Spencer, Wallace, Huxley, Galton, Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock, Bagehot, Lewes, in England, and a phalanx of strong men in Germany, Italy, France, and America gave forth works which became authoritative in every department of biology.
If some of the older men in France held back, overawed perhaps by the authority of Cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on.
One source of opposition deserves to be especially mentioned--Louis Agassiz.
A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble man, he had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation which he could not readily change.

In his heart and mind still prevailed the atmosphere of the little Swiss parsonage in which he was born, and his religious and moral nature, so beautiful to all who knew him, was especially repelled by sundry evolutionists, who, in their zeal as neophytes, made proclamations seeming to have a decidedly irreligious if not immoral bearing.

In addition to this was the direction his thinking had received from Cuvier.

Both these influences combined to prevent his acceptance of the new view.
He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a barrier across the current of evolutionary thought.

Linnaeus in the second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half, and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth--all made the same effort.