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.

In Short, The Animal And Vegetable Lines, Diverging Widely Above, Join Below In A Loop.

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.

This Substance, Which Is Manifold In Its Forms And Protean In Its Transformations, Has, In Its State Of Living Matter, One Physiological Name Which Has Become Familiar, That Of Protoplasm.

We Have Really, That I Know Of, No Philosophical Basis For High And Low. Moreover, The Vegetable Kingdom Does Not Culminate, As The Animal Kingdom Does. It Is Not A Kingdom, But A Common-wealth; A Democracy, And Therefore Puzzling And Unaccountable From The Former Point Of View.