the same effort. Each remains great; but not all of them together could arrest the current. Agassiz's strong efforts throughout the United States, and indeed throughout Europe, to check it, really promoted it. From the great museum which he had founded at Cambridge, from his summer school at Penikese, from his lecturerooms at Harvard and Cornell, his disciples went forth full of love and admiration for him, full of enthusiasm which he had aroused and into fields which he had indicated; but their powers, which he had aroused and strengthened, were devoted to developing the truth he failed to recognize; Shaler, Verrill, Packard, Hartt, Wilder, Jordan, and a multitude of others, and above all the son who bore his honored name, did justice to his memory by applying what they had received from him to research under inspiration of the new revelation.
Still another man deserves especial gratitude and honor in this great progress—Edward Livingston Youmans. He was perhaps the first in America to recognize the vast bearings of the truths presented by Darwin, Wallace, and Spencer. He became the apostle of these truths, sacrificing the brilliant career on which he had entered as a public lecturer, subordinating himself to the three leaders and giving himself to editorial drudgery in the stimulation of research and the announcement of results.
In support of the new doctrine came a world of new proofs; those which Darwin himself added in regard to the cross-fertilization of plants, and which he had adopted from embryology, led the way, and these were followed by the discoveries of Wallace, Bates, Huxley, Marsh, Cope, Leidy, Haeckel, Müller, Gaudry, and a multitude of others in all lands. The last theological efforts against these men we shall study in the next chapter.[1]
- ↑ For Agassiz's opposition to evolution, see the Essay on Classification, vol. i, 1857, as regards Lamarck, and vol. iii, 1860, as regards Darwin; also Silliman's Journal, July, 1860; also the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1874; also his Life and Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 647; also Asa Gray, Scientific Papers, vol. ii, p. 484. A reminiscence of my own enables me to appreciate his deep ethical and religious feeling. I was passing the day with him at Nahant in 1868, consulting him regarding candidates for various scientific chairs at the newly established Cornell University, in which he took a deep interest. As we discussed one after another of the candidates he suddenly said: "Who is to be your Professor of Moral Philosophy? That is a far more important position than all the others."
