The learned
world resolves itself into committees to consider every important
work; claiming leave to sit for as long a time as they choose,--for
years, or for a whole generation. Every alleged fact is to be
verified or cancelled or qualified, every inference to be measured
over and over again by its premises, every proposition to be tried
by all the tests that can prove its strength or weakness, and the
whole to be marshalled to the place it may claim in the alcoves of
the universal library. No hasty opinion can anticipate this final
and peremptory judgment. Its elements must of necessity be gathered
slowly from many and scattered sources. The accumulated learning of
the great centres of civilization, the patient investigation of
plodding observers, the keen insight of subtile analysts, the
jealous clairvoyance of dissentient theorists, the oblique glances
of suspicious sister-sciences, the random flashes that skepticism
throws from her faithless mirror to dazzle all eyes that seek for
truth; through such a varied and protracted ordeal must every record
that embodies long and profound observation, large and lofty thought,
reach the golden _Imprimatur_ which is its warrant for immortality.
The work of Mr. Agassiz, if we may judge it by the portion now
before us, has a right to challenge such a matured opinion, and to
wait for it.
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