Louis Agassiz as a Teacher Part 3

by Professor Burt G. Wilder, in _The Harvard Graduate's Magazine,_ June, 1907, and the last three from Aga.s.siz's posthumous article, "Evolution and Permanence of Type," in the _Atlantic Monthly,_ Jan., 1874 (vol. 33).]

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. This much-needed reform is already beginning in our colleges, and I hope it will continue. It is a relic of mediaeval times, this idea of professing everything. 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.

Lay aside all conceit. Learn to read the book of nature for yourself.

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. 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 const.i.tuted 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. If you can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each hold a specimen and examine it as you talk.

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Ma.s.sachusetts, before a Teachers'

Inst.i.tute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was gra.s.shoppers. I pa.s.sed 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. Take your text from the brooks, not from the book -sellers. It is better to have a few forms well known than to teach a little about many hundred species. Better a dozen specimens thoroughly studied as the result of the first year's work, than to have two thousand dollars' worth of sh.e.l.ls 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.

Methods may determine the result.

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.

Have the courage to say: 'I do not know.'

Since the ability of combining facts is a much rarer gift than that of discerning them, many students lost sight of the unity of structural design in the multiplicity of structural detail. [Footnote: _Atlantic Monthly_ 33. 93.]

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. Speech is known only in connection with the organs of man, thought in connection with his brain, religion as the expression of his aspirations, history as the record of his deeds, and physical sciences as the laws under which he lives. [Footnote: _Atlantic Monthly_ 33. 95.]

The most advanced Darwinians seem reluctant to acknowledge the intervention of an intellectual power in the diversity which obtains in nature, under the plea that such an admission implies distinct creative acts for every species. What of it, if it were true? 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. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.

The more I look at the great complex of the animal world, the more sure do I feel that we have not yet reached its hidden meaning, and the more do I regret that the young and ardent spirits of our day give themselves to speculation rather than to close and accurate investigation. [Footnote: _Atlantic Monthly_ 33. 101.]

X

Pa.s.sAGES FOR COMPARISON WITH THE METHOD OF AGa.s.sIZ

BOECKH ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY AND LITERATURE

[Footnote: August Boeckh; _Encyclopadie und Methodobgie der Philologischen Wissenschaften_, pp. 46-47.]

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, Sch.e.l.ling 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. In history, his advice is, first study one period in detail, and from this broaden out in all directions. For the study of language and literature (which corresponds with history in its most general sense) a similar procedure is the only right one. Everything in science is related; although science itself is endless, yet the whole system is pervaded with sympathies and correspondences. Let the student place himself where he will--so long as he selects something significant and worth while,--and he will be compelled to broaden out from this point of departure in every direction in order to reach a complete understanding of his subject.

From each and every detail one is driven to consider the whole; the only thing that matters is that one go to work in the right way, with strength, intelligence, and avidity. 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. Accordingly, by sinking deep into the particular, one most easily avoids the danger of becoming narrow.

Pa.s.sAGES FOR COMPARISON

FROM THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO

[The pa.s.sage is thus summarized by Jowett: 'He who would be truly initiated should pa.s.s from the concrete to the abstract, from the individual to the universal, from the universal to the universe of truth and beauty. [Footnote: Plato, _Symposium_. _The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Jowett, New York, Oxford University Press, 1892, 1. 580-582.]]

_Diotima_.... These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. He who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only--out of that he should create fair thoughts. And soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then, if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this, he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms.

In the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of inst.i.tutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle. And after laws and inst.i.tutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not, like a servant, in love with the beauty of one youth or man or inst.i.tution, himself a slave, mean and narrow- minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and n.o.ble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that sh.o.r.e he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere....

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; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as, for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and peris.h.i.+ng beauties of all other things. 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.