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COSMOS:
A SKETCH
07
A PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSE.
BY
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.
TBANSLATED FBOM THB OSRMAN,
BY E. C OTTE.
Katursa vero rerum vis atquo majestas in omnibus momentis fide caret, si quis modo
partes ejus ac non totam complectatur animo. — Plin., Hist. Nat., lib. vii., c. 1.
VOL. 11.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
329 & 331 PEARL STR;EET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
18 5 6.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PART I.
INCITEMENTS TO THE STUDY OF NATURE.
Page
THE IMAGE REFLECTED BY THE EXTERNAL WORLD ON THE IMAG-
INATION. POETIC DESCRIPTION OF NATURE. LANDSCAPE PAINT-
ING. THE CULTIVATION OF EXOTIC PLANTS, WHICH CHARACTER-
IZE THE VEGETABLE PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE VARIOUS PARTS OF
THE earth's SURFACE 1 9-21
I. Description of Nature. — The Difference of Feeling excited by the
Contemplation of Nature at different Epochs and among different
Races of Men 21-82
Descriptions of Nature by the Ancients 21
Descriptions of Nature by the Greeks 22
Descriptions of Nature by the Romans 29
Descriptions of Nature in the Christian Fathers 39
Descriptions of Nature by the Indians 43
Descriptions of Nature by the Minnesingers 44
Descriptions of Nature by the Arian Races 49
Natural Descriptions by the Indians 50
Natural Descriptions in the Persian Writers ■ 52
Natural Descriptions in the Hebrew Writers 57
Hebrew Poetry 58
Literature of the Arabs 60
General Retrospect 62
Descriptions of Nature in early Italian Poets 62
Descriptions of Nature by Columbus 66
Descriptions of Nature in Camoens's Lusiad 68
Descriptions of Nature in Ercilla's Araucana 71
Calderon 73
Modern Prose Writers 74
Travelers of the fourteenth and fifteenth Centuries 78
Modern Travelers 79
Goethe 82
II. Landscape Painting, in its Influence on the Study of Nature. —
Graphical Representation of the Physiognomy of Plants. — The
Character and Aspect of Vegetation in different Zones 82—98
Landscape Painting among the Ancients 83
The Brothers Van Eyck 87
Landscape Painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries 88, 8£
Franz Post of Haarlem 90, 91
IV CONTENTS.
Fagi
Introduction of Hot-houses in our Gardens 91
The Treasures open to the Landscape Painter in the Tropics. . . 93
The Perfection of Art in Greece 94
The Condition of Art in more Modern Times 95
Tropical Scenery 96
Panoramas 98
IIL Cultivation of Tropical Plants. — Contrasts and Assemblages
of Vegetable Forms. — Impressions induced by the Physiognomy
and Character of the Vegetation 99—105
Cultivation of Exotic Plants 99
Eastern Gardens , , o « 101
Chinese Parks and Gardens , 103
Physiognomy of Nature 105
PART II.
HISTORY OF THE PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE.
PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EXTEN-
SION OF THE IDEA OF THE COSMOS AS A NATURAL WHOLE 106—118
The Knowledge of Nature among the Ancients 108
Events which have been the Means of extending a Knowledge
of Nature 109
Comparative Philology Ill
The Idea of the Unity of the Cosmos 113
History based on Human Testimony knows of no Primitive Race 114
Ancient Seats of Civilization 117
PRINCIPAL MOMENTA THAT HAVE LIJFLUENCED THE HISTORY OF
THE PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE 119
I. The Mediterranean considered as the Starting-point 119—153
Civilization in the Valley of the Nile 124
The Cultivation of the Phcsnicians 128
The Amber Trade 131
The geographical Myth of the Elysion 133
The Expeditions of Hiram and Solomon 136
The Ophir (El Dorado) of Solomon 138
The Etruscans 139
The highly-gifted Hellenic Races 140
The Landscape of Greece 143
The three Events which extended the Knowledge of the Universe 144
The Extent of Inland Traffic 146
The Doric Migrations : c 148
Contact with the East 1 49
The Passage beyond the Pillars of Hercules 151
II. Expeditions of the Macedonians under Alexander the Great 1 53—1 69
The Foundation of Greek Cities in Asia 1 53
CONTENTS. T
Pag«
The vast Sphere of new Ideas opened to Mankind by the Cam-
paigns of Alexander 155
The Countries through which the Macedonians passed 157
The Natural Products first made known 158
A.ristotIe 160
The Men of Aristotle's School 163
The Comparison of Races 165
The Schools of Babylon 166
Alexander's Advance to the Land of the Five Rivers 168
III. Extension of the Contemplation of the Universe under the
Ptolemies 170-179
The three great Ptolemies 171
The Caravan Trade, its Influence in extending a Knowledge of
different Countries 171, 172
Proofs of the Commercial Relations maintained by the Egyptians 174
The Tendency of the Schools of Alexandria 174
The Foundation of the Alexandrian Museum 175
The Alexandrian Astronomers 176
The slow Advance of Astronomy from those remote Ages to its
present high Stand 179
IV. Universal Dominion of the Romans 180—199
The Extent of the Area of the Roman Dominions 181
The few Observers of Nature who appeared at this Period 182
The Greatness of the National Character of the Romans 184
Diffusion of the Latin Tongue 185
The Expeditions undertaken by Asiatic Rulers 186
The Works of Strabo and Ptolemy 187
The Way-measurers in use among the Chinese 191
The Optical Inquiries of Ptolemy 193
The Botanical Gardens of the Romans 195
The Historia Naturalis of Pliny 195
Reference to the Influence exercised by the Establishment of
Christianity 199
V. Invasion of the Arabs 200-228
Principal Momenta of the Recognition of the Unity of Nature . . 200
The Arabs 201
Natural Products of Arabia 204, 205
Nomadic Life in Arabia 207
Mental Culture of the Arabs 208
Arabian Geographers 213
The learned Men of Arabia 216
Astronomical Works of the Arabs 222
Science of Numbers 225
VI. Period of Oceanic Discoveries 228—301
The fifteenth Centmy, its Tendencies 228
The first Discovery of America 230
VI CONTENTS.
The conjectured Discovery of America by the Irish 234
The Efforts of Missionaries 235
The Traces of Gaelic supposed to be met with in American Dia-
lects 236
The Rediscovery of America by Columbus 238
The Discovery of Tropical America 240
Albertus Magnus, Bacon, and Vincenzius of Beauvais 241
Realists and Nominalists 243
The Encyclopedic Works of the fifteenth Century 246
The Revival of Greek Literature 248
Important Events in Asia 249
Early Travelers 249, 250
Marco Polo's Narratives 251
Use of the Magnetic Needle 253
The supposed Inventor of the Mariner's Compass 254
Application of Astronomy to Navigation 255
Martyr de Anghiera 260
The Charts consulted by Columbus 261
The Characteristics of Columbus 263
The Discovery and Navigation of the Pacific 267
The first Circumnavigation of the Earth 270
The Conquistadores 271
The Discovery of the Sandwich Islands, &c 272
Spanish Travelers in the new Continent 274
Papal Line of Demarkation 277
Line without Magnetic Variation 278
The Magnetic Pole 281
The Line of Perpetual Snow 282
The Equatorial Current 283
The first Descriptions of the Southern Constellations 286
The Coal-bags and the Magellanic Clouds 286
The Southern Cross 288
The Determination of the Ship's Place 291
The Age of the Conquista 296
VII. Great Discoveries in the Heavens 301—351
The Telescope 302
The seventeenth Century 302
Nicolaus Copernicus 303
The different Stages of the Development of Cosmical Contempla-
tion 309
The Theory of Eccentric Intercalated Spheres 316
The great Men of the seventeenth Century 316
The accidental Discovery of the Telescope 317
Telescopic Discoveries 319
The Discovery of Jupiter's Satellites 320
The Spots upon the Sun 324
Galileo 324
Kepler 325
CONTENTS. VU
Page
The Zodiacal Light 329
Polarization and Interference of Light 332
Measurable Velocity of Light* 333
William Gilbert 334
Edmund Halley 335
Land and Sea Expeditions 336
Instruments for measuring Heat 337
The Electric Force 341
Otto von Guericke 342
Pneumatic Chemistry 343
Geognostic Phenomena 347
The Charm inherent in Mathematical Studies 351
VIII. Retrospect of the Epochs considered 352-356
Recapitulation 352
The Power of penetrating Space 353
Early Gems of Natural Knowledge 354
The Advance of various Sciences « 355
SUMMARY.
Vol. II.
GENERAL SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS.
A. Incitements to the Study of Nature. — The image reflected by the ex-
ternal world on the imagination Page 19-23
I. Poetic Delineation of Nature. — The feeling entertained for natur«
according to difference of times and races p. 21-82
II. Landscape Painting. — Graphical representation of the physiog-
nomy of vegetation p. 82-98
III. Cultivation of Exotic Plants. — Contrasted apposition of vegeta-
ble forms p, 99-105
B. History of the Physical Contemplation of the Universe. — Principal
momenta of the gradual development and extensipn of the idea of
the Cosmos as one natural whole p. 106-118
I. The Mediterranean the starting-point of the attempts at an ad-
vance toward the northeast (by the Argonauts), toward the south (to
Ophir), toward the west (by the Phoenicians and Colaeus of Samos).
Simultaneous reference to the earliest civilization of the nations who
dwelt around the basin of the Mediterranean p. 1 19-153
II. Campaigns of the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. — Fu-
sion of the East and West. Hellenism furthers the blending of nations
from the Nile to the Euphrates, the Jaxartes and the Indus. Sudden
extension of the contemplation of the Universe by direct observations,
as well as by intercourse with anciently-civilized industrial nations
p. 153-169
III. Increased Contemplation of the Universe under the Ptolemies. —
Museum at Serapeum. Encyclopedic learning. Generalization of nat-
ural view^s regarding the earth and the regions of space. Increased
maritime trade toward the south p. 170-179
IV. Universal Dominion of the Romans. — Influence of a political
union on Cosmical views. Advance of geography by means of inland
trade. The development of Christianity generates and fosters the feel-
in^of the unity of the human race p. 180-199
T. Irruption of the Arabian Races. — Intellectual aptitude of this
branch of the Semitic races. Taste for the study of nature and its
forces. Medicine and chemistry. Extension of physical geography,
astronomy, and the mathematic sciences generally p. 200-228
VI. Period of Oceanic Discoveries. — Opening of the western hemi-
sphere. America and the Pacific. The Scandinavians. Columbus,
Cabot, and Gama ; Cabrillo, Mendana, and Quiros. The greatest
abundance of materials now presented itself to the western nations of
Europe for the establishment of physical geography p. 228-301
VII. Period of the great Discoveries in the Regions of Space. — The
application of the telescope. Principal epochs in the history of astron-
omy and mathematics, from Galileo and Kepler to Newton and Leib-
nitz p. 301-35?
A 2
X SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS.
VIII. Retrospect. — Multiplicity and intimate connection of the scien-
tific efforts of recent times. The history of the physical sciences be-
comes gradually associated with the history of the Cosmos
Page 352-356
SPECIAL SUMMARY.
A. Means of Incitement to the Study of Nature p. 19-21
I. Poetic Delineation of Nature. — The principal results of observation
referring to a purely objective mode of treating a scientific description
of nature have already been treated of in the picture of nature ; we
now, therefore, proceed to consider the reflection of the image con-
veyed by the external senses to the feelings and a poetically-framed
imagination. The mode of feeling appertaining to the Greeks and Ro-
mans. On the reproach advanced against these nations having enter-
tained a less vivid sentiment for nature. The expression of such a sen-
timent is more rare among them, solely in consequence of natural
descriptions being used as mere accessories in the great forms of lyric
and epic poetry, and all things being brought in the ancient Hellenic
forms of art within the sphere of humanity, and being made subservi-
ent to it. Paeans to Spring, Homer, Hesiod. Tragic authors: frag-
ments of a lost work of Aristotle. Bucolic poetry, Nonnus, Anthology —
p. 27. Romans: Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Lucilius the younger
A subsequent period, in vvrhich the poetic element appears only as an
incidental adornment of thought; the Mosella, a poem of Ausonius.
Roman prose writers; Cicero in his letters, Tacitus, Pliny. Descrip-
tion of Roman villas — p. 38. Changes in the mode of feeling and in
^\e\v representation produced by the diffusion of Christianity and by
an anchorite life. Minucius Felix in Octavius. Passages taken from
the writings of the Fathers of the Church : Basil the Great in the wil-
derness on the Armenian river Iris, Gregory Nyssa, Chrysostom. Mel-
ancholy and sentimental tone of feeling — ji. 38-43. Influence of the
difterence of races manifested in the different tone of feeling pervading
the natural descriptions of the nations of Hellenic, Italian, North Ger-
manic, Semitic, Persian, and Indian descent. The florid poetic litera-
ture of the three last-named races shows that the animated feeling for
nature evinced by the North Germanic races is not alone to be ascribed
to a long deprivation of all enjoyment of nature through a protracted
winter. The opinions of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm on the chivalrii;
poetry of the Minnesingers and of the German animal epos ; Celto-Irish
descriptions of nature — p. 48. East and west Arian nations (Indians
and Persians). The Ramayana and Mahabharata; Sakuntala and Ka-
lidasa's Messenger of Clouds. Persian litei'ature in the Iranian High-
lands does not ascend beyond the period of the Sassanidfe — p. 54. (A
fragment of Theodor Goldstticker.) Finnish epic and songs, collected
by Elias Lonui'ot from the lips of the Karelians — p. 56. Aramseic na-
tions : natural poetry of the Hebrews, in which w^e trace the reflection
of Monotheism — p. 57-60. Ancient Arabic poetry. Descriptions in
Antar of the Bedouin life in the desert. Descriptions of nature in Am-
ru'l Kais — p. 61. After the downfall of the Aramaeic, Greek, and Ro-
man power, there appears Dante Alighieri, whose poetic creations
breathe from lime to time the deepest sentiment of admiration for the
terrestrial life of nature. Petrarch, Boiardo, and Vittoria Colonna.
The ^tna Dialogus and the picturesque delineation of the luxuriant
vegetation of the New World in the Historic Venetcc of Bembo. Chris-
topher Columbus — p. 66. Caiuoens'.s Lusind — p. (iS. Spanish poe-
SUMMAiiN i)V TIN-; COXTENTfi. 3C)
try : the Araucajia of Don Alouso de Ercilla. Fray Luis de Leou and
Calderou, with the remarks on the same of Ludwig Tieck. Shakepeare,
Milton, Thomson — p. 74. French prose writers : Rousseau, BufFon,
Bernardiu de St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand — p. 75-77. Review of
the narratives of the older travelers of the Middle Ages, John Mande-
ville, Hans Schiltberger, and Bernhard von Breitenbach ; contrast with
modern travelers. Cook's companion, George Forster — p. 80. The-
blame sometimes justly applied to descriptive poetiy as an independ-
ent form does not refer to the attempt either to give a picture of distant
zones visited by the writer, or to convey to others, by the force of
applicable words, an image of the results yielded by a direct contem-
plation of nature. All parts of the vast sphere of creation, from the
equator to the frigid zones, are endowed with the happy power of ex-
ercising a vivid impression on the human mind — p. 82.
II. Landscape painting in its animating influence on the study of na-
ture. In classical antiquity, in accordance with the respective mental
direction of different nations, landscape painting and the poetic delin-
eation of a particular region were neither of them independent objects
of art. The elder Philostratus. Scenography. Ludius. Evidences
of landscape painting among the Indians in the brilliant period of Vi-
kramaditya. Herculaneum and Pompeii. Painting among Christians,
from Constantine the Great to the beginning of the Middle Ages ; of
landscape painting in the historical pictures of the brothers Van Eyck.
The seventeenth century the most brilliant epoch of landscape paint-
ing. Miniatures on manuscripts — p. 87. Development of the ele-
ments of painting. (Claude Lorraine, Ruysdael, Gaspard and Nicolas
Poussin, Everdingen, Hobbima, and Cuyp.) Subsequent striving to
give natural truthfulness to the representation of vegetable forms. Rep-
resentation of tropical vegetation. Franz Post, the companion of Prince
Maurice of Nassau. Eckhout. Requirement for a representation of
the physiognomy of nature. The great and still imperfectly completed
cosmical event of the independence of Spanish and Portuguese Ameri-
ca, and the foundation of constitutional freedom in regions of the chain
of Cordilleras between the tropics, whei-e there are populous cities sit-
uated at an elevation of 14,000 feet above the level of the sea, together
with the increasing civilization of India, New Holland, the Sandwich
Islands, and Southern Africa, will undoubtedly impart a new impulse
and a more exalted character to landscape painting, no less than to me-
teorology and descriptive geography. Importance and application of
Barker's panoramas. The conception of the unity of nature and the
feeling of the harmonious accord pervading the Cosmos will increase
in force among men in proportion to the multiplication of the means for
representing all natural phenomena in delineating pictures — p. 98.
III. Cultivation of Exotic Plants. — Impression of the physiognomy
of vegetable forms, as far as plantations are capable of producing such
an impression. Landscape gardening. Earliest plantation of parks in
Central and Southern Asia. Trees and groves sacred to the gods — p.
102. The gardens of the nations of Eastern Asia. Chinese gardens
under the victorious dynasty of Han. Poem on a garden, by the Chi-
nese statesman See-ma-kuang, at the close of the eleventh century.
Prescripts of Li3U-tscheu. Poem of the Emperor Kien-long, descrip-
tive of nature. Influence of the connection of Buddhist monastic estab-
lishments on the distribution of beautifid characteristic vegetHble form«
—p. 105.
B. History of the Physifa! Contemplation of the Universe. — The histo-
XU SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS.
ry of the recognition of the universe is wholly different from the history
of the natural sciences, as given in our elementary works on physics
and on the morphology of plants and animals. This is the history of
our conception of the unity of phenomena, and of the reciprocal con
nection existing among the natural forces of the universe. Mode of
treating a history of the Cosmos : a. The independent eSbrts of reason
to gain a knowledge of natural laws ; h. Cosmical events which have
euddenly enlarged the horizon of observation ; c. The invention of new
means of sensuous perception. Languages. Points of radiation from
which civilization has been diffused. Primitive physics and the natural
science of barbarous nations obscured by civilization — p. 118.
Principal Momenta of a History of a Physical Contemplation of the
Universe.
