At some near future day, it is to be hoped some one of you who is well acquainted with Agassiz’s scientific career will discourse3 here concerning it — I could not now, even if I would, speak to you of that of which you have far more intimate knowledge than I. On this social occasion it has seemed that what Agassiz stood for in the way of character and influence is the more fitting thing to commemorate4, and to that agreeable task I have been called. He made an impression that was unrivalled. He left a sort of popular myth — the Agassiz legend, as one might say — behind him in the air about us; and life comes kindlier to all of us, we get more recognition from the world, because we call ourselves naturalists5 — and that was the class to which he also belonged.
The secret of such an extraordinarily7 effective influence lay in the equally extraordinary mixture of the animal and social gifts, the intellectual powers, and the desires and passions of the man. From his boyhood, he looked on the world as if it and he were made for each other, and on the vast diversity of living things as if he were there with authority to take mental possession of them all. His habit of collecting began in childhood, and during his long life knew no bounds save those that separate the things of Nature from those of human art. Already in his student years, in spite of the most stringent8 poverty, his whole scheme of existence was that of one predestined to greatness, who takes that fact for granted, and stands forth9 immediately as a scientific leader of men.
His passion for knowing living things was combined with a rapidity of observation, and a capacity to recognize them again and remember everything about them, which all his life it seemed an easy triumph and delight for him to exercise, and which never allowed him to waste a moment in doubts about the commensurability of his powers with his tasks. If ever a person lived by faith, he did. When a boy of twenty, with an allowance of two hundred and fifty dollars a year, he maintained an artist attached to his employ, a custom which never afterwards was departed from — except when he maintained two or three. He lectured from the very outset to all those who would hear him. “I feel within myself the strength of a whole generation,” he wrote to his father at that time, and launched himself upon the publication of his costly11 “Poissons Fossiles” with no clear vision of the quarter from whence the payment might be expected to come.
At Neuchatel (where between the ages of twenty-five and thirty he enjoyed a stipend12 that varied13 from four hundred to six hundred dollars) he organized a regular academy of natural history, with its museum, managing by one expedient14 or another to employ artists, secretaries, and assistants, and to keep a lithographic and printing establishment of his own employed with the work that he put forth. Fishes, fossil and living, echinoderms and glaciers15, transfigured themselves under his hand, and at thirty he was already at the zenith of his reputation, recognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited16 sense, one of those folio copies of mankind, like Linnaeus and Cuvier, who aim at nothing less than an acquaintance with the whole of animated17 Nature. His genius for classifying was simply marvellous; and, as his latest biographer says, nowhere had a single person ever given so decisive an impulse to natural history.
Such was the human being who on an October morning fifty years ago disembarked at our port, bringing his hungry heart along with him, his confidence in his destiny, and his imagination full of plans. The only particular resource he was assured of was one course of Lowell Lectures. But of one general resource he always was assured, having always counted on it and never found it to fail — and that was the good will of every fellow-creature in whose presence he could find an opportunity to describe his aims. His belief in these was so intense and unqualified that he could not conceive of others not feeling the furtherance of them to be a duty binding18 also upon them. Velle non discitur, as Seneca says:— Strength of desire must be born with a man, it can’t be taught. And Agassiz came before one with such enthusiasm glowing in his countenance19 — such a persuasion20 radiating from his person that his projects were the sole things really fit to interest man as man — that he was absolutely irresistible21. He came, in Byron’s words, with victory beaming from his breast, and every one went down before him, some yielding him money, some time, some specimens22, and some labor23, but all contributing their applause and their godspeed. And so, living among us from month to month and from year to year, with no relation to prudence24 except his pertinacious25 violation26 of all her usual laws, he on the whole achieved the compass of his desires, studied the geology and fauna27 of a continent, trained a generation of zoologists28, founded one of the chief museums of the world, gave a new impulse to scientific education in America, and died the idol29 of the public, as well as of his circle of immediate10 pupils and friends.
The secret of it all was, that while his scientific ideals were an integral part of his being, something that he never forgot or laid aside, so that wherever he went he came forward as “the Professor,” and talked “shop” to every person, young or old, great or little, learned or unlearned, with whom he was thrown, he was at the same time so commanding a presence, so curious and inquiring, so responsive and expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and of his own, that every one said immediately, “Here is no musty savant, but a man, a great man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice30 and sin.” He elevated the popular notion of what a student of Nature could be. Since Benjamin Franklin, we had never had among us a person of more popularly impressive type. He did not wait for students to come to him; he made inquiry31 for promising32 youthful collectors, and when he heard of one, he wrote, inviting33 and urging him to come. Thus there is hardly one now of the American naturalists of my generation whom Agassiz did not train. Nay34, more; he said to every one that a year or two of natural history, studied as he understood it, would give the best training for any kind of mental work. Sometimes he was amusingly na?f in this regard, as when he offered to put his whole Museum at the disposition35 of the Emperor of Brazil if he would but come and labor there. And I well remember how certain officials of the Brazilian empire smiled at the cordiality with which he pressed upon them a similar invitation. But it had a great effect. Natural history must indeed be a godlike pursuit, if such a man as this can so adore it, people said; and the very definition and meaning of the word naturalist6 underwent a favorable alteration36 in the common mind.
