Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/574

558 where they listened to scientific papers or discussed scientific matters. They took tea once a week with Professor von Martins, while with Döllinger they were still more intimate. "Not only did they go to him daily, but he often came to see them, bringing botanical specimens to Braun, or looking in upon Agassiz's breeding experiments, in which he took the liveliest interest, being always ready with advice and practical aid. The fact that Agassiz and Braun had their room in his house made intercourse with him especially easy. This room became the rendezvous of all the aspiring, active spirits among the young naturalists at Munich, and was known by the name of 'The Little Academy.'. . . The friends gave lectures in turn on various subjects, especially on modes of development in plants and animals. These lectures were attended not only by students, but often by the professors." In a letter to his father, Agassiz describes his life at this period as exceedingly pleasant. He says:

When our lectures are over, we meet In the evening at Braun's room or mine, with three or four intimate acquaintances, and talk of scientific matters, each one in his turn presenting a subject which is first developed by him and then discussed by all. These exercises are very instructive. As my share, I have begun to give a course of natural history, or rather of pure zoology. Braun talks to us of botany, and another of our company, Mahir, who is an excellent fellow, teaches us mathematics and physics in his turn. In two months Schimper will join us and become our professor of philosophy. Thus we instruct each other, learning what we teach more thoroughly because obliged to demonstrate it. Each session lasts two or three hours, during which the professor in charge retails his merchandise without aid of notes or book. You can imagine how useful this must be in preparing us to speak in public and with coherence; the experience is the more important, since we all desire nothing so much as sooner or later to become professors in very truth.

Again, in writing to his father, Braun says of these private lectures:

Sometimes Agassiz tries to beat French rules and constructions into our brains, or we have a lesson in anatomy, or I read general natural history aloud to William Schimper. By-and-by I shall review the natural history of grasses and ferns, two families of which I made a special study last summer. Twice a week Karl Schimper lectures to us on the morphology-of plants. He has twelve listeners. Agassiz is also to give us lectures occasionally on Sundays upon the natural history of fishes.

An artist who was already in the employ of Agassiz, and who afterward made the illustrations of his works upon fossil fishes, describes Agassiz's life and surroundings at this time as follows;

He never lost his temper, though often under great trial. . . . His studio was a perfect German student's room. It was large, with several wide windows; the furniture consisted of a couch and about half a dozen chairs, besides some tables, fur the use of his artists and himself. Alexander Braun and Dr. Schimper lodged in the same house and seemed to me to share bis studio. Being botanists, they too brought homo what they collected in their excursions, and all this found a place in the atelier, on the couch, on the seats, on the floors. Books filled the chairs, one alone being left for the other artists, while I occupied a standing desk with my drawing. No visitor could sit down, and sometimes there was little room to stand or move about. The walls were white, and diagrams were drawn upon them, to which by-and-by we artists added skeletons and caricatures. In short, it was quite original.

The second volume is devoted to Agassiz's life in America. The frontispiece is a portrait taken at the age of fifty-five, and bringing at once to mind the features so well known to multitudes of people in all parts of the country. Besides the vignette, showing us the laboratory at Nahant, there is a view of the cottage at Nahant, of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, a portrait bust by Powers, and a view of Penikese.

work is an attempt at developing theism from science and the scientific method. Dr. Abbot criticises nominalism and conceptualism, and argues for a noumenism in which every phenomenon is, as far as it goes, a real revelation of the noumenon. He holds that the mind perceives true relations in nature, and that therefore to the extent to which human knowledge has gone it forms a part, however small, of that contained in the Divine Mind. The theory of the unknowable the author rejects, holding that absolute knowledge of a thing would consist in knowing the sum of its relations to all other things in the universe.

Dr. Abbot argues from the intelligibility of the universe to its intelligence; and hence, since it is all-inclusive, to its self-consciousness. His is no external deity related to the universe, as machinist to machine, but the immanent mind, whose organic life and growth, manifested to us in nature,