I. The basin of the Mediterraneaji the starting-point of the attempts
to extend the idea of the Cosmos. Subdivisions in the form of the ba-
sin. Importance of the form of the Arabian Gulf. Intersection of two
geognostic systems of elevation from N.E. to S.W., and from S.S.E. to
N.N.W. Importance of the latter direction of the lines of intersection
considered, with reference to general international intercourse. An-
cient civilization of the nations dwelling round the Mediterranean.
The Valley of the Nile, the ancient and modern kingdom of the Egyp.
tians. The Phoenicians, a race who favored general intercourse, were
the means of diffusing alphabetical writing (Phoenician signs), coins as
medium of currency, and the original Babylonian weights and meas-
ures. The science of numbers, arithmetic. The art of navigating by
night. West African colonies — p. 130.
Pelasgian Tyrrhenians and Etruscans (Rasenae). Peculiar tendency
of the Etrurian races to maintain an intimate communion with natural
forces ; the fulguratores and aquileges — p. 140.
Other anciently civilized races dwelling around the Mediterranean.
Traces of cultivation in the East, under the Phrygians and Lycians ;
and in the West, under the Turduli and the Turdetaui. Dawn of Hel-
lenic power. Western Asia the great thoroughfare of nations emigra
ting from the East; the iEgean island woi-ld the connecting link be-
tween Greece and the far East. Beyond the 48th degree of latitude,
Europe and Asia are fused together, as it were, by flat steppes. Pher-
ecydes of Syros, and Herodotus, considei'ed the whole of North Scyth-
ian Asia as appertaining to Sarmatian Europe. Mai'itime power, and
Doric and Ionic habits of life transmitted to the colonial cities. Ad-
vance toward the East, to the Euxine and Colchis ; first acquaintance
with the western shore of the Caspian Sea, confounded, according to
HecatsBus, with the encircling Eastern Ocean. Inland trade and bar-
ter carried on by the chain of Scytho-scolotic races with the Argippye-
ans, Issedones, and the Arismaspes, rich in gold. Meteorological myth
of the Hyperboreans. Opening of the port of Gadeira toward the west,
which had long been closed to the Greeks. Navigation of Coheus of
Samos. A glance into the boundless ; an unceasing striving for the far
distant; accurate know^ledge of the great natural phenomenon of the
periodic swelling of the sea — p. 153.
II. Campaigns of the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, and tlit
long-enduring Influence of the Bactrian Empire. — With the excei)ti()n of
the one great event of the discovery and opening of ti-opical America
eighteen and a half centuries later, there was no other period in which
a richer field qf natnrs^l views, f^nd a more abundant mass of inrtteiiala
SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS. XUl
for the foundations of cosmical knowledge, and of comparative ethno-
logical study, were presented at once to one single portion of the human
race. The use of these materials, and the intellectual elaboration of
matter, are facilitated and rendered of more importance by the direc-
tion imparted by the Stagiidte to empirical investigation, philosophical
speculation, and to the strict definitions of a language of science. The
Macedonian expedition was, in the strictest sense of the word, a scien-
tific expedition. Callisthenes of Olynthus, the pupil of Aristotle, and
friend of Theophrastus. The knowledge of the heavens, and of the
earth and its products, was considerably increased by intercourse with
Babylon, and by the observations that had been made by the dissolved
Chaldean order of priests — p. 169.
III. Increase of the Contemplation of the Universe under the Ptole
mie$. — Grecian Egypt enjoyed the advantage of political unity, while its
geographical position, and the entrance to the Arabian Gulf, brought
the profitable traffic of the Indian Ocean within a few miles of the south-
eastern shores of the- Mediterranean. The kingdom of the Seleucidfe
did not enjoy the advantages of a maritime trade, and was frequently
shaken by the conflicting nationality of the diiferent satrapies. Active
traffic on rivers and caravan tracks with the elevated plateaux of the
Seres, north of the Uttara-Kuru and the Valley of the Oxus. Knowledge
of monsoons. Reopening of the canal connecting the Red Sea with the
Nile above Bubastus. History of this water route. Scientific institu-
tions under the protection of the Lagides ; the Alexandrian Museum,
and two collections of books in Bruchium and at Rhakotis. Peculiar
direction of these studies. A happy generalization of views manifests
itself, associated with an industrious accumulation of materials. Era-
tosthenes of Cyrene. The first attempt of the Greeks, based on imper-
fect data of the Bematists, to measure a degree between Syene and
Alexandria. Simultaneous advance of science in pure mathematics,
mechanics, and astronomy. Aristyllus and Timochares. Views enter-
tained regarding the structure of the universe by Aristarchus of Samos,
and Seleucus of Babylon or of Erythrsea. Hipparchus, the founder of
scientific astronomy, and the greatest independent astronomical observer
of antiquity. Euclid. Apollonius of Perga, and Archimedes — p. 179.
IV. Influence of the Universal Dominion of the Romans and of their
Empire on the Extension of Cosmical Vietvs. — Considering the diversity
in the configuration of the soil, the variety of the organic products, the
distant expeditions to the Amber lands, and under iElius Gallus to Ara-
bia, and the peace which the Romans long enjoyed under the monarchy
of the Caesars, they might, indeed, during four centm-ies, have afforded
more animated support to the pursuit of natural science ; but witli the
Roman national spirit perished social mobility, publicity, and the main-
tenance of individuality — the main supports of free institutions for tha
furtherance of intellectual development. In this long period, tlie only
observers of nature that present themselves to our notice are Dioscori-
des, the Cilician, and Galen of Pergamus. Claudius Ptolemy made the
first advance in an important branch of mathematical physics, and in
the study of optics, based on experiments. Material advantages of the
extension of inland trade to the interior of Asia, and the navigatinn of
Myos HoiTnos to India. Under Vespasian and Domitian, in the time
of the dynasty of Han, a Chinese army penetrates as far as the eastern
shores of the Caspian Sea. The direction of the stream of migrati )n in
Asia is from east to west, while in the new continent it inclines from
north to south. Asiatic migrations begin, a century and a half before
XIV SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS.
oar era, with the inroads of the Hiungnu, a Turkish race, on the fair-
haired, bk;e-eyed, probably ludo-Germanic race of the Yueti and Usun,
near the Chinese Wall, Roman embassadors are sent, under Marcus
Aurelius, to the Chinese court by way of Tonkin. The Emperor Clau-
dius received au embassy of the Rashias of Ceylon. The great Indian
mathematicians, Warahamihira, Brahmagupta, and probably also Arya-
bhatta, lived at more recent periods than those we are considering ; but
the elements of knowledge, which had been earlier discovered in India
in w^hoily independent and separate paths, may, before the time of Di-
ophantus, have been in part conveyed to the West by means of the ex-
tensive universal commerce carried on under the Lagides and the Cae-
sars. The influence of these widely-diffused commercial relations is
manifested in the colossal geographical works of Strabo and Ptolemy.
The geographical nomenclature of the latter writer has recently, by a
careful study of the Indian languages and of the history of the west Ira-
nian Zend, l)een recognized as a historical memorial of these remote
commercial relations. Stupendous attempt made by Phny to give a
description of the universe ; the characteristics of his encyclopedia of
nature and art. While the long-enduring influence of the Roman do-
minion manifested itself in the history of the contemplation of the uni-
verse as an element of union and fusion, it was reserved for the diffu-
sion of Christianity (when that Ibrm of faith was, from political motives,
forcibly raised to be the religion of the state of Byzantium) to aid iu
awakening an idea of the unity of the human race, and by degrees to
give to that idea its proper value amid the miserable dissensions of re-
ligious parties — p. 199.
V. Irruption of the Arabs. — Effect of a foreign element on the pro-
cess of development of European civilization. The Arabs, a Semitic
primitive race susceptible of cultivation, in part dispel the barbarism
which for two hundred years had covered Europe, which had been
shaken by national convulsions ; they not only maintain ancient civil-
ization, but extend, it, and. open new paths to natural investigation.
Geographical figure of the Arabian peninsula. Products of Hadramaut,
Yemen, and Oman. Mountain chains of Dschebel-Akhdar, and Asyr.
Gerrha, the ancient emporium for Indian wares, opposite to the Phoe-
nician settlements of Aradus and Tylus. The northern portion of the
peninsula was brought into animated relations of contact with other
cultivated states, by means of the spread of Arabian races in the Syro-
Palestinian frontier mountainous districts and the lands of the Euphra-
tes. Pre-existing indigenous civilization. Ancient participation in the
general commerce of the universe. Hostile advances to the West and
to the East. Hyksos and Ariaeus, prince of the Himyarites, the allies
of Minus on the Tigris. Peculiar character of the nomadic life of the
Arabs, together with their caravan tracks and their populous cities — p.
200-208. Influence of the Nestorians, Syrians, and of the pharmaceu-
tico-medicinal school at Edessa. Taste for inteixourse with nature and
her forces. The Arabs were the actual founders of the physical and
chemical sciences. The science of medicine. Scientific institutions in
the brilliant epoch of Almansur, Haroun Al-Raschid, Mamun, and Mo-
tasem. Scientific intercourse with India. Employment made of the
Tscharaka and the Susruta, and of the ancient technical arts of the
Egyptians. Botanical gardens at Cordova, under the C;ilif Abdurrah-
man the poet — p. 208-217. Efforts made at independent astronomical
observations and the improvement in instruments. Ebn Junis employs
the pendulum as a measure of time. The vvoik of Alhuzen <n\ the re-
SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS. XV
fraction of rays. Indian planetary tables. The disturbance in the
moon's longitude recognized by Abul Wefa, Astronomical Congress
of Toledo, to which Alfonso of Castille invited Rabbis and Arabs. Ob-
servatoiy at Meraglia, of Ulugh Beig, the descendant of Timnr, at Sam-
arcand, and its inflaence. Measurement of a degree in the plain be-
tween Tadmor and Rakka. The Algebra of the Arabs has originated
from two currents, Indian and Greek, which long flowed independent-
ly of one another. Mohammed Ben Musa, the Chowarezmier. Dio-
phantus, first translated into Arabic at the close of the tenth centur)--,
l)y Abul Wefa Buzjani. By the same path which brought to the Arabs
the knowledge of Indian Algebra, they likewise obtained in Persia and
on the Euphrates the Indian numerals and the knowledge of the ingen-
ious device of Position, or the employment of the value of position.
They transmitted this custom to the revenue officers in Northern Afri-
ca, opposite to the coasts of Sicily. The probability that the Christians
of the West were acquainted with Indian numerals eai-lier than the
Arabs, and that they were acquainted, under the name of the system
of the Abacus, with the employment of nine ciphers, according to their
position-value. The value of position was known in the Suanpan, de-
rived from the interior of Asia, as well as in the Tuscan Abacus. Would
a permanent dominion of the Arabs, taking into account their almost
exclusive predilection for the scientific (natural, descriptive, physical,
and astronomical) results of Greek investigation, have been beneficial
to a general and free mental cultivation, and to the creative power of
art?— p. 219-228.
VI. Period of the great Oceanic Discoveries. — America and the Pa-
cific. Events and extension of scientific knowledge which prepared
the way for great geogi'aphical discoveries. As the acquaintance of the
nations of Europe with the western portion of the globe constitutes the
main object of this section, it is absolutely necessary to divide in an in-
contestable manner the first discovery of America in its northern and
temperate zone by the Northmen, from the rediscovery of the same con-
tinent in its tropical regions. While the Califate of Bagdad flourished
under the Abbassides, America was discovered and investigated to the
41^° north latitude by Leif, the son of Erik the Red. The Faroe Islands
and Iceland, accidentally discovered by Naddod, must be regarded as
intermediate stations, and as stai'ting points for the expeditions to the
Scandinavian portions of America. The eastern coasts of Greenland in
Scoresby's Land (Svalbord), the eastern coasts of Baffin's Bay to 72°
55', and the entrance of Lancaster Sound and Barrow's Straits, were
all visited — Earlier (?) Irish discoveries. The White Men's Land be-
tween Virginia and Florida. Whether, previously to Naddod and In-
golf's colonization of Iceland, this island was inhabited by Irish (West-
men from American Great Ireland), or by Irish missionaries {Papar,
the Clerici of Dicuil), driven by the Northmen from the Farofe Islands?
The national treasures of the most ancient records of Northern Europe,
endangered by disturbances at home, were transferred to Iceland, which
three and a half centuries earlier enjoyed a free social Constitution, and
w^ere thei'e preserved to future ages. We are acquainted with the com-
mercial relations existing between Greenland and New Scotland (the
American Markland) up to 1347 ; but as Greenland had lost its repub-
lican Constitution as early as 1261, and, as a crown fief of Norway, had
been interdicted from holding intercourse with strangers, and there-
fore also with Iceland, it is not surprising that Columbus, when he vis-
ited Iceland in 1477. should have obtained no tidings of the new conti-
XVI SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS.
nent situated to the west. Commercial relations existed, however, a«
late as 1484, between the Norwegian port of Bei-gen and Greenluud—
p. 228-238.
Widely different, in a cosmical point of view, from the isolated and
barren event of the first discovery of the new continent by the North-
men, was its rediscovery in its tropical regions by Christopher Colum-
bus, although that navigator, seeking a shorter route to Eastern Asia,
had not the object of discovering a new continent, and, like Amerigo
Vespucci, believed to the time of his death that he had simply reached
the eastern shores of Asia. The influence exercised by the nautical
discoveries of the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the six-
teenth century on the rich abundance of the ideal world, can not be
thoroughly understood until we have thrown a glance on the ages which
separate Columbus from the blooming period of cultivation under the
Arabs. That which gave to the age of Columbus the peculiar character
of an uninterrupted and successful striving for an extended knowledge
of the earth, was the appearance of a small number of daring minds
(Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam),
who incited to independent thought and to the investigation of sepa-
rate natural phenomena ; the revived acquaintance with the works of
Greek literature ; the invention of the art of printing ; the missionary
embassies to the Mogul princes, and the mercantile travels to Eastern
Asia and South India (Marco Polo, Mandeville, and Nicolo de' Conti);
the improvement of navigation ; and the use of the mariner's compass
or the knowledge of the north and south pointing of the magnetic
needle, which we owe to the Chinese through the Arabs — p. 238-254.
Early expeditions of the Catalans to the western shores of Tropical
Africa; discoveiy of the Azoi'es ; general atlas of Picigano, of 1367. Re-
lations of Columbus to Toscanelli and Martin Alonso Pinzon. The more
recently known chart of Juan de la Cosa. The South Pacific and its
islands — p. 255-273. Discovery of the magnetic line of no variation in
the Atlantic Ocean. Inflection observed in the isothermal lines a hund-
red nautical miles to the west of the Azores. A physical line of demark-
ation is converted into a political one ; t|ie line of demarkation of Pope
Alexander VI., of the 4th of May, 1493. Knowledge of the distribution
of heat ; the line of perpetual snow is recognized as a function of geo-
graphical latitude. Movement of the waters in the Atlantic Ocean.
Great beds of sea-weed — p. 273-285. Extended view into the wodd
of space ; an acquaintance with the stars of the southern sky ; more a
sensuous than a scientific knowledge. Improvement in the method of
determining the ship's place ; the political requirement for establishing
the position of the papal line of demarkation increased the endeavor to
discover practical methods for determining longitude. The discovery
and first colonization of America, and the voyage to the East Indies
round the Cape of Good Hope, coincide with the highest perfection of
art, and with the attainment of intellectual freedom by means of relig-
ious reform, the forerunner of gi-eat political convulsions. The daring
enterprise of the Genoese seaman is the first link in the immeasurable
chain of mysterious events. Accident, and not the deceit or intrigues
of Amerigo Vespucci, deprived the Continent of America of the niune
of Columbus. Influence of the New World on political institutions,
and on the ideas and inclinations of the people of the Old Continent—
p. *285-301.
VII. Period of great Discoveries in the Regions of Space. — The ap-
plication of the telescope: a more correct viev\ uf the structure of tVio
SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS. XVU
Universe prepared the way for these discoveries. Nicholas Copernicus
was engaged in making observations with the astronomer Brudzewski
at Cracow when Columbus discovered America. Ideal connection be-
tween the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by Peurbach and Re-
giomontanus. Copernicus never advanced his system of the universe
as an hypothesis, but as incontrovertible ti'uth — p. 301-313. Kepler
and the empirical planetary laws which he discovered — p. 313-317.
Invention of the telescope; Hans Lippershey, Jacob Adriaansz (Meti-
us), and Zacharias Janseu. The first fruits of telescopic vision : mount-
ains of the moon ; clusters of stars and the Milky Way ; the four satel-
lites of Jupiter ; the triple configuration of Saturn ; the crescent fomi
of Venus ; solar spots ; and the period of rotation of the sun. The dis-
covery of the small system of Jupiter indicates a memorable epoch in
the fate and sound foundation of astronomy. The discovery of Jupiter's
satellites gave rise to the discovery of the velocity of light, and the rec-
ognition of this velocity led to an explanation of the aberration-ellipse
of the fixed stars — the perceptive evidence of the translatory movement
of the earth. To the discoveries of Galileo, Simon Maiius, and Johanu
Fabricius followed the discovery of Saturn's satellites by Huygens and
Cassini, of the zodiacal light as a revolving isolated nebulous ring by
Childrey, of the variation in brilliancy of the light of the fixed stars by
David Fabricius, Johann Bayer, and Holwarda. A nebula devoid of
stars in Andromeda described by Simon Marius — p. 317-331. While
the seventeenth century owed at its commencement its main brilliancy
to the sudden extension of the knowledge of the regions of space afforded
by Galileo and Kepler, and at its close to the advance made in pure
mathematical science by Newton and Leibnitz, the most important of
the physical problems of the processes of light, heat, and magnetism,
likewise experienced a beneficial progress during this great age. Double
refraction and polarization ; traces of the knowledge of the interference
of light in Grimaldi anc^Hooke. William Gilbei*t separates magnetism
from electricity. Knowledge of the periodical advance of lines with-
out vai-iatiou. Halley's early conjecture that the polar light (the phos-
phorescence of the earth) is a magnetic phenomenon. Galileo's ther-
moscope, and its employment for a series of regular diurnal observations
at stations of different elevation. Researches into the radiation of heat.
Ton-icellian tubes, and measurements of altitude by the position of the
mercury in them. Knowledge of aerial currents, and the influence of
the earth's rotation on them. Law of rotation of the winds conjectured
by Bacon. Happy, but short-lived, influence of the Accademia del Ci-
mento on the establishment of mathematical natural philosophy, as based
on experiment. Attempts to measure the humidity of the atmosphere ;
condensation hygrometer. The electric process ; telluric electricity ;
Otto von Guericke sees, for the first time, light in induced electricity.
