If it be asked why a teacher of English should be moved to issue this
book on Agassiz, my reply might be: 'Read the Introductory Note'-for
the answer is there. 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. But there is no need to
elaborate the point. Of those who are likely to examine the book, some
already know the underlying truth involved, others will grasp it when
it is first presented to them (and for these my slight and pleasant
labors are designed), and the rest will find a stumbling-block and
foolishness--save for the entertainment to be had in the reading of
biography.

I have naturally kept in mind the needs of my own students, past and
present, yet I believe these pages may be useful to students of natural
science as well as to those who concern themselves with the humanities.
We live in an age of narrow specialization--at all events in America.
Agassiz was a specialist, but not a 'narrow' one. 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. There can be no doubt that science and scholarship in this