preamble to his will he described himself in three words as 'Louis
Agassiz, Teacher.'

We have more than one reason to be interested in the form of
instruction employed by so eminent a scientist as Agassiz. In the first
place, it is much to be desired that those who concern themselves with
pedagogy should give relatively less heed to the way in which subjects,
abstractly considered, ought to be taught, and should pay more
attention than I fear has been paid to the way in which great and
successful teachers actually have taught their pupils. 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.

Yet there is a second main reason for our interest. 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. Most persons do not, in
fact, discern the close, though not obvious, relation between
investigation in biology or zoology and the observation and comparison