Agassiz, When I Saw Him Last, Had

We May Take It To Be The Accepted Idea That The Mosaic Books Were Not Handed Down To Us For Our Instruction In Scientific Knowledge, And That It Is Our Duty To Ground Our Scientific Beliefs Upon Observation And Inference, Unmixed With Considerations Of A Different Order.

Your Candor Is Worth Everything To Your Cause. It Is Refreshing To Find A Person With A New Theory Who Frankly Confesses That He Finds Difficulties, Insurmountable, At Least For The Present.

The Former Conviction That These Two Kingdoms Were Wholly Different In Structure, In Function, And In Kind Of Life, Was Not Seriously Disturbed By The Difficulties Which The Naturalist Encountered When He Undertook To Define Them.

Indeed Upon Much That May Have To Say, I Expect Rather The Charitable Judgment Than The Full Assent Of Those Whose Approbation I Could Most Wish To Win.

I Accept Extinction As Best Explaining Disjoined Species. I See That The Same Cause Must Have Reduced Many Species Of Great Range To Small, And That It May Have Reduced Large Genera To So Small, And Of Families.