Louis Agassiz

IN one of the first letters which Agassiz sent back to his scientific associates in Europe after he came to this country are the words, “ Naturalist as I am, I cannot but put the people first, — the people who have opened this part of the American continent to European civilization.” The editor of the two handsome volumes ¹ which record the naturalist’s life might have chosen this sentence to express the spirit in which she has performed her task. She has apparently had before her not an audience of scientific students, exclusively, but of all those persons of generous mind who could appreciate the career of a man who was of too large a make ever to be characterized as a professional scientist. This is, in truth, little more than saying that Mrs. Agassiz has permitted her husband’s life to appear as it was, merely using her judgment in the discrimination of material; but how much is then said ! The skill of the biographer is in just this power of apprehending the essential lines of the subject, and then in using the most telling facts and words.

We leave to others to draw from these volumes the estimate of Agassiz’s contributions to science; they will have no difficulty in following closely the record of his accomplishments, for his letters, supplemented by the editor’s notes and connecting narrative, exhibit clearly the nature of his work and the tendency of his thought. His figure in this respect will always have a peculiar interest for students, since it was the most conspicuous of those that withstood the march of Darwinism ; and whatever one’s own scientific creed may be, he lays down the book with a profound regret that Agassiz could not have lived to complete the task which he had entered upon, at the close of his life, and which would have been in effect a scientific apologia pro vita sua.

In connection with this, one notes with pleasure that the editor has used a dignified and wise reserve in all references to the controversies which sprang up between Agassiz and his contemporaries. These controversies, while in a measure impersonal, involved finally more or less of personal feeling; yet there is not a word in these volumes to which Forbes, Desor, Vogt, Clark, or any of their champions could for a moment take exception. The silence of the biography in this respect serves to heighten the effect of serenity in the central figure. The narrative could have been made more picturesque had the editor chosen to record all the passages at arms, but we doubt whether anything would have been gained in the portraiture of Agassiz, since the questions involved were either matters of opinion or somewhat ignoble contentions over precedence in discovery and proportion of credit. An account of the émeute, for instance, in the early days of the Cambridge Museum, which is passed over in silence, would simply have given an opportunity for comparing European and American modes of collaboration, — an interesting subject, to be sure, but throwing no special light on the character and aims of Agassiz.

We prefer to dwell upon that view of the naturalist which associates him with the humanities rather than separates him with his profession, and the two volumes before us give abundant opportunity for making his acquaintance. By a very natural division, in which a just proportion is preserved, the first volume is devoted to the European, the second to the American, portion of Agassiz s life. There is a charm in this symmetry of parts. That a Swiss boy should have had the close-fitting training which nature, fine-grained yet frugal parents, the compact drill of a college, and the generous inspiration of university life could give; should have risen rapidly to a peerage of fame in the company of the first naturalists of Europe ; and then should have brought all these gifts and a ripe enthusiasm to America, there to make the largest single endowment of science yet enjoyed by the republic,— all this constitutes an ideally rounded subject.

The pictures of his boyish life are charmingly touched. His childish love of nature, his companionship with his brother, his dexterity of manipulation, his spirit of adventure, are described with a light hand, and serve as a graceful vignette, not too laboriously elaborated, to his maturer life. One follows the young student in his eager advance, and almost outruns the rapid movements of the biographer in a desire to see what new leap of life the boy will take ; and when the boy has developed with extraordinary yet perfectly intelligible ease into an investigator and author, the reader is hardly less interested in the details of his work than in the admirable delineation of intellectual growth.

The fascination which Agassiz’s personality exercised over those who came near him, when he was in the height of his power here, was native to him, and so merged in his consciousness of aim as never to be separated in his thought. There are repeated instances throughout these volumes of the charm which he inspired, but Agassiz himself seems to have been the most unconscious of men, wholly lost in the pursuit of his ends.

says Lowell in his noble elegy, and the letters which the European naturalist sent home on his first arrival in this country are charged with a glowing interest in all that he saw of the New World ; whether the rocks which repeated in new form the stories he had read in Switzerland, or the people who impressed him by their positive difference from those amongst whom he had been reared.

“ The manners of the country,” he writes to his mother, “ differ so greatly from ours that it seems to me impossible to form a just estimate regarding them, or, indeed, to pronounce judgment at all upon a population so active and mobile as that of the Northern States of the Union, without having lived among them for a long time. I do not therefore attempt any such estimate. I can only say that the educated Americans are very accessible and very pleasant. ... A characteristic feature of American life is to be found in the frequent public meetings where addresses are delivered. Shortly after my arrival in Boston I was present at a meeting of some three thousand workmen, foremen of workshops, clerks, and the like. No meeting could have been more respectable and well conducted. All were neatly dressed; even the simplest laborer had a clean shirt. It was a strange sight to see such an assemblage, brought together for the purpose of forming a library, and listening attentively in perfect quiet for two hours to an address on the advantages of education, of reading, and the means of employing usefully the leisure moments of a workman’s life. The most eminent men vie with each other in instructing and forming the education of the population at large. I have not yet seen a man out of employment or a beggar, except in New York, which is a sink for the emptyings of Europe. Yet do not think that I forget the advantages of our old civilization. Far from it. I feel more than ever the value of a past which belongs to you and in which you have grown up. Generations must pass before America will have the collections of art and science which adorn our cities, or the establishments for public instruction, — sanctuaries, as it were, consecrated by the devotion of those who give themselves wholly to study. Here all the world works to gain a livelihood or to make a fortune. Few establishments (of learning) are old enough, or have taken sufficiently deep root in the habits of the people, to be safe from innovation ; very few institutions offer a combination of studies such as, in its ensemble, meets the demands of modern civilization. All is done by the single efforts of individuals or of corporations, too often guided by the needs of the moment. Thus American science lacks the scope which is characteristic of higher instruction in our old Europe. Objects of art are curiosities but little appreciated, and usually still less understood.”

As this passage indicates, there is an incidental value in the work from the light which it throws on society in America at the time of Agassiz’s arrival, forty years ago. That was the time when in Boston the Lowell Institute was of vastly more consequence than the opera, and when the States were beginning those surveys which gave such an impetus to scientific research. The letters illustrate also something of Southern life, since Agassiz was for a time living in South Carolina, and there is an exceedingly valuable series of letters to Dr. Howe, in which Agassiz gives his views on the negro race in America.

Indeed, the biography abounds in references to men and events both in this country and in Europe; for Agassiz, as we have said, was far too human and catholic in his interests and tastes to be shut up to a strictly scientific view. But, after all, the one commanding figure of the book is Agassiz himself, and the reader never once loses his keen delight in that fervor of intellectual aim, that broad comprehensiveness of purpose, which make this personality so clear and so captivating. The growth of the Museum from its almost grotesque beginnings to its noble proportions is not half so inspiring as the activity of that impelling mind which conceived it and hurried forward its development. There are delightful passages here and there, like that, for example, which describes the opening of the Penikese school, which cast a mellow light upon Agassiz and his methods. We wish there were more of them, and that Mrs. Agassiz had allowed herself to use, if not direct testimony from his students and from others who came under his influence, yet something more of her own personal recollection of her husband as he was at work in the school-room and lectureroom. Such a fuller treatment was not necessary to give life and distinctness to the figure, and perhaps might have marred the admirable proportions of the work; still no one can read this life without wishing to know more intimately the man. To those who were associated with him, either in work or in society, the book will be eminently satisfactory, for it will give them in orderly form the course of his life, and fill out certain portions, especially in the earlier years, of which they can have known little. They will themselves supply from a little dimmed recollection those touches which animate the picture into more glowing life. Better too little than too much, and the fine reserve which the editor of these volumes has shown is a quality in biographic writing not so common but that it will give the reader a grateful sense of being treated with respect as well as with confidence. We will only add that the interesting illustrations, the abundant index, and the evident care shown in all the details of literary execution and mechanical workmanship combine to increase the pleasure with which one handles and reads the volumes.