earnestly,' you haven't even seen one of the most conspicuous features
of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish itself;
look again, look again!' and he left me to my misery.
I was piqued; I was mortified. Still more of that wretched fish! But
now I set myself to my task with a will, and discovered one new thing
after another, until I saw how just the Professor's criticism had been.
The afternoon passed quickly; and when, toward its close, the Professor
inquired:
'Do you see it yet?'
'No,' I replied, 'I am certain I do not, but I see how little I saw
before.'
'That is next best,' said he, earnestly, 'but I won't hear you now;
put away your fish and go home; perhaps you will be ready with a better
answer in the morning. I will examine you before you look at the fish.'
This was disconcerting. Not only must I think of my fish all night,
studying, without the object before me, what this unknown but most
visible feature might be; but also, without reviewing my new discoveries,
I must give an exact account of them the next day. I had a bad memory;
so I walked home by Charles River in a distracted state, with my two
perplexities.
The cordial greeting from the Professor the next morning was
reassuring; here was a man who seemed to be quite as anxious as I that
I should see for myself what he saw.
'Do you perhaps mean,' I asked, 'that the fish has symmetrical sides
with paired organs?'
His thoroughly pleased 'Of course! of course!' repaid the wakeful
hours of the previous night. After he had discoursed most happily and
enthusiastically--as he always did-upon the importance of this point,
I ventured to ask what I should do next.
'Oh, look at your fish!' he said, and left me again to my own devices.
In a little more than an hour he returned, and heard my new catalogue.
'That is good, that is good!' he repeated; 'but that is not all; go
on;' and so for three long days he placed that fish before my eyes,
forbidding me to look at anything else, or to use any artificial aid.
'Look, look, look,' was his repeated injunction.
This was the best entomological lesson I ever had--a lesson whose
influence has extended to the details of every subsequent study; a
legacy the Professor has left to me, as he has left it to many others,
of inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we cannot part.
A year afterward, some of us were amusing ourselves with chalking
outlandish beasts on the Museum blackboard. We drew prancing
starfishes; frogs in mortal combat; hydra-headed worms; stately
crawfishes, standing on their tails, bearing aloft umbrellas; and
grotesque fishes with gaping mouths and staring eyes. The Professor
came in shortly after, and was as amused as any at our experiments. He
looked at the fishes.
'Haemulons, every one of them,' he said; 'Mr.---- drew them.'
True; and to this day, if I attempt a fish, I can draw nothing but
haemulons.
The fourth day, a second fish of the same group was placed beside the
first, and I was bidden to point out the resemblances and differences
between the two; another and another followed, until the entire family
lay before me, and a whole legion of jars covered the table and
surrounding shelves; the odor had become a pleasant perfume; and even
now, the sight of an old, six-inch, worm-eaten cork brings fragrant
memories.
The whole group of haemulons was thus brought in review; and, whether
engaged upon the dissection of the internal organs, the preparation and
examination of the bony frame-work, or the description of the various
parts, Agassiz's training in the method of observing facts and their
orderly arrangement was ever accompanied by the urgent exhortation not
to be content with them.
'Facts are stupid things,' he would say, 'until brought into
connection with some general law.'
At the end of eight months, it was almost with reluctance that I left
these friends and turned to insects; but what I had gained by this
outside experience has been of greater value than years of later
investigation in my favorite groups.
[Footnote: Professor Edward S. Morse writes: 'As I remember Mr.
Scudder's article, ... he has stated clearly the method of Agassiz's
teaching--simply to let the student study intimately one object at a
time. Day after day he would come to your table and ask you what you
had learned, and thus keep you at it for a week. My first object put
before me was a common clam, _Mya arenaria_.']
VIII
THE DEATH OF AGASSIZ--HIS PERSONALITY
[Footnote: The materials for this sketch are drawn from several
sources--chiefly the Life by Marcou (which I have used with some
caution) and the Life by Mrs. Agassiz. I had wished to preserve the
words of Marcou throughout (with judicious omissions), but this wish
was defeated by certain persons who, for reasons unknown to me, have
the power to prevent the use of adequate quotations from him. I have
followed him where I had no other guide, and no ground for suspecting
him of bias. The composition, and to some extent the interpretation of
the facts, are my own.]
In later years the robust constitution and herculean frame of Agassiz
showed the effects of his extraordinary and multifarious labors, for it
must be confessed that he was not careful of his bodily welfare. In the
year 1869 he suffered a temporary breakdown of a very threatening sort,
and for months was in seclusion, forbidden by his medical advisers even
to think. His own wise efforts, and a quiet spring passed in the
village of Deerfield, Connecticut, brought about his recovery, so that
three years of activity were yet to be vouchsafed him. But the strain
of his lectures, of his correspondence, of his labors at and for the
Museum, was perilous. On the second of December, 1873, he gave a
lecture, his last, on 'The Structural Growth of Domestic Animals,'
before the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture at Fitchburg. On the
third he dined with friends; on the fifth he was present at a family
gathering--and smoked cigars, defying the orders of his physician. But
the end was not far off. He spoke of a dimness of sight; he complained
of feeling 'strangely asleep.' On the morning of the sixth he went as
usual to the Museum, but with a sense of great weariness he shortly
returned to his room, where he lay down, never to depart from it alive.
The disease was a paralysis of the organs of respiration, beginning
with the larynx. He had every care from his friends Dr. Brown-Sequard,
who immediately came from New York, and Dr. Morrill Wyman; and the last
few days of his life were passed, not in great suffering, with his
loving family around him. Nothing, however, could arrest the progress
of the malady.
Agassiz, it is said, had been afraid of softening of the brain, and of
a long and painful illness like that which preceded the death of his
friend Professor Bache; it had been his hope that he might rather go
quickly. Yet it was not easy for him to think of dying, when his
imagination teemed with projects, and when the two main visions of his
life were on the point of being fully accomplished, in the great Museum
and the Anderson School of Natural History on the island of Penikese.
Stricken though he was, he clung to life, nor did he give up all hope
of recovery until the last day. Still there was a change of demeanor,
for the aims of his career as a scientist were now less obtrusive in
his mind than thoughts of his family. And with the arrival of Dr. Brown
-Sequard he resumed the language of his youth, so that his last words
were uttered in French. In the closing hours, when at length all hope
was abandoned, he was more than once heard to say: '_Tout est
fini_.' On the eighth day, when death itself was approaching, his
family and friends--among these, Pourtales--withdrew to an adjoining
room, keeping watch over the patient through the open door. While
Pourtales was standing there in his turn, not long after ten o'clock at
night, Agassiz lifted himself up in bed, and said with emphasis: '_Le
jeu est fini_.' Then, sinking back, he passed away.
'The play is done. _Plaudite_.' For Agassiz life was a game, full
of motion, crowded with incident. He could not understand the complaint
of those who found time hanging heavily upon their hands, and who
sought ways of killing it. He, who had 'no time for making money,'
would gladly have borrowed an extra life or two for study and teaching.
From the outset he had unwavering confidence in himself. He would be
'the first naturalist of his time, a good citizen, a good son, beloved
of those who knew him.' He was not to follow others; he would lead in
his own path, which should be the right path, and others should follow
him.
