Chapter 25: 1872-1873: Aet. 65-66.
- Return to Cambridge. -- summer school proposed. -- interest of Agassiz. -- gift of Mr. Anderson. -- prospectus of Penikese school. -- difficulties. -- opening of school. -- summer work. -- close of school. -- last course of lectures at Museum. -- lecture before board of Agriculture. -- illness. -- death. -- place of Burial.
In October, 1872, Agassiz returned to Cambridge. To arrange the collections he had brought back, to write a report of his journey and its results, to pass the next summer quietly at his Nahant laboratory, continuing his work on the Sharks and Skates, for which he had brought home new and valuable material, seemed the natural sequence of his year of travel. But he found a new scheme of education on foot; one for which he had himself given the first impulse, but which some of his younger friends had carefully considered and discussed in his absence, being confident that with his help it might be accomplished. The plan was to establish a summer school [766] of natural history somewhere on the coast of Massachusetts, where teachers from our schools and colleges could make their vacations serviceable, both for work and recreation, by the direct study of nature. No sooner was Agassiz once more at home than he was confronted by this scheme, and he took it up with characteristic ardor. Means there were none, nor apparatus, nor building, nor even a site for one. There was only the ideal, and to that he brought the undying fervor of his intellectual faith. The prospectus was soon sketched, and, once before the public, it awakened a strong interest. In March, when the Legislature of Massachusetts made their annual visit to the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Agassiz laid this new project before them as one of deep interest for science in general, and especially for schools and colleges throughout the land. He considered it also an educational branch of the Museum, having, as such, a claim on their sympathy, since it was in the line of the direct growth and continuance of the same work. Never did he plead more eloquently for the cause of education. His gift as a speaker cannot easily be described. It was born of conviction, and was as simple as it [767] was impassioned. It kept the freshness of youth, because the things of which he spoke never grew old to him, but moved him to the last hour of his life as forcibly as in his earlier years.
This appeal to the Legislature, spoken in the morning, chanced to be read in the evening papers of the same day by Mr. John Anderson, a rich merchant of New York. It at once enlisted his sympathy both for the work and for the man. Within the week he offered to Agassiz, as a site for the school, the island of Penikese, in Buzzard's Bay, with the buildings upon it, consisting of a furnished dwelling-house and barn. Scarcely was this gift accepted than he added to it an endowment of $50,000 for the equipment of the school. Adjectives belittle deeds like these. The bare statement says more than the most laudatory epithets.
Agassiz was no less surprised than touched at the aid thus unexpectedly offered. In his letter of acknowledgment he says: ‘You do not know what it is suddenly and unexpectedly to find a friend at your side, full of sympathy, and offering support to a scheme which you have been trying to carry out under difficulties and with very scanty means. [768] I feel grateful to you for making the road so easy, and I believe you will have the permanent gratitude of scientific men here and elsewhere, for I have the utmost confidence that this summer school will give valuable opportunities for original research, as well as for instruction.’ At Agassiz's suggestion the school was to bear the name of ‘The Anderson School of Natural History.’ Mr. Anderson wished to substitute the name of Agassiz for his own. This Agassiz absolutely refused to permit, saying that he was but one of many scientific men who had already offered their services to the school for the coming summer, some of whom would, no doubt, continue to work for it in the future, and all of whom would be equally indebted to Mr. Anderson. It was, therefore, most suitable that it should bear his name, and so it was agreed.