Beginnings of pneumatic chemistry ; observed increase of weight in
metals from oxydation; Cardanus and Jean Rey, Hooke and Mayovv.
Ideas on the fundamental part of the atmosphere (spiritus nitro-aeretis),
which enters into all metallic calxes, and is necessary to all the processes
of combustion, and the respiration of animals. Influence of physical
and chemical knowledge on the development of geognosy (Nicolaus
Steno, Scilla, Lister) ; the elevation of the sea's bottom and of littoral
districts. In the greatest of all geognostic phenomena — the mathemat-
ical figure of the earth — we see perceptibly reflected all the conditions
of a primitive age, or, in other words, the primitive fluid state of the
rotating mass and its consolidation into a terrestrial spheroid. Meas-
YVUl SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS.
urements of degrees and pendulum experiments in different latitudes.
Compression. The figure of the earth was known to Newton on theo-
retical grounds, and the force discovered, of the operation of which the
laws of Kepler are a necessary consequence. The discovery of such a
force, whose existence is developed in Newton's imperishable work
Principia, w^as nearly simultaneous with the opening of new paths to
mathematical discovery by the invention of the infinitesimal calculus —
p. 331-352.
VIII. Retrospect, Multiplicity, and intimate Connection existing among
the Scientijic Efforts of Modern Times. — Retrospect of the principal
momenta in the history of cosmical contemplation connected with great
events. The multiplicity of the links of connection among the different
branches of science in the present day increases the diflHculty of separ-
ating and limiting the individual portions — Intellectual activity hence-
forth produces great results almost without any external incitement,
and by its own internal power manifested in every direction. The his-
tory of the physical sciences gradually fuses into that of the idea of
Universal Nature — p. 352-356.
COSMOS.
PART I.
INCITEMENTS TO THE STUDY OF NATURE.
THE IMAGE REFLECTED BY THE EXTERNAL WORLD ON THE IMAGIN-
ATION.—POETIC DESCRIPTION OF NATURE.-LANDSCAPE PAINTING—
THE CULTIVATION OF EXOTIC PLANTS, WHICH CHARACTERIZE THE
VEGETABLE PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE VARIOUS PARTS OF THE EARTH'S
SURFACE.
We are now about to proceed from the sphere of objects to
that of sensations. The main results of observation, which,
stripped of all the extraneous charms of fancy, belong to the
purely objective domain of a scientific delineation of nature,
have been considered in the former part of this work in the
mutually connected relations, by which they constitute one
sole picture of the universe. It now, therefore, remains for
us to consider the impressions reflected by the external senses
on the feelings, and on the poetic imagination of mankind.
An inner world is here opened before us, but in seeking to
penetrate its mysterious depths, we do not aspire, in turning
over the leaves of the great book of Nature, to arave at that
solution of its problems which is required by the philosophy
of art in tracing aesthetic actions through the psychical powers
of the mind, or through the various manifestations of intel-
lectual activity, but rather to depict the contemplation of
natural objects as a means of exciting a pure love of nature,
and to investigate the causes which, especially in recent times,
have, by the active medium of the imagination, so powerfully
encouraged the study of nature and the predilection for dis-
tant travels.^ The inducements which promote such con-
templations of nature are, as I have already remarked, of
three different kinds, namely, the aesthetic treatment of nat-
ural scenery by animated delineations of animal and vegetable
forms, constituting a very recent liranch of literature ; land-
scape painting, especially where it has caught the character-
istic features of the animal and vegetable world ; and the
* See vol. i., p. 57.
20 COSMOS.
more widely-diffused cultivation of tropical floras, and the
more strongly contrasting opposition of exotic and indigenous
forms. Each of these might, owing to their historical rela-
tions, be made the object of a widely-extending consideration,
but it appears to me more in conformity with the spirit and
aim of this work merely to unfold a few leading ideas, in order
to remind the reader how differently the aspect of nature has
acted on the intellect and feelings of different nations at dif-
ferent epochs, and how, at periods characterized by general
mental cultivation, the severer forms of science and the more
delicate emanations of fancy have reciprocally striven to infuse
their spirit into one another. In order to depict nature in its
exalted sublimity, we must not dwell exclusively on its extern-
al manifestations, but we must trace its image, reflected in
the mind of man, at one time fiUing the dreamy land of phys-
ical myths with forms of grace and beauty, and at another
developing the noble germ of artistic creations.
In limiting myself to the simple consideration of the in-
citements to a scientific study of nature, I would not, how-
ever, omit calling attention to the fact that impressions arising
from apparently accidental circumstances often — as is repeat-
edly confirmed by experience — exercise so powerful an effect
on the youthful mind as to determine the whole direction of
a man's career through life. The child's pleasure in the form
of countries, and of seas and lakes,*' as delineated in maps ;
the desire to behold southern stars, invisible in our hemis-
phere ;t the representation of palms and cedars of Lebanon
as depicted in our illustrated Bibles, may all implant in the
mind the first impulse to travel into distant countries. If I
might be permitted to instance my own experience, and recall
to mind the source from whence sprang my early and fixed
desire to visit the land of the tropics, I should name George
Forster's Delineations of the South Sea Islands, the pictures
of Hodge, which represented the shores of the Ganges, and
which I first saw at the house of Warren Hastings, in Lon-
don, and a colossal dragon-tree in an old tower of the Botan-
ical Garden at Berlin. These objects, which I here instance
by way of illustration, belong to the three classes of induce-
* As the configuration of the counti'Ies of Italy, Sicily, and Greece,
and of the Caspian and Red Seas. See Relation Historique du Yoy. aux
Rigions Equinoxiales, t. i., p. 208.
+ Dante, Furg., i., 25-28.
Goder pareva il ciel di lor fiammelle :
O settentrional vedovo sito,
Poi che private se' di mirar quelle !
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE ANCIENTS. 21
ments which we have already named, viz., the description of
nature when springing from an animated impression of terres-
trial forms ; the delineative art of landscape painting ; and,
lastly, the direct objective consideration of the characteristic
features of natural forms. The power exercised by these in-
citements is, however, limited to the sphere embraced by mod-
ern cultivation, and to those individuals whose minds havt
been rendered more susceptible to such impressions by a pe
culiar disposition, fostered by some special direction in the de
velopment of their mental activity.
DESCRIPTION OF NATURE.— THE DIFFERENCE OF FEELING EXCITED
BY THE CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE AT DIFFERENT EPOCHS AND
AMONG DIFFERENT RACES OF MEN.
It has often been remarked that, although the enjoyment
derived from the contemplation of nature was not wholly un-
know^i to the ancients, the feeling was, nevertheless, much
more rarely, and less vividly expressed than in modern times.
In his considerations on the poetry of the sentiments, Schiller
thus expresses himself:* "If we bear in mind the beautiful
scenery with which the Greeks were surrounded, and remem-
ber the opportunities possessed by a people living in so genial
a climate, of entering into the free enjoyment of the contem-
plation of nature, and observe how conformable were their
mode of thought, the bent of their imaginations, and the hab-
its of their lives to the simplicity of nature, which was so faith-
fully reflected in their poetic works, we can not fail to remark
with surprise how few traces are to be met among them of
the sentimental interest with which we, in modern times, at-
tach ourselves to the individual characteristics of natural scen-
ery. The Greek poet is certainly, in the highest degree,
correct, faithful, and circumstantial in his descriptions of na-
ture, but his heart has no more share in his w^ords than if he
were treating of a garment, a shield, or a suit of armor. Na-
ture seems to interest his understanding more than his moral
perceptions ; he does not cling to her charms with the fervor
and the plaintive passion of the poet of modern times."
However much truth and excellence there may be in these
* See Schiller's SummtUche V/erke, 1826, bd. xviii., s. 231, 473, 480,
486; Gei-viuus, Neuere Gesch. der Poet. National-Litter atiir der Dent'
tchen, 1840, bd. i., s. 135 ; Adolpli Bekker, ia Charikles, tli. i., s. 219.
Compare, also, EduarJ Miiller, Ueher Sophokleische NaturanschauunQ
und die fiefe Naturempfind^ins: der Griechen, 1842, s, 10, 26,
22 COSMOS.
remarks, they must not be extended to the whole of antiquity ;
and I moreover consider that we take a very Hmited view of
antiquity when, in contradistinction to the present time, we
restrict the term exclusively to the Greeks and Romans. A
profound feeling of nature pervades the most ancient poetry
of the Hebrews and Indians, and exists, therefore, among na-
tions of very different descent — Semitic and Indo-Germanic.
We can only draw conclusions regarding the feelings enter-
tained by the ancients for nature from those expressions of the
sentiment which have come down to us in the remains of their
literature, and we must, therefore, seek them with a care, and
judge of them with a caution proportionate to the infrequency
of their occurrence in the grand forms of lyric and epic poetry.
In the periods of Hellenic antiquity — the flowery season in
the history of mankind — we certainly meet with the tenderest
expressions of deep natural emotion, blended with the most
poetic representations of human passion, as delineating some
action derived from mythical history ; but specific descriptions
of nature occur only as accessories, for, in Grecian art, all
things are centered in the sphere of human life.
The description of nature in its manifold richness of form,
as a distinct branch of poetic literature, was wholly unknown
to the Greeks. The landscape appears among them merely
as the back-ground of the picture of which human figures con-
stitute the main subject. Passions, breaking forth into action,
riveted their attention almost exclusively. An active life,
spent chiefly in public, drew the minds of men from dwelling
with enthusiastic exclusiveness on the silent workings of na-
ture, and led them always to consider physical phenomena as
having reference to mankind, whether in the relations of ex-
ternal conformation or of internal development.* It was al-
most exclusively under such relations that the consideration
of nature was deemed worthy of being admitted into the do-
main of poetry under the fantastic form of comparisons, which
often present small detached pictures replete with objective
truthfulness.
At Delphi, pseans to Spring were sung,t being intended,
* Schnaase, Geschichte der bildenden Kunste bei den Alien, bd. ii.,
1843, s. 128-138.
t Flat., de E. I. apud Delphos, c. 9 [an attempt of Plutarch's to explain
the meaning of an inscription at the entrance of the temple of Delphi.
— Tr."]' Regarding a passage of Apollonius Dyscolus of Alexandria
{Mirab. Hist., c. 40), see Otfr. MliUer's last work, Gesch. der Griech.
Litteratur, bd. i., 1845, s. 31.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREERS. 23
probably, to express the delight of man at the termination of
the discomforts of winter. A natural description of winter is
interwoven (perhaps by the hand of some Ionian rhapsodist)
in the Works and Days of Hesiod.* This poem, which is
composed with noble simplicity, although in accordance with
the rigid didactic form, gives instructions regarding agriculture,
directions for different kinds of trade and labor, and ethic pre-
cepts for a blameless course of life. It is only elevated to the
dignity of a lyric poem when the poet clothes the miseries of
mankind, or the exquisite mythical allegory of Epimetheus
and Pandora, in an anthropomorphic garb. In the theogony
of Hesiod, which is composed of many ancient and dissimilar
elements, we frequently find, as, for instance, in the enumer-
ation of the Nereides,! natural descriptions of the realm of
Neptune concealed under the significant names of mythical
characters. The Boeotian, and, indeed, all the ancient schools
of poetry, treat only of the phenomena of the external world,
under the personification of human forms.
But if, as we have already remarked, natural descriptions,
whether they delineate the richness and luxuriance of tropical
vegetation, or portray the habits of animals, have only become
a distinct branch of literature in the most recent times, thif
circumstance must not be regarded as a proof of the absence
of susceptibiHty for the beauties of nature, where the percep-
tion of beauty was so intense, $ nor must we suppose that the
animated expression of a spirit of poetic contemplation was
wanting to the Greeks, who have transmitted to us such in-
imitable proofs of their creative faculty alike in poetry and in
sculpture. All that we are led by the tendency of our modern
ideas to discover as deficient in this department of ancient lit-
erature is rather of a negative than of a positive kind, being
evinced less in the absence of susceptibility than in that oi
the urgent impulse to give expression in words to the senti-
ment awakened by the charms of nature. Directed less to
* Hesiodi Opera et Dies, y. 502-561. Gottling, in Hes. Carm., 1831;
p. xix. ; Uhici, Gesch. der Hellenischen Dichtkunst, th. i., 1835, s. 337.
Bernhardy, Grundriss der Griech. Litteratur, th. ii., s. 176. According
to the opinion of Gottfr. Hermann {Opuscula, vol. vi., p. 239\ "the
picturesque description given by Hesiod of winter beai-s all the evi-
dence of great antiquity."
t Hes., Theog., v. 233-264. The Nereid Mera (Oi., xi., 326 ; H.,
xviii., 48) may perhaps be indicative of the phosphoric light seen on
the surface of the sea, in the same manner as the same word fialpa des«
i^ates the sparkling dog-star Sirius.
t Compare Jacobs, Leben und Knnst der Alien, bd. i., abth. i., s. vii.
24 COSMOS.
the inanimate world of phenomena than to the realities ot" act-
ive life, and to the inner and spontaneous emotions of the
mind, the earliest, and, at the same time, the noblest direc-
tions of the poetic spirit were epic and lyric. In these arti-
ficial forms, descriptions of nature can only occur as incidental
accessories, and not as special creations of fancy. As the in-
fluence of antiquity gradually disappeared, and as the bright
beauty of its blossoms faded, rhetorical figures became more
and more diffused through descriptive and didactic poetry.
This form of poetry, which in its earliest philosophical, half-
sacerdotal type, was solemn, grand, and devoid of ornament
— as we see exemplified in the poem of Empedocles On Na-
ture— by degrees lost its simplicity and earlier dignity as it
became more strongly marked by a rhetorical character.
I may be permitted here to mention a few particular in-
stances in illustration of these general observations. In con-
formity with the character of the Epos, we find the most at-
tractive scenes of nature introduced in the Homeric songs
merely as secondary adjuncts. " The shepherd rejoices in
the stillness of night, in the purity of the sky, and in the
starry radiance of the vault of heaven ; he hears from afar
the rush of the mountain torrent, as it pursues its foaming
course swollen with the trunks of oaks that have been borne
along by its turbid waters."* The sublime description of the
sylvan loneliness of Parnassus, with its somber, thickly- wooded
and rocky valleys, contrasts with the joyous pictures of the
many-fountained poplar groves in the Phseacian island of
Scheria, and especially of the land of the Cyclops, " where
meadows waving with luxuriant and succulent grass encircle
the hills of unpruned vines, "t Pindar, in a dithyrambus in
praise of Spring, recited at Athens, sings of" the earth covered
with new-born flowers, when, in the Argive Nemsea, the first
opening shoot of the palm announces the coming of balmy
Spring." Then he sings of ^tna as "the pillar of heaven,
the fosterer of enduring snow ;" but he quickly turns away
* Ilias, viii., 555-559; iv., 452-455; xi., 115-119. Compare, also,
the crowded but animated description of the animal world, which pre-
cedes the review of the army, ii,, 458-475.
t Od., xix., 431-445; vi., 290; ix., 115-199. Compare, also, "the
Verdant overshadowing of the grove" near Calypso's grotto, " where
even an immortal would linger with admiration, rejoicing in the beau-
tiful view," V. 55-73 ; the breaking of the surf on the shores of the
Phaeacian Islands, v. 400-442; and the gardens of AlcinoLis, vii., 113-
130. On the vernal dithyrambus of Pindar, see Bockh, Pindari Operas
t ii., part ii., p. 575-579.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE B^ THE GREEKS. 26
from these terrific forms of inanimate nature to celebrate Hi-
ero of Syracuse, and the victorious combats of the Greeks with
the mighty race of the Persians.
We must not forget that Grecian scenery presents the pe-
euhar charm of an intimate association of land and sea, of
shores adorned with vegetation, or picturesquely girt round by
rocks gleaming in the light of aerial tints, and of an ocean
beautiful in the play of the ever-changing brightness of its
deep-toned moving waves.
Although to other nations, sea and land, in the different
pursuits of life to which they give rise, appeared as two sep-
arate spheres of nature, the Greeks — not only those who in-
habited the islands, but also those occupying the southern
portion of the continent — enjoyed, almost every where, the as-
pect of the richness and sublime grandeur imparted to the
scenery by the contact and mutual influence of the two ele-
ments. How can we suppose that so intellectual and highly-
gifted a race should have remained insensible to the aspect of
the forest-crowned cliH's on the deeply-indented shores of the
Mediterranean, to the silent interchange of the influences af-
fecting the surface of the earth, and the lower strata of the
atmosphere at the recurrence of regular seasons and hours, or
to the distribution of vegetable forms ? How, in an age when
the poetic feelings were the strongest, could this active state
of the senses have failed to manifest itself in ideal contempla-
tion ? The Greek regarded the vegetable world as standing
in a manifold and mythical relation to heroes and to the gods,
who were supposed to avenge every injury inflicted on the
trees and plints sacred to them. Imagination animated veg-
etable foi'u.o with life, but the types of poetry, to which the
peculiar direction of mental activity among the ancient Greeks
limited them, gave only a partial development to the descrip-
tions of natural scenery. Occasionally, however, even in the
writings of their tragic poets, a deep sense of the beauty of
nature breaks forth in animated descriptions of scener}'" in the
midst of the most excited passions or the deepest tones of sad-
ness. Thus, when CEdipus is approaching the grove of the
Eumenides, the chorus sings, "the noble resting-place of the il-
lustrious Colonos, where the melodious nightingale loves to tar-
ry and pour forth its clear but plaintive notes." Again it sings,
" the verdant gloom of the thickly-mantling ivy, the narcissus
steeped in heavenly dew, the golden-beaming crocus, and the
hardy and ever fresh-sprouting ohve-tree."* Sophocles strives
* CEd. Colon., V. 668-719. Among delineations of scenery, indica-
Vol. II.— B
26 COSMOS.
to extol his native Colonos by placing the lofty form of the
fated and royal wanderer by the brink of the sleepless waters
of Cephisus, surrounded by soft and bright scenery. The re-
pose of nature heightens the impression of pain called forth by
the image of the noble form of the blind sufferer, the victim
of mysterious and fatal passion. Euripides* also delights, in
picturesque descriptions of" the pastures of Messenia and La-
conia, which, under an ever-mild sky, are refreshed by a thou-
sand fountains, and by the waters of the beautiful Pamisos."
