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

[388] when the sight of the date fills me with confusion. And yet, for years, I have not received a letter which has given me greater pleasure or moved me more deeply. I have felt in it and have received from it that vigor of conviction which gives to all you say or write a virile energy, captivating alike to the listener or the reader. Like you, I am pained by the progress of certain tendencies in the ___domain of the natural sciences; it is not only the arid character of this philosophy of nature (and by this I mean, not natural philosophy, but the ‘Natur-philosophie’ of the Germans and French) which alarms me. I dread quite as much the exaggeration of religious fanaticism, borrowing fragments from science, imperfectly or not at all understood, and then making use of them to prescribe to scientific men what they are allowed to see or to find in Nature. Between these two extremes it is difficult to follow a safe road. The reason is, perhaps, that the ___domain of facts has not yet received a sufficiently general recognition, while traditional beliefs still have too much influence upon the study of the sciences.

Wishing to review such ideas as I had formed upon these questions, I gave a public course this winter upon the plan of creation