Agassiz was somewhat above the average in height. His body was well
formed, his shoulders broad and square, his figure powerful, firmly set
upon rather small feet that served him well in walking and climbing. With
a quick, elastic step, he was an excellent pedestrian, and quite at home
in the mountains. As a boy he became proficient in swimming and in the
management of boats. To bodily fear he was a stranger. His hands were
large and shapely, and very skilful. Never a finished draughtsman, he
was none the less expert in representing, with swift, sure strokes, the
essential structure of the object he wished to recall or explain. He was
deft, too, with the dissecting-knife and the microscope, and with the
geologist's hammer. His neck (the weak part, as his fatal illness showed)
was rather short; his head was fine and large. In later years his hair,
of a chestnut color, deserted his brow, but he wore it full at the sides
and back, and this, with the side-whiskers of the day, tended to conceal
his ears. The head itself was admirable, the forehead high and broad,
the chin shapely, the countenance frank and open. The mouth was wide, the
lips full and smiling, the expression as a whole altogether amiable and
intelligent. His aquiline nose, with well-developed nostrils, sharply
set off by the oblique lines on either side, helped to give him an air of
sagacity. But it was the magnificent, fascinating eyes, young, kindly,
and searching, that above all gave life to that animated countenance. To
those eyes nothing was commonplace. [Footnote: Compare Clara Conant
Gilson, 'Agassiz at Cambridge,' in _Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly_,
December, 1891: 'He was a man of fine figure and striking appearance,
not too much of the _embonpoint_, not too tall, but just tall enough
to constitute a finely developed physique. His head was grand, of perfect
intellectual shape, and commanded your admiration as you gazed. He was
but slightly bald, his hair was of a beautiful brown, soft and fine, and
fell lovingly over the collar of his coat. His face was of well-rounded
contour, with a large, expressive mouth, and features indicative of
great character and decision. His eyes were the feature of his face, par
excellence. They were of a beautiful bright brown, full of tenderness,
of meaning and earnestness--a liquid brown eye, that would moisten with
tears of emotion as thoughts of his Creator came rushing to mind, while
he traced His footsteps in the sciences he studied. His eyes mirrored
his soul. I think there was never but one pair of eyes such as Professor
Louis Agassiz's.']
Agassiz spoke French with a slight drawl characteristic of the section
of Switzerland in which he was born. When he came to America in 1846,
he rapidly acquired a command of English, and he eventually wrote and
spoke the language with great facility, though his speech never ceased
to betray his foreign origin. [Footnote: See Clara Conant Gilson, in
the article just cited: He had a few striking peculiarities of
pronunciation, one or two of which cling to me with great pertinacity
even now. One, in particular, is fresh in my memory. For example, the
words respiratory and perspiratory he would accent on the third
syllable--_rat_; and, bless me, if to this day I don't have to
think twice before I am sure which is right! This shows what indelible
impressions his words left upon his pupils.]
With his superabundant physical, mental, and emotional energy, he was
a natural orator; he was fond of an audience, and gratified by
applause. No one ever possessed a greater talent for making natural
science popular; even when his discourse became highly technical, his
auditors hung upon his words. His method of exposition was very clear
and simple. He studiously avoided the error of dragging the listener
through all the processes by which the speaker has arrived at a
particular truth, and quickly came to the point. In lecturing, his
personal magnetism counted for much; he readily communicated his
enthusiasm to others.
He was easily moved to tears or to laughter. In his earlier life he
was seldom angry, or seldom showed it, but otherwise made no attempt to
hide his feelings, being a perfect child of nature. Later he became
less demonstrative, save when he was angry. In the last twenty years of
his life he not infrequently lost his temper, though he would not
utterly forget what he was saying; and, however heated the discussion
might become, he never ceased to be a gentleman. Neither indecency nor
aught approaching thereto ever issued from his lips. As a youth in
Switzerland, during his life as a student, and even when he was a
teacher at Neuchatel, he was fond of singing, and he liked to yodel
after the fashion of the Swiss and Tyrolese mountaineers, but he gave
this up when he came to America.
