John Fiske

“ How contrary to common-sense it is to say that a species is produced, not by the action of blind natural forces, but by an intelligent will! For, although this most prominent of all facts seems to be oftenest overlooked by theologians and others whom it most especially concerns, we are all the time, day by day and year by year, in each and every event of our lives, having experience of the workings of that Divine Power which, whether we attribute to it "intelligent will" or not, is unquestionably the one active agent in all the dynamic phenomena of Nature. ”

“ Why does a mammal always begin to develop as if it were going to become a fish, and then, changing its tactics, proceed as if it were going to become a reptile or bird, and only after great delay and circumlocution take the direct road toward mammality? In answer to this, we do not care to be told that a mammal never was the son of a fish, because we know that already; nor do we care to hear any more about the "free manifestations of an intelligent mind," because we have had quite enough of metaphysical phrases which do not contain a description of some actual or imaginable process. ”

“ Traditions of a barbarous and uncultivated age, in which mere grotesque associations of thoughts were mistaken for facts, have told us that this Power has, at various times in the past, worked in a different way—causing effects to appear without cognizable antecedents, even as Aladdin's palace rose in all its wondrous magnificence, without sound of carpenter's hammer or mason's chisel, in a single night. But about such modes of divine action we know nothing whatever from experience ”

“ Agassiz seems to me to be hopelessly behind the age. I have never yet come across the first indication that he knows what the Darwinian theory is. Against the development theory, as it was taught him by the discussions of forty years ago, he is fond of uttering, I will not say arguments, but expressions of dislike. With the modern development theory, with the circumstances of variation, heredity, and natural selection, he never, in any of his writings, betrays the slightest acquaintance. ”

“ The end of scientific research is the discovery of truth, and not the satisfaction of our whims or fancies, or even of what we are pleased to call our finer feelings. The proper reason for refusing to accept any doctrine is, that it is inconsistent with observed facts, or with some other doctrine which has been firmly established on a basis of fact. The refusal to entertain a theory because it seems disagreeable or degrading, is a mark of intellectual cowardice and insincerity. ”

“ Agassiz is utterly dumb and helpless. The sonorous phrase "special creation," in which he has so long taken refuge, is nothing but a synthesis of vocal sounds which covers and, to some minds, conceals a thoroughly idiotic absence of sense or significance. To say that "Abracadabra is not a genial corkscrew," is to make a statement quite as full of meaning as the statement that species have originated by "special creation." ”

“ I am just as firmly convinced that the human race is descended from lower animal forms, as I am that the earth revolves in an elliptical orbit about the sun. So completely, indeed, is this proposition wrought in with my whole mental structure, that the negation of it seems to me utterly nonsensical and void of meaning, and I doubt if my mind is capable of shaping such a negation into a proposition which I could intelligently state. ”

“ To have such deeply-rooted convictions shaken once in a while is, I believe, a very useful and wholesome experiment in mental hygiene. That rigidity of mind which prevents the thorough revising of our opinions is sure, sooner or later, to come upon all of us; but we ought to dread it, as we dread the stagnation of old age or death. For some such reasons as these, I am sure that I should have been glad to find, in the course of Prof. Agassiz's lectures, at least one powerful argument against the interpretation of organic affinities which Mr. Darwin has done so much to establish. ”

“ Trusting, then, in this universal teaching of experience, let us for a moment face fairly the problem which the existence of men upon the earth presents to us. Here is actually existing a group of organisms, which we call the human race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Little as we know of the intrinsic nature of this Omnipresent Power, which, in our poor human talk, we call God, we do at least know, by daily and hourly experience, what is the character of its working. The whole experience of our lives teaches us that this Power works after a method which, in our scholastic expression, we call the method of cause and effect, or the method of natural law. ”

“ The history of science supplies us with many an instance in which a new and unpopular theory has been vehemently opposed by those whom one would at first suppose most competent to judge of its merits, and has nevertheless gained the victory. ”

“ Instead of the natural process of generation—which is the only process by which we have ever known organic beings to be produced—he would fain set up some unknown mysterious process, the nature of which he is careful not to define, but for which he endeavors to persuade us that we have a fair equivalent in sonorous phrases concerning "creative will," "free action of an intelligent mind," and so on. ”

“ This should not be allowed to detract from Bacon's real greatness, any more than the rejection of Darwinism should be allowed to detract from the real merit of Agassiz. Great men must be measured by their positive achievements rather than by their negative shortcomings, otherwise they might all have to step down from their pedestals. ”

“ It is quite possible for one to study the structure of echinoderms and fishes during a long life, and yet remain unable to offer a satisfactory opinion upon any subject connected with zoology, for the proper treatment of which there are required some power of generalization and some familiarity with large considerations. Indeed, there are many admirable experts in natural history, as well as in other studies, who never pay the slightest heed to questions involving wide-reaching considerations ”

