Ten years before his death, Agassiz, wishing to illustrate the
laborious and slow results of scientific research, said: “I
have devoted my whole life to the study of nature, and yet a
single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown
that there is a correspondence between the succession of fishes
in geological times and the different stages of their growth
in the egg--that is all.” Here speaks the scientist, with that
humility which characterizes the true student of nature. But
let me follow with his prouder outlook for such toil: “It is
given to no mortal man to predict what may be the result of any
discovery in the realm of nature. When the electric current was
discovered, what was it? A curiosity. When the first electric
machine was invented, to what use was it put? To make puppets
dance for the amusement of children; but should our work have
no other result than this--to know that certain facts in nature
are thus and not otherwise, their causes were such and no
other--this result in itself is good enough and great enough
since the end of his aim, his glory, is the knowledge of the
truth.”--JULIA S. VISHER, _The Christian Register_.
(1463)