Bucolic poetry, which originated in the plains of Sicily, and
popularly inclined to the dramatic, has been justly termed a
transitional form. Its pastoral epics describe on a small scale
human beings rather than natural scenery ; and in this form
it appears in its greatest perfection in the writings of Theoc-
ritus. A soft elegiac element is peculiar to the idyl, as if it
had emanated from " the longing for some lost idea ;" as if,
in the breast of mankind, a certain touch of melancholy was
ever mingled with the deep feelings awakened by the aspect
of nature.
True Hellenic poetry expired with the freedom of the
Greeks, and became descriptive, didactic, and instructive. As-
tronomy, geography, hunting, and fishing were converted, in
the time of Alexander, into objects of poetic consideration, and
often adorned with a remarkable degree of metrical skill. The
forms and habits of animals are depicted with grace, and not
unfrequently with such accuracy that the particular genera
or even species may be recognized by the classifying natural-
ist of the present day. x\ll these compositions are, however,
wholly wanting in that inner lile — that inspired contempla-
tion of nature — by which the external world becomes to the
poet, almost unconsciously to himself, a subject of his imagin-
tive of a deep feeling of nature, I would here further mention the de-
scription of Cithseron in the Bac-chcB of Euripides, v. 1045 (Leake, North.
Greece, vol. ii., p. 370), where the messenger ascends from the Valley
of Asopus, the reference to the sunrise in the Valley of Delphos, in the
Ion of Euripides, v. 82, and the gloomy picture in the Hymn on Delos,
V. 11, by Callimachus, in which the holy Delos is represented as sur-
rounded by sea-gulls, and scourged by tempestuous waves.
* According to Strabo (lib. viii., p. 366, Casaub.), who accuses the
tragedian of giving a geographically incorrect boundary to Blis. This
beautiful passage of Euripides occurs in the Cresphontes. The descrip-
tion of the excellence of the district of Messenia is intimately connected
with the exposition of its political relations, as, for instance, the division
of the land among the Heraclida?. The delineation of nature is, there-
fore, here too, a:s B5ckh ingeniously remarks, associated with human
interests.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE GREEKS. 27
ation. The preponderance of the descriptive element shows
itself in the forty-eight cantos of the Dionysiaca of the Egyp-
tian Nonnus, which are remarkable ibr their skillfully artist-
ical versification. The poet dwells with pleasure on the de-
lineation of great convulsions of nature ; he makes a fire kin-
dled by lightning on the woody banks of the Hydaspes bum
up even the fishes in the bed of the river ; and he shows how
ascending vapors occasion the meteorological processes of the
storm and electric rain. Although capable of writing roman-
tic poetry, Nonnus of Panopolis is remarkably unequal in his
style, being at one time animated and exciting, and at another
tedious and verbose.
A deeper feeling for nature and a greater delicacy of sensi-
bility is manifested in some portions of the Greek Anthology,
which "has been transmitted to us in such various ways and
from such different epochs. In the graceful translation of
Jacobs, every thing that relates to animal and vegetable forms
has been collected in one section — these passages being small
pictures, consisting, in most cases, of mere allusions to indi-
vidual forms. The plane-tree, which " nourishes amid its
branches the grape swelling with juice," and which, in the
time of Dionysius the Elder, first penetrated from Asia Minor
through the Island of Diomedes to the shores of the Sicilian
Anapus, is perhaps too often introduced ; still, on the whole,
the ancient mind shows itself more inclined, in these songs
and epigrams, to dwell on the animal than on the vegetable
world. The vernal idyl of Meleager of Gadara, in Ccfilo-Syr-
ia, is a noble, and, at the same time, a more considerable com-
position.*
* Meleagri Reliquice, ed. Mauso, p. 5. Compare Jacobs, Leben una
Kunst der Alten, bd. i., abth. i., s. xv. ; abth. ii., s. 150-190. Zenobetti
believed himself to have been the first to discover Meleager's poem on
Spring, in the middle of the eighteenth century {Mel. Gadareni in Ver
Idyllicni, 1759, p. 5). See Briincku Anal., t. iii., p. 105. There are
two fine sylvan poems of Marianos in the Anthol. Grceca, ii., 511 and
512. Meleager's poem contrasts well with the praise of Spring in the
eclogues of Himerius, a Sophist, who was teacher of rhetoric at Athens
under Julian. The style, on the whole, is cold and profusely ornate ;
but in some parts, especially in the descriptive portions, this writer
sometimes approximates closely to the modern way of considering na-
ture. Himerii Sophistce Eclogce et Declamationes, ed. Wernsdorf, 1790.
(Oratio iii., 3-6, and xxi., 5.) It seems extraordinary that the lovely
situation of Constantinople should not have inspired the Sophists.
(Orat. vii., 5—7 ; xvi., 3-8.) The passages of Nonnus, referred to in the
text, occur in Dionys., ed. Petri Cunaei, 1610, lib. ii., p. 70 ; vi., p. 199,
xxiii., p. 16 and 619 ; xxvi., p. 694. Compare, also, Ouwarotf, Nonnu*
von Panopolis, der Dichter, 1817, s. 3, 16. 21.
28 COSMOS.
On account of the renown attached from ancient times to
the spot, I would not omit to mention the description of the
wooded valley of Terape, as given by ^lian,* probably in im-
itation of some earlier notice by Dicsearchus. It is the most
detailed description of natural scenery by any of the Greek
prose writers that we possess ; and, although topographical
it is also picturesque, for the shady vale is animated by the
Pythian procession {theoria), " wliich breaks from the sacred
laurel the atoning bough." In the later Byzantine epoch,
about the close of the fourth century, we meet more frequently
with descriptions of scenery interwoven in the romances of the
Greek pros^e writers, as is especially manifested in the pastor-
al romance of Longus,t in which, however, the tender scenes
taken from life greatly excel the expression of the sensations
awakened by the aspect of nature.
It is not my object in the present work to extend these ref-
erences beyond what my own special recollection of particular
forms of art may enable me to add to these general consider-
ations of the poetic conception of the external world. I should
here quit the flowery circle of Grecian antiquity, if, in a work
to which I have ventured to prefix the title of Cosmos, I could
pass over in silence the description of nature with which the
pseudo- Aristotelian book of Cosmos, or Order of the Universe,
begins. It describes " the earth as adorned with luxuriant
vegetation, copiously watered, and (as the most admirable of
all) inhabited by thinking beings. "$ The rhetorical color of
this rich picture of nature, so totally unlike the concise and
purely scientific mode of treatment characteristic of the Stag-
irite, is one of the many indications by which it has been
judged that this work on the Cosmos is not his composition.
It may, in fg^ct, be the production of Apuleius,^ or of Chrysip-
* JEliani Var. Hist, et Fragm., lib. iii., cap. 1, p. 139, Kiilin. Com-
pare A. Buttmanu, Qucest. de Diccearcko (Naumb., 1832, p. 32), and
Geogr. Gr. Min., ed. Gail, vol. ii., p. 140-145. We observe in the tragic
poet Chaeremon a remarkable love of nature, and especially a predilec-
tion for flowers, which has been compared by Sir William Jones to the
sentiments evinced in the Indian poets. See Welcker, Griechische Tra-
godien, abth. iii., s. 1088.
t Longi Pastoralia {Daphnis et Chloe, ed. Seller, 1843), lib. i., 9 ;
iii., 12, and iv., 1-3; p. 92, 125, 137. Compare Villemaine, SurlesRo
mans Grecs, in his Milanges de Littirature, t. ii., p. 435-448, where
Longus is compared with Bernardin de St. Pierre.
X Pseudo-Aristot., de Mundo, cap. 3, 14-20, p. 392, Bekker.
$ See Stahr, Aristoteles bei den Edmern, 1834, s. 173-177. Osann,
Beitrdge zur Griech. und Rom. Litteraturgeschichte, bd. i., 1835, s. 165-
192. Stahr (s. 172) supposes, like Heumann, that the present Greek i»
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE HV THE (;RKEKi*. 29
pus,* or of any other author. In the place of the passages
relating to natural scenery, which we can not venture to as-
cribe to Aristotle, we possess, however, a genuine fragment
which Cicero has preserved to us from a lost work of Aris«
totle.f It runs thus : " If there were beings who lived in
the depths of the earth, in dwellings adorned with statues and
paintings, and every thing which is possessed in rich abund-
ance by those whom we esteem fortunate ; and if these beings
could receive tidings of the power and might of the gods, and
could then emerge from their hidden dwellings through the
open fissures of the earth to the places which we inhabit ; if
they could suddenly behold the earth, and the sea, and the
vault of heaven ; could recognize the expanse of the cloudy
firmament, and the might of the winds of heaven, and admire
the sun in its majesty, beauty, and radiant efiiilgence ; and,
lastly, when night vailed the earth in darkness, they could be-
hold the starry heavens, the changing moon, and the stars
rising and setting in the unvarying course ordained from eter-
nity, they would surely exclaim, ' there are gods, and such
great things must be the work of their hands.' " It has been
justly observed that this passage is alone sufficient to corrob-
orate Cicero's opinion of " the golden flow of Aristotle's elo-
quence,"! and that his words are pervaded by something of
the inspired force of Plato's genius. Such a testimony to the
existence of the heavenly powers, drawn from the beauty and
stupendous greatness of the works of creation, is rarely to be
met with in the works of antiquity.
That which we miss in the works of the Greeks, I will not
say from their want of susceptibility to the beauties of nature,
but from the direction assumed by their literature, is still more
rarely to be met with among the Romans. A nation which,
in accordance with the ancient Sicilian habits, evinced a de-
cided predilection for agriculture and other rural pursuits,
might have justified other expectations ; but, with all their
an altered ti-anslation of the Latin text of Apuleius. The latter says
distinctly {de Mundo, p. 250, Bip.) " that he has followed Aristotle and
Theophrastus in the composition of his work."
* Osanu, op. cit., s. 194-266.
t Cicero, de Natura Deorum, ii., 37. A passage in which Sextus Em-
piricns (adversus Physicos, lib. ix., 22, p. 554, Fabr.) instances a simihir
expression of Aristotle, deserves the more attention from the fact that
the same writer shortly before (ix., 20) alludes to another work of Ar-
istotle (on divination and dreams) which is also lost to us.
X '' Aristoteles flumen oiationis aureum fundens." Cic, Acad. Qucest.,
ii., cap. 38. (Compare Stahr, Aristotelia, th. ii., 8. 161. and Aristotele*
bei den Rdmern. s. 53.)
30 COSMOS.
disposition to practical activity, the Romans, with the cold
severity and practical understanding of their national charac-
ter, were less susceptible of impressions of the senses than the
Greeks, and were more devoted to every-day reality than to
the idealizing poetic contemplation of nature. These difier-
ences in the habits and feelings of the Greeks and Romans
are reflected in their literature, as is ever the case with the
intellectual expression of national character. Here, too, we
must notice the acknowledged difference that exists in the or-
ganic structure of their respective languages, notwithstanding
the affinity between the races. The language of ancient La-
tium possesses less flexibility, a more limited adaptation of
words, a stronger character of "practical tendency" than of
ideal mobility. Moreover, the predilection evinced in the Au-
gustan age for imitating Greek images must have been detri-
mental to the free outpouring of native feelings, and to the
free expression of the natural bent of the mind ; but still there
were some powerful minds, which, inspired by love of coun-
try, were able by creative individuahty, by elevation of
thought, and by the gentle grace of their representations, to
surmount all these obstacles. The great poem of nature,
which Lucretius has so richly decked with the charms of his
poetic genius, embraces the whole Cosmos. It has much af-
finity with the writings of Empedocle^ and Parmenides, the
archaic diction of the versification heightening the earnest-
ness of the descriptions. Poetry is here closely interwoven
with philosophy, without, however, falling into that frigidity
of style which, in contrast with Plato's richly fanciful mode
of treating nature, was so severely blamed by Menander the
Rhetorician, in the sentence he pronounced on the Hymns of
Nature.* My brother has shown with much ingenuity the
striking analogies and differences which have arisen from the
amalgamation of metaphysical abstractions with poetry in the
ancient Greek didactic poems, as in the works of Lucretius,
and in the episode Bhagavad of the Indian Epic Mahabhar-
* Menandri Rhetoris Comment, de Encomiis, ex rec. Heeren, 1785,
sect, i., cap. 5, p. 38, 39. The severe critic terms the didactic poem
On Nature a frigid composition {ipvxporepov), in which the forces of na-
ture are brought forward divested of their personality — Apollo as light,
Hera as the concentration of all the phenomena of the atmosphere, and
Jupiter as heat. Plutai'ch also ridicules the so-call»d poems of nature,
which have only the fonn of poetry {de And. Poet., p. 27, Steph.). Ac-
coi'ding to the Stagirite {de Poet., c. i.), Empedocles was more a phys-
iologist than a poet, and has nothing in common with Homer but the
rhythmical measure used by both.
JiESrRIPTIONS OF XATlKi: U\ THE ROMANS. S]
ata* The great physical picture of the universe by the Ro-
man poet contrasts in its cold doctrine of atoms, and in its
frequently visionary geognostic hypotheses, with his vivid and
animated delineation of the advance of mankind from the re-
cesses of the forest to the pursuit of agriculture, to the control
of natural forces, the more elevated cultivation of mind and
lanffuages, and through the latter to social civilization.!
When, in the midst of the active and busy life of the states-
man, and in a mind excited by political passion, a keen sus-
ceptibility for the beauties of nature and an animated love of
rural solitude still subsists, its source must be derived from the
depths of a great and noble character. Cicero's writings test-
ify to the truth of this assertion. As is generally known,
many points in his book De Legibus, and in that De Oratore,
are copied from Plato's Phcedrui ;% yet his delineations of
Italian nature do not, on that account, lose any of their indi-
viduality. Plato extols in general terms " the dark shade of
the thickly-leaved plane-tree ; the luxuriance of plants and
herbs in all the fragrance of their bloom ; and the sweet sum-
mer breezes which fan the chirping swarms of grasshoppers."
In Cicero's smaller sketches of nature we find, as has lately
been remarked by an intelligent inquirer, § all things described
as they still exist in the actual landscape ; we see the Liris
shaded by lofty poplars ; and as we descend from the steep
* " It may appear singular, but yet it is not the less correct, to at-
tempt to connect poetry, which rejoices every where in variety of form,
color, and character, with tlie simplest and most abstract ideas. Poet-
ry, science, philosophy, and history are not necessarily and essentially
divided ; they are united vt'herever man is still in unison with the par-
ticular stage of his development, or whenever, from a truly poetic mood
of mind, he can in imagination bring himself back to it." Wilhelm von
Humboldt, Gesammelte Wcrke, bd. i., s. 98-102. (Compare, also, Bern-
hardy, Rom. Litteratur, s. 215-218, and Fried. Schlegel, Sdmmtliche
Werke,hd. i., s. 108-110.) Cicero (^ad Quint, fralrcm, ii., 11) ascribes,
if not pettishly, at any rate very severely, more tact than creative talent
(ingenium) to Lucretius, who has been so highly piaised by Virgil,
Os'id, and Qaintilian. t Lucret., lib. v., v. 930-1455.
X Plato, Phcsdr., p. 230; Cicero, de Leg., i., 5, 15; ii., 2, 1-3; ii., 3,
6. (Compare Wagner, Comment. Perp., in Cic, de Leg., 1814, p. 6;)
Cic, deOratore, i., 7, 28 (p. 15, EUendt).
§ See s. 431-434 of the admirable work by Rudolph Abeken, I'ector
of the Gymnasium at Osnabriick, which appeared in 1835 under the
title of Cicero in selnen Briefen. The important addition relative to
the birth-place of Cicero is by H. Abeken, the learned nephew of the
author, who was formerly chaplain to the Prussian embassy at Rome,
and is now taking part in the important Egyptian e.-^pedition of Profes-
sor Lepsius. See, also, on the birth-place of Cicero, Valery, Voy. Hisl
en Italic, X. iii., p. 421.
32 COSMOS.
mountain behind the old towers of Arpinum, we see the grovo
of oaks on the margin of the Fibrenus, and the island now
called Isola di Carnello, which is formed by the division of
the stream, and whither Cicero retired, in order, as he said, to
"give himself up to meditation, reading, and writing." Ar-
pinum, situated on the Volscian Hills, was the birth-place of
the great statesman, and its noble scenery no doubt exercised
an influence on his character in boyhood. Unconsciously to
himself, the external aspect of the surrounding scenery im-
presses itself upon the soul of man with an intensity corre-
sponding to the greater or less degree of his natural suscepti-
bility, and becomes closely interwoven with the deep original
tendencies and the free natural disposition of his mental
powers.
In the midst of the eventful storms of the year 708 (from
the foundation of Rome), Cicero found consolation in his villas,
alternately at Tusculum, Arpinum, Cumasa, and Antium.
" Nothing can be more delightful," he Mrrites to Atticus,*
" than this solitude — nothing more charming than this coun-
try place, the neighboring shore, and the view of the sea. In
the lonely island of Astura, at the mouth of the river of the
same name, on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea, no human
being disturbs me ; and when, early in the morning, I retire
to the leafy recesses of some thick and wild wood, I do not
leave it till the evening. Next to my Atticus, nothing is so
dear to me as solitude, in which I hold communion with phi-
losophy, although often interrupted by my tears. I struggle
as much as I am able against such emotions, but as yet I am
not equal to the contest." It has frequently been remarked,
that in these letters, and in those of the younger Pliny, pas-
sages are met with which manifest the greatest harmony with
the expressions in use among modern sentimental writers ; for
my own part, I can only find in them the echoes of the same
deep-toned sadness which in every age and in every race bursts
forth from the recesses of the heavily-oppressed bosom.
Amid the general difiusion of Roman literature, an ac-
quaintance with the great poetic works of Virgil, Horace,
and Tibullus is so common, that it would be superfluous to
dwell on individual examples of the tender and ever wakeful
sensibility to nature, by which some of these works are ani-
mated. In Virgil's great epic, the nature of the poem tends
to make descriptions of scenery appear merely as accessories,
* Cic.y Ep. ad AtticAim, xii., 9 and 15.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE ROMANS. 33
occupying' only a very small space. There is no individual
portraiture of particular localities,* but a deep and intimate
comprehension of nature is depicted in soft colors. Where,
for instance, has the gentle play of the waves, or the stillness
of night been, more happily described ? And how well do
these pleasing pictures contrast with the powerful description
of the bursting tempest in the first book of the Georgics, and
the picture in the ^neid of the voyage and landing at the
Strophades, the crashing fall of the rock, or the flames emitted
from Mount -tEtna.t
From Ovid we might have expected, as the fruit of his long'
sojourn in the plains of Tomi, in Lower Moesia, a poetic de-
scription of the marshes, of which, however, no account has
been transmitted to us from antiquity. The exile did not
indeed see that kind of steppe-like plain, which in summer is
densely covered with juicy plants, varying from four to six feet
in height, and which in every breath of wind present the as-
pect of a waving sea of flowering verdure. The place of
his banishment was a desolate, swampy marsh-land, and the
broken spirit of the poet, which gives itself vent in unmanly
lamentation, was preoccupied with the recollection of the en-
joyments of social life and the political occurrences at Rome,
and thus remained dead to the impressions produced by the
contemplation of the Scythian desert, with which he was sur-
rounded. As a compensation, however, this highly-gifted poet,
whose descriptions of nature are so vivid, has given us, besides
his too frequently-repeated representations of grottoes, springs,
and "calm moon-light nights," a remarkably characteristic,
and even geognostically important delineation of a volcanic
eruption at Methone, between Epidaurus and Troezene. The
passage to which we allude has already been cited in another
part of this work. J Ovid shows us, as our readers will re-
* The passages from Virgil, which are adduced by Malte-Brun (Ayi-
nales des Voyages, t. iii., 1808, p. 235-266) as local descriptions, merely
show that the poet had a knowledge of the produce of different coun-
tries, as, for instance, the safl'ron of Mount Traolus ; that he was ac-
quainted with the incense of the Sabeans, and viith the true names of
several small rivers; and that even the mephitic vapors which rise from
a cavern in the Apennines, near Amsanctus, were not unknown to him.
t Virg., Georg., l, 356-392; iii., 349-380; ^n., iii., 191-211; iv.,
246-251; xii., 684-689.
t Compare Ovid, Mef.,i., 568-576; iii., 155-164; iii., 407-412; vii.,
180-188; XV., 296-306; Trist., lib. i., EL 3, 60; hb. iii., EL 4, 49;
EL 12, 15 ; Ex Ponto, lib. iii., Ep. 7-9, as instances of separate pictures
of natural scenery. There is a pleasant description of a spring at Hy
mettus, beginning with the verse,
B2
34 COSMOS.
member, " how, by the force of the impregnated vapor, the
earth was distended like a bladder filled with air, or like the
skin of the goat."
It is especially to be regretted that Tibullus should have
left no great composition descriptive of the individual charac-
ter of nature. Amiong the poets of the Augustan age, he be-
longs to the few who, being happily strangers to the Alexan-
drian learning, and devoted to seclusion and a rural life, drev/
with feeling, and therefore with simplicity, from the resources
of their own mind. Elegies,* of which the landscape only
constitutes the back-ground, must certainly be regarded as
mere pictures of social habits ; but the Lustration of the
Fields, and the Sixth Elegy of the first book, show us what
was to have been expected from the friend of Horace and of
Messala.
Lucan, the grandson of the rhetorician M. Annseus Seneca,
certainly resembles the latter too much in the rhetorical or-
nation of his diction, but yet we find among his works an ad-
mirable and vividly truthful picture of the destruction of a
.Druidic forestt on the now treeless shores of Marseilles. The
half-severed oaks support themselves for a time by leaning tot-
tering against each other, and, stripped of their leaves, suffer
the first ray of light to pierce their awful and sacred gloom.
He who has long lived amid the forests of the New World
must feel how vividly the poet, with a few touches, has de-
picted the luxuriant growth of trees, whose colossal remains
lie buried in some of the turf moors of France. In the di-
dactic poem o£ jEtna by Lucilius the younger, a friend of L.
Annseus Seneca, we certainly meet with a truthful description
of the phenomena attending the eruption of a volcano ; but
the conception has much less of individuality than the work
entitled JEtna Dialogus,t by Bembo, of which we have al-
ready spoken in terms of praise.
" Est prope purpureos colles florentis Hymetti"
(Ovid, de Arte. Am., iii., 687), which, as Ross has remarked, is one of
the rare instances that occur of individual delineations of nature refer-
ring to a definite locality. The poet describes the fountain of Kallia,
sacred to Aphrodite, so celebrated in antiquity, which breaks forth on
the westei'n side of Hymettus, otherwise so scantily supplied with wa-
ter. (See Ross, Letter to Professor Vuros, in the Grieck. Medicin.
Zeitschrift, June, 1837.
* Tibullus, ed. Voss, 1811. Eleg., lib. i., 6, 21-34; lib. ii., 1, 37-66.
t Lucan, Phars., iii., 400-452 (vol. i., p. 374-384, Weber).
X The poem of Lucilius, which is very probably a part of a larger
poetic work, on the natural characteristics of Sicily, was ascribed by
uK^iCRIPTIONS or NATURE BY THE ROMANS. 35
When, finally, at the close of the fourth century, the art
oi" poetry, in its grander and nobler forms, faded away, as if
exhausted, poetic emanations, stripped of the charms of cre-
ative fancy, turned aside to the barren realities of science and
of description. A certain oratorical polish of style could not
compensate for the diminished susceptibility for nature and an
idealizing inspiration. As a production of this unfruitful age,
in which the poetic element only appeared as an incidental
external adornment of thought, we may instance a poem on
the Moselle by Ausonius. As a native of Aquitanian Gaul,
the poet had accompanied Valentinian in his campaign against
the Allemanni. The Mosella, which was composed in ancient
Treves,* describes in some parts, and not ungracefully, the
already vine-clad hills of one of the loveliest of our rivers, but
the barren topography of the country, the enumeration of the
streams falling into the Moselle, and the characteristic form,
color, and habits of some of the different species of fish that
are found in these waters, constitute the main features of this
wholly didactic composition.
In the M^orks of the Roman prose writers, among which we
have already cited some remarkable passages by Cicero, de-
scriptions of natural scenery are as rare as in those of Greek
authors. It is only in the writings of the great historians,
Julius Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus, that we meet with some
examples of the contrary, where they are compelled to de-
Wernsdorf to Coinielius Sevenis. The passages especially worthy of
attention are the praises of general knowledge considered as •• the fruits
of the mind," v. 270-280; the lava cuiTents, v. 360-370 and 474-515;
the eruptions of water at the foot of the volcano (?), v. 395 ; the forma-
tion of pumice, v. 425 (p. xvi.-xx., 32, 42, 46, 50, 55, ed. Jacob, 1826).
* Decii Magni Ausonii Mosella, v. 189-199, p. 15, 44, Bocking. See,
also, the notice of the lish of the Moselle, which is not unimportant
with" reference to natural history, and has been ingeniously applied by
Valenciennes, v. 85-150, p. 9-12, and contrast it with Oppiau (Bern-
hardy, Griecli. Litt.,ih.. ii., s. 1049). The Ortliinogonia and IVicriaca
of iEmilius Macer of Verona (imitations of the works of Nicauder of
Colophon), which have not come to us, belonged to the same dry, di-
dactic style of poetry which treated of the products of nature. A nat-
ural description of the southern coast of Gaul, which is to be found iu
a poetical narrative of a journey by Claudius Rutilius Numatianus, a
statesman under Honorius, is more attractive than the Mosella of Auso-
nius. Rutilius, who was driven from Rome by the iiTuption of the
Gauls, is returning to his estates in Gaul. We unfortunately possess
only a fragment of the second book of this poem, and this does not take
us beyond tiie quarries of Carrara. See Rutilii Claudii Numatiani de
Reditu suo (e Roma in Galliam Narboneiisem) libri duo, rec. A. W.
Zumpt, 1840, p. XV., 31-219 (with a fine map by Kiepert). Wenw**
dorf, Pacta Lat Min., T. v.. pt. i., p. 125.
36 COSMOS. .
scribe battle-fields, the crossing of rivers or difficult mountain
passes in their narrations of the struggle of man against nat-
ural obstacles. In the Annals of Tacitus, I am charmed with
the description of the untoward passage of Germanicus over
the Amisia, and the grand geographical delineation of the
mountain chains of Syria and Palestine.* Curtius has left
us a fine natural picture of a woody desert to the west of Hec-
atompylos, through which the Macedonian army had to pass
in the m.arshy region of Mazanderan.f I would refer more
circumstantially to this passage if our uncertainty as to the
age in which this writer lived did not prevent our deciding
what was due to the poet's own imagination and what was
derived from historic sources.
The great encyclopedic work of the elder Pliny, which, by
the richness of its contents, surpasses any other production of
antiquity, will be more fully considered in the sequel, when
we enter on the " history of the contemplation of the uni-
verse." The natural history of Pliny, which has exercised a
powerful influence on the Middle Ages, is, as his nephew, the
younger Pliny, has elegantly remarked, " manifold as nature
itself" As the creation of an irresistible passion for a com-
prehensive, but often indiscriminate and irregular accumula-
tion of facts, this work is unequal in style, being sometimes
simple and narrative, and sometimes full of thought, anima-
tion, and rhetorical ornament, and from its very character de-
ficient in individual delineations of nature ; although, wher-
ever the connection existing between the active forces of the
universe, the well-ordered Cosmos {^naturce QTiajestas), is made
* Tac, Ann., ii., 23-24; Hist., v., 6. The only fragment preserved
by the rhetorician Seneca {Suasor., i., p. 11, Bipont) that we possess
of a heroic poem, in which Ovid's friend Pedo Albiuovanus describes
the deeds of Germanicus, likewise describes the unfortunate passage of
the Ems (Fed. Albinov., Elegit, Amst., 1703, p. 172). Seneca con-
siders this description of the stormy waters as more picturesque than
any passage to be found in the writings of the other Roman poets. He
remarks, however, Latini declamafores in Oceani descriptiojie non nimis
viguerunt ; nam aut tumide scripserunt aut curiose.
t Curt., in Alex. Magno., vi,, 16. Compare Droysen, Gesch. Alex-
anders des Orossen, 1833, s. 205. In Qucest. Natur., lib. iii., c. 27-30,
p. 677-68(), ed. Lips., 1741, of the too rhetorical Lucius Annaeus Sene-
ca, there is a remarkable description of one of the several instances of
the destruction of an originally pure and subsequently sinful race, by
an almost universal deluge, commencing with the words Cum fatalis
dies diluvii venerit; and terminating thus: peracto exitio generis kiima-
ni extinctisque pariter feris in quarum homines ingenia transierant
See, also, the description of chaotic terrestrial revolutions, in Bhagavo'
ta-Pnrqna, bk. iii., c. 17 (ed. Burnouf, t. \„ p. 441).
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE ROMANS. 37
the object of contemplation, we can not mistake the indica-
tions of a true poetic inspiration.
We would gfladly instance the pleasantly-situated villas on
the Pincian Hill, at Tusculum and Tibur, on the promontory
of Misenum, and at Puteoli and Baiae, as proofs of a love of
nature among the Romans, had not these buildings, like those
of Scaurus and Maecenas, of Lucullus and Adrian, been over-
stocked with edifices designed for pomp and display ; temples,
theaters, and race-courses alternating with aviaries, and houses
for rearing snails and dormice. The elder Scipio had sur-
rounded his simpler country house at Litumum with towers
in the castellated style. The name of Matins, a friend of Au
gustus, has come down to us as that of the person who, in his
love, for unnatural stiffness, first caused trees to be cut in imi-
tation of architectural and plastic patterns. The letters of
the younger Pliny give us a charming description of two of
his numerous villas, Laurentinum and Tusculum.* Although,
in these two buildings, surrounded by cut box-trees, we meet
with a, greater number of objects crowded together than we,
with our ideas of nature, would esteem in accordance with
good taste, yet these descriptions, as well as the imitation of
the Valley of Tempe in the Tiburtine villa of Adrian, show
us that a love for the free enjoyment of nature was not whol-
ly lost sight of by the Roman citizens in their love of art, and
in their anxious solicitude for their personal comfort in adapt-
ing the locality of their country houses to the prevaihng rela-
tions of the sun and winds. It is gratifying to be able to add
that this enjoyment was less disturbed on the estates of Pliny
than elsewhere by the revolting features of slavery. This
wealthy man was not only one of the most learned of his age,
* Pliu., Epist., ii., 17; v., 6; ix., 17; Plin., Hist. Nat., xii., 6; Hirt,
Gesch. der Baukunst bet den Alten, bd. ii., s. 241, 291, 376. The villa
Laurentiua of" the younger Pliny was situated near the present Torre di
Paterno, in the littoral valley of Palombara, east of Ostia. See Viaggio
da Ostia a la villa di Plinio, 1802, p. 9, and Le Laurent in, by Haudel-
court, 1838, p. 62. A deep feeling for nature is expressed in the few-
lines which Pliny wrote from Laurentinum to Minutius Fund anus :
^^ Mecum tantum et cum libellis loquor. Rectam sinceramque vitam!
dulce otium horiestumque ! O mare, o littus, verum secretumque fiovoelov i
quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis .'" (i., 9). Hirt was persuad-
ed that the origin in Italy, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
of that stiff and systematic style of gardening long known as the French,
in contradistinction to the freer mode of landscape gardening of the
English, and the early taste for wearisome and regular lines, is to bo
ascribed to a wish of imitating that which Pliny the younger has de-
scribed in his letters {Geschichie der Baukunst bei den Alten, th. ii., a
366).
38 COSMOS.
but he likewise entertained feelings of humane compassion
for the enslaved condition of the people, a sentiment which
was but seldom expressed in antiquity. On the estates of the
younger Pliny no fetters were used ; and the slave was per-
mitted freely to bequeath, as a cultivator of the soil, that
which he had acquired by the labor of his own hands.*
No description has been transmitted to us from antiquity
of the eternal snow of the Alps, reddened by the evening glow
or the morning dawn, of the beauty of the blue ice of the gla-
ciers, or of the sublimity of Swiss natural scenery, although
statesmen and generals, with men of letters in their retinue,
continually passed through Helvetia on their road to Gaul.
All these travelers think only of complaining of the wretched-
ness of the roads, and never appear to have paid any attention
to the romantic beauty of the scenery through which they
passed. It is even known that Julius Caesar, when he was
returning to his legions in Gaul, employed his time while he
was passing over the Alps in preparing a grammatical work
entitled De Analogia.\ Silius Italicus, who died in the time
of Trajan, when Switzerland was already considerably culti-
vated, describes the region of the Alps as a dreary and barren
wilderness,! at the same time that he extols with admiration
the rocky ravines of Italy, and the woody shores of the Liris
(Garigliano).§ It is also worthy of notice, that the remarka-
ble appearance of the jointed basaltic columns which are so
frequently met with, associated in groups, in Central France,
on the banks of the Rhine, and in Lombard y, should never
have been described or even mentioned by Roman writers.
At the period when the feelings died away which had ani-
mated classical antiquity, and directed the mmds of men to a
visible manifestation of human activity rather than to a pas-
sive contemplation of the external world, a new spirit arose ;
Christianity gradually diffused itself, and, wherever it was
adopted as the religion of the state, it not only exercised a
beneficial influence on the condition of the lower classes by
inculcating the social freedom of mankind, but also expanded
* Plin., Epist., iii., 19; viii., 16.
t Suet., i?i Julio Ccesare, cap. 56. The lost poem of Csesar {Iter)
described the journey to Spain, when he led his army to his last mili-
tary action from Rome to Cordova by land (which was accomplished
in twenty-four days according to Suetonius, and in twenty-seven days ac-
cording to Strabo and Appian), when the remnant of Pompey's party,
which had been defeated in Africa, liad ralhed together in Spain.
I Sil. Ital., Punica, lib. iii., v. 477.
$ Id. ibid., lib. iv , v. 348; lib. viii., v. 399.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 39
the views of men in their communion with nature. The eye
no longer rested on the forms of Olympic gods. The fathers
of the Church, in their rhetorically correct and often poetical-
ly imaginative language, now taught that the Creator showed
himself great in inanimate no less than in animate nature,
and in the wild strife of the elements no less than in the still
activity of organic development. At the gradual dissolution
of the Roman dominion, creative imagination, simplicity, and
purity of diction disappeared from the writings of that dreary
age, first in the Latin territories, and then in Grecian Asia
Minor. A taste for solitude, for mournful contemplation, and
for a moody absorption of mind, may be traced simultaneously
in the style and coloring of the language. Whenever a new
element seems to develop itself in the feelings of mankind, it
may almost invariably be traced to an earlier, deep-seated in-
dividual germ. Thus the softness of Mimnermus* has often
been regarded as the expression of a general sentimental di-
rection of the mind. The ancient world is not abruptly sep-
arated from the modern, but modifications in the religious
sentiments and the tenderest social feelings of men, and changes
in the special habits of those who exercise an influence on the
ideas of the mass, must give a sudden predominance to that
which might previously have escaped attention. It was the
tendency of the Christian mind to prove from the order of the
universe and the beauty of nature the greatness and goodness
of the Creator. This tendency to glorify the Deity in his
works gave rise to a taste for natural description. The earli-
est and most remarkable instances of this kind are to be met
with in the writings of Minucius Felix, a rhetorician and
lawyer at Rome, Avho lived in the beginning of the third cen-
tury, and was the cotemporary of Tertullian and Philostratus
We follow with pleasure the delineation of his twilight ram-
bles on the shore near Ostia, which he describes as more pic-
turesque and more conducive to health than we find it in the
present day. In the religious discourse entitled Octavius, we
meet with a spirited defense of the new faith against the at-
tacks of a heathen friend. t
The present would appear to be a fitting place to introduce
some fragmentary examples of the descriptions of nature which
Dccur in the writings of the Greek fathers, and which are
* On elegiac poetiy, consult Nicol. Bach, in the Allg. Sckul-Zeiiun^,
1829, abth. ii., No. 134, s. 1097.
+ Minucii Felicis Octavius, ex. rec. Gron. Roterod., 1743, cap. 2, 3, p.
12,28; cap. 16-18. ]>. 151-171.