Thus the material problem was solved. Name and habitation were found; it remained only to organize the work for which so fitting a home had been provided. Mr. Anderson's gift was received toward the close of March, and, in the course of the following month, the preliminaries were concluded, and the property was transferred to the trustees of the Anderson School. [769]
Few men would have thought it feasible to build dormitories and laboratories, and provide working apparatus for fifty pupils as well as for a large corps of teachers, between May and July. But to Agassiz no obstacles seemed insurmountable where great aims were involved, and the opening of the school was announced for the 8th of July. He left Boston on Friday, the 4th of July, for the island. At New Bedford he was met by a warning from the architect that it would be simply impossible to open the school at the appointed date. With characteristic disregard of practical difficulties, he answered that it must be possible, for postponement was out of the question. He reached the island on Saturday, the 5th, in the afternoon. The aspect was certainly discouraging. The dormitory was up, but only the frame was completed; there were no floors, nor was the roof shingled. The next day was Sunday. Agassiz called the carpenters together. He told them that the scheme was neither for money, nor for the making of money; no personal gain was involved in it. It was for the best interests of education, and for that alone. Having explained the object, and stated the emergency, he asked whether, under these circumstances, [770] the next day was properly for rest or for work. They all answered ‘for work.’ They accordingly worked the following day from dawn till dark, and by night-fall the floors were laid. On Monday, the 7th, the partitions were put up, dividing the upper story into two large dormitories; the lower, into sufficiently convenient working-rooms. On Tuesday morning (the 8th), with the help of a few volunteers, chiefly ladies connected with the school, who had arrived a day or two in advance, the dormitories, which were still encumbered by shavings, sawdust, etc., were swept, and presently transformed into not unattractive sleeping-halls. They were divided by neat sets of furniture into equal spaces, above each of which was placed the name of the person to whom it was appropriated. When all was done, the large open rooms, with their fresh pine walls, floors, and ceilings, the rows of white beds down the sides, and the many windows looking to the sea, were pretty and inviting enough. If they somewhat resembled hospital wards, they were too airy and cheerful to suggest sickness either of body or mind.
Next, a large barn belonging to Mr. Anderson's former establishment was cleared, and a [771] new floor laid there also. This was hardly finished (the last nails were just driven) when the steamer, with its large company, touched the wharf. There was barely time to arrange the seats and to place a table with flowers where the guests of honor were to sit, and Agassiz himself was to stand, when all arrived. The barn was, on the whole, not a bad lecture-room on a beautiful summer day. The swallows, who had their nests without number in the rafters, flew in and out, and twittered softly overhead; and the wide doors, standing broadly open to the blue sky and the fresh fields, let in the sea-breeze, and gave a view of the little domain. Agassiz had arranged no programme of exercises, trusting to the interest of the occasion to suggest what might best be said or done. But, as he looked upon his pupils gathered there to study nature with him, by an impulse as natural as it was unpremeditated, he called upon them to join in silently asking God's blessing on their work together. The pause was broken by the first words of an address no less fervent than its unspoken prelude.1
Thus the day, which had been anticipated [772] with so much anxiety, passed off, unclouded by any untoward accident, and at evening the guests had departed. Students and teachers, a company of some fifty or sixty persons, were left to share the island with the sea-gulls whose haunt it was.
We will not enter into the daily details of the school. It was a new phase of teaching, even for Agassiz, old as he was in the work. Most of his pupils were mature men and women, some of whom had been teachers themselves for many years. He had, therefore, trained minds to deal with, and the experience was at that time as novel as it was interesting. The novelty has worn off now. Summer schools for advanced students, and especially for teachers, have taken their place in the general system of education; and, though the Penikese school may be said to have died with its master, it lives anew in many a sea-side laboratory organized on the same plan, in summer schools of Botany and field classes of Geology. The impetus it gave was not, and cannot be, lost, since it refreshed and vitalized methods of teaching.
Beside the young men who formed his corps of teachers, among whom the resident professors were Dr. Burt G. Wilder, of Cornell University, [773] and Professor Alpheus S. Packard, now of Brown University, Agassiz had with him some of his oldest friends and colleagues. Count de Pourtales was there, superintending the dredging, for which there were special conveniences, Mr. Charles G. Galloupe having presented the school with a yacht for the express purpose. This generous gift gave Agassiz the greatest pleasure, and completed the outfit of the school as nothing else could have done. Professor Arnold Guyot, also,— Agassiz's comrade in younger years,—his companion in many an Alpine excursion,—came to the island to give a course of lectures, and remained for some time. It was their last meeting in this world, and together they lived over their days of youthful adventure. The lectures of the morning and afternoon would sometimes be followed by an informal meeting held on a little hill, which was a favorite resort at sunset. There the whole community gathered around the two old friends, to hear them talk of their glacial explorations, one recalling what the other had forgotten, till the scenes lived again for themselves, and became almost equally vivid for their listeners. The subject came up naturally, for, strange to say, this island in a [774] New England bay was very suggestive of glacial phenomena. Erratic materials and boulders transported from the north were scattered over its surface, and Agassiz found the illustrations for his lectures on this topic ready to his hand. Indeed, some of his finest lectures on the ice-period were given at Penikese.
