The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858

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The first chapter of the first part has for its title, "The
fundamental relations of animals to one another and to the world in
which they live, as the basis of the natural system of animals."

Certain general doctrines, the spirit of which runs through all the
scientific works of Mr. Agassiz, are distinctly laid down in the
first section of this chapter. It is headed with the statement,
"The leading features of a natural zoological system are all founded
in nature." The systems named from the great leaders of science are
but translations of the Creator's thoughts into human language.
"If it can be proved that man has not invented, but only traced this
systematic arrangement in nature,--that these relations and
proportions which exist throughout the animal and vegetable world
have an intellectual, an ideal connection in the mind of the Creator,--
that this plan of creation, which so commends itself to our highest
wisdom, has not grown out of the necessary action of physical laws,
but was the free conception of the Almighty Intellect, matured in
his thought, before it was manifested in tangible, external forms,--
if, in short, we can prove premeditation prior to the act of creation,
we have done, once and forever, with the desolate theory which
refers us to the laws of matter as accounting for all the wonders of
the universe, and leaves us with no God but the monotonous, unvarying
action of physical forces, binding all things to their inevitable
destiny."

One more extract must be given from this section, for it is the key
to the general argument which follows.

"I disclaim every intention of introducing in this work any evidence
irrelevant to my subject, or of supporting any conclusions not
immediately flowing from it; but I cannot overlook nor disregard
here the close connection there is between the facts ascertained by
scientific investigations, and the discussions now carried on
respecting the origin of organized beings. And though I know those
who hold it to be very unscientific to believe that thinking is not
something inherent in matter, and that there is an essential
difference between inorganic and living and thinking beings, I shall
not be prevented by any such pretensions of a false philosophy from
expressing my conviction, that, as long as it cannot be shown that
matter or physical forces do actually reason, I shall consider any
manifestation of thought as evidence of the existence of a thinking
being as the author of such thought, and shall look upon an
intelligent and intelligible connection between the facts of nature
as direct proof of the existence of a thinking God, as certainly as
man exhibits the power of thinking when he recognizes their natural
relations."

We must content ourselves with the most general statement of the
nature and bearing of the series of propositions which follow. They
are illustrated by a large survey of the material universe in its
manifestations of life, and of the relations between the various
forms of life to each other and to the inorganic world. These
propositions, thirty-one in number, might be called an analysis of
the qualities of the Infinite Mind exhibited in the realm of
organized and especially of animal being. Nothing but want of space
prevents our reproducing at full length the very careful
recapitulation to be found at the close of the chapter, or the
analysis to be found in the Table of Contents. With something more
of labor than the task of copying would have been, we have attempted
to compress the truths already crowded in these brief and pregnant
sentences into the still narrower compass of a few lines in our
straitened pages.

The harmony of the universe is a manifestation of illimitable
intellect, displaying itself in various modes of thought, as these
are shown in the characters and relations of organized beings: unity
of thought, manifesting itself independently of space, of time, of
known material agencies, of special form,--illustrated by repetition
of similar types in different circumstances, by identities, or
partial resemblances, or serial connections, found under varying
conditions of being; power of expressing the same idea in innumerable
forms, as in those instances of essential identity of parts in the
midst of formal differences known as _special homologies_; power of
combination, as in the adjustment of organized beings to each other
and to the inorganic world, or in the harmonious allotment of the
most varied gifts to different beings; definite recognition of time
and space, as in the life of individuals, of species, in the stages
of growth, in the geographical limitation of types; prescience and
omniscience, as shown in the _prophetic_ types of earlier geological
ages; omnipresence, by the adjustment of the whole series of animal
organisms to the various parts of the planet they inhabit.

The final _resume_ of Mr. Agassiz is as follows:--

"We may sum up the results of this discussion, up to this point, in
still fewer words.

"All organized beings exhibit in themselves all those categories of
structure and of existence upon which a natural system may be founded,
in such a manner, that, in tracing it, the human mind is only
translating into human language the Divine thoughts expressed in
Nature in living realities.

