Lane Cooper

“ And so Plato, in the Phaedrus, makes Socrates say: 'At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own, and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole.' It would seem that to Plato an oration represents an organic idea in the mind of the human creator, the orator, just as a living animal represents a constructive idea in the mind of God. ”

“ Most persons do not, in fact, discern the close, though not obvious, relation between investigation in biology or zoology and the observation and comparison of those organic forms which we call forms of literature and works of art. Yet the notion that a poem or a speech should possess the organic structure, as it were, of a living creature is basic in the thought of the great literary critics of all time. So Aristotle, a zoologist as well as a systematic student of literature, compares the essential structure of a tragedy to the form of an animal. ”

“ But if Agassiz, in order to develop independence and accuracy of observation, threw his students on their own resources at first, there was never a more generous teacher in the end than he. All his intellectual capital was thrown open to his pupils. His original material, his unpublished investigations, his most precious specimens, his drawings and illustrations were at their command. This liberality led in itself to a serviceable training, for he taught them to use with respect the valuable, often unique, objects entrusted to their care. ”

“ Have those who object to repeated acts of creation ever considered that no progress can be made in knowledge without repeated acts of thinking? And what are thoughts but specific acts of the mind? Why should it then be unscientific to infer that the facts of nature are the result of a similar process, since there is no evidence of any other cause? The world has arisen in some way or other. ”

“ He who, penetrating into the secrets of creation, arranges them under a formula, which he proudly calls his scientific system? or he who in the same pursuit recognizes his glorious affinity with the Creator, and in deepest gratitude for so sublime a birthright strives to be the faithful interpreter of that Divine Intellect with whom he is permitted, nay, with whom he is intended, according to the laws of his being, to enter into communion? ”

“ When teachers begin to decline work which they cannot do well, improvements begin to come in. If one will be a successful teacher, he must firmly refuse work which he cannot 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 encyclopaedic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by the thorough possession of something. ”

“ Better a dozen specimens thoroughly studied as the result of the first year's work, than to have two thousand dollars' worth of shells and corals bought from a curiosity -shop. The dozen animals would be your own.
The study of nature is an intercourse with the highest mind. You should never trifle with nature. At the lowest her works are the works of the highest powers—the highest something, in whatever way we may look at it.
It is much more important for a naturalist to understand the structure of a few animals than to command the whole field of scientific nomenclature. ”

“ As in other fields of human endeavor, so in teaching: there is a portion of the art that cannot be taken over by one person from another, but there is a portion, and a larger one than at first sight may appear, that can be so taken over, and can be almost directly utilized. Nor is the possible utility of imitation diminished, but rather increased, when we contemplate the method of a teacher like Agassiz, whose mental operations had the simplicity of genius, and in whose habits of instruction the fundamentals of a right procedure become very obvious. ”

“ It cannot be too soon understood that science is one, and that whether we investigate language, philosophy, theology, history, or physics, we are dealing with the same problem, culminating in the knowledge of ourselves. ”

“ We have perhaps heard too much of 'laboratory' methods in the teaching of English and the like; but none of us has heard too much about the fundamental operations of observation and comparison in the study of living forms, or of the way in which great teachers have developed the original powers of the student. It is simply the fact that, reduced to the simplest terms, there is but a single method of investigating the objects of natural science and the productions of human genius. ”

“ When the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skilfully came to the point of his business—the skeletons—and this so dexterously and sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed, ready to turn over the living as well as the dead beasts for his service. I have seen a lot of human doing, much of it critically as actor or near observer, but this was in many ways the greatest. ”

“ The person who first seeks to acquire a general survey of a science, and then gradually to descend to details, will never attain to sound and exact knowledge, but will for ever dissipate his energies, and, knowing many things, will yet know nothing. In his lectures on the Method of Academical Study, Schelling remarks with great justice that, in history, to begin with a survey of the entire past is in the highest degree useless and injurious, since it gives one mere compartments for knowledge, without anything to fill them. ”

“ He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love is to begin from the beauties of earth, and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. ”

“ But doubtless the primary reason is that I have been taught, and I try to teach others, after a method in essence identical with that employed by the great naturalist. And I might go on to show in some detail that a doctoral investigation in the humanities, when the subject is well chosen, serves the same purpose in the education of a student of language and literature as the independent, intensive study of a living or a fossil animal, when prescribed by Agassiz to a beginner in natural science. ”

