Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/748

726 him like an atmosphere, and which sometimes gave the appearance of great achievement to the commonest things, was never lacking.

Essentially Latin in his nature, he was always picturesque in his words and his work. He delighted in the love and approbation of his students and his friends, and the influence of his personality sometimes gave his opinions weight beyond the value of the investigations on which they were based. With no other investigator have the work and the man been so identified as with Agassiz. No other of the great workers has been equally great as a teacher. His greatest work in science was his influence on other men.

In an old note-book of those days I find fragments of some of his talks to teachers at Penikese. From this note-book I take some paragraphs, just as I find them written there:

"Never try to teach what you do not yourself know and know well. If your school board insist on your teaching anything and everything, decline firmly to do it. It is an imposition alike on pupils and teacher to teach that which he does not know. Those teachers who are strong enough should squarely refuse to do such work. This much-needed reform is already beginning in our colleges, and I hope it will continue. It is a relic of mediæval times, this idea of professing everything. When teachers begin to decline work which they can not do well, improvements begin to come in. If one will be a successful teacher, he must firmly refuse work which he can not do successfully.

"It is a false idea to suppose that everybody is competent to learn or to teach everything. Would our great artists have succeeded equally well in Greek or calculus? A smattering of everything is worth little. It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopædic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong not through much learning, but by the thorough possession of something."

"Lay aside all conceit. Learn to read the book of Nature for yourself. Those who have succeeded best have followed for years some slim thread which has once in a while broadened out and disclosed some treasure worth a life-long search."

"A man can not be professor of zoölogy on one day and of chemistry on the next, and do good work in both. As in a concert all are musicians—one plays one instrument, and one another, but none all in perfection."

"You can not do without one specialty. You must have some base-line to measure the work and attainments of others. For a general view of the subject, study the history of the sciences. Broad knowledge of all Nature has been the possession of no naturalist except Humboldt, and general relations constituted his specialty."