"All these beings do not exist in consequence of the continued
agency of physical causes, but have made their successive appearance
upon earth by the immediate intervention of the Creator. As proof, I
may sum up my argument in the following manner:--

"The products of what are commonly called physical agents are
everywhere the same, (that is, upon the whole surface of the globe,)
and have always been the same (that is, during all geological periods);
while organized beings are everywhere different, and have differed
in all ages. Between two such series of phenomena there can be no
causal or genetic connection.

"The combination in time and space of all these thoughtful
conceptions exhibits not only thought, it shows also premeditation,
power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, providence. In
one word, all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud
the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and Natural History
must, in good time, become the analysis of the thoughts of the
Creator of the Universe, as manifested in the animal and vegetable
kingdoms."

To this statement we must add two paragraphs from the pages just
preceding, (pp. 130, 131.)

"If I have succeeded, even very imperfectly, in showing that the
various relations observed between animals and the physical world,
as well as between themselves, exhibit thought, it follows that the
whole has an Intelligent Author; and it may not be out of place to
attempt to point out, as far as possible, the difference there may
be between Divine thinking and human thought."

"Taking nature as exhibiting thought for my guide, it appears to me,
that, while human thought is consecutive, Divine thought is
simultaneous, embracing at the same time and forever, in the past,
the present, and the future, the most diversified relations among
hundreds of thousands of organized beings, each of which may present
complications, again, which to study and understand even imperfectly,
as, for instance, man himself, mankind has already spent thousands of
years. And yet, all this has been done by one Mind, must be the work
of one Mind only, of Him before whom man can only bow in grateful
acknowledgment of the prerogatives he is allowed to enjoy in this
world, not to speak of the promises of a future life."

Chapter Second is entitled, "Leading Groups of the existing systems
of animals."

Its nine sections treat successively of the great types or branches
of the animal kingdom, of classes, orders, families, genera, species,
other natural divisions, successive development of characters, and
close with some very significant conclusions on the importance of
the study of classification.

Mr. Agassiz has attempted to give definiteness to the terms above
enumerated, which have been used with various significance, by
limiting each one of them to covering a single category of natural
relationship. Thus:--

_Branches_ or _types_ are characterized by their plan of structure.

_Classes_, by the manner in which that plan is executed, so far as
ways and means are concerned.

_Orders_, by the degrees of complication of that structure.

_Families_, by their form, so far as determined by structure.

_Genera_, by the details of the execution in special parts.

_Species_, by the relations of individuals to one another and to
the world in which they live, as well as by the proportions of their
parts, their ornamentation, etc.

"And yet there are other natural divisions which must be acknowledged
in a natural zooelogical system; but these are not to be traced so
uniformly in all classes as the former,--they are, in reality, only
limitations of the other kinds of divisions."

This chapter must be studied in the original text, the arguments by
which its conclusions are supported hardly admitting of brief analysis.
The most superficial reader will be interested in Mr. Agassiz's
account of the mode in which he sought for the natural boundaries
of the various divisions, by observing the special point of view
in which various eminent naturalists have considered their subject;
as, for instance, Audubon, among the biographers of species,--
Latreille, among the students of genera,--and Cuvier, at the head
of those who have contemplated the higher groups, such as classes
and types. The most indifferent reader will be arrested by the
opinions boldly promulgated with reference to species.

"The evidence that all animals have originated in large numbers is
growing so strong, that the idea that every species existed in the
beginning in single pairs may be said to be given up almost entirely
by naturalists." "If we are led to admit as the beginning of each
species the simultaneous origin of a large number of individuals, if
the same species may originate at the same time in different
localities, these first representatives of each species, at least,
were not connected by sexual derivation; and as this applies equally
to any first pair, this fancied test criterion of specific identity
must at all events be given up, and with it goes also the pretended
real existence of the species, in contradistinction from the mode of
existence of genera, families, orders, classes, and types; for what
really exists are individuals, not species." (pp. 166-167.)

