how they stole and plundered and ate the tallow candles
in people’s houses. And he heard, too, of the great men whose fame
was not created by the sword—Schiller, Goethe Tasso, Shakespeare,
Voltaire, Rousseau. Perhaps the stories of these famous men of
history inspired the boy in later years to become himself a leader
among men.
When he was still very young, Carl was sent to school; and twice a
week he walked, each way, to a town four miles distant, to study
music. It was during these early days that Carl first heard his
family talk about the United States, “that young Republic where the
people were free, without kings, without counts”; and it is probable
that the impressions of this republican state of free citizens
received in his early years had something to do with the directing of
his ambitions in later life.
When Carl was nine years old his father, believing that the boy had
outgrown the little school at Liblar, sent him to a school at Brühl,
where he continued his various lessons and the study of music. The
next year Carl was taken by his father to Cologne and entered the
“gymnasium,” a school which bears some resemblance to the high
school in the United States. Here he studied history, Latin, and
German, and particularly the art of expressing himself in writing
with clearness and ease—a study which perhaps contributed most to his
success in coming years.
But now a new influence began to enter the life of the boy. During
the first fifty years of the nineteenth century, that part of
Germany which extends along the banks of the Rhine had seen three
governments. First, it had been ruled by the Archbishop Electors;
then it was conquered by the French and had felt French rule both
under the French Republic and the Empire; and last of all, it had
been taken from the French and annexed by Prussia. The Rhenish people
perhaps liked the Prussian rule least of all; for the Prussians
governed well, but with a stern discipline that could never be
understood by the careless, pleasure-loving people of the Rhine.
Among the younger people, and particularly those of the
better-educated class, among whom Carl found himself, there was a
restless spirit and the feeling that great changes were necessary.
Young men believed that the hard Prussian rule must be overthrown
and give place to a new form of constitutional government, with free
speech, free press, and free political institutions. How this was to
be done, no one knew; but Carl and his companions talked much with
each other of their dreams of liberty and unity for the Fatherland,
and eagerly read every newspaper and pamphlet that fell into their
hands, to keep themselves informed of the tendencies of the day.