OF THE EARTHQUAKE
X. THE ENERGIES OF MEN
XI. THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR
XII. REMARKS AT THE PEACE BANQUET
XIII. THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED
XIV. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL
THE PH. D. OCTOPUS
THE TRUE HARVARD
STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY
XV. A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

I

LOUIS AGASSIZ[1]

It would be unnatural to have such an assemblage as this meet in the
Museum and Faculty Room of this University and yet have no public word
spoken in honor of a name which must be silently present to the minds
of all our visitors.

At some near future day, it is to be hoped some one of you who is well
acquainted with Agassiz's scientific career will discourse here
concerning it,--I could not now, even if I would, speak to you of that
of which you have far more intimate knowledge than I. On this social
occasion it has seemed that what Agassiz stood for in the way of
character and influence is the more fitting thing to commemorate, and
to that agreeable task I have been called. He made an impression that
was unrivalled. He left a sort of popular myth--the Agassiz legend, as
one might say--behind him in the air about us; and life comes kindlier
to all of us, we get more recognition from the world, because we call
ourselves naturalists,--and that was the class to which he also
belonged.

The secret of such an extraordinarily effective influence lay in the
equally extraordinary mixture of the animal and social gifts, the
intellectual powers, and the desires and passions of the man. From his
boyhood, he looked on the world as if it and he were made for each
other, and on the vast diversity of living things as if he were there
with authority to take mental possession of them all. His habit of
collecting began in childhood, and during his long life knew no bounds
save those that separate the things of Nature from those of human art.
Already in his student years, in spite of the most stringent poverty,
his whole scheme of existence was that of one predestined to greatness,
who takes that fact for granted, and stands forth immediately as a
scientific leader of men.

His passion for knowing living things was combined with a rapidity of
observation, and a capacity to recognize them again and remember
everything about them, which all his life it seemed an easy triumph and
delight for him to exercise, and which never allowed him to waste a
moment in doubts about the commensurability