Here his recreations were mostly social. He was the friend of
Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier; he was the friend of laborers and
fishermen. In society he liked to encounter men of wealth and
influence, for he had by nature, and also learned from Alexander von
Humboldt, some of the arts of the courtier. 'It would be difficult,'
says Dr. Charles D. Walcott, [Footnote: _Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections_ 50. 217 (1908).] 'to measure his influence in the way
of causing men of political and commercial power to realize that the
support of scientific research, and the diffusion of knowledge thereby
gained, depend largely on them.' In other natural scientists he was
prone to discover too much self-satisfaction, and too much personal
curiosity, against which he hardly knew how to protect himself. But
with the group of younger scientists he himself developed, though now
and then one or another grew mutinous, he was, during most of the time,
on the best of terms. His own early schooling in the classics gave him
a relish for scholars, and he was pleased with the company of
historians and lawyers. For military men he did not care, but he liked
naval officers and sea-captains. He paid little attention to matters of
dress, certainly as regards his own person. He was gratified by the
marks of distinction conferred upon him at home and abroad, but took
little subsequent thought of the ribbons, badges, and diplomas, keeping
them, but not very carefully, and never making a parade of them.
Eloquent as a lecturer, he was also brilliant and persuasive in
conversation, being, in appearance at least, quite unreserved, and open
in his attempt to capture the good will of his auditor. However, if
there was no covert artifice, there was at all events the native
shrewdness of the Swiss peasant to reckon with, and doubtless the
subtlety of genius--which will not, or cannot, always reveal itself in
full. In his later years, accordingly, though his winning manners and
his desire that you should completely display your thought to him might
lead you to suppose him utterly open with you, you might in the end
discover that you had not fathomed his soul, that there was that in him
which could not be taken captive, and that there might be a silent
invincible rejection on his part of something within you which was
foreign to him.
In Agassiz the theoretical and the practical life were well balanced.
He was both a visionary and a man capable of bringing his visions to
pass. No philosophical conception was too general for him, and no
detail of observation or inference too small. No fact could appear too
slight for his intense and comprehensive scrutiny, and his memory for
minute resemblances and differences was vast; yet the enduring quality
of his work arose from his sense of order, and from the soundness and
rigor of his principles. He possessed not only physical, but
intellectual and moral courage. In the face of hardship or difficulty
he was undaunted, ever energetic at the moment, ever hoping for better
times. His power of working was enormous, for he made virtually no
false motions, but proceeded silently, swiftly, with no apparent
effort, and for long periods without interruption.
Much has been said by his friends of the depth and sincerity of his
sentiments in point of religion. But he had little sympathy with
clergymen, or with the definite forms in which the religious experience
of man has expressed itself--though these forms are in their essence
and development not unlike the natural forms which he so reverently
studied. One who knew him well affirms that in early manhood Agassiz,
if not precisely a materialist, was at all events a sceptic; but his
later studies, with mature reflection, led him to believe in a Divine
Creator. The external universe became to him the language in which the
Divine Being conveys his ideas to man, and natural history the
discipline by which men interpret that language. Thus he says, in the
_Essay on Classification:_ 'To me it appears indisputable that
this order and arrangement of our studies are based upon the natural,
primitive relations of animal life--those systems, to which we have
given the names of the great leaders of our science who first proposed
them, being in truth but translations into human language of the
thoughts of the Creator. And if this is indeed so, do we not find in
this adaptability of the human intellect to the facts of creation, by
which we become instinctively, and, as I have said, unconsciously, the
translators of the thoughts of God, the most conclusive proof of our
affinity with the Divine mind? And is not this intellectual and
spiritual connection with the Almighty worthy of our deepest
consideration? If there is any truth in the belief that man is made in
the image of God, it is surely not amiss for the philosopher to
endeavor, by the study of his own mental operations, to approximate the
workings of the Divine Reason, learning from the nature of his own mind
better to understand the Infinite Intellect from which it is derived.