Nothing could be less artificial, more free from constraint or formality, than the intercourse between him and his companions of this summer. He was at home with every member of the settlement. Ill-health did not check the readiness of his sympathy; languor did not chill the glow of his enthusiasm. All turned to him for help and inspiration. Walking over their little sovereignty together, hunting for specimens on its beaches, dredging from the boats, in the laboratory, or the lecture-room, the instruction had always the character of the freest discussion. Yet the work, although combined with out-of-door pleasures, and not without a certain holiday element, was no play. On the part of the students, the application was close and unremitting; on the part of the teachers, the instruction, though untrammeled by routine, was sustained and systematic.
Agassiz himself frequently gave two lectures [775] a day. In the morning session he would prepare his class for the work of the day; in the afternoon he would draw out their own observations by questions, and lead them, by comparison and combination of the facts they had observed, to understand the significance of their results. Every lecture from him at this time was a lesson in teaching as well as in natural history, and to many of his hearers this gave his lectures a twofold value, as bearing directly upon their own occupation. In his opening address he had said to them: ‘You will find the same elements of instruction all about you wherever you may be teaching. You can take your classes out, and give them the same lessons, and lead them up to the same subjects you are yourselves studying here. And this mode of teaching children is so natural, so suggestive, so true. That is the charm of teaching from Nature herself. No one can warp her to suit his own views. She brings us back to absolute truth as often as we wander.’
This was the bright side of the picture. Those who stood nearest to Agassiz, however, felt that the strain not only of work, but of the anxiety and responsibility attendant upon a new and important undertaking, was perilous [776] for him. There were moments when this became apparent, and he himself felt the danger. He persevered, nevertheless, to the end of the summer, and only left Penikese when the school broke up.
In order to keep the story of this final effort unbroken, some events of great interest to Agassiz and of importance to the Museum have been omitted. In the spring the Museum had received a grant of $25,000 from the Legislature. To this was added $100,000, a birthday gift to Agassiz in behalf of the institution he so much loved. This last sum was controlled by no official body and was to be expended at his own good will and pleasure, either in collections, publications, or scientific assistance, as seemed to him best. He therefore looked forward to a year of greater ease and efficiency in scientific work than he had ever enjoyed before. On returning from Penikese, full of the new possibilities thus opened to him, he allowed himself a short rest, partly at the sea-shore, partly in the mountains, and was again at his post in the Museum in October.
His last course of lectures there was on one of his favorite topics,—the type of Radiates as connected with the physical history of the [777] earth, from the dawn of organic life till now. In his opening lecture he said to his class: ‘You must learn to look upon fossil forms as the antiquarian looks upon his coins. The remains of animals and plants have the spirit of their time impressed upon them, as strongly as the spirit of the age is impressed upon its architecture, its literature, its coinage. I want you to become so familiar with these forms, that you can read off at a glance their character and associations.’ In this spirit his last course was conceived. It was as far-reaching and as clear as usual, nor did his delivery evince failure of strength or of mental power. If he showed in any way the disease which was even then upon him, it was by an over-tension of the nerves, which gave increased fervor to his manner. Every mental effort was, however, succeeded by great physical fatigue.
At the same time he had undertaken a series of articles in the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ entitled, ‘Evolution and Permanence of Type.’ They were to have contained his own convictions regarding the connection between all living beings, upon which his studies had led him to conclusions so different from the philosophy of the day. Of these papers, only [778] one was completed. It was his last word upon science; the correction of the proof-sheets was the last act of his working life, and the article was published after his death. In it he claimed that the law of evolution, in a certain sense as true to him as to any so-called evolutionist, was a law ‘controlling development, and keeping types within appointed cycles of growth.’ He maintained that this law acts within definite limits, and never infringes upon the great types, each one of which is, in his view, a structural unit in itself. Even metamorphoses, he adds, ‘have all the constancy and invariability of other modes of embryonic growth, and have never been known to lead to any transition of one species into another.’ Of heredity he says: ‘The whole subject of inheritance is exceedingly intricate, working often in a seemingly capricious and fitful way. Qualities, both good and bad, are dropped as well as acquired, and the process ends sometimes in the degradation of the type, and the survival of the unfit rather than the fittest. The most trifling and fantastic tricks of inheritance are quoted in support of the transmutation theory; but little is said of the sudden apparition of powerful original qualities, which almost always rise like pure creations, and are [779] gone with their day and generation. The noblest gifts are exceptional, and are rarely inherited; this very fact seems to me an evidence of something more and higher than mere evolution and transmission concerned in the problem of life. In the same way the matter of natural and sexual selection is susceptible of very various interpretations. No doubt, on the whole, Nature protects her best. But it would not be difficult to bring together an array of facts as striking as those produced by the evolutionists in favor of their theory, to show that sexual selection is by no means always favorable to the elimination of the chaff, and the preservation of the wheat. A natural attraction, independent of strength or beauty, is an unquestionable element in this problem, and its action is seen among animals as well as among men. The fact that fine progeny are not infrequently the offspring of weak parents, and vice versa, points, perhaps, to some innate power of redress by which the caprices of choice are counterbalanced. But there can be no doubt that types are as often endangered as protected by the so-called law of sexual selection.’