“ As in a concert all are musicians —one plays one instrument, and one another, but none all in perfection.
You cannot 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.
Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the specimens about which you speak. ”

“ Never try to teach what you yourself do not know, and know well. If your school board insists 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. ”

“ There can be no doubt that science and scholarship in this country are suffering from a lack of sympathy and contact between the devotees of the several branches, and for want of definite efforts to bridge the gaps between various disciplines wherever this is possible. It may not often be possible until men of science generally again take up the study of Plato and Aristotle, or at least busy themselves, as did Agassiz, with some comprehensive modern philosopher like Schelling. ”

“ Let one choose several different points of departure, working through from each of them to the whole, and one will grasp the whole all the more surely, and comprehend the wealth of detail all the more fully. ”

“ I would call special attention to an extract from Boeckh's Encyclopadie, and another from the Symposium of Plato, on pp. 69-74, and to the similarity between the method of study there enjoined upon the student of the humanities, or indeed of all art and nature, and the method imposed by Agassiz upon the would-be entomologist who was compelled first of all to observe a fish. In reforming the mind it is well to begin by contemplating some structure we never have seen before, concerning which we have no, or the fewest possible, preconceptions. ”

“ One who knew him well affirms that in early manhood Agassiz, if not precisely a materialist, was at all events a sceptic; but his later studies, with mature reflection, led him to believe in a Divine Creator. The external universe became to him the language in which the Divine Being conveys his ideas to man, and natural history the discipline by which men interpret that language. ”

“ The only true scientific system must be one in which the thought, the intellectual structure, rises out of, and is based upon, facts.
He is lost, as an observer, who believes that he can, with impunity, affirm that for which he can adduce no evidence. ”

“ Within recent years we have witnessed an extraordinary development in certain studies, which, though superficially different from those pursued by Agassiz, have an underlying bond of unity with them, but which are generally carried on without reference to principles governing the investigation of every organism and all organic life. I have in mind, particularly, the spread of literary and linguistic study in America during the last few decades, and the lack of a common standard of judgment among those who engage in such study. ”

“ He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils) —a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning ”

“ No man ever exercised a more genial personal influence over his students and assistants.
His initiatory steps in teaching special students of natural history were not a little discouraging. Observation and comparison being in his opinion the intellectual tools most indispensable to the naturalist, his first lesson was one in looking. He gave no assistance; he simply left his student with the specimen, telling him to use his eyes diligently, and report upon what he saw. ”

“ If there is any truth in the belief that man is made in the image of God, it is surely not amiss for the philosopher to endeavor, by the study of his own mental operations, to approximate the workings of the Divine Reason, learning from the nature of his own mind better to understand the Infinite Intellect from which it is derived. ”

“ There is probably no public school teacher now [1896] in New England who will not tell you how Agassiz used to lock a student up in a room full of turtle-shells, or lobster-shells, or oyster-shells, without a book or a word to help him, and not let him out till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained. Some found the truths after weeks and months of lonely sorrow; others never found them. Those who found them were already made into naturalists thereby—the failures were blotted from the book of honor and of life. "Go to nature; take the facts into your own hands ”

“ I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.
There is no part of the country where, in the summer, you cannot get a sufficient supply of the best specimens. Teach your children to bring them in themselves. ”

“ 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 cannot be a professor of zoology on one day, and of chemistry on the next, and do good work in both. ”

“ I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always taking care to replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground-glass stoppers and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students will recall the huge neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax -besmeared corks, half eaten by insects, and begrimed with cellar dust. Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example of the Professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the jar to produce the fish, was infectious ”

“ His example should therefore be salutary to those persons, on the one hand, who think that a man can have general culture without knowing some one thing from the bottom up, and, on the other, to those who immerse themselves and their pupils blindly in special investigation, without thought of the prima philosophia that gives life and meaning to all particular knowledge. ”

“ On my return, I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at the Museum, but had gone, and would not return for several hours. My fellow-students were too busy to be disturbed by continued conversation. Slowly I drew forth that hideous fish, and with a feeling of desperation again looked at it. I might not use a magnifying-glass; instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish: it seemed a most limited field. ”