Species

The Nineteenth Century, a Period of Change 133

All the more comprehensive groups, equally with Species, are based upon a posi-

tive, permanent, specific principle, maintained generation after generation with

all its essential characteristics. Individuals are the transient representatives of all

these organic principles, which certainly have an independent, immaterial exis-

tence, since they outlive the individuals that embody them, and are no less real

after the generation that has represented them for a time has passed away, than

they were before.”^80

Species are not composed of organisms, in other words; organisms at best “repre-

sent” species. And species are of the same standing as the higher taxa, which are

built upon a precise and definite plan which characterizes its Branch,—that that plan

is executed in each individual in a particular way which characterizes its Class, ...^81

and so on down to Species.
He discusses variation in domesticated animals “which has been urged with
great persistency in recent discussions” (i.e., by Darwin and his followers^82 ) but
asserts that this is due to the “fostering care” of the breeders of freaks that are
not observed in wild species,^83 and that “this in no way alters the character of
the Species.”^84

They are called Breeds, and Breeds among animals are the work of man: Species were

created by God.^85

Homologies, the foundation of Darwinian argument, are “the Creative Ideas in
living reality.”^86 All is the work of God, and we are just making classifications to
trace what God hath wrought.
Later, Agassiz further attacked “Darwinism” by means of an attack on Haeckel’s
genealogical classifications in Darwin’s name, in a chapter added to a French edi-
tion.^87 Here he attacks the apriorism of the work of Oken and those who follow the
ideal morphology school, including Haeckel in that class because he imposes his
expectations on the data, which he also accuses Darwin of doing, a point he had
made in an earlier review of the Origin. He rejects the claim of the “Darwinists and
their henchmen” that organisms will not reproduce the essential characters of their
ancestors. In Morris’ translation, Agassiz says

(^80) Agassiz, op. cit., 136.
(^81) Agassiz, op. cit., 139f.
(^82) Agassiz, op. cit., 141.
(^83) Agassiz, op. cit., 145.
(^84) Agassiz, op. cit., 141f.
(^85) Agassiz, op. cit., 147. Disarmingly, Agassiz in the very next chapter refers approvingly to Darwin’s
work on the coral reefs as a “charming little volume” [Agassiz, op. cit., 154], possibly because Darwin
consciously emulated Agassiz’s method from his ice age studies. Thanks again to Mike Dunford for
access to his copy of this work.
(^86) Agassiz, op. cit., 231.
(^87) Agassiz 1869, Morris 1997.