Louis Agassiz as a Teacher | Page 3

he said that a year or two of natural history, studied as he
understood it, would give the best kind of training for any other sort of
mental work.
The following passages will illustrate Agassiz's ideals and practice in
teaching, the emphasis being laid upon his dealings with special
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