subordinate groups. The Creator, however, according to Agassiz, can move only within six groups or categories: the species, genus, family, order, class, and type. More than these six categories do not exist for him.

When we read Agassiz's book on classification, and see how he carries out and establishes these strange ideas, we can scarcely understand how, with all the appearances of scientific earnestness, he could persevere in his idea of the divine Creator as a man-like being (anthropomorphism), for by his explanation of details he produces a picture of the most absurd nonsense. In the whole series of these suppositions the Creator is nothing but an all-mighty man, who, plagued with ennui, amuses himself with planning and constructing all manner of toys in the shape of organic species. After having diverted himself with these for thousands of years, they become tiresome to him, he destroys them by a general revolution of the earth's surface, and thus throws the whole of the useless toys in heaps together; then, in order to while away his time with something new and better, he calls a new and more perfect animal and vegetable world into existence. But in order not to have the trouble of beginning the work of creation over again, he keeps, in the main, to his original plan of creation, and creates merely new species, or at most only new genera, much more rarely new families, new orders, or classes. He never succeeds in producing a new style or type, and always keeps strictly within the six categories or graduated groups.

When, according to Agassiz, the Creator has thus amused himself for thousands of millions of years with constructing and destroying a series of different creations, at last (but

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very late) he is struck with the happy thought of creating something like himself, and so makes man in his own image. With this, the aim of all the history of creation is arrived at and the series of revolutions of the earth is closed. Man, the child and image of God, gives him so much to do, causes him so much pleasure and trouble, that he is wearied no longer, and therefore need not undertake a new creation. It is clear that if, according to Agassiz, we once assign to the Creator entirely human attributes and qualities, and regard his work of creation as entirely analogous to human creative activity, we are necessarily obliged to admit such utterly absurd inferences as those just stated.

The many intrinsic contradictions and perversities in Agassiz's view of creation-a view which necessarily led him to the most decided opposition to the Theory of Descent -must excite our astonishment all the more because, in his earlier scientific works, he has in many respects actually paved the way for Darwin, especially by his researches in Palæontology. Among the numerous investigations which created general interest in the then young science of Paleontology, those of Agassiz, especially his celebrated work on "Fossil Fish," rank next in importance to Cuvier's work, which formed the foundation of the science. The petrified fish, with which Agassiz has made us acquainted, have not only an extremely great importance for the understanding of all groups of Vertebrate animals, and their historical development, but we have arrived through them at a sure knowledge of important general laws of development. It was Agassiz who drew special attention to the remarkable parallelism between the embryonal and the palæontological development-between ontogeny and phy

logeny, which I have already (p. 10) claimed as one of the strongest pillars of the Theory of Descent. No one before had so distinctly stated as Agassiz did, that, of the Vertebrate animals, fishes alone existed at first, that amphibious animals came later, and that birds and mammals appeared only at a much later period; further, that among mammals, as among fishes, imperfect and lower orders had appeared first, but more perfect and higher orders at a later period. Agassiz, therefore, showed that the palæontological development of the whole Vertebrate group was not only parallel with the embryonic, but also with the systematic development, that is, with the graduated series which we see everywhere in the system, ascending from the lower to the higher classes, orders, etc.

In the earth's history lower forms appeared first, the higher forms later. This important fact, as well as the agreement of the embryonic and palæontological development, is explained quite simply and naturally by the Doctrine of Descent, and without it is perfectly inexplicable. This cause holds good also in the great law of progressive development, that is, of the historical progress of organization, which is traceable, broadly and as a whole, in the historical succession of all organisms, as well as in the special perfecting of individual parts of animal bodies. Thus, for example, the skeleton of Vertebrate animals acquired at first slowly, and by degrees, that high degree of perfection which it now possesses in man and the other higher Vertebrate animals. This progress acknowledged in point of fact by Agassiz, necessarily follows from Darwin's Doctrine of Descent, which demonstrates its active causes. If this doctrine is correct, the perfecting and diversification

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of animal and vegetable species must of necessity have gradually increased in the course of the organic history of the earth, and could only attain its highest perfection in most recent times.

The above-mentioned laws of development, together with some other general ones, which have been expressly admitted and justly emphasized by Agassiz, and some of which have first been set forth by him, are, as we shall see later, only explicable by the Theory of Descent, and without it remain perfectly incomprehensible. The conjoint action of Inheritance and Adaptation, as explained by Darwin, can alone be their true cause. But they all stand in sharp and irreconcilable opposition to the hypothesis of creation maintained by Agassiz, as well as to the idea of a personal Creator who acts for a definite purpose. If we seriously wish to explain those remarkable phenomena and their inner connection by Agassiz's theory, then we are necessarily driven to the supposition that the Creator himself has developed, together with the organic nature which he created and modelled. We can, in that case, no longer rid ourselves of the idea that the Creator himself, like a human being, designed, improved, and finally, with many alterations, carried out his plans. "Man grows as higher grow his aims," says the poet, and this remark, so unworthy of a God, must be applied to him. Although, from the reverence with which, in every page, Agassiz speaks of the Creator, it might appear that, by his theory, we attain to the sublimest conception of the divine activity in nature, yet the contrary is in truth the case. The divine Creator is degraded to the level of an idealized man, of an organism progressing in development. According to this low conception God is, in fact, nothing more than a "gaseous vertebrate."

Considering the wide popularity and great authority which Agassiz's work has gained, and which is perhaps justified on account of earlier scientific services rendered by the author, I have thought it my duty here to show the utter untenableness of his general conceptions. So far as his work pretends to be a scientific history of creation, it is undoubtedly a complete failure. But still it is of great value, in being the only detailed attempt, adorned with scientific arguments, which an eminent naturalist of our day has made to found a teleological or dualistic history of creation. The utter impossibility of such a history has thus been made obvious to every one. No opponent of Agassiz could have refuted the dualistic conception of organic nature and its origin more strikingly than he himself has done by the intrinsic contradictions which present themselves everywhere in his theory.

The opponents of the monistic or mechanical conception of the world have welcomed Agassiz's work with delight, and find in it a perfect proof of the direct creative action of a personal God. But they overlook the fact that this personal Creator is only an idealized organism, endowed with human attributes. This low dualistic conception of God is in keeping with a lower animal stage of development of the human organism. The more developed man of the present day is capable of, and justified in, conceiving that infinitely nobler and sublimer idea of God which alone is compatible with the monistic conception of the universe, and which recognizes God's spirit and power in all phenomena without exception. This monistic idea of God, which belongs to the future, has already been expressed by Giordano Bruno in the following words: "A spirit exists in all things, and no