40 COSMOS.
probably less well known to my readers than the evidences
afforded by Roman authors, of the love of nature entertained
by the ancient Italians. I will begin with a letter of Basil
the Great, for which I have long cherished a special predilec-
tion. Basil, who was born at Cesarea in Cappadocia, re-
nounced the pleasures of Athens when not more than thirty
years old, and, after visiting the Christian hermitages in Coelo-
Syria and Upper Egypt, retired, like the Essenes and Thera-
Deuti before the Christian era, to a desert on the shores of the
Armenian river Iris. There his second brother* Naucratius
was drowned while fishing, after having led for five years the
rigid life of an anchorite. He thus writes to Gregory of Na-
zianzum, " I believe I may at last flatter myself with having
found the end of my wanderings. The hopes of being united
with thee — or I should rather say my pleasant dreams, for
hopes have been justly termed the waking dreams of" men —
have remained unfulfilled. God has sufiered me to find a
place, such as has often flitted before our imaginations ; for
that which fancy has shown us from afar is now made mani-
fest to me. A high mountain, clothed with thick woods, is
watered to the north by fresh and ever-flowing streams. At
its foot lies an extended plain, rendered fruitful by the vapors
with which it is moistened. The surrounding forest, crowded
with trees of difierent kinds, incloses me as in a strong for
tress. This wilderness is bounded by two deep ravines ; on
the one side, the river, rushing in foam down the mountain,
forms an almost impassable barrier, while on the other all ac-
cess is impeded by a broad mountain ridge. My hut is so
situated on the summit of the mountain that I can overlook
the whole plain, and follow throughout its course the Iris,
which is more beautiful, and has a more abundant body of
water, than the Strymon near Amphipolis. The river of
my wilderness, which is more impetuous than any other that
I know of, breaks against the jutting rock, and throws itself
foaming into the abyss below : an object of admiration to the
mountain wanderer, and a source of profit to the natives,
from the numerous fishes that are found in its waters. Shall
* On the death of Naucratius, about the year 357, see Basilii Magni,
Op. omnia, ed. Par., 1730, t. iii., p. xlv. The Jewish Esseaes. two
centuries before our era, led an ancliorite life on the western shores of
the Dead Sea, in communion with nature. Pliny, in speaking of them,
uses the graceful expression (v. 15), '^ mira gens, socia palmarum.^^
The Therapeuti lived originally in monastic communities, in a chaim«
ing district near Lake Moeris (Neander, Allg. Geschichte der Chnstl
Religion und Kirche, bd. i., abth. i., 1842, s. 73, 103).
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 41
I describe to thee the fructifying vapors that rise from the
moist earth, or the cool breezes wafted over the rippled face
of the waters ? Shall I speak of the sweet song of the birds,
or of the rich luxuriance of the flowering plants ? What
charms me beyond all else is the calm repose of this spot. It
is oBily visited occasionally by huntsmen ; for my wilderness
nourishes herds of deer and wild goats, but not bears and
wolves. What other spot could I exchange for this ? Alc-
maeon, when he had found the Echinades, would not wander
further."* In this simple description of scenery and of forest
life, feelings are expressed which are more intimately in uni-
son with those of modern times than any thing that has been
transmitted to us from Greek or Roman antiquity. From
the lonely Alpine hut to which Basil withdrew, the eye wan-
ders over the humid and leafy roof of the forest below. The
place of rest which he and his friend Gregory of Nazianzura
had long desired, is at length found.f The poetic and myth-
ical allusion at the close of the letter falls on the Christian
ear like an echo from another and earlier world.
Basil's Homilies on the Hexsemeron also give evidence of
his love of nature. He describes the mildness of the con-
stantly clear nights of Asia Mmor, where, according to his ex-
pression, the stars, " those everlasting blossoms of heaven,"
elevate the soul from the visible to the invisible.! When, in
the myth of the creation, he would praise the beauty of the
sea, he describes the aspect of the boundless ocean plain, in
all its varied and ever-changing conditions, " gently moved by
the breath of heaven', altering its hue as it reflects the beams
of light in their white, blue, or roseate hues, and caressing the
* Basilii M. Epist., xiv., p. 93 ; Ep. ccxxiii., p. 339. On the beau-
tiful letter to Gregory of Nazianzura, and on the poetic frame of mind
of St. Basil, see Villemain, De V Eloquence Chritienne dans le Quatneme
Steele, in his Melanges Historiques et LitUraires, t. iii., p. 320-325.
The Iris, on whose shores the family of the great Basil had formerly
possessed an estate, rises in Armenia, and, after flowing through the
plains of Pontus, and mingling with the waters of the Lycus, empties
itself into the Black Sea.
t Gregory of Nazianzura did not, how^ever, suffer himself to be en-
ticed by the description of Basil's hermitage, preferring Arianzus in the
Tiberina Regio, although his friend had complainingly designated it as
an impure j3dpadpov. See Basilii Epist., ii., p. 70, and Vita Sancti Bas.,
p. xlvi. and lix. of the edition of 1730.
t Basilii Homil. in Hexcsm., vi., 1, and iv., 6 ; Bas., Op. Omnia, ed.
Jul. Garnier, 1839, t. i., p. 54-70. Compare with this the expression
of deep sadness in the beautiful poem of Gregonus of Nazianzura, bear-
ing the title On the Nature of Man (Gregor. Naz., Op. omnia, ed. Par.,
1611, t. ii., Carm. xiii., p. 85).
42 COSMOS.
bhores in peaceful sport." We meet with the same senti»
mental and plaintive expressiors regarding nature in the writ-
ings of Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil the Great.
" When," he exclaims, " I see every ledge of rock, every val-
ley and plain, covered with new-born verdure, the varied
beauty of the trees, and the lilies at my feet decked by nature
with the double charms of perfume and of color ; when in the
distance I see the ocean, toward which the clouds are onward
borne, my spirit is overpowered by a sadness not wholly de-
void of enjoyment. When in autumn the fruits have passed
away, the leaves have fallen, and the branches of the trees,
dried and shriveled, are robbed of their leafy adornments, we
are instinctively led, amid the everlasting and regular change
in nature, to feel the harmony of the wondrous powers per-
vading all things. He who contemplates them with the eye
of the soul, feels the littleness of man amid the greatness of
the universe."*
While the Greek Christians were led by their adoration
of the Deity through the contemplation of his works to a po-
etic delineation of nature, they were at the same time, during
the earlier ages of their new belief, and owing to the peculiar
bent of their minds, full of contempt for all w^orks of human
art. Thus Chrysostom abounds in passages like the follow-
ing : "If the aspect of the colonnades of sumptuous buildings;
would lead thy spirit astray, look upward to the vault of
heaven, and around thee on the open fields, in which herds
graze by the water's side ; who does not despise all the crea-
tions of art, when, in the stillness of his spirit, he watches
with admiration the rising of the sun, as it pours its golden
light over the face of the earth ; when, resting on the thick
grass beside the murmuring spring, or beneath the somber
shade of a thick and leafy tree, the eye rests on the far-reced-
ing and hazy distance ?"t Antioch was at that time sur-
* The quotation given in the text from Gregory of Nyssa is composed
of several fragments literally translated. They occur in S. Gregorii
Nysseni, Op., ed. Par., 1615, t. i., p. 49, C; p. 589, D; p. 210, C; p.
780, C; t. ii., p. 860, B; p. 619, B; p. 619, D; p. 324, D. "Be gentle
toward the emotions of sadness," says Thalassius, in one of the apho-
risms which were so much admired by his cotemporaries (Biblioth. Pa-
trum, ed. Par., 1624, t. ii., p. 1180, C).
t See Joannis Chrysostorni Op. omnia, Par., 1838 (8vo, t. ix., p. 687,
A; t. ii., p. 821, A, and 851, E; t. i., p. 79). Compare, also, Joanni*
Philoponi in cap. 1, Geneseos de Creatione Mundi libri septem, Viennae
Aust., 1630, p. 192, 236, and 272, as also Georgii Pisidce Mundi Opijici-
urn, ed. 1596, v. 367-375, 560, 933, and 1248. The works of Basil and
of Gregory of Nazianzum soon arrested my attention, after I began to
DESCRfPTrONS OF NATURE BY THE INDIANS. 43
rounded by hermitages, in one of which hved Chrysostom.
It seemed as if Eloquence had recovered her element, freedom,
from the fount of nature in the mountain regions of Syria and
Asia Minor, which were then covered with forests.
But in those subsequent ages — so inimical to intellectual
culture — when Christianity was diffused among the Germanic
and Celtic nations, who had previously been devoted to the
worship of nature, and had honored under rough symbols its
preserving and destroying powers, intimate intercourse with
nature, and a study of its phenomena were gradually consid-
ered suspicious incentives to witchcraft. This communion
with nature was regarded in the same light as Tertullian,
Clement of Alexandria, and almost all the older fathers of
the Church, had considered the pursuit of the plastic arts.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Councils of Tours
(1163) and of Paris (1209) interdicted to monks the sinful
reading of works on physics. =*^ Albertus Magnus and Hoger
Bacon were the first who boldly rent asunder these fetters of
the intellect, and thus, as it were, absolved Nature, and re-
stored her to her ancient rights.
We have hitherto depicted the contrasts manifested accord-
ing to the difierent periods of time in the closely allied litera-
ture of the Greeks and Romans. But differences in the mode
of thought are not limited to those which must be ascribed to
the age alone, that is to say, to passing events which are con-
stantly modified by changes in the form of government, social
manners, and religious belief ; for the most striking differences
are those generated by varieties of races and of intellectual de-
velopment. How diflerent are the manifestations of an ani-
mated love for nature and a poetic coloring of natural descrip-
tions among the nations of Hellenic, Northern Germanic, Se-
mitic, Persian, or Indian descent I The opinion has been re-
collect descriptions of nature ; but I am indebted to my friend and col-
league H. Hase, Member of the Institute, and Conservator of the King's
Library at Paris, for all the admirable translations of Chrysostom and
Thallasius that I have already given.
* On the Concilium Tnronense, under Pope Alexander III., see Zie-
gelbauer, Hist. Rei Litter, ordinis S. Benedicti, t. ii., p. 248, ed. 17.54;
and on the Council at Paris in 1209, and the Bull of Gregory IX., from
the year 1231, see Jourdain, Recherches Crit. sur les Traductions d^ Ar-
istote, 1819, p. 204-206. The perusal of the physical works of Aristotle
was forbidden under penalty of severe penance. In the Concilium La-
teranense of 1139, Sacror. Concil. nova Collectio, ed. Ven., 1776, t. xxi.,
p. 528, the practice of medicine was interdicted to monks. See, on
this subject, the learned and agreeable work of the young Wolfgang
von Gotlie, Der Mensch rind die Elementarische Natur, 1844, s. 10
44 COSMOS.
peatedly expressed, that the love of nature evinced by northern
nations is to be referred to an innate longing for the pleasant
fields of Italy and Greece, and for the w^onderful luxuriance
of tropical vegetation, when contrasted with their own pro-
longed deprivation of the enjoyment of nature during the
dreary season of winter. We do not deny that this longing
for the land of palms diminishes as we approach Southern
France or the Spanish peninsula, but the now generally adopt-
ed and ethnologically correct term of Indo- Germanic nations
should remind us that too general an influence ought not to
be ascribed to northern winters. The luxuriant poetic litera-
ture of the Indians teaches us that within and near the trop-
ics, south of the chain of the Himalaya, ever- verdant and ev-
er-blooming forests have at all times powerfully excited the
imaginations of the East Arian nations, and that they have
always been more inclined toward poetic delineations of nature
than the true Germanic races who have spread themselves
over the inhospitable north as far as Iceland. The happier
climates of Southern Asia are not, hoAvever, exempt from a
certain deprivation, or, at least, an interruption of the enjoy-
ment of nature ; for the seasons are abruptly divided from
each other by an alternation of fructifying rain and arid de-
structive drought. In the West Arian plateaux of Persia,
the barren wilderness penetrates in many parts in the form
of bays into the surrounding highly fruitful lands. A margin
of forest land often constitutes the boundary of these far-ex-
tending seas of steppe in Central and Western Asia. In this
manner the relations of the soil present the inhabitants of these
torrid regions with the same contrast of barrenness and veg-
etable abundance in a horizontal plane as is manifested in a
vertical direction by the snow-covered mountain chains of In-
dia and of Afghanistan. Great contrasts in seasons, vegeta-
tion, and elevation are always found to be exciting elements
of poetic fancy, where an animated love for the contemplation
of nature is closely interwoven with the mental culture and
the religious aspirations of a people.
Pleasure in the contemplation of nature, which is consonant
with the characteristic bent of mind of the Germanic nations,
is in the highest degree apparent in the' earliest poems of the
Middle Ages, as may be proved by many examples from the
chivalric poetry of the Minnesingers, in the period of the Ho-
henstaufien dynasty. However numerous may be the histor-
ical points of contact connecting it with the romanesque songs
of the Provenfals, we can not overlook the genuine Germanic
f
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE MINNESINGERS. 45
Bpirit every where breathing through it. A deep and all-per-
vading enjoyment of nature breathes through the manners
and social arranjjements of the Germanic races, and through
the very spirit of freedom by which they are characterized,*
Although moving and often born in courtly circles, the wan-
dering Minnesingers never relinquished the habit of commun-
ing with nature. It was thus that their productions were
often marked by a fresh, idyllic, and even elegiac tone of feel-
ing. In order to form a j ust appreciation of the result of such
a disposition of mind, I avail myself of the labors of my valued
friends Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who have so profoundly
investigated the literature of our German middle ages. "Our
national poets during that age," writes the latter of the two
brother inquirers, " have never devoted themselves to a de-
scription of nature, having no object but that of conveying to
the imagination a glowing picture of the scene. A love of
nature was assuredly not wanting to the ancient German Min-
nesingers, although they have left us no other expression of
the feeling than what was evolved in lyric poems from their
connection with historical events, or from the sentiments ap-
pertaining to the subject of which they treated. If we begin
with the oldest and most remarkable monuments of the popu-
lar Epos, we shall find that neither the Niebehingen nor Gu-
dru7i\ contain any description of natural scenery, even where
the occasion seems specially to prompt its introduction. In
the otherwise circumstantial description of the hunt, during
which Siegfried was murdered, the flowering heath and the
cool spring under the linden are only casually touched upon.
In Gudrun, which evinces to a certain extent a more delicate
finish, the feeling for nature is somewhat more apparent.
When the king's daughter and her attendants, reduced to a
condition of slavery, are carrying the garments of their cruel
masters to the sea-shore, the time is indicated, when the win-
ter is just melting away, and the song of rival birds has al-
ready begun. Snow and rain are falling, and the hair of the
* Fried. Schlegel, Ueher nordische Dichtkunst, ia bis Sdmmtliche
Werke, bd. x., s. 71 and 90. I may further cite, from the very early
times of Charlemagne, the poetic description of the Thiergarlen at Aix,
inclosing both woods and meadows, and which occurs in the hfe of the
greatemperor, by Angilbertus, abbotof St. Riques. {^ee'PerXz,Monum.,
vol. i., p. 393-403.)
t See the comparison of the two epics, the poem of the Niebelungen
(describing the vengeance of Chriemhild, the wife of Siegfried), and
that of Gudrun, the daughter of King Hetel, iu Gerviims, Geschichte
•ie.r Detitschen Litt., bd. i., s. 354-381.
4.6 COSMOS.
maidens is disheveled by the rough winds of March. As Gu-
drun, hoping for the arrival of her liberators, is leaving her
couch, and the sea begins to shine in the light of the rising
morning star, she distinguishes the dark helmets and shields
of her friends. This description is conveyed in but few words,
but it calls before the mind a visible picture, and heightens
the feeling of suspense preceding the occurrence of an import-
ant historical event. Homer, in a similar manner, depicts
the island of the Cyclops and the well-ordered gardens of Al-
cinoiis, in order to produce a visible picture of the luxuriant
profusion of the wilderness in which the giant monsters dwell,
and of the splendid abode of a powerful king. Neither of the
poets purposes to give an individual delineation of nature."
" The rugged simplicity of the popular epic contrasts strong
ly with the richly-varied narratives of the chivalric poets of
the thirteenth century, who all exhibited a certain degree of
artistical skill, although Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von
Eschenbach, and Gotfried von Strasburg* were so much dis-
tinguished above the rest in the beginning of the century, that
they may be called great and classical. It would be easy to
collect examples of a profound love of nature from their com-
prehensive works, as it occasionally breaks forth in similitudes ;
but the idea of giving an independent delineation of nature
does not appear to have occurred to them. They never ar-
rested the plot of the story to pause and contemplate the tran-
quil life of nature. How different are the more modern poetic
compositions ! Bernardin de St. Pierre makes use of events
merely as frames for his pictures. The lyric poets of the thir-
teenth century, when they sang of Mi?ine or love, which they
did not, however, invariably choose as their theme, often speak
of the genial month of May, of the song of the nightingale, or
of the drops of dew glittering on the flowers of the heath, but
these expressions are always used solely with reference to the
feelings which they are intended to reflect. In like manner,
when emotions of sadness are to be delineated, allusion is made
to the sear and yellow leaf, the songless birds, and the seed
buried beneath the snow. These thoughts recur incessantly,
although not without gracefulness and diversity of expression.
The tender Walther von der Vogelweide and the meditative
Wolfram von Eschenbach, of whose poems we unfortunately
possess but a few lyrical songs, may be adduced as brilliant
examples of the cultivators of this species of writing."
* On the romantic description of the grotto of the lovers, in the Tris-
tan of Gotfried of Strasburg, see Gervinus, op. cit., bd. i., s. 450.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE MINNESINGER? 47
*' The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or
the intercourse opened by means of the crusades with Asia
Minor, Syria, and Palestine, may not have enriched Germanic
poetry with new images of natural scenery, nmst be answered
generally in the negative, for we do not find that an acquaint-
ance with the East gave any different direction to the pro-
ductions of the Minnesingers. The Crusaders had little con-
nection with the Saracens, and differences ever reigned among
the various nations who were fighting for one common cause.
One of the most ancient of the lyric poets was Friedrich von
Hansen, who perished in the army of Barbarossa. His songs
contain many allusions to the Crusades, but they simply ex-
press religious views, or the pain of being separated from the
beloved of his heart. Neither he. nor any of those who took
part in the crusades, as Reinmar the elder, Rubin, Neidhardt,
and Ulrich von Lichtenstein, ever take occasion to speak of
the country surrounding them. Reinmar came to Syria as a
pilgrim, and, as it would appear, in the retinue of Duke Leo-
pold VI, of Austria. He laments that he can not shake off
the thoughts of home, which draw his mind away from God
The date-tree is occasionally mentioned when reference is
made to the palm-branches which the pilgrims should bear
on their shoulders. I do not remember an instance in which
the noble scenery of Italy seems to have excited the imagina-
tive fancy of the Minnesingers who crossed the Alps. Wal-
ther von der Vogelweide, who had made distant travels, had,
however, not journeyed further into Italy than to the Po ;
but Freidank* had been in Rome, and yet he merely remarks
that grass grows on the palaces of those who once -held sway
there."