‘As to the influence of climate and physical conditions,’ he continues, ‘we all know [780] their power for evil and for good upon living beings. But there is, nevertheless, nothing more striking in the whole book of nature than the power shown by types and species to resist physical conditions. Endless evidence may be brought from the whole expanse of land and air and water, showing that identical physical conditions will do nothing toward the merging of species into one another, neither will variety of conditions do anything toward their multiplication. One thing only we know absolutely, and in this treacherous, marshy ground of hypothesis and assumption, it is pleasant to plant one's foot occasionally upon a solid fact here and there. Whatever be the means of preserving and transmitting properties, the primitive types have remained permanent and unchanged,—in the long succession of ages, amid all the appearance and disappearance of kinds, the fading away of one species and the coming in of another,—from the earliest geological periods to the present day. How these types were first introduced, how the species which have successively represented them have replaced one another,— these are the vital questions to which no answer has been given. We are as far from any satisfactory solution of this problem as [781] if development theories had never been dis-Cussed.’
In conclusion, he sketches the plan of these articles. ‘I hope in future articles to show, first, that, however broken the geological record may be, there is a complete sequence in many parts of it, from which the character of the succession may be ascertained; secondly, that, since the most exquisitely delicate structures, as well as embryonic phases of growth of the most perishable nature, have been preserved from very early deposits, we have no right to infer the disappearance of types because their absence disproves some favorite theory; and, lastly, that there is no evidence of a direct descent of later from earlier species in the geological succession of animals’
This paper contained the sentence so often quoted since, ‘A physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle. Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance.’ This expressed the secret of his whole life. Every fact in nature was sacred to him, as part of an intellectual conception expressed in the history of the earth and the beings living upon it.
On the 2d of December, he was called to a meeting of the Massachusetts Board of [782] Agriculture at Fitchburg, where he lectured in the evening on ‘The structural growth of domesticated animals.’ Those who accompanied him, and knew the mental and physical depression which had hung about him for weeks, could not see him take his place on the platform, without anxiety. And yet, when he turned to the blackboard, and, with a single sweep of the chalk, drew the faultless outline of an egg, it seemed impossible that anything could be amiss with the hand or the brain that were so steady and so clear.
The end, nevertheless, was very near. Although he dined with friends the next day, and was present at a family festival that week, he spoke of a dimness of sight, and of feeling ‘strangely asleep.’ On the 6th he returned early from the Museum, complaining of great weariness, and from that time he never left his room. Attended in his illness by his friends, Dr. Brown-Sequard and Dr. Morrill Wyman, and surrounded by his family, the closing week of his life was undisturbed by acute suffering and full of domestic happiness. Even the voices of his brother and sisters were not wholly silent, for the wires that thrill with so many human interests brought their message of greeting and farewell across [783] the ocean to his bedside. The thoughts and aims for which he had lived were often on his lips, but the affections were more vivid than the intellect in these last hours. The end came very peacefully, on the 14th of December, 1873. He lies buried at Mount Auburn. The boulder that makes his monument came from the glacier of the Aar, not far from the spot where his hut once stood; and the pine-trees which are fast growing up to shelter it were sent by loving hands from his old home in Switzerland. The land of his birth and the land of his adoption are united in his grave. [784]
