Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence Part 9

The friendly correspondence between Aga.s.siz and M. Coulon regarding the professors.h.i.+p at Neuchatel was now rapidly bringing the matter to a happy conclusion.

AGa.s.sIZ TO LOUIS COULON.

PARIS, June 4, 1832.

I have received your kind letter with great pleasure and hasten to reply. What you write gives me the more satisfaction because it opens to me in the near future the hope of establis.h.i.+ng myself in your neighborhood and devoting to my country the fruits of my labor. It is true, as you suppose, that the death of M. Cuvier has sensibly changed my position; indeed, I have already been asked to continue his work on fishes in connection with M. Valenciennes, who made me this proposition the day after your letter reached me. The conditions offered me are, indeed, very tempting, but I am too little French by character, and too anxious to live in Switzerland, not to prefer the place you can offer me, however small the appointments, if they do but keep me above actual embarra.s.sment. I say thus much only in order to answer that clause in your letter where you touch upon this question. I would add that I leave the field quite free in this respect, and that I am yours without reserve, if, indeed, within the fortnight, the urgency of the Parisians does not carry the day, or, rather, as soon as I write you that I have been able finally to withdraw. You easily understand that I cannot bluntly decline offers which seem to those who make them so brilliant. But I shall hold out against them to the utmost. My course with reference to my own publications will have shown you that I do not care for a lucrative position from personal interest; that, on the contrary, I should always be ready to use such means as I may have at my disposition for the advancement of the inst.i.tution confided to my care.

My work will still detain me for four or five months at Paris,--my time being after that completely at my disposal. The period at which I should like to begin my lectures is therefore very near, and I think if your people are favorably disposed toward the creation of a new professors.h.i.+p we must not let them grow cold. But you have shown me so much kindness that I may well leave to your care, in concert with your friends, the decision of this point; the more so since you are willing to take charge of my interests, until you see the success of what you are pleased to look upon as an advantage to your inst.i.tution, while for me it is the realization of a sincere desire to do what I can for the advancement of science, and the instruction of our youth. . .

The next letter from M. Coulon (June 18, 1832) announces that the sum of eighty louis having been guaranteed for three years, chiefly by private individuals, but partly also by the city, they were now able to offer a chair of natural history at once to their young countryman. In conclusion, he adds:--

"I can easily understand that the brilliant offers made you in Paris strongly counterbalance a poor little professors.h.i.+p of natural history at Neuchatel, and may well cause you to hesitate; especially since your scientific career there is so well begun. On the other hand, you cannot doubt our pleasure in the prospect of having you at Neuchatel, not only because of the friends.h.i.+p felt for you by many persons here, but also on account of the l.u.s.tre which a chair of natural history so filled would shed upon our inst.i.tution. Of this our subscribers are well aware, and it accounts for the rapid filling of the list. I am very anxious, as are all these gentlemen, to know your decision, and beg you therefore to let us hear from you as soon as possible."

A letter from Humboldt to M. Coulon, about this time, is an earnest of his watchful care over the interests of Aga.s.siz.

HUMBOLDT TO LOUIS COULON.

POTSDAM, July 25, 1832.

. . .I do not write to ask a favor, but only to express my warm grat.i.tude for your n.o.ble and generous dealings with the young savant, M. Aga.s.siz, who is well worthy your encouragement and the protection of your government. He is distinguished by his talents, by the variety and substantial character of his attainments, and by that which has a special value in these troubled times, his natural sweetness of disposition.

Through our common friend, M. von Buch, I have known for many years that you study natural history with a success equal to your zeal, and that you have brought together fine collections, which you place at the disposal of others with a n.o.ble liberality. It gratifies me to see your kindness toward a young man to whom I am so warmly attached; whom the ill.u.s.trious Cuvier, also, whose loss we must ever deplore, would have recommended with the same heartiness, for his faith, like mine, was based on those admirable works of Aga.s.siz which are now nearly completed. . .

I have strongly advised M. Aga.s.siz not to accept the offers made to him at Paris since M. Cuvier's death, and his decision has antic.i.p.ated my advice. How happy it would be for him, and for the completion of the excellent works on which he is engaged, could he this very year be established on the sh.o.r.es of your lake! I have no doubt that he will receive the powerful protection of your worthy governor, to whom I shall repeat my requests, and who honors me, as well as my brother, with a friends.h.i.+p I warmly appreciate. M. von Buch also has promised me, before leaving Berlin for Bonn and Vienna, to add his entreaty to mine. . .He is almost as much interested as myself in M. Aga.s.siz and his work on fossil fishes, the most important ever undertaken, and equally exact in its relation to zoological characters and to geological deposits. . .