The German Animal Ej^os, which must not be confound-
ed with the " animal fables" of the East, has arisen from
a habit of social familiarity with animals, and not from any
special purpose of giving a representation of them. This kind
of epos, of which Jacob Grimm has treated in so masterly a
* Vridankes Bescheidenheit, by Wilhelm Grimm, 1834, s. 1. and cxxviii
I have taken all that refers to the German national Epos and the Min
nesingers from a letter of Wilhelm Grimm to myself, dated October,
1845. In a very old Anglo-Saxon poem on the names of the Runes,
first made known by Hickes, we find the following characteristic de-
scription of the birch-tree: " Beorc is beautiful in its branches: it rus-
tles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of
heaven." The greeting of the day is simple and noble: " The day is
the messenger of the Lord, dear to man, the glorious light of God, a
joy and trusting comfort to rich and pool', beneficent to all !" See, also.
Willielm Grimm, Ueber Deutsche Rvnen. 1821, s. 94, 225, and 234
48 COSMOS.
manner in the introduction to his edition of Reinhart Fuchs,
manifests a genuine dehght in nature. The animals, not
chained to the ground, passionately excited, and supposed to
be gifted with voice, form a striking contrast with the still life
of the silent plants, and constitute the ever-animated principle
of the landscape. "Ancient poetry delights in considering
natural life with human eyes, and thus lends to animals, and
sometimes even to plants, the senses and emotions of human
beings, giving at the same time a fantastic and child-like in-
terpretation of all that had been observed in their forms and
habits. Herbs and flowers that may have been gathered and
used by gods and heroes are henceforward named after them.
It seems, on reading the German Animal Epos, as if the fra-
grance of some ancient forest were wafted from its pages."*
We might formerly have been disposed to number among
the memorials of the Germanic poetry of natural scenery the
remains of the Celto-Irish poems, which for half a century
flitted like vapory forms from nation to nation under the
name of Ossian ; but the charm has vanished since the literary
fraud of the talented Macpherson has been discovered by his
publication of the fictitious Gaelic original text, which was a
mere re translation of the English work. There are undoubt-
edly ancient Irish Fingal songs, designated as Finnian, which
do not date prior to the age of Christianity, and, probably,
not even from so remote a period as the eighth century ; but
these popular songs contain little of that sentimental delinea-
tion of nature which imparted so powerful a charm to the
productions of Macpherson. f
We have already observed that, although sentimental and
romantic excitement of feeling may be considered as in a high
degree characteristic of the Indo-Germanic races of Northern
Europe, it can not be alone referred to climate, or, in other
words, to a longing, increased by protracted deprivation. We
have already remarked how the literature of the Indians and
Persians, which has been developed under the genial glow of
southern climes, presents the most charming descriptions, not
* Jacob Grimm, in Reinhart Fuchs, 1834, s. ccxciv. (Compare,
also, Christian Lassen, in his Indische AlterthumsTcunde, bd. i., 1843,
s. 296.)
t {Die Undchtheit der Lieder Ossian' s und des Macpherson' schen Os-
nans insbesondere, von Talvj, 1840.) The first publication of Os-
sian by Macpherson was in 1760. The Finnian songs are, indeed,
heard in the Scottish Highlands as well as in Ireland, but they have
been carried, according to O'Reilly and Drummond, from the latter
country to Scotland.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE ARIAN RACES. 49
only of organic, but of inanimate nature ; of the transition
from drought to tropical rain ; of" the appearance of the first
cloud on the deep azure of the pure sky, when the long-desired
Etesian winds are first heard to rustle amid the feathery foli-
age of the lofty palms.
The present would appear a fitting place to enter somewhat
further into the domain of Indian delineations of nature. " If
we suppose," writes Lassen, in his admirable work on Indian
antiquity,* " that a part of the Arian race emigrated to India
from their native region in the northwestern portion of the
continent, they would have found themselves surrounded by a
wholly unknown and marvolously luxuriant vegetation. The
mildness of the climate, the fruitfulness of the soil, and its
rich and spontaneous products, must have imparted a brighter
coloring to the new life opened before them. Owing to the
originally noble characteristics of the Arian race, and the pos-
session of superior mental endowments, in which lay the germ
of all the nobleness and greatness to Avhich the Indians have
attained, the aspect of external nature gave rise in the minds
of these nations to a deep meditation on the forces of nature,
which has proved the means of inducing that contemplative
tendency which we find so intimately interwoven in the most
ancient poetry of the Indians. The all-powerful impression
thus produced on the minds of the people is most clearly
manifested in the fundamental dogma of their belief — the rec-
ognition of the divine in nature. The freedom from care,
and the ease of supporting existence in such a climate, were
also conducive to the same contemplative tendency. Who
could devote themselves with less hinderance to a profound
meditation of earthly life, of the condition of man after death,
and of the divine essence, than the anchorites, dwelling amid
forests,! the Brahmins of India, whose ancient schools consti-
* Lassen, Ind. AUerthumskunde, bd.i., s. 412-415.
t Respecting the Indian forest-hermits, Vanaprestiae (Sylvicolse) aud
Sramaui (a name which has been altered into Sarmani and Gerniaai),
see Lassen, " (ie nominibus quibus veteribus appellantur Indorum phi-
losophi," in the Rheiii. Museum fur Philologie, 1833, s. 178-180. VVil-
helm Grimm recognizes something of Indian coloring in the description
of the magic forest by a priest named Lambrecht, in the So7ig of Alex-
ander, composed more than 1200 years ago, in immediate imitation of
a French original. The hero comes to a wonderful wood, where
maidens, adorned with supernatural charms, spring from large flowers.
He remains so long with them that both flowers and maidens fade away.
[Compare Gervinus, bd, i., s. 282, and Massmann's Denkmdler, bd. i.,
B. 16.) These are the same as the maidens of Edrisi's Eastern magic
Island of Vacvac, called in the Latin version of the Masudi Chothbeddin,
Vol. II.— C
50 COSMOS.
tute one of the most remarkable phenomena of Indian life,
and must have exercised a special influence on the mental
development of the whole race ?"
In referring here, as I did in my public lectures, under the
guidance of my brother and other learned Sanscrit scholars,
to individual instances of that animated and frequently-ex-
pressed feeling for nature which breathes through the descrip-
tive portions of Indian poetry, I would begin with the Vedas,
the most ancient and most valuable memorials of the civiliza-
tion of the East Arian nations. The main subject of these
writings is the veneration and praise of nature. The hymns
of the Rig- Veda contain the most charming descriptions of
the " roseate hue of early dawn," and of the aspect of the
" golden-handed sun." The great heroic poems of Pwamayana
and Mahabharata are of more recent date than the Vedas,
but more ancient than the Puranas ; the adoration of nature
being associated with the narrative in accordance with the
character of epic creations. In the Vedas, the locality of the
scenes which had been glorified by holy beings was seldom
indicated, but in the heroic poems the descriptions of nature
are mostly individual, and refer to definite localities, from
whence they derive that animation and life which is ever im-
parted when the writer draws his materials from the impres-
sions he has himself experienced. There is a rich tone of
coloring throughout the description of the journey of Rama
from Ayodhya to the residence of Dschanaka, in his life in
the primitive forest, and in the picture of the anchorite life of
the Panduides.
The name of Kalidasa was early and widely known among
the Western nations. This great poet flourished in the highly-
cultivated court of Vikramaditya, and was consequently the
cotemporary of Virgil and Horace. The English and German
translations of the Sacontala have added to the admiration
which has been so freely yielded to this poet,"* whose tender-
puellas Vasvalcienses (Humboldt, Examen Crit. de la G^ographie, t. i.
* Kalidasa lived at the court of Vikramaditya about lifty-six year
befoi'e our era. It is highly probable that the age of the two great
heroic poems, Ramayana and Mahabharata, is much more ancient than
that of the appearance of Buddha, that is to say, prior to the middle oi
the sixth century before Cliiist. (Buri.onf, Bhagavata-Pvra7ia, t. i..
p. cxi. and cxviii.; Lassen, Ind. AUerthumshmde, bd. i., s. 3.36 and 4!>L'.)
George Forster, by the translation of Sahmtala, i. c, by liis eietjaiit
German translation of the English version of Sir William .fones (17I.M )
'■•ontributed very considerably to the eutbusiasm for Indian pnelrv
NATURAL DESCRIPTIONS BV THE INDIAiVS. 51
ness of feeling and richness of creative fancy entitle him to a
high place in the ranks of the poets of all nations. The charm
of his descriptions of nature is strikingly exemplified in the
beautiful drama of Vikrama and Urvasi, where the king
wanders through the thickets of the forest in search of the
nymph Urvasi ; in the poem of The Seasons ; and in that
of The Messenger of Clouds (Meghaduta). This last poem
describes with admirable truth to nature the joy with which,
< after long drought, the first appearance of a rising cloud is
hailed as the harbinger of the approaching season of rain.
The expression, " truth to nature," of which I have just made
use, can alone justify me in referring, in connection with the
Indian poem of TJie Messenger of the Clonds, to a picture of
the beginning of the rainy season, Avhich I sketched* in South
America, at a period when Kalidasa's Meghaduta was not
known to me even through the translation of Chezy. The
mysterious meteorological processes which take place in the
atmosphere in the formation of vapors, in the form of the
clouds, and in the luminous electric phenomena, are the same
between the tropics in both continents ; and the idealizing
art, whose province it is to exalt reality into a picture, will
lose none of its charm from the fact that the analyzing spirit
of observation of a later age may have succeeded in con-
firming the truthfulness of an ancient and simply graphic
delineation.
We now turn from the East Arians or Brahminical In-
dians, and the marked bent of their minds toward the contem-
plation of the picturesque beauties of nature, f to the West
which then first showed itself in Germany. I take pleasure in recall
ing some admirable lines of Gothe's, which appeared in 1792 :
" Willst du die Bliithe dea friihen, die Friichte des spateren Jahres,
Willst du was reizt und entziickt, willst du, was sattigt und nahrt.
Willst du den Himmel, die Erde mit einem Namen begreifen ;
Nenn' ich Sakontala, Dich, und so ist alles gesagt."
The most recent German translation of this Indian drama is that by
Otto Bohtlingk (Bonn, 1842), from the important original text discovered
by Brockhaus.
* Humboldt ( Ueber Steppen und Wusten), in the Ansichten der Natur,
2te Ausgabe, 1826, bd. i., s. 33-37.
t In order to render more complete the small portion of the text
which belongs to Indian literature, and to enable me (as I did before
with relation to Greek and Roman literature) to indicate the different
works referred to, I will here introduce some notices on the more cren-
eral consideration of the love of nature evinced by Indian writers, and
kindly communicated to me in manuscript by Herr Theodor Gold-
stiicker, a distinguished m\d. philosophical scholar thoroughly versed in
Indian poetry:
" Among all the influeuces affecting the intellectual development of
52 COSMOS.
Arians or Persians, who had separated in difierent parts of
the Northern Zend, and who were originally disposed to coni-
the Indian nation, the first and most important appears to me to have
been that which was exercised by the rich aspect of the country. A
deep sentiment for nature has at all times been a fundamental charac-
teristic of the Indian mind. Thi-ee successive epochs may be pointed
out in which this feeling has manifested itself. Each of these has its
determined character deeply implanted in the mode of life and tenden-
cies of the people. A few examples may therefore suffice to indicate
the activity of the Indian imagination, which has been evinced for
nearly three thousand years. The first epoch of the expression of a
vivid feeling for nature is manifested in the Vedas; and here we would
refer in the Rig- Veda to the sublime and simple desciiptions of the dawn
of day {Rig-Veda-Sanhitd, ed. Rosen, 1838, Hymn xlvi., p. 88; Hymn
xlviii., p. 92; Hymn xcii., p. 184; Hymn cxiii., p. 233: see, also, H6-
fer, Ind. Gedichte, 1841, Lese i., s. 3) and of * the golden-handed sun'
{Rig-Veda-Sanhitd,Hymx\ xxii.,p. 31 ; Hymn xxxv., p. 65). The ad-
oration of nature which v^^as connected here, as in other nations, with
an early stage of the religious belief, has in the Vedas a peculiar sig-
nificance, and is always brought into the most intimate connection with
the external and internal life of man. The second epoch is very differ-
ent. In it a popular mythology was formed, and its object was to mold
the sagas contained in the Vedas into a shape more easily comprehend-
ed by an age far removed in character from that which had gone by,
and to associate them with historical events which were elevated to
the domain of mythology. The two great heroic poems, the Ramaya-
na and the Mahabharata, belong to this second epoch. The last-named
poem had also the additional object of rendering the Brahmins the
most influential of the four ancient Indian castes. The Ramayana ia
therefore the more beautiful poem of the two : it is richer in natural
feeling, and has kept within the domain of poetry, not having been
obliged to take up elements alien and almost hostile to it. In both
poems, nature does not, as in the Vedas, constitute the whole picture,
but only a part of it. Two points essentially distinguish the conception
of nature at the period of the heroic poems from that which the Vedas
exhibit, without reference to the difference which separates the lan-
guage of adoration from that of narrative. One of these points is the lo-
calization of the descriptions, as, for instance, according to Wilhelm von
Schlegel, in the first book of the Ramayana or Balakanda, and in the
second book, or Ayodhyakanda. See, also, on the differences between
these two great epics, Lassen, Ind. Alter thumskunde, bd. i., s. 482.
The next point, closely connected with the first, refers to the subject
which has enriched the natural description. Mythical narration, espe-
cially when of a historical character, necessarily gave rise to greater
distinctness and localization in the description of nature. All the writ-
ers of great epics, whether it be Valmiki, who sings the deeds of Rama,
or the authors of the Mahabharata, who collected the national tradi-
tions under the collective title of Vyasa, show themselves overpowered,
is it were, by emotions connected with their descriptions of external
nature. Rama's joui'ney from Ayodhya to Dschanaka's capital, his life
in the forest, his expedition to Lanka (Ceylon), where the savage Ra-
vana, the robber of his bride, Sita, dwells, and the hermit hfe of the
Panduides, furnish the poet with the opportunity of follov^^ing the orig-
'nal bent of the Indian mind, and of blending with the narration of he>
NATURAL DESCRIPTIONS BY THE INDIANS. 53
bine a spiritualized adoration of nature with the duaUstic be
lief in Ahrimanes and Ormuzd. What we usually term Per
roic deeds the rich pictm-es of a luxuriant nature. (^Ramayana, ed
Schlegel, lib. i., cap. 26, v. 13-15; lib. ii., cap. 56, v. 6-11: compare
Nalus, ed. Bopp, 1832, Ges., xii., v. 1-10.) Another point in which
the second epoch differs from that of the Vedas in regard to the feeling
for external nature is in the greater richness of the subject treated of,
which is not, Hke the first, hmited to the phenomena of the heavenly
powers, but comprehends the whole of nature — the heavens and the
earth, with the world of plants and of animals, in all its luxuriance and
variety, and in its influence on the mind of men. In the third epoch
of the poetic literature of India, if we except the Puranas, which have
the particular object of developing the religious pi-inciple in the minds
of the different sects, external nature exercises undivided sway, but the
descriptive portion of the poems is based on scientific and local observ-
ation. By way of specifying some of the great poems belonging to this
epoch, we will mention the Bhatti-kdvya (or Bhatti's poem), which,
like the Ramayana, has for its subject the exploits and adventures of
Rama, and in which there occur successively several admirable descrip-
tions of a forest life during a term of banishment, of the sea and of its
beautiful shores, and of the bi'eaking of the day in Ceylon (Lanka).
{Bhatti-kdvya, ed. Calc, Part i., canto vii., p. 432; canto x., p. 715:
canto xi., p. 814. Compare, also, Funf Gesdnge des Bhatti-kdvya, 1837,
s. 1-18, by Professor Schiitz of Bielefeld; the agreeable description of
the different periods of the day in Magha's Sisupalabdha, and the Nais-
chada-tscharita of Sri Harscha, where, however, in the story of Nallis
and Damayanti, the expression of the feeling for exteriial nature passes
into a vague exaggeration. This extravagance contrasts with the noble
simplicity of the Ramayana, as, for instance, where Visvamitra is de-
scribed as leading his pupil to the shores of the Sona. (Sisvpaladha,
ed. Calc, p. 298 and 372. Compare Schutz, op. cit., s. 25-28; Nais-
chada-isckarita, ed. Calc, Part i., v. 77-129 ; and Ramayana, ed. Schle-
gel, lib. i., cap. 35, v. 15-18.) Kalidasa, the celebrated author of Sa-
kuntala, has a masterly manner of representing the influence which the
aspect of nature exercises on the minds and feelings of lovers. The
forest scene which he has portrayed in the drama of Vikrama and Ur-
vasi may rank among the finest poetic creations of any period. ( Vi-
kramorvasi, ed. Calc, 1830, p. 71; see the translation in Wilson's Se-
lect Specimens of the Theater of the Hindus, Calc, 1827, vol. ii., p. 63.)
Particular reference should be made in the poem of The Seasons to the
passages refemng to the rainy season and to spring. {Ritusanhdra, ed.
Bohlen, 1840, p. 11-18 and 37-45, and s. 80-88, 107-114 of Bohlen's
translation.) In the Messenger of Cloudg, likewise the work of Kali-
dasa, the influence of external nature on the feelings of men is also the
leading subject of the composition. This poem (the Meghaduta, or
Messenger of Clouds, which has been edited by Gildemeister and Wil-
son, and translated both by Wilson and by Chezy) describes the grief of
an exile on the mountain Ramagiri. In his longing for the piesence of
his beloved, from w^hom he is separated, he entreats a passing cloud
to convey to her tidings of his sorrows, and describes to the cloud the
path which it must pursue, depicting the landscape as it would be re-
flected in a mind agitated with deep emotion. Among the treasures
which the Indian poetry of the third period owes to the influence of
nature on the national mind, the highest praise must be awarded to the
54 . COSMOS.
siaii literature does not go further back than the time of the
Sassanides ; the most ancient monuments of their poetry have
perished. It was not until the country had been subjugated
by the Arabs, and had lost its original characteristics, that it
again acquired a national literature among the Samanides,
Gaznevides, and Seldschukes. The flourishing period of their
poetry, extending from Firdusi to Hafiz and Dschami, scarce-
ly lasted more than four or five hundred years, and hardly
reaches to the time of the voyage of Vasco de Gama. We
must not forget, in seeking to trace the love of nature evinced
by the Indians and Persians, that these nations, if we judge
according to the amount of cultivation by M^hich they are re-
spectively characterized, appear to be separated alike by time
and space. Persian literature belongs to the Middle Ages,
Mobile the great literature of India appertains in the strictest
sense to antiquity.
