Louis Agassiz as a Teacher | Page 3

students. A few biographical details are introduced in order to round out our conception of the personality of the teacher himself. Toward the close, certain of his opinions are given in his own words.
I would call special attention to an extract from Boeckh's Encyclopadie, and another from the Symposium of Plato, on pp. 69-74, and to the similarity between the method of study there enjoined upon the student of the humanities, or indeed of all art and nature, and the method imposed by Agassiz upon the would-be entomologist who was compelled first of all to observe a fish. In reforming the mind it is well to begin by contemplating some structure we never have seen before, concerning which we have no, or the fewest possible, preconceptions.

II
AGASSIZ AT NEUCHATEL
[Footnote: From E. C. Agassiz, _Louis Agassiz, his Life and Correspondence_, pp. 206 ff. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1885.]
[In the autumn of the year 1832] Agassiz assumed the duties of his professorship 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 ... 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 Agassiz'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 passion 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 stagecoach 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 became enthusiastic, and began to pour out information from the stores of his own rough and untaught habits of observation. Agassiz'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....
Beside his classes at the gymnasium, Agassiz 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.... From some high ground affording a wide panoramic view Agassiz would explain to them the formation of lakes, islands, rivers, springs, water -sheds, hills, and valleys....
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.... 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 classify and describe some unusual specimen by their own unaided efforts.

III
AGASSIZ AT HARVARD
[Footnote: From E. C. Agassiz, _Louis Agassiz, his Life and Correspondence_, pp. 564 ff. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1885.]
On his return to Cambridge at the end of September [1859], Agassiz found the Museum building well advanced. It was completed in the course of the next year, and the dedication took place on the 13th of November, 1860. The transfer of the collections to their new and safe abode was made as rapidly as possible, and the work of developing the institution under these more favorable conditions moved steadily on. The lecture-rooms were at once opened, not only to students, but to other persons not connected with the University. Especially welcome were teachers