The next letter from Aga.s.siz to his influential friend is written after his final acceptance of the Neuchatel professors.h.i.+p.

AGa.s.sIZ TO HUMBOLDT.

PARIS, July, 1832.

. . .I would most gladly have answered your delightful letter at once, and have told you how smoothly all has gone at Neuchatel.

Your letters to M. de Coulon and to General von Pfuel have wrought marvels; but they are now inclined to look upon me there as a wonder from the deep,* (* Ein blaues Meerwunder.) and I must exert myself to the utmost lest my actual presence should give the lie to fame. It is all right. I shall be the less likely to relax in devotion to my work.

The real reason of my silence has been that I was unwilling to acknowledge so many evidences of efficient sympathy and friendly encouragement by an empty letter. I wished especially to share with you the final result of my investigations on the fossil fishes, and for that purpose it was necessary to revise my ma.n.u.scripts and take an account of my tables in order to condense the whole in a few phrases. I have already told you that the investigation of the living fishes had suggested to me a new cla.s.sification, in which families as at present circ.u.mscribed respectively received new, and to my thinking more natural positions, based upon other considerations than those hitherto brought forward. I did not at first lay any special stress on my cla.s.sification. . .My object was only to utilize certain structural characters which frequently recur among fossil forms, and which might therefore enable me to determine remains. .h.i.therto considered of little value. . .Absorbed in the special investigation, I paid no heed to the edifice which was meanwhile unconsciously building itself up. Having however completed the comparison of the fossil species in Paris, I wanted, for the sake of an easy revision of the same, to make a list according to their succession in geological formations, with a view of determining the characteristics more exactly and bringing them by their enumeration into bolder relief. What was my joy and surprise to find that the simplest enumeration of the fossil fishes according to their geological succession was also a complete statement of the natural relations of the families among themselves; that one might therefore read the genetic development of the whole cla.s.s in the history of creation, the representation of the genera and species in the several families being therein determined; in one word, that the genetic succession of the fishes corresponds perfectly with their zoological cla.s.sification, and with just that cla.s.sification proposed by me. The question therefore in characterizing formations is no longer that of the numerical preponderance of certain genera and species, but of distinct structural relations, carried through all these formations according to a definite direction, following each other in an appointed order, and recognizable in the organisms as they are brought forth. . .If my conclusions are not overturned or modified through some later discovery, they will form a new basis for the study of fossils. Should you communicate my discovery to others I shall be especially pleased, because it may be long before I can begin to publish it myself, and many may be interested in it. This seems to me the most important of my results, though I have also, partly from perfect specimens, partly from fragments, identified some five hundred extinct species, and more than fifty extinct genera, beside reestablis.h.i.+ng three families no longer represented.

Cotta has written me in very polite terms that he could not undertake anything new at present; he would rather pay, without regard to profit, for what has been done thus far, and lets me have fifteen hundred francs. This makes it possible for me to leave d.i.n.kel in Paris to complete the drawings. Although it often seems to me hard, I must reconcile myself to the thought of leaving investigations which are actually completed, locked up in my desk. . .

CHAPTER 7.

1832-1834: AGE 25-27.

Enters upon his Professors.h.i.+p at Neuchatel.

First Lecture.

Success as a Teacher.

Love of Teaching.

Influence upon the Scientific Life of Neuchatel.

Proposal from University of Heidelberg.

Proposal declined.

Threatened Blindness.

Correspondence with Humboldt.

Marriage.

Invitation from Charpentier.

Invitation to visit England.

Wollaston Prize.

First Number of "Poissons Fossiles."

Review of the Work.

THE following autumn Aga.s.siz a.s.sumed the duties of his professors.h.i.+p at Neuchatel. His opening lecture "Upon the Relations between the different branches of Natural History and the then prevailing tendencies of all the Sciences" was given on the 12th of November, 1832, at the Hotel de Ville. Judged by the impression made upon the listeners as recorded at the time, this introductory discourse must have been characterized by the same broad spirit of generalization which marked Aga.s.siz's later teaching. Facts in his hands fell into their orderly relation as parts of a connected whole, and were never presented merely as special or isolated phenomena. From the beginning his success as an instructor was undoubted. He had, indeed, now entered upon the occupation which was to be from youth to old age the delight of his life. Teaching was a pa.s.sion with him, and his power over his pupils might be measured by his own enthusiasm. He was intellectually, as well as socially, a democrat, in the best sense. He delighted to scatter broadcast the highest results of thought and research, and to adapt them even to the youngest and most uninformed minds. In his later American travels he would talk of glacial phenomena to the driver of a country stage-coach among the mountains, or to some workman, splitting rock at the road-side, with as much earnestness as if he had been discussing problems with a brother geologist; he would take the common fisherman into his scientific confidence, telling him the intimate secrets of fish structure or fish-embryology, till the man in his turn grew enthusiastic, and began to pour out information from the stores of his own rough and untaught habits of observation. Aga.s.siz's general faith in the susceptibility of the popular intelligence, however untrained, to the highest truths of nature, was contagious, and he created or developed that in which he believed.

