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
PASSAGES FOR COMPARISON WITH THE METHOD OF AGASSIZ
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, Schelling 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.
PASSAGES FOR COMPARISON
FROM THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO
[The passage is thus summarized by Jowett: 'He who would be truly initiated should pass 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.]