In addition to this
was the direction his thinking had received from Cuvier. Both these
influences combined to prevent his acceptance of the new view.
He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a
barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus in the
second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half,
and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth--all made the same
effort. Each remains great; but not all of them together could
arrest the current. Agassiz's strong efforts throughout the United
States, and indeed throughout Europe, to check it, really promoted
it. From the great museum he had founded at Cambridge, from his
summer school at Penikese, from his lecture rooms at Harvard and
Cornell, his disciples went forth full of love and admiration for
him, full of enthusiasm which he had stirred and into fields which
he had indicated; but their powers, which he had aroused and
strengthened, were devoted to developing the truth he failed to
recognise; Shaler, Verrill, Packard, Hartt, Wilder, Jordan, with a
multitude of others, and especially the son who bore his honoured
name, did justice to his memory by applying what they had received
from him to research under inspiration of the new revelation.
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