“ Strange as it may at first seem, nothing is more certain than that a man's opinion may be eminently fallible, even with reference to matters which might appear to come directly within the range of his own specialty. Many people, I presume, think that, because Prof. Agassiz has made a specialty of the study of extinct and living organisms, because he has devoted a long and industrious life to this study, therefore his opinion with reference to the relations of present life upon the globe to past life ought to be at once conclusive. ”

“ I remember a passage in which he rightly rejects the notion that any species has arisen from a single pair of parents, and propounds the formula: "Pines have originated in forests, heaths in heather, grasses in prairies, bees in hives, herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in nations." Now, when Prof. Agassiz asserts that men originated in nations, by some other process than that of physical generation, what does he mean? Does he mean that men dropped down from the sky? ”

“ Supposing, then, that the Darwinian theory is rejected by Agassiz, this fact is no more decisive against the Darwinian theory than the rejection of Fresnel's theory by Laplace was decisive against Fresnel's theory.
For the facts just cited show that even the wisest and most learned men are not infallible, and that it will not do to have a papacy where scientific questions are concerned. ”

“ The lamentable decline of science in France since the beginning of the Second Empire has been most conspicuously marked by the tendency of scientific inquirers to occupy themselves exclusively with matters of detail, to the neglect of wide-reaching generalizations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why have marsupials in Australia followed after other marsupials, and edentata in South America followed after other edentata, with such remarkable regularity, unless the bond which unites present with past ages be the well-known, the only known, and the only imaginable bond of physical generation? ”

“ The first alternative is maintained by no one, and our astronomical knowledge of the past career of our planet is sufficient decisively to exclude it. There is no doubt that at some time in the past the human race did not exist, and that its gradual or sudden coming into existence was determined by some combination of circumstances. ”

“ We see that fishes are lowest, that reptiles are higher, that birds have a superior organization to both, and that mammals, with man at their head, are highest. The phases of development which a quadruped undergoes, in his embryonic growth, recall this gradation. He has a fish-like, a reptile-like stage before he shows unmistakable mammal-like features. We do not on this account suppose a quadruped grows out of a fish in our time, for this simple reason, that we live among quadrupeds and fishes, and we know that no such thing takes place. ”

“ Agassiz has become the welcome ally of those zealous but narrow-minded theologians, in whom the rapid progress of the Darwinian theory has awakened the easily explicable but totally groundless fear that the necessary foundations of true religion, or true Christianity, are imperilled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Does he mean that the untold millions of organic particles which make up a man all rushed together from the four quarters of the compass, and proceeded, spontaneously or by virtue of some divine sorcery, to aggregate themselves into the infinitely complex organs and tissues of the human body, with all their wondrous and well-defined aptitudes? ”

“ But when he is brought before the public as the destroyer of a theory, the elements of which he has never yet given any sign of having mastered, he is placed in a false position, which would be ludicrous could he be supposed to have sought it, and which is, at all events, unworthy of his eminent fame. ”

“ Agassiz will have before him when he comes to undertake the refutation of Darwinism in earnest. He will have to explain away the enormous multitude of facts which show that there is a struggle for life in which the fittest survive; or he will at any rate have to show in what imaginable way an organic type can remain constant in all its features through countless ages under the influence of such circumstances, unless by taking into the account the Darwinian interpretation of persistent types offered by Prof. ”

“ So far as we know aught concerning the works of God, which are being performed in us, through us, and around us, during every moment of that conscious intelligence which enables us to bear witness to them, we know they are works from which the essential relation of a given effect to its adequate cause is never absent. ”

“ One feels, in reading his writings, that, except when he is narrating facts with the pure joyfulness of a specialist exulting in the exposition of his subject (and, when in this mood, he often narrates facts with which his inferences are wholly incompatible) , he never makes a point without some regard to its bearings upon theological propositions which his early training has led him to place paramount to all facts of observation whatever. ”

“ To such persons, "science" means the collecting of polyps, the dissecting of mollusks, the vivisection of frogs, the registration of innumerable facts of detail, without regard to the connected story which all these facts, when put together, have it in their power to tell. ”

“ Agassiz fairly comes to an issue, if he ever does, and undertakes to refute the Darwinian theory, these are some of the questions which he will have to answer: 1. If all organisms are not associated through the bonds of common descent, why is it that the facts of classification are just such as they would have been had they been due to such a common descent? ”

“ In his discussions concerning the character of the relationships between the various members of the animal kingdom, the foreground of his consciousness is always completely occupied by theological considerations, to such an extent that the evidentiary value of scientific facts cannot always get a footing there, and is, consequently, pushed away into the background. ”