In Neuchatel the presence of the young professor was felt at once as a new and stimulating influence. The little town suddenly became a centre of scientific activity. A society for the pursuit of the natural sciences, of which he was the first secretary, sprang into life. The scientific collections, which had already attained, under the care of M. Louis Coulon, considerable value, presently a.s.sumed the character and proportions of a well-ordered museum. In M.

Coulon Aga.s.siz found a generous friend and a scientific colleague who sympathized with his n.o.blest aspirations, and was ever ready to sustain all his efforts in behalf of scientific progress. Together they worked in arranging, enlarging, and building up a museum of natural history which soon became known as one of the best local inst.i.tutions of the kind in Europe.

Beside his cla.s.ses at the gymnasium, Aga.s.siz collected about him, by invitation, a small audience of friends and neighbors, to whom he lectured during the winter on botany, on zoology, on the philosophy of nature. The instruction was of the most familiar and informal character, and was continued in later years for his own children and the children of his friends. In the latter case the subjects were chiefly geology and geography in connection with botany, and in favorable weather the lessons were usually given in the open air. One can easily imagine what joy it must have been for a party of little playmates, boys and girls, to be taken out for long walks in the country over the hills about Neuchatel, and especially to Chaumont, the mountain which rises behind it, and thus to have their lessons, for which the facts and scenes about them furnished subject and ill.u.s.tration, combined with pleasant rambles. From some high ground affording a wide panoramic view Aga.s.siz would explain to them the formation of lakes, islands, rivers, springs, water-sheds, hills, and valleys. He always insisted that physical geography could be better taught to children in the vicinity of their own homes than by books or maps, or even globes. Nor did he think a varied landscape essential to such instruction. Undulations of the ground, some contrast of hill and plain, some sheet of water with the streams that feed it, some ridge of rocky soil acting as a water-shed, may be found everywhere, and the relation of facts shown perhaps as well on a small as on a large scale.

When it was impossible to give the lessons out of doors, the children were gathered around a large table, where each one had before him or her the specimens of the day, sometimes stones and fossils, sometimes flowers, fruits, or dried plants. To each child in succession was explained separately what had first been told to all collectively. When the talk was of tropical or distant countries pains were taken to procure characteristic specimens, and the children were introduced to dates, bananas, cocoa-nuts, and other fruits, not easily to be obtained in those days in a small inland town. They, of course, concluded the lesson by eating the specimens, a practical ill.u.s.tration which they greatly enjoyed. A very large wooden globe, on the surface of which the various features of the earth as they came up for discussion could be shown, served to make them more clear and vivid. The children took their own share in the instruction, and were themselves made to point out and describe that which had just been explained to them.

They took home their collections, and as a preparation for the next lesson were often called upon to cla.s.sify and describe some unusual specimen by their own unaided efforts. There was no tedium in the cla.s.s. Aga.s.siz's lively, clear, and attractive method of teaching awakened their own powers of observation in his little pupils, and to some at least opened permanent sources of enjoyment.

His instructions to his older pupils were based on the same methods, and were no less acceptable to them than to the children.

In winter his professional courses to the students were chiefly upon zoology and kindred topics; in the summer he taught them botany and geology, availing himself of the fine days for excursions and practical instruction in the field. Professor Louis Favre, speaking of these excursions, which led them sometimes into the gorges of the Seyon, sometimes into the forests of Chaumont, says: "They were fete days for the young people, who found in their professor an active companion, full of spirits, vigor, and gayety, whose enthusiasm kindled in them the sacred fire of science."

It was not long before his growing reputation brought him invitations from elsewhere. One of the first of these was from Heidelberg.

PROFESSOR TIEDEMANN TO LOUIS AGa.s.sIZ.

HEIDELBERG, December 4, 1832.

