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Agassiz, Louis – Essay on Classification – The lop-sided view of the physicist
Identifier
024941
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION By LOUIS AGASSIZ
I feel it necessary to add that there are physicists who might be shocked at the idea of being considered as materialists, who are yet prone to believe that when they have recognized the laws which regulate the physical world and acknowledged that these laws were established by the Deity, they have explained everything, even when they have considered only the phenomena of the inorganic world, as if the world contained no living beings and as if these living beings exhibited nothing that differed from the inorganic world.
Mistaking for a causal relation the intellectual connection observable between serial phenomena, they are unable to perceive any difference between disorder and the free, independent, and self-possessed action of a superior mind, and call mysticism even a passing allusion to the existence of an immaterial principle in animals, which they acknowledge themselves in man.