Myself a convert to the doctrine of evolution, in as absolute a form as it is held even by the materialists, though differently, I am persuaded that if Agassiz had lived long enough to see the latest development of it he would have accepted it, as did Professor Owen, who was, like Agassiz, and possibly even more literally, a believer in the designer of the universe.  The fundamental ground for Agassiz’s rejection of it is stated by himself in one of the lectures delivered at Cambridge, as follows:  “I believe that all these correspondences between the different aspects of animal life are the manifestations of mind acting consciously with intention towards one object from beginning to end.  This view is in accordance with the working of our minds; it is an instinctive recognition of a mental power with which our own is akin, manifesting itself in nature.  For this reason, more than any other, perhaps, do I hold that this world of ours was not the result of the action of unconscious organic forces, but the work of an intelligent, conscious power.”  Whatever might have been the process by which the orderly creation was produced (into which he did not inquire), it was the result of a definite plan and the work of design.  The immutability of species, as he defined species, was the logical consequence of this theory, and that, it seems to me, is the substantial difference between him and Darwin.

But Agassiz was no sectarian, and held no other creed than a belief in the Creator.  In the fibre of the man was the consciousness of the immanent deity, rooted, perhaps, in that influence of his early theological environage from which no man can ever escape, though he may rebel against it; and the almost universal deduction by the scientific world from Darwin’s theory then was that there could be no divine design in creation.  It was this negation of the direction of the great artist in the process of creation against which Agassiz rebelled; and although, at a later phase of the conflict, Darwin himself protested against the implication sometimes drawn from his theory, there can be no question that at that moment the general evolutionary opinion was that the hypothesis of a divine authorship of creation was superfluous.  Agassiz maintained the presence of “Conscious Mind in Creation;” Darwin did not deny it explicitly, nor did he admit it.

As a matter of observation, no case of a development of one species from another has ever been noted, and the evidence for it is precisely analogous to that adduced by Agassiz, “that it is in accordance with the working of our minds,” still further illuminated by the side-lights which science has thrown on it since Agassiz died.  The ultimate decision in the individual mind will be according to the bias for or against the “conscious mind” or automatic creation; and it must not be forgotten that one of the most powerful arguments for a large evolution was the discovery by Agassiz that the embryo of the