Chapter Third is headed, "Notice of the principal systems of Zoology."
It is divided into the six following sections: General remarks upon
modern systems; Early attempts to classify animals; Period of Linnaeus;
Period of Cuvier, and Anatomical systems; Physiophilosophical systems;
Embryological systems.

This chapter is invaluable to the general student, as giving him in
a single view not only a _conspectus_, of the most important
attempts at classification in Zoology, but an examination of the
principles involved in each, by the one among all living men most
fitted to perform the task. No cultivated person who desires to know
anything of Natural Science can pass over this portion of the work
without careful study. Those who are not prepared to follow the
author through the details of the Second Part will yet consider
these volumes as indispensable companions for reference, as
containing this brief but comprehensive encyclopedia and commentary,
covering the whole philosophical machinery of zoological science.

For the first section of this chapter Mr. Agassiz adopts the
fundamental divisions (branches) of Cuvier, introducing such changes
among the classes and orders as the progress of science demands. The
second section gives a short account of the early attempts to
classify animals, more particularly of the divisions established by
Aristotle. The third section embraces the period of Linnaeus, and
gives his classification. The fourth, that of Cuvier, and Anatomical
systems, with the classifications of Cuvier, Lamark, De Blainville,
Ehrenberg, Burmeister, Owen, Milne-Edwards, Von Siebold and Stannius,
Leuckart. The fifth section includes the Physiophilosophical systems,
with diagrams of Oken's and Fitzinger's classifications, and a
special article for the circular groups of McLeay. The sixth and last
section is devoted to Embryological systems, and presents diagrams
of the classifications of Von Baer, Van Beneden, Koelliker, and Vogt.

The second part of the Monograph introduces us to the consideration
of a special subject of Natural History,--the North American
Testudinata. Its three chapters treat successively of this order of
Reptiles,--of its families,--of its North American genera and species.

The THIRD PART, contained in the second volume, is entitled,
"Embryology of the Turtle." It consists of two chapters: "Development
of the Egg, from its first appearance to the formation of the embryo."
"Development of the Embryo, from the time the egg leaves the ovary
to that of the hatching of the young." Then follow the explanation
of the plates and the plates themselves, thirty-four in number.

We need not attempt to give any account of the parts devoted to the
development of these particular subjects. This we must necessarily
leave to the journals devoted to scientific matters, and the class
of students most intimate with these departments of Natural Science.

Yet the American who asks for a model to work by in his
investigations will find a great deal more than the "North American
Testudinata" in the part to which that title is prefixed. The
principles of classification exemplified, the methods of description
illustrated, the rules of nomenclature tested,--what matter is it
whether the _gran maestro_ has chosen this or that string to play
the air upon, when each has compass enough for all its melody?

Still more forcibly does this comment apply to the elaborate and
ample division of the work embracing the Embryology of the Turtle.
He who has mastered the details of this section has at his feet the
whole broad realm of which this province holds one of the
key-fortresses. _Ex testudine naturam_.

We are unwilling to speak of the illustrations comparatively
without more extended means of judgment than we have at hand. But
that they are of superlative excellence, brilliant, delicate,
accurate, life-like, and nature-like, is what none will dispute.
Look at these turtles, models of real-estate owners as they are,
Observe No. 13, Plate IV.,--"Chelydra Serpentina,"--"snapper",
or "snappin' turtle," in the vernacular. He is out collecting
rents from the naked-skinned reptiles, his brethren; in default
thereof, taking the bodies of the aforesaid. Or behold No. 5, Plate
VI., bewailing the wretchedness of those who have no roofs to cover
them. Or No. 2, of the same plate, bestowing an archiepiscopal
benediction on the houseless multitudes, before he retires for the
night to slumber between his tessellated floor and his frescoed
ceiling.

