hough he did not recognize the Creator of Genesis, he could not
dispense with the supreme mind.

Myself a convert to the doctrine of evolution, in as absolute a form
as it is held even by the materialists, though differently, I am
persuaded that if Agassiz had lived long enough to see the latest
development of it he would have accepted it, as did Professor Owen,
who was, like Agassiz, and possibly even more literally, a believer
in the designer of the universe. The fundamental ground for Agassiz's
rejection of it is stated by himself in one of the lectures delivered
at Cambridge, as follows: "I believe that all these correspondences
between the different aspects of animal life are the manifestations
of mind acting consciously with intention towards one object from
beginning to end. This view is in accordance with the working of our
minds; it is an instinctive recognition of a mental power with which
our own is akin, manifesting itself in nature. For this reason, more
than any other, perhaps, do I hold that this world of ours was not the
result of the action of unconscious organic forces, but the work of an
intelligent, conscious power." Whatever might have been the process
by which the orderly creation was produced (into which he did not
inquire), it was the result of a definite plan and the work of design.
The immutability of species, _as he defined species_, was the
logical consequence of this theory, and that, it seems to me, is the
substantial difference between him and Darwin.

But Agassiz was no sectarian, and held no other creed than a belief
in the Creator. In the fibre of the man was the consciousness of
the immanent deity, rooted, perhaps, in that influence of his early
theological environage from which no man can ever escape, though
he may rebel against it; and the almost universal deduction by the
scientific world from Darwin's theory then was that there could be no
divine design in creation. It was this negation of the direction of
the great artist in the process of creation against which Agassiz
rebelled; and although, at a later phase of the conflict, Darwin
himself protested against the implication sometimes drawn from his
theory, there can be no question that at that moment the general
evolutionary opinion was that the hypothesis of a divine authorship
of creation was superfluous. Agassiz maintained the presence of
"Conscious Mind in Creation;" Darwin did not deny it explicitly, nor
did he admit it.