Some proclaim amalgamation as the remedy, upon the theory that by diluting black blood with white blood in larger and larger proportions, it will finally be so far diluted as to be imperceptible and will disappear. They forget that we may not do the wrong that right may come of it. They forget that no amount of diffusion will exterminate whatever exists; that a pint of ink diffused in a lake is still there, and the water is only the less pure.
Others persist that mulattoism is not and cannot be persistent beyond four generations. In other words, that like some other abnormal and diseased conditions it is self-limiting, and that the body social will be purged of it.
In the face of these and other theories, it is our duty to gather as many facts and as much knowledge as is possible, in order to throw light upon every part of the subject; nobody can furnish more than you can.
Faithfully yours,
SAMUEL G. HOWE.* (* In this correspondence with Dr. Howe, one or two phrases in Agassiz's letters are interpolated from a third unfinished letter, which was never forwarded to Dr. Howe. These sentences connect themselves so directly with the sense of the previous letters that it seemed worth while to add them.—ED.)
The Museum and his own more immediate scientific work must naturally take precedence in any biography of Agassiz, and perhaps, for this reason, too little prominence has been given in these pages to his interest in general education, and especially in the general welfare and progress of Harvard College. He was deeply attached to the University with which he had identified himself in America. While he strained every nerve to develop his own scientific department, which had no existence at Harvard until his advent there, no one of her professors was more concerned than himself for the organization of the college as a whole. A lover of letters as well as a devotee of nature, he valued every provision for a well proportioned intellectual training. He welcomed the creation of an Academic Council for the promotion of free and frequent interchange of opinion between the different heads of departments, and, when in Cambridge, he was never absent from the meetings. He urged, also, the introduction of university lectures, to the establishment of which he largely contributed, and which he would fain have opened to all the students. He advocated the extension of the elective system, believing that while it might perhaps give a pretext for easy evasion of duty to the more inefficient and lazy students, it gave larger opportunities to the better class, and that the University should adapt itself to the latter rather than the former. "The bright students," he writes to a friend, "are now deprived of the best advantages to be had here, because the dull or the indifferent must still be treated as children."
The two following letters, from their bearing on general university questions, are not out of place here. Though occasioned by a slight misconception, they are so characteristic of the writers, and of their relation to each other, that it would be a pity to omit them.
TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
December 12, 1864.