. . .Last autumn, when I had the pleasure of meeting you in Carlsruhe, I proposed to you to give some lectures on Natural History at this university. Professor Leuckart, who till now represented zoology here, is called to Freiburg, and you would therefore be the only teacher in that department. The university being so frequented, a numerous audience may be counted upon. The zoological collection, by no means an insignificant one, is open to your use. Professor Leuckart received a salary of five hundred florins. This is now unappropriated, and I do not doubt that the government, conformably to the proposition of the medical faculty, would give you the appointment on the same terms. By your knowledge you are prepared for the work of an able academical teacher. My advice is, therefore, that you should not bind yourself to any lyceum or gymnasium, as a permanent position; such a place would not suit a cultivated scientific man, nor does it offer a field for an accomplished scholar. Consider carefully, therefore, a question which concerns the efficiency of your life, and give me the result of your deliberation as soon as possible. Should it be favorable to the acceptance of my proposition, I hope you will find yourself here at Easter as full professor, with a salary of five hundred florins, and a fitting field of activity for your knowledge. The fees for lectures and literary work might bring you in an additional fifteen hundred gulden yearly. If you accede to this offer send me your inaugural dissertation, and make me acquainted with your literary work, that I may take the necessary steps with the Curatorio. Consider this proposition as a proof of my high appreciation of your literary efforts and of my regard for you personally.

Aga.s.siz's next letter to Humboldt is to consult him with respect to the call from Heidelberg, while it is also full of pleasure at the warm welcome extended to him in Neuchatel.

AGa.s.sIZ TO HUMBOLDT.

December, 1832.

. . .At last I am in Neuchatel, having, indeed, begun my lectures some weeks ago. I have been received in a way I could never have antic.i.p.ated, and which can only be due to your good-will on my behalf and your friendly recommendation. You have my warmest thanks for the trouble you have taken about me, and for your continued sympathy. Let me show you by my work in the years to come, rather than by words, that I am in earnest about science, and that my spirit is not irresponsive to a n.o.ble encouragement such as you have given me.

You will have received my letter from Carlsruhe. Could I only tell you all that I have since thought and observed about the history of our earth's development, the succession of the animal populations, and their genetic cla.s.sification! It cannot easily be compressed within letter limits; I will, nevertheless, attempt it when my lectures make less urgent claim upon me, and my eyes are less fatigued. I should defer writing till then were it not that to-day I have something of at least outside interest to announce. It concerns the inclosed letter received to-day. (The offer of a professors.h.i.+p at Heidelberg.) Should you think that I need not take it into consideration, and you have no time to answer me, let me know your opinion by your silence. I will tell you the reasons which would induce me to remain for the present in Neuchatel, and I think you will approve them. First, as my lectures do not claim a great part of my time I shall have the more to bestow on other work; add to this the position of Neuchatel, so favorable for observations such as I propose making on the history of development in several cla.s.ses of animals; then the hope of freeing myself from the burden of my collections; and next, the quiet of my life here with reference to my somewhat overstrained health. Beside my wish to remain, these favorable circ.u.mstances furnish a powerful motive, and then I am satisfied that people here would a.s.sist me with the greatest readiness should my publications not succeed otherwise. As to the publication of my fishes, I can, after all, better direct the lithographing of the plates here. I have just written to Cotta concerning this, proposing also that he should advance the cost of the lithographs. I shall attend to it all carefully, and be content for the present with my small means. From the gradual sale he can, little by little, repay my expenses, and I shall ask no profit until the success of the work warrants it. I await his answer. This proposal seems to me the best and the most likely to advance the publication of this work.

Since I arrived here some scientific efforts have been made with the help of M. Coulon. We have already founded a society of Natural History,* (* Societe des Sciences Naturelles de Neuchatel.) and I hope, should you make your promised visit next year, you will find this germ between foliage and flower at least, though perhaps not yet ripened into seed. . .

M. Coulon told me the day before yesterday that he had spoken with M. de Montmollin, the Treasurer, who would write to M. Ancillon concerning the purchase of my collection. . .Will you have the kindness, when occasion offers, to say a word to M. Ancillon about it?. . .Not only would this collection be of the greatest value to the museum here, but its sale would also advance my farther investigations. With the sum of eighty louis, which is all that is subscribed for my professors.h.i.+p, I cannot continue them on any large scale.

I await now with anxiety Cotta's answer to my last proposition; but whatever it be, I shall begin the lithographing of the plates immediately after the New Year, as they must be carried on under my own eye and direction. This I can well do since my uncle, Dr. Mayor in Lausanne, gives me fifty louis toward it, the amount of one year's pay to Weber, my former lithographer in Munich. I have therefore written him to come, and expect him after New Year. With my salary I can also henceforth keep d.i.n.kel, who is now in Paris, drawing the last fossils which I described. . .

No answer to this letter has been found beyond such as is implied in the following to M. Coulon.

HUMBOLDT TO M. COULON, FILS.