Such a suggestion may, at first sight, appear irreverent. But who is
the truly humble? He who, penetrating into the secrets of creation,
arranges them under a formula, which he proudly calls his scientific
system? or he who in the same pursuit recognizes his glorious affinity
with the Creator, and in deepest gratitude for so sublime a birthright
strives to be the faithful interpreter of that Divine Intellect with
whom he is permitted, nay, with whom he is intended, according to the
laws of his being, to enter into communion? [Footnote: _Essay on
Classification_ (1859), pp. 9-10.] Herein we may discern the secret
of his power as a teacher.
'Agassiz's influence on methods of teaching in our community,' said
Professor James, 'was prompt and decisive--all the more that it struck
people's imagination by its very excess. The good old way of committing
printed abstractions to memory never seems to have received such a shock
as it encountered at his hands. There is probably no public school
teacher now [1896] in New England who will not tell you how Agassiz used
to lock a student up in a room full of turtle-shells, or lobster-shells,
or oyster-shells, without a book or a word to help him, and not let him
out till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained.
Some found the truths after weeks and months of lonely sorrow; others
never found them. Those who found them were already made into naturalists
thereby--the failures were blotted from the book of honor and of life.
"Go to nature; take the facts into your own hands; look, and see for
yourself!"--these were the maxims which Agassiz preached wherever he
went, and their effect upon pedagogy was electric.... While on the Thayer
expedition [to Brazil, in 1865], I remember that I often put questions to
him about the facts of our new tropical habitat, but I doubt if he ever
answered one of these questions of mine outright. He always said: "There,
you see you have a definite problem. Go and look, and find the answer for
yourself."' [Footnote: William James, _Louis Agassiz, Words Spoken ...
at the Reception of the American Society of Naturalists ..._ [Dec. 30,
1896]. Pp. 9, 10. Cambridge, 1897.]
IX
OBITER DICTA BY AGASSIZ
[Footnote: The first nine of these utterances were taken down by Dr.
David Stair Jordan at Penikese, in the summer of 1873, from Agassiz's
talks to teachers; see _Popular Science Monthly_ 40. 726-727, and
Holder, _Louis Agassiz, his Life and Works,_ 1893, pp. 173-176.
The next five come from the article entitled 'Louis Agassiz, Teacher,'
by Professor Burt G. Wilder, in _The Harvard Graduate's Magazine,_
June, 1907, and the last three from Agassiz's posthumous article,
"Evolution and Permanence of Type," in the _Atlantic Monthly,_
Jan., 1874 (vol. 33).]
Never try to teach what you yourself do not know, and know well. If
your school board insists on your teaching anything and everything,
decline firmly to do it. It is an imposition alike on pupils and
teacher to teach that which he does not know. Those teachers who are
strong enough should squarely refuse to do such work. This much-needed
reform is already beginning in our colleges, and I hope it will
continue. It is a relic of mediaeval times, this idea of professing
everything. When teachers begin to decline work which they cannot do
well, improvements begin to come in. If one will be a successful
teacher, he must firmly refuse work which he cannot do successfully.
It is a false idea to suppose that everybody is competent to learn or
to teach everything. Would our great artists have succeeded equally
well in Greek or calculus? A smattering of everything is worth little.
It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopaedic knowledge is
desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by
the thorough possession of something.
Lay aside all conceit. Learn to read the book of nature for yourself.
Those who have succeeded best have followed for years some slim thread
which has once in a while broadened out and disclosed some treasure
worth a life-long search.
A man cannot be a professor of zoology on one day, and of chemistry on
the next, and do good work in both. As in a concert all are musicians
--one plays one instrument, and one another, but none all in perfection.
You cannot do without one specialty; you must have some base-line to
measure the work and attainments of others. For a general view of the
subject, study the history of the sciences. Broad knowledge of all
nature has been the possession of no naturalist except Humboldt, and
general relations constituted his specialty.
Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk without seeing them.
Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the
specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a
house-fly or a cricket, and let each hold a specimen and examine it as
you talk.
In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Massachusetts, before a Teachers'
Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I
passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take
one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I
stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation,
and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress
in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.