Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/714

696 inquirers to occupy themselves exclusively with matters of detail, to the neglect of wide-reaching generalizations. And the rejection of Mr. Darwin's name was justified upon the ground, not that he had made unscientific generalizations, but that he had been a mere (!) generalizer, instead of a collector of facts. The allegation was, indeed, incorrect; since Mr. Darwin is as eminent for his industry in collecting facts as for his boldness in generalizing. But the form of the allegation well illustrates the truth of what I have been seeking to show—that familiarity with the details of a subject does not enable one to deal with it in the grand style, and elicit new truth from old facts, unless one also possesses some faculty for penetrating into the hidden implications of the facts; or, in other words, some faculty for philosophizing.

Now, I am far from saying of Prof. Agassiz that he is a mere collector of echinoderms and dissector of fishes, with no tact whatever in philosophizing. He does not stand in the position of those who think that the end of scientific research is attained when we have carefully ticketed a few thousand specimens of corals and butterflies, in mucli the same spirit as that in which a school-girl collects and classifies autographs or postage-stamps. Along with his indefatigable industry as a collector and observer, Prof. Agassiz has a decided inclination toward general views. However lamentably deficient we may think him in his ability to discern the hidden implications of facts, there can be no question that his facts are of little importance to him save as items in a philosophic scheme. He knows very well—perhaps almost too well—that the value of facts lies in the conclusions to which they point. And, accordingly, lack of philosophizing is the last shortcoming with which, as a scientific writer, he can be charged. If he errs on a great scientific question, lying within his own range of investigation, it is not because he refrains steadfastly from all general considerations, but because he philosophizes—and philosophizes on unsound principles. It is because his philosophizing is not a natural outgrowth from the facts of Nature which lie at his disposal, but is made up out of sundry traditions of his youth, which, by dint of playing upon the associations of ideas which are grouped around certain combinations of words, have come to usurp the place of observed facts as a basis for forming conclusions. It is not because he abstains from generalizing that Prof. Agassiz is unable to appreciate the arguments by which Mr. Darwin has established his theory, but it is because he long ago brought his mind to acquiesce in various generalizations, of a thoroughly unscientific or non-scientific character, with the further maintenance of which the acceptance of the Darwinian theory is (or seems to Prof. Agassiz to be) incompatible.

The generalizations which have thus preoccupied Prof. Agassiz's mind are purely theological or mythological in their nature. In estimating the probable soundness of his opinion upon any scientific