In the Iranian elevated plateaux nature has not the same
luxuriance of arborescent vegetation, or the remarkable divers-
ity of form and color, by which the soil of Hindostan is em-
bellished. The chain of the Vindhya, which long continued
to be the boundary line of the East Arian nations, falls with-
in the tropical region, while the whole of Persia is situated
beyond the tropics, and a portion of its poetry belongs even to
the northern districts of Balkh and Fergana.
The four paradises celebrated by the Persian poets* were
the pleasant valley of Soghd near Samarcand, Maschanrud
near Hamadan, Scha'abi Bowan near Kal'eh Sofid in Fars,
and Ghute, the plain of Damascus. Both Iran and Turan
are wanting in woodland scenery, and also, therefore, in the
hermit hfe of the forest, which exercised so powerful an influ-
ence on the imagination of the Indian poets. Gardens re-
freshed by cool springs, and filled with roses and fruit-trees,
can form no substitute for the wild and grand natural scenery
of Hindostan. It is no wonder, then, that the descriptive
poetry of Persia was less fresh and animated, and that it was
Gitagov'mda of Dschayadeva. (Riickert, in the Zeitschrift fur die
Kunde des Morgenlandes, bd. i., 1837, s. 129-173; Gitagovinda Jaya-
devce poetce indici drama lyricum, ed. Chr. Lassen, 1836.) We possess
a masterly rhythmical translation of this poem by Rtickert, which is
one of the most pleasing, and, at the same time, one of the most diffi-
cult in the whole literature of the Indians. The spirit of the original
IS rendered with admirable fidelity, while a vivid conception of nature
animates every part of this great composition."
* Journal of the Royal Geogr. Soc. of London, vol. x., 1841, p. 2, 3;
Riickert, Makamcn Hariri's, s. 261.
NAITHAI, i)l«CKirTIONS I ,\ rili: J'!;RS1A\ writers, tii)
often heavy and overcharged with artiiicial adornment. li\
in accordance wdth the opinion of the Persians themselves. '
we award the highest praise to that which we may designate
by the terms spirit and wit, we must hmit our admiration to
the productiveness of the Persian poets, and to the infinite di-
versity of forms imparted to the materials which they employ ;
depth and earnestness of feeling are wholly absent from their
writings.*
Descriptions of natural scenery do but rarely interrupt the
narrative in the historical or national Epos of Firdusi. It
seems to me that there is much beauty and local truthfulness
in the description of the mildness of the climate and the force
of the vegetation, extolled in the praise of the coast-land of
Mazanderan, which is put into the mouth of a wandering
bard. The king, Kei Kawus, is represented as being excited
by this j)raise to enter upon an expedition to the Caspian Sea,
and even to attempt a new conquest.! The poems on Spring
by Enweri, Dschelaleddin Humi (who is esteemed the greatest
mystic poet of the East), Adhad,= and the half-Indian Feisi,
generally breathe a tone of freshness and life, although a pet-
ty striving to play on words not unfrequently jars unpleasant-
ly on the senses4 As Joseph von Hammer has remarked, in
his great work on the history of Persian poetry, Sadi, in his
Bostan a7id Gulistan (Fruit and Pwose Gardens), may "be re-
garded as indicating an age of ethical teaching, while Hafiz,
whose joyous views of life have caused him to be compared
to Horace, may be considered by his love-songs as the type oi'
a high development of lyrical art ; but that, in both, bom-
bastic affectation too frequently mars the descriptions of na-
ture. § The darling subject of Persian poetry, the "loves of
* Gothe, iu his Commentar zum west-dstlichen Divan, bd. vi., 1828,
s. 73,78, and 111.
t See Le Livre des Rois, public par Jules Molil, t. i., 1838, p. 487.
X See Jos. vou Hammer, Gesch. der schonen Redekiinste Persiens,
1818, s. 96, concerniug Ewliadeddin Enweri, who lived iu the twelfth
ceutury, aud iu whose poem ou the Sckedschai a remarkable allusiou
has been discovered to the mutual attraction of the heavenly bodies ; s.
183, concerniug Dschelaleddin Rumi, the mystic; s. 259, concerning
Dschelaleddin Alidad ; and s. 403, concerning Feisi, who stood forth al
the court of Akbar as a defender of the religion of Brahma, and in whose
Ghazuls there breathes an Indian tenderness of feeling.
$ " Night comes on when the ink-bottle of heaven is overturned," is
the inelegant expression of Chodschah Abdulla Wassaf, a poet who has,
however, the merit of having been the first to describe the great as-
tronomical observatory' of Meragha, with its lofty gnomon. Hilali. of
Asterabad. makes the disk of the moon glow with heat, and regards
56 COSMOS,
the nightingale and the rose," recurs with wearying frequency,
and a genuine love of nature is lost in the East amid the art-
ificial conventionalities of the lano^uaofe of flowers.
On passing northward from the Iranian plateaux through
Turan (Tuirja* in the Zend) to the Uralian Mountains, which
separate Europe and Asia, we arrive at the primitive seat of
the Finnish race ; for the Ural is as much a land of the an-
cient Fins as the Altai is of the ancient Turks. Among the
Finnish tribes who have settled far to the west in the low-
lands of Europe, Elias Lonnrot has collected from the hps of
the Karelians, and the country people of Olonetz, a large
number of Finnish songs, in which " there breathes," accord-
ing to the expression of Jacob Grimm, " an animated love of
nature rarely to be met with in any poetry but that of India* "f
An ancient Epos, containing nearly three thousand verses,
treats of a fight between the Fins and Laps, and the fate of a
demi-god named Vaino. It gives an interesting account of
Finnish country life, especially in that portion of the work
where Ilmarine, the wife of the smith, sends her flocks into
the woods, and offers up prayers for their safety. Few races
exhibit greater or more remarkable differences in mental cul-
tivation, and in the direction of their feelings, according as
they have been determined by the degeneration of servitude,
warlike ferocity, or a continual striving for political freedom,
than the Fins, who have been so variously subdivided, al-
though retaining kindred languages. In evidence of this, we
need only refer to the now peaceful population among whom
the Epos above referred to was found ; to the Huns, once cel-
ebrated for conquests that disturbed the then existing order of
things, and who have long been confounded with the Monguls ;
and, lastly, to a great and noble people, the Magyars.
After having considered the extent to which intensity in
the love of nature and animation in the mode of its expression
may be ascribed to differences of race, to the peculiar influ-
ence of the configuration of the soil, the form of government,
and the character of religious belief, it now remains for us to
throw a glance over those nations of Asia who offer the
the evening dew as "the sweat of the moon." (Jos. von Hammer, s.
247 and 371.)
* Tiiirja or Turan are names whose etymology is still unknown,
Barnouf ( Yacna, t. i., p. 427-430) has acutely called attention to the
Bactrian satrapy of Turiua or Turiva, mentioned in Strabo (lib. xi,, p.
517, Cas,), Du Theil and Groskurd would, however, substitute the
reading of Tapyria. See the work of the latter, th. ii., s. 410.
+ Ueber ein Finnisches Epos, Jacob Grimm, 1845, s. 5.
NATURAL DESCRIPTIONS IN THE HEBREW WRITERS. 57
strongest contrast to the Arian or Indo-Germanic races, or, ui
other words, to the Indians and Persians.
The Semitic or Aramseic nations afford evidence of a pro-
found sentiment of love for nature in the most ancient and
venerable monuments of their poetic feeling and creative fan-
cy. This sentiment is nobly and vividly manifested in their
pastoral effusions, in their hymns and choral songs, in all the
splendor of lyric poetry in the Psalms of David, and in the
schools of the seers and prophets, vv^hose exalted inspiration,
almost wholly removed from the past, turns its prophetic as-
pirations to the future.
The Hebraic poetry, besides all its innate exalted sublimity,
presents the nations of the West with the special attraction
of being interwoven with numerous reminiscences connected
with the local seat of the religion professed by the followers
of the three most widely-diffused forms of belief, Judaism,
Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Thus missions, favoxed
by the spirit of commerce, and the thirst for conquest evinced
by maritime nations, have combined to bear the geographical
names and natural descriptions of the East as they are preserved
to us in the books of the Old Testament, far into the ibrests of
the New World, and to the remote islands of the Pacific.
It is a characteristic of the poetry of the Hebrews, that, as
a reflex of monotheism, it always embraces the universe in its
unity, comprising both terrestrial life and the luminous realms
of space. It dwells but rarely on the individuality of phe-
nomena, preferring the contemplation of great masses. The
Hebrew poet does not depict nature as a self-dependent object,
glorious in its individual beauty, but always as in relation and
subjection to a higher spiritual power. Nature is to him a
work of creation and order, the living expression of the omni-
presence of the Divinity in the visible world. Hence the lyr-
ical poetry of the Hebrews, from the very nature of its subject,
is grand and solemn, and when it treats of the earthly condi-
tion of mankind, is full of sad and pensive longing. It is
worthy of remark, that Hebrew poetry, notwithstanding its
grandeur, and the lofty tone of exaltation to which it is often
elevated by the charm of music, scarcely ever loses the rie-
straint of measure, as does the poetry of India. Devoted to
the pure contemplation of the Divinity, it remains clear and
simple in the midst of the most figurative forms of expression,
dehghting in comparisons which recur with almost rhythmic
al regularity.
As descriptions of nature, the writings of the Old Testa
C 2
58 COSMOS.
ment are a faithful reflection of the character of the country
in which they were composed, of the alternations of barren-
ness and fruitfulness, and of the Alpine forests by which the
land of Palestine was characterized. They describe in their
regular succession the relations of the climate, the manners
of this people of herdsmen, and their hereditary aversion to
agricultural pursuits. The epic or historical narratives are
marked by a graceful simplicity, almost more unadorned than
those of Herodotus, and most true to nature ; a point on which
the unanimous testimony of modern travelers may be received
as conclusive, owing to the inconsiderable changes effected in
the course of ages in the manners and habits of a nomadic
people. Their lyrical poetry is more adorned, and develops a
rich and animated conception of the life of nature. It might
almost be said that one single psalm (the 104th) represents
the image of the whole Cosmos : " Who coverest thyself with
light as with a garment : who stretchest out the heavens like
a curtain : who layeth the beams of his chambers in the wa-
ters : who maketh the clouds his chariot : who walketh upon
the wings of the wind : who laid the foundations of the earth,
that it should not be removed forever. He sendeth the springs
into the valleys, which run among the hills. They give drink
to every beast of the field : the wild asses quench their thirst.
By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation,
which sing among the branches. He causeth the grass to
grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man : that he
may bring forth food out of the earth ; and wine that maketh
glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face shine, and
bread which strengtheneth man's heart. The trees of the
Lord are full of sap ; the cedars of Lebanon which he hath
planted ; where the birds make their nests : as for the stork,
the fir-trees are her house." " The great and wide sea" is
then described, "wherein are things creeping innumerable,
both small and great beasts. There go the ships : there is
that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein." The
description of the heavenly bodies renders this picture of na-
ture complete : " He appointed the moon for seasons : the sun
knoweth his going down. Thou makest darkness, and it is
night ; wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.
The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat
from God. The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together,
and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his
work and to his labor unto the evening."
We are astonished to find, in a lyrical poem of such a lim
1 1 E V, 11 1 '. W I* ( ) E T H Y . 59
ited compass, the whole universe — the heavens and the earth
— sketched with a few bold touches. The calm and toilsome
labor of man, from the rising of the sun to the setting- of the
same, when his daily w^ork is done, is here contrasted with
the moving: Ufe of the elements of nature. This contrast and
generalization in the conception of the mutual action of natu-
ral phenomena, and this retrospection of an omnipresent invis-
ible power, which can renew the earth or crumble it to dust,
constitute a solemn and exalted rather than a glowing and
gentle form of poetic creation.
Similar views of the Cosmos occur repeatedly in the Psalms*
(Psalm Ixv., 7—14, and Ixxiv., 15-17), and most fully, per-
haps, in the 37th chapter of the ancient, if not ante-Mosaic
Book of Job. The meteorological processes which take place
in the atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapor, ac-
cording to the changing direction of the wind, the play of its
colors, the generation of hail and of the rolling thunder, are
described with individualizing accuracy ; and many questions
are propounded which we in the present state of our physical
knowledge may indeed be able to express under more scien-
tific definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily. The
Book of Job is generally regarded as the most perfect speci-
men of the poetry of the Hebrews. It is alike picturesque in
the delineation of individual phenomena, and artistically skill-
ful in the didactic arrangement of the whole work. In all
the modern languages into which the Book of Job has been
translated, its images, drawn from the natural scenery of the
East, leave a deep impression on the mind. " The Lord
walketh on the heights of the waters, on the ridges of the
waves towering high beneath the force of the wind." " The
morning red has colored the margins of the earth, and vari-
ously formed the covering of clouds, as the hand of man molds
the yielding clay." The habits of animals are described, as,
for instance, those of the wild ass, the horse, the bufi'alo, the
rhinoceros, and the crocodile, the eagle and the ostrich. We
see " the pure ether spread, during the scorching heat of the
south wind, as a melted mirror over the parched desert. "f
* Noble echoes of the ancient Hebraic poetry are found in the elev-
enth century, in the hymns of the Spanish Synagogue poet, Salomo ben
Jehudah Gabirol, which contain a poetic paraphrase of the pseudo-Ar-
istotelian book, De Mundo. See Die Religiose Poesie der Juden in
Spanien, by Michael Sachs, 1845, s. 7, 217, and 229. The sketches
drawn from nature, and found in the writings of Mose ben Jakob ben
Esra (s. 69, 77, and 285), are full of vigor and grandeur.
t I have taken the passages in the Book of Job from the translation
60 COSMOS.
Where nature has but sparingly bestowed her gifts, the senses
of man are sharpened, and he marks every change in the mov-
ing clouds of the atmosphere around him, tracing in the soli-
tude of the dreary desert, as on the face of the deep and mov-
ing sea, every phenomenon through its varied changes, back
to the signs by which its coming was proclaimed. The cli-
mate of Palestine, especially in the arid and rocky portions of
the country, is peculiarly adapted to give rise to such observ-
ations.
The poetic literature of the Hebrews is not deficient in va-
riety of form ; for while the Hebrew poetry breathes a tone
of warlike enthusiasm from Joshua to Samuel, the little book
of the gleaner Ruth presents us with a charming and exqui-
sitely simple picture of nature. Gothe,* at the period of his
enthusiasm for the East, spoke of it " as the loveliest speci-
men of epic and idyl poetry which we possess."
Even in more recent times, we observe in the earliest lit-
erature of the Arabs a faint reflection of that grand, contem-
plative consideration of nature which was an original charac-
teristic of the Semitic races. I would here refer to the pic-
turesque delineation of Bedouin desert life, which the gram-
marian Agmai has associated with the great name of Antar,
and has interwoven with other pre-Mohammedan sagas of
heroic deeds into one great work. The principal character in
this romantic novel is the Antar (of the race of Abs, and son
of the princely leader Scheddad and of a black slave), whose
verses have been preserved among the prize poems [Moalla-
kat) hung up in the Kaaba. The learned English translator,
Terrick Hamilton, has remarked the Biblical tone which
breathes through the style of Antar. f Asmai makes the son
and exposition of Umbreit (1824), s. xxix.-xlii., and 2.90-314. (Com-
pare, generally, Geseuius, Geschichte der Hebr. Sprache und Schrift, s.
33 ; and Jobi Antiquissimi Carminis Hebr. Natura atque Virtutes, ed.
Ilgen, p. 28.) The longest and most characteristic description of an an-
imal which we meet with in Job is that of the crocodile (xl., 25 — xli.,
26), and yet it contains one of the evidences of the writer being him-
self a native of Palestine. (Umbreit, s. xli. and 308.) As the river-
horse of the Nile and the crocodile were formerly found throughout the
whole Delta of the Nile, it is not surprising that the knowledge of such
Btrangely-formed animals should have spread into the contiguous region
of Palestine.
* Gothe, in his Commentar zum toest-ostlichen Divan, s. 8.
t Antar, a Bedouin romance, translated from the Arabic by Terrick
Hamilton, vol. i., p. xxvi, ; Hammer, in the Wiener Jahrbuchern der
Litteratur, bd. vi., 1819, s. 229 ; Rosenmtiller, in the Charahteren der
vorJiehmsten Dickter aller Nationen, bd. v. (1798). .s. 251.
LITERATURE OF THE ARABS. 61
of the desert go to Constantinople, and thus a picturesque
contrast of Greek culture and nomadic ruggedness is intro-
duced. The small space occupied in the earliest Arabic
poems by natural delineations of the country will excite but
little surprise when we remember, as has been remarked by
my friend Freytag of Bonn, who is so celebrated for his knowl-
edge of this branch of literature, that the principal subjects
of these poems are narrations of deeds of arms, and praise of
hospitality and fidelity, and that scarcely any of the bards
were natives of Arabia Felix. A wearying uniformity of
grassy plains and sandy deserts could not excite a love of na-
ture, except under peculiar and rare conditions of mind.
Where the soil is not adorned by woods and forests, the
phenomena of the atmosphere, as winds, storms, and the long-
wished-for rain, occupy the mind more strongly, as we have
already remarked. For the sake of referring to a natural im-
age of this kind in the Arabian poets, I would, especially no-
tice Antar's Moallakat, which describes the meadows ren-
dered fruitful by rain, and visited by swarms of buzzing in-
sects ;* the fine description of storms in Amru'l Kais, and in
the seventh book of the celebrated Hamasa;] and, lastly, the
picture in the Nabegha Dliohyani of the rising of the Eu-
phrates, when its waves bear in their course masses of reeds
and trunks of trees.^ The eighth book of Hconasa, inscribed
" Travel and Sleepiness," naturally attracted my special at-
tention ; I soon found, however, that " sleepiness"§ was lim-
ited to the first fragment of the book, and that the choice of
the subject was the more excusable, as the composition is re-
ferred to a night journey on a camel.
* Antara cum schol. Sunsenii, ed. Menil., 1816, v. 15.
t Amrulkeisi Moallakat, ed. E. G. Hengstenberg, 1823; Hamasa, ed.
Freytag, Part i., 1828, lib. vii., p. 785. Compare, also, the pleasing
work entitled Amrilkais, the Poet and King, translated by Fr. Riickