Part 2

We have more than one reason to be interested in the form of instruction employed by so eminent a scientist as Agassiz. In the first place, it is much to be desired that those who concern themselves with pedagogy should give relatively less heed to the way in which subjects, abstractly considered, ought to be taught, and should pay more attention than I fear has been paid to the way in which great and successful teachers actually have taught their pupils. As in other fields of human endeavor, so in teaching: there is a portion of the art that cannot be taken over by one person from another, but there is a portion, and a larger one than at first sight may appear, that can be so taken over, and can be almost directly utilized. Nor is the possible utility of imitation diminished, but rather increased, when we contemplate the method of a teacher like Agassiz, whose mental operations had the simplicity of genius, and in whose habits of instruction the fundamentals of a right procedure become very obvious.

Yet there is a second main reason for our interest. Within recent years we have witnessed an extraordinary development in certain studies, which, though superficially different from those pursued by Agassiz, have an underlying bond of unity with them, but which are generally carried on without reference to principles governing the investigation of every organism and all organic life. I have in mind, particularly, the spread of literary and linguistic study in America during the last few decades, and the lack of a common standard of judgment among those who engage in such study. Most persons do not, in fact, discern the close, though not obvious, relation between investigation in biology or zoology and the observation and comparison of those organic forms which we call forms of literature and works of art. Yet the notion that a poem or a speech should possess the organic structure, as it were, of a living creature is basic in the thought of the great literary critics of all time. So Aristotle, a zoologist as well as a systematic student of literature, compares the essential structure of a tragedy to the form of an animal. And so Plato, in the Phaedrus, makes Socrates say: 'At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own, and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole.' It would seem that to Plato an oration represents an organic idea in the mind of the human creator, the orator, just as a living animal represents a constructive idea in the mind of God. Now it happens that Agassiz, considered in his philosophical relations, was a Platonist, since he clearly believed that the forms of nature expressed the eternal ideas of a divine intelligence.

Accordingly, his method of teaching cannot fail to be illuminating to the teacher of literature--or to the teacher of language, either, since each language as a whole, and also the component parts of language, words, for instance, are living and growing forms, and must be studied as organisms. We have perhaps heard too much of 'laboratory' methods in the teaching of English and the like; but none of us has heard too much about the fundamental operations of observation and comparison in the study of living forms, or of the way in which great teachers have developed the original powers of the student. It is simply the fact that, reduced to the simplest terms, there is but a single method of investigating the objects of natural science and the productions of human genius. We study a poem, the work of man's art, in the same way that Agassiz made Shaler study a fish, the work of God's art; the object in either case is to discover the relation between form or structure and function or essential effect. It was no chance utterance of Agassiz when 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.

AGASSIZ AT NEUCHATEL

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

On his return to Cambridge at the end of September , 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 of schools, for whom admittance was free. It was a great pleasure to Agassiz thus to renew and strengthen his connection with the teachers of the State, with whom, from the time of his arrival in this country, he had held most cordial relations, attending the Teachers' Institutes, visiting the normal schools, and associating himself actively, as far as he could, with the interests of public education in Massachusetts. From this time forward his college lectures were open to women as well as to men. He had great sympathy with the desire of women for larger and more various fields of study and work, and a certain number of women have always been employed as assistants at the Museum.

The story of the next three years was one of unceasing but seemingly uneventful work. The daylight hours from nine or ten o'clock in the morning were spent, with the exception of the hour devoted to the school, at the Museum, not only in personal researches and in lecturing, but in organizing, distributing, and superintending the work of the laboratories, all of which was directed by him. Passing from bench to bench, from table to table, with a suggestion here, a kindly but scrutinizing glance there, he made his sympathetic presence felt by the whole establishment. No man ever exercised a more genial personal influence over his students and assistants.

His initiatory steps in teaching special students of natural history were not a little discouraging. Observation and comparison being in his opinion the intellectual tools most indispensable to the naturalist, his first lesson was one in looking. He gave no assistance; he simply left his student with the specimen, telling him to use his eyes diligently, and report upon what he saw. He returned from time to time to inquire after the beginner's progress, but he never asked him a leading question, never pointed out a single feature of the structure, never prompted an inference or a conclusion. This process lasted sometimes for days, the professor requiring the pupil not only to distinguish the various parts of the animal, but to detect also the relation of these details to more general typical features. His students still retain amusing reminiscences of their despair when thus confronted with their single specimen; no aid to be had from outside until they had wrung from it the secret of its structure. But all of them have recognized the fact that this one lesson in looking, which forced them to such careful scrutiny of the object before them, influenced all their subsequent habits of observation, whatever field they might choose for their special subject of study....

But if Agassiz, in order to develop independence and accuracy of observation, threw his students on their own resources at first, there was never a more generous teacher in the end than he. All his intellectual capital was thrown open to his pupils. His original material, his unpublished investigations, his most precious specimens, his drawings and illustrations were at their command. This liberality led in itself to a serviceable training, for he taught them to use with respect the valuable, often unique, objects entrusted to their care. Out of the intellectual good-fellowship which he established and encouraged in the laboratory grew the warmest relations between his students and himself. Many of them were deeply attached to him, and he was extremely dependent upon their sympathy and affection. By some among them he will never be forgotten. He is still their teacher and their friend, scarcely more absent from their work now than when the glow of his enthusiasm made itself felt in his personal presence.

HOW AGASSIZ TAUGHT PROFESSOR SHALER

At the time of my secession from the humanities, Agassiz was in Europe; he did not return, I think, until the autumn of 1859. I had, however, picked up several acquaintances among his pupils, learned what they were about, and gained some notion of his methods. After about a month he returned, and I had my first contact with the man who was to have the most influence on my life of any of the teachers to whom I am indebted. I shall never forget even the lesser incidents of this meeting, for this great master by his presence gave an importance to his surroundings, so that the room where you met him, and the furniture, stayed with the memory of him. When I first met Louis Agassiz, he was still in the prime of his admirable manhood; though he was then fifty-two years old, and had passed his constructive period, he still had the look of a young man. His face was the most genial and engaging that I had ever seen, and his manner captivated me altogether. But as I had been among men who had a free swing, and for a year among people who seemed to me to be cold and super-rational, hungry as I doubtless was for human sympathy, Agassiz's welcome went to my heart--I was at once his captive. It has been my good chance to see many men of engaging presence and ways, but I have never known his equal.

As the personal quality of Agassiz was the greatest of his powers, and as my life was greatly influenced by my immediate and enduring affection for him, I am tempted to set forth some incidents which show that my swift devotion to my new-found master was not due to the accidents of the situation, or to any boyish fancy. I will content myself with one of those stories, which will of itself show how easily he captivated men, even those of the ruder sort. Some years after we came together, when indeed I was formally his assistant,--I believe it was in 1866,--he became much interested in the task of comparing the skeletons of thoroughbred horses with those of common stock. I had at his request tried, but without success, to obtain the bones of certain famous stallions from my acquaintances among the racing men in Kentucky. Early one morning there was a fire, supposed to be incendiary, in the stables in the Beacon Park track, a mile from the College, in which a number of horses had been killed, and many badly scorched. I had just returned from the place, where I had left a mob of irate owners and jockeys in a violent state of mind, intent on finding some one to hang. I had seen the chance of getting a valuable lot of stallions for the Museum, but it was evident that the time was most inopportune for suggesting such a disposition of the remains. Had I done so, the results would have been, to say the least, unpleasant.

As I came away from the profane lot of horsemen gathered about the rums of their fortunes or their hopes, I met Agassiz almost running to seize the chance of specimens. I told him to come back with me, that we must wait until the mob had spent its rage; but he kept on. I told him further that he risked spoiling his good chance, and finally that he would have his head punched; but he trotted on. I went with him, in the hope that I might protect him from the consequences of his curiosity. When we reached the spot, there came about a marvel; in a moment he had all those raging men at his command. He went at once to work with the horses which had been hurt, but were savable. His intense sympathy with the creatures, his knowledge of the remedies to be applied, his immediate appropriation of the whole situation, of which he was at once the master, made those rude folk at once his friends. Nobody asked who he was, for the good reason that he was heart and soul of them. When the task of helping was done, then Agassiz skilfully came to the point of his business--the skeletons--and this so dexterously and sympathetically, that the men were, it seemed, ready to turn over the living as well as the dead beasts for his service. I have seen a lot of human doing, much of it critically as actor or near observer, but this was in many ways the greatest. The supreme art of it was in the use of a perfectly spontaneous and most actually sympathetic motive to gain an end. With others, this state of mind would lead to affectation; with him, it in no wise diminished the quality of the emotion. He could measure the value of the motive, but do it without lessening its moral import.

As my account of Agassiz's quality should rest upon my experiences with him, I shall now go on to tell how and to what effect he trained me. In that day there were no written examinations on any subjects to which candidates for the Lawrence Scientific School had to pass. The professors in charge of the several departments questioned the candidates, and determined their fitness to pursue the course of study they desired to undertake. Few or none who had any semblance of an education were denied admission to Agassiz's laboratory. At that time, the instructors had, in addition to their meagre salaries--his was then $2,500 per annum,--the regular fees paid in by the students under his charge. So I was promptly assured that I was admitted. Be it said, however, that he did give me an effective oral examination, which, as he told me, was intended to show whether I could expect to go forward to a degree at the end of four years of study. On this matter of the degree he was obdurate, refusing to recommend some who had been with him for many years, and had succeeded in their special work, giving as reason for his denial that they were 'too ignorant.'

The examination Agassiz gave me was directed first to find that I knew enough Latin and Greek to make use of those languages; that I could patter a little of them evidently pleased him. He didn't care for those detestable rules for scanning. Then came German and French, which were also approved: I could read both, and spoke the former fairly well. He did not probe me in my weakest place, mathematics, for the good reason that, badly as I was off in that subject, he was in a worse plight. Then asking me concerning my reading, he found that I had read the Essay on Classification, and had noted in it the influence of Schelling's views. Most of his questioning related to this field, and the more than fair beginning of our relations then made was due to the fact that I had some enlargement on that side. So, too, he was pleased to find that I had managed a lot of Latin, Greek, and German poetry, and had been trained with the sword. He completed this inquiry by requiring that I bring my foils and masks for a bout. In this test he did not fare well, for, though not untrained, he evidently knew more of the Schlager than of the rapier. He was heavy-handed, and lacked finesse. This, with my previous experience, led me to the conclusion that I had struck upon a kind of tutor in Cambridge not known in Kentucky.

While Agassiz questioned me carefully as to what I had read and what I had seen, he seemed in this preliminary going over in no wise concerned to find what I knew about fossils, rocks, animals, and plants; he put aside the offerings of my scanty lore. This offended me a bit, as I recall, for the reason that I thought I knew, and for a self-taught lad really did know, a good deal about such matters, especially as to the habits of insects, particularly spiders. It seemed hard to be denied the chance to make my parade; but I afterward saw what this meant--that he did not intend to let me begin my tasks by posing as a naturalist. The beginning was indeed quite different, and, as will be seen, in a manner that quickly evaporated my conceit. It was made and continued in a way I will now recount.

Agassiz's laboratory was then in a rather small two-storied building, looking much like a square dwelling-house, which stood where the College Gymnasium now stands.... Agassiz had recently moved into it from a shed on the marsh near Brighton bridge, the original tenants, the engineers, having come to riches in the shape of the brick structure now known as the Lawrence Building. In this primitive establishment Agassiz's laboratory, as distinguished from the storerooms where the collections were crammed, occupied one room about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide--what is now the west room on the lower floor of the edifice. In this place, already packed, I had assigned to me a small pine table with a rusty tin pan upon it....

When I sat me down before my tin pan, Agassiz brought me a small fish, placing it before me with the rather stern requirement that I should study it, but should on no account talk to any one concerning it, nor read anything relating to fishes, until I had his permission so to do. To my inquiry, 'What shall I do?' he said in effect: 'Find out what you can without damaging the specimen; when I think that you have done the work I will question you.' In the course of an hour I thought I had compassed that fish; it was rather an unsavory object, giving forth the stench of old alcohol, then loathsome to me, though in time I came to like it. Many of the scales were loosened so that they fell off. It appeared to me to be a case for a summary report, which I was anxious to make and get on to the next stage of the business. But Agassiz, though always within call, concerned himself no further with me that day, nor the next, nor for a week. At first, this neglect was distressing; but I saw that it was a game, for he was, as I discerned rather than saw, covertly watching me. So I set my wits to work upon the thing, and in the course of a hundred hours or so thought I had done much--a hundred times as much as seemed possible at the start. I got interested in finding out how the scales went in series, their shape, the form and placement of the teeth, etc. Finally, I felt full of the subject, and probably expressed it in my bearing; as for words about it then, there were none from my master except his cheery 'Good morning.' At length, on the seventh day, came the question, 'Well?' and my disgorge of learning to him as he sat on the edge of my table puffing his cigar. At the end of the hour's telling, he swung off and away, saying: 'That is not right.' Here I began to think that, after all, perhaps the rules for scanning Latin verse were not the worst infliction in the world. Moreover, it was clear that he was playing a game with me to find if I were capable of doing hard, continuous work without the support of a teacher, and this stimulated me to labor. I went at the task anew, discarded my first notes, and in another week of ten hours a day labor I had results which astonished myself and satisfied him. Still there was no trace of praise in words or manner. He signified that it would do by placing before me about a half a peck of bones, telling me to see what I could make of them, with no further directions to guide me. I soon found that they were the skeletons of half a dozen fishes of different species; the jaws told me so much at a first inspection. The task evidently was to fit the separate bones together in their proper order. Two months or more went to this task with no other help than an occasional looking over my grouping with the stereotyped remark: 'That is not right.' Finally, the task was done, and I was again set upon alcoholic specimens--this time a remarkable lot of specimens representing, perhaps, twenty species of the side -swimmers or Pleuronectidae.