Certain sayings of Agassiz’s, as the famous one that he “had no time for making money,” and his habit of naming his occupation simply as that of “teacher,” have caught the public fancy, and are permanent benefactions. We all enjoy more consideration for the fact that he manifested himself here thus before us in his day.
He was a splendid example of the temperament37 that looks forward and not backward, and never wastes a moment in regrets for the irrevocable. I had the privilege of admission to his society during the Thayer expedition to Brazil. I well remember at night, as we all swung in our hammocks in the fairy-like moonlight, on the deck of the steamer that throbbed38 its way up the Amazon between the forests guarding the stream on either side, how he turned and whispered, “James, are you awake?” and continued, “I cannot sleep; I am too happy; I keep thinking of these glorious plans.” The plans contemplated39 following the Amazon to its headwaters, and penetrating40 the Andes in Peru. And yet, when he arrived at the Peruvian frontier and learned that that country had broken into revolution, that his letters to officials would be useless, and that that part of the project must be given up, although he was indeed bitterly chagrined41 and excited for part of an hour, when the hour had passed over it seemed as if he had quite forgotten the disappointment, so enthusiastically was he occupied already with the new scheme substituted by his active mind.
Agassiz’s influence on methods of teaching in our community was prompt and decisive — all the more so that it struck people’s imagination by its very excess. The good old way of committing printed abstractions to memory seems never to have received such a shock as it encountered at his hands. There is probably no public school teacher now in New England who will not tell you how Agassiz used to lock a student up in a room full of turtle shells, or lobster42 shells, or oyster43 shells, without a book or 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 thereby44 — the failures were blotted45 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 maxims46 which Agassiz preached wherever he went, and their effect on pedagogy was electric. The extreme rigor47 of his devotion to this concrete method of learning was the natural consequence of his own peculiar48 type of intellect, in which the capacity for abstraction and causal reasoning and tracing chains of consequences from hypotheses was so much less developed than the genius for acquaintance with vast volumes of detail, and for seizing upon analogies and relations of the more proximate and concrete kind. While on the Thayer expedition, 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 outright49. He always said: “There, you see you have a definite problem; go and look and find the answer for yourself.” His severity in this line was a living rebuke50 to all abstractionists and would-be biological philosophers. More than once have I heard him quote with deep feeling the lines from Faust:
“Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie.
Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum.”
The only man he really loved and had use for was the man who could bring him facts. To see facts, not to argue or raisonniren, was what life meant for him; and I think he often positively51 loathed52 the ratiocinating type of mind. “Mr. Blank, you are totally uneducated!” I heard him once say to a student who propounded53 to him some glittering theoretic generality. And on a similar occasion he gave an admonition that must have sunk deep into the heart of him to whom it was addressed. “Mr. X, some people perhaps now consider you a bright young man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you then, what they will say will be this: ‘That X— oh, yes, I know him; he used to be a very bright young man!’” Happy is the conceited54 youth who at the proper moment receives such salutary cold water therapeutics as this from one who, in other respects, is a kind friend. We cannot all escape from being abstractionists. I myself, for instance, have never been able to escape; but the hours I spent with Agassiz so taught me the difference between all possible abstractionists and all livers in the light of the world’s concrete fulness, that I have never been able to forget it. Both kinds of mind have their place in the infinite design, but there can be no question as to which kind lies the nearer to the divine type of thinking.
Agassiz’s view of Nature was saturated55 with simple religious feeling, and for this deep but unconventional religiosity he found at Harvard the most sympathetic possible environment. In the fifty years that have sped since he arrived here our knowledge of Nature has penetrated56 into joints57 and recesses58 which his vision never pierced. The causal elements and not the totals are what we are now most passionately59 concerned to understand; and naked and poverty-stricken enough do the stripped-out elements and forces occasionally appear to us to be. But the truth of things is after all their living fulness, and some day, from a more commanding point of view than was possible to any one in Agassiz’s generation, our descendants, enriched with the spoils of all our analytic60 investigations61, will get round again to that higher and simpler way of looking at Nature. Meanwhile as we look back upon Agassiz, there floats up a breath as of life’s morning, that makes the work seem young and fresh once more. May we all, and especially may those younger members of our association who never knew him, give a grateful thought to his memory as we wander through that Museum which he founded, and through this University whose ideals he did so much to elevate and define.
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1
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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naturalists
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| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
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naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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stringent
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| adj.严厉的；令人信服的；银根紧的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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stipend
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| n.薪贴；奖学金；养老金 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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pertinacious
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| adj.顽固的 | |
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violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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fauna
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| n.(一个地区或时代的)所有动物，动物区系 | |
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zoologists
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| 动物学家( zoologist的名词复数 ) | |
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idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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41
chagrined
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| adj.懊恼的，苦恼的v.使懊恼，使懊丧，使悔恨( chagrin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
lobster
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| n.龙虾，龙虾肉 | |
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oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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maxims
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| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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48
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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49
outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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50
rebuke
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| v.指责，非难，斥责 [反]praise | |
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51
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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52
loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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53
propounded
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| v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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54
conceited
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| adj.自负的，骄傲自满的 | |
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55
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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56
penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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57
joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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58
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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analytic
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| adj.分析的，用分析方法的 | |
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investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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