Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[528] anxieties of his earlier career. The occupation of teaching was so congenial to him that his part in the instruction of the school did not at any time weigh heavily upon him. He never had an audience more responsive and more eager to learn than the sixty or seventy girls who gathered every day at the close of the morning to hear his daily lecture; nor did he ever give to any audience lectures more carefully prepared, more comprehensive in their range of subjects, more lofty in their tone of thought. As a teacher he always discriminated between the special student, and the one to whom he cared to impart only such a knowledge of the facts of nature, as would make the world at least partially intelligible to him. To a school of young girls he did not think of teaching technical science, and yet the subjects of his lectures comprised very abstruse and comprehensive questions. It was the simplicity and clearness of his method which made them so interesting to his young listeners. ‘What I wish for you,’ he would say, ‘is a culture that is alive, active, susceptible of farther development. Do not think that I care to teach you this or the other special science. My instruction is only intended to show you the thoughts in nature which ’