I shall never forget the sense of power in dealing with things which I felt in beginning the more extended work on a group of animals. I had learned the art of comparing objects, which is the basis of the naturalist's work. At this stage I was allowed to read, and to discuss my work with others about me. I did both eagerly, and acquired a considerable knowledge of the literature of ichthyology, becoming especially interested in the system of classification, then most imperfect. I tried to follow Agassiz's scheme of division into the order of ctenoids and ganoids, with the result that I found one of my species of side-swimmers had cycloid scales on one side and ctenoid on the other. This not only shocked my sense of the value of classification in a way that permitted of no full recovery of my original respect for the process, but for a time shook my confidence in my master's knowledge. At the same time I had a malicious pleasure in exhibiting my 'find' to him, expecting to repay in part the humiliation which he had evidently tried to inflict on my conceit. To my question as to how the nondescript should be classified he said: 'My boy, there are now two of us who know that.'

This incident of the fish made an end of my novitiate. After that, with a suddenness of transition which puzzled me, Agassiz became very communicative; we passed indeed into the relation of friends of like age and purpose, and he actually consulted me as to what I should like to take up as a field of study. Finding that I wished to devote myself to geology, he set me to work on the Brachiopoda as the best group of fossils to serve as data in determining the Palaeozoic horizons. So far as his rather limited knowledge of the matter went, he guided me in the field about Cambridge, in my reading, and to acquaintances of his who were concerned with earth structures. I came thus to know Charles T. Jackson, Jules Marcou, and, later, the brothers Rogers, Henry and James. At the same time I kept up the study of zoology, undertaking to make myself acquainted with living organic forms as a basis for a knowledge of fossils.

HOW AGASSIZ TAUGHT PROFESSOR VERRILL

In regard to the methods of instruction of Agassiz I must say that so far as I saw and experienced he had no regular or fixed method, except that his plan was to make young students depend on natural objects rather than on statements in books. To that end he treated each one of his new students differently, according to the amount of knowledge and experience that the student had previously acquired, and often in line with what the student had done before. Not infrequently young men came to him who were utterly destitute of any knowledge or ability to study natural science, or zoology in particular, but had an idea that it would be a 'soft snap,' as the boys say. In such cases he often did give them a lot of mixed stuff to mull over, to see what they could do, and also to discourage those that seemed unfit. Sometimes he was mistaken, of course, and the student would persevere and stay on--and sometimes turned out well later. In fact, his treatment was highly and essentially individualistic.

In my own case, he questioned me closely as to what I had previously done and learned. He found I had made collections of birds, mammals, plants, etc., and had mounted and identified them for several years, and in that way was not a beginner exactly. I remember that before I had been with him six months he told me I knew more zoology than most students did when they graduated. Therefore my case was not like some others. He had an idea, of course, that though I had collected and mounted birds, and knew their names and habits, I probably knew little about their anatomy. At any rate the first thing he did was to give me a badly mutilated old loon, from old alcohol, telling me to prepare the skeleton. This I did so well and so quickly that he expressed regret that he had not given me some better bird with unbroken bones. He gave me next a blue heron, but it being spring, I 'went collecting' in the vicinity, following my usual inclination, before breakfast and after laboratory hours, and brought in a number of incubated birds'-eggs. When Agassiz came into the laboratory, I was extracting and preserving the embryos, being interested in embryology. He at once exclaimed that he was delighted, and told me to put aside the skeletons and go right on with collecting and preparing embryo birds, and making drawings, etc. This I did all that season, obtaining about 2,000 embryos, mostly of sea birds, for he sent me to Grand Manan Island, etc., for that purpose. Before the end of the first year he gave me entire charge of the birds and mammals in the Museum, as well as the coral collection, which was large even then.