We shall close this article with some remarks upon the great doctrines that dominate all the manifold subordinate thoughts which fill these crowded pages. The plan of creation, Mr. Agassiz maintains, "has not grown out of the necessary action of physical laws, but was the free conception of the Almighty Intellect, matured in his thought before it was manifested in tangible, external forms." Before Mr. Agassiz, before Linnaeus, before Aristotle, before Plato, Timaeus the Locrian spake; the original, together with the version we cite, is given with the Plato of Ficinus:--"Duas esse rerum omnium causas: mentem quidem, earum quae ratione quadam nascuntur, et necessitatem, earum quae existunt vi quadam, secundum corporum potentias et faculitates. Harrum rerum, id est, Natunae bonorum, optimum esse quoddam rerum optimarum principium, et Deum vocari.... Esse praeterea in hac Naturae universitate quiddam quod maneat et intelligible sit, rerum genitarum, quae quidem in perpetuo quodam mutationum fluxu versantur, exemplar, Ideam dici et mente comprehendi.... Permanet igitur mundus constanter talis qualis est creatus a Deo ... proponente sibi non exemplaria quaedam manuum opificio edita, sed illam Ideam intelligibilemque essentiam."--So taught the half-inspired pagan philosopher whom Plato took as his guide in his contemplations of Nature. We trace the thought again in Dante, amidst the various fragments of ancient wisdom which he has embodied in the "Divina Commedia": Ciò che non muore e ciò che può morire Non è se non splendor cli quella idea Che partorisco, amando, il nosfro Sire. ----_Paradiso_, XIII. 52-54. Two thousand years after the old Greek had written, the Christian philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne, repeats the same doctrine in a new phraseology:--"_Before Abraham was, I am_, is the saying of Christ; yet it is true in some sense, if I say it of myself; for I was not only before myself, but _Adam_, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that Synod held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the World was before the Creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive; though my grave be _England_, my dying place was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain."