Ten years before his death, Agassiz, wishing to illustrate the laborious and slow results of scientific research, said: “I have devoted my whole life to the study of nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of fishes in geological times and the different stages of their growth in the egg—that is all.” Here speaks the scientist, with that humility which characterizes the true student of nature. But let me follow with his prouder outlook for such toil: “It is given to no mortal man to predict what may be the result of any discovery in the realm of nature. When the electric current was discovered, what was it? A curiosity. When the first electric machine was invented, to what use was it put? To make puppets dance for the amusement of children; but should our work have no other result than this—to know that certain facts in nature are thus and not otherwise, their causes were such and no other—this result in itself is good enough and great enough since the end of his aim, his glory, is the knowledge of the truth.”—Julia S. Visher, The Christian Register.
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HUMOR
Humor dwells with sanity,
Truth, and common sense.
Humor is humanity,
Sympathy intense.
Humor always laughs with you,
Never at you; she
Loves the fun that’s sweet and true