Of the smooth, white eggs, with their rounded reliefs and tenderly
graduated light and shadow, all eyes are judges. But of the
exquisite figures showing the various stages of development and the
details of structural arrangement, the uninitiated must take the
opinions of a microscopic expert: and if they will accept our
testimony as that of one not unfamiliar with the instrument and the
mysteries it reveals, we can assure them that these figures are of
supreme excellence. The hazy semitransparency of the embryonic
tissues, the halos, the granules, the globules, the cell-walls, the
delicate membranous expansions, the vascular webs, are expressed
with purity, softness, freedom, and a conscientiousness which
reminds us of Donne's microscopic daguerreotypes, while in many
points the views are literally truer to nature,--just as a
sculptor's bust of a living person is often more really like him in
character than a cast moulded on his features.

We have attempted to give a slight idea of the contents of these two
volumes, in the compass of a few pages. We have called the reader's
attention to various points of special interest, as we were going
along. It remains to make such comments as suggest themselves to us,
either in our character of "the scholiast," or in our own right as a
freed citizen of the intellectual as well as the political republic.

WHENCE? WHY? WHITHER? These are the three great questions that arise
in the soul of every race and of every thinking being. He who looks
at either of them with the least new light, though he whisper what
he sees ever so softly, has the world to listen to him. No matter
how he got his knowledge nor what he calls it; it belongs to mankind.
But "Science" has been mainly engaged with another question, in
itself of very inferior interest, namely, _How?_

We must be permitted to speak of "Science" in our freest capacity,
and will endeavor not to abuse our liberty. The study of natural
phenomena for the sake of the pleasing variety of aspects they
present, for the delight of collecting curious specimens, for the
exercise of ingenuity in detecting the secret methods of Nature, for
the gratification of arranging facts or objects in regular series, is
an innocent and not a fruitless pursuit. Many persons are born with
a natural instinct for it, and with special aptitudes which may even
constitute a kind of genius. We should do honor to such power
wherever we find it; honor according to its kind and its degree; but
not affix the wrong label to it. Those who possess it acquire
knowledge sometimes so extensive and uncommon that we regard them
with a certain admiration. But knowledge is not wisdom. Unless these
narrow trains of ideas are brought into relation with other and
wider ranges of thought, or with the conduct of life, they cannot
aspire to that loftier name.

We must go farther than this. The study of the _How?_ in Nature, or
the simple observation of phenomena, is often used as an opiate to
quiet the higher faculties. There can be no question of the fact
that many persons pass much of their lives working in the in-door or
out-door laboratories of science, just as old women knit, just as
prisoners carve quaintly elaborate toys in their dungeons. The
product is not absolutely useless in either case; the fingers of the
body or of the mind become swift and cunning, but the soul does not
grow under such culture. We are willing to allow that many of those
who browse in the sleepy meadows of aimless observation,--loving to
keep their heads down as they gaze at and gather their narcotic herbs,
rather than lift them to the horizon beyond or the heaven above,--
act in obedience to the law of their limited natures. Still, let us
recognize the limitation, and not forget that the pursuit which may
be fitting and praiseworthy toil for one class of minds may be
ignoble indolence for another. We must remember, on the other hand,
that, however humble may be the intellectual position of the man of
science or knowledge, in distinction from wisdom, the results of his
labors may be of the highest importance. The most ignorant laborer
may get a stone out of the quarry, and the poorest slave unearth a
diamond. These intellectual artisans come to their daily task with
hypertrophied special organs, fitted to their peculiar craft. Some
of them are all eyes; some, all hands; some are self-recording
microscopes; others, self-registering balances. If a man would watch
a thermometer every hour of the day and night for ten years, and
give a table of his observations, the result would be of interest
and value. But the bulbous extremity of the instrument would
probably contain as much thought at the end of the ten years as that
of the observer.

Clearly, then, "Science" does not properly belong to "scientific" men,
unless they happen also to be wise ones; not more to them than honey
to bees, or books to printers. The bee _may_, certainly, feed on the
honey he has made, and the printer read the books he has put in type.
But _Vos non vobis_ is the rule. "Science" is knowledge, it is true,
but knowledge disarticulated and parcelled out among certain
specialists, like Truth in Milton's glorious comparison. He who can
restore each part to its true position, and orient the lesser whole
in its relations to the universe, he it is to whom science belongs.
He must range through all time and follow Nature to her farthest
bounds. Then he can dissect beetles like Straus Derekheim, without
becoming a myope. But even this is not enough. Let us see what
qualities would go to make up the ideal model of the truly wise
student of Nature.

He must have, in the first place, as the substratum of his faculties,
the power of observation, with the passion that keeps it active and
the skilful hand to serve its needs. Secondly, a quick eye for
resemblances and differences. Thirdly, a wide range of mental vision.
Fourthly, the coordinating or systematizing faculty. Fifthly, a
large scholarship. Lastly, and without which all these gifts fall
short of their ultimate aim, an instinct for the highest forms of
truth,--a centripetal tendency, always seeking the idea behind the
form, the Deity in his manifestations, and thence working outward
again to solve those infinite problems of life and its destinies
which are, in reality, all that the thinking soul most lives for.

It is as easy to find all these qualities separate as it is to turn
beneath the finger one of the letters of a revolving padlock. But
they must all be brought together in line before the grand portals
of Nature's hypaethral temple will open to her chosen student. How
incomplete the man of science is with only one or two of these
endowments may be seen by a few examples.

The power and instinct of observation combined with the most
consummate skill do not necessarily make a great philosophical
naturalist. Leeuwenhoek had all these. They bore admirable fruits,
too. We cannot but read the old man's letters to the Royal Society,
written, if we remember right, after the age of eighty, with delight
and admiration. Those little lenses in their silver mountings, all
ground and set and fashioned by his own hand, showed him the
blood-globules, and the "pipes" of the teeth, which Purkinje and
Retzius found with their achromatic microscopes a century later. We
honor his skill and sagacity as they deserve; but a little trick of
Mr. Dollond's, applied to the microscopic object-glass, has left all
his achievements a mere matter of curious history.

Few have been more remarkable for perceiving resemblances and
differences than Oken. This is the poetical side of the scientific
mind; and he shares with Goethe the honor of that startling and
far-reaching discovery, the vertebral character of the bones of the
cranium. At this very time the four vertebral cranial bones
recognized by Owen are the same Oken has described. But
notwithstanding the generous tribute of Mr. Agassiz to his great
merits, the writer who assigns special colors to the persons in the
Trinity, (red, blue, and green,) and then allots to Satan a
constituent of one of these, (yellow,) has drifted away from the
solid anchorage of observation into the shoreless waste of the inane,
if not amidst the dark abysses of the profane.

If the widest range of mental vision, joined, too, with great
learning, could make a successful student of Nature, Lord Bacon
should have stood by the side of Linnaeus. But open the "Sylva
Sylvarum" anywhere and see what Bacon was as a naturalist. "It was
observed in the _Great Plague_ of the last yeare, that there were
scene in divers _Ditches_ and low _Grounds_ about _London_, many
_Toads_ that had _Tailes_, two or three inches long, at the least:
Whereas _Toads_ (usually) have no Tailes at all. Which argueth a
great disposition to _Putrefaction_ in the _Soile_ and _Aire_." This
in that "great birth of time," the "Instauration of the Sciences"!

The systematizing or coordinating power is worse than nothing,
unless it be supported by the other qualities already mentioned.
Darwin had it, and something of what is called genius with it; but
where is now the "Zooenomia"?

And what is erudition without the power to correct errors by
appealing to Nature, to arrange methodically, to use wisely? It
would be a shame to mention any name in illustration of its
insignificance. Our shelves bend and crack under the load of unwise
and learned authorship. There are two stages in every student's life.
In the first he is afraid of books; in the second books are afraid
of him. For they are a great community of thieves, and one finds the
same stolen patterns in all their pockets. Though often dressed in
sheep's clothing, they have the maw of wolves. When the student has
once found them out, he laughs at the pretensions of erudition, and
strides gayly up and down great libraries, feeling that the most
blustering folio of them all will turn as pale as if it were bound
in law-calf, if he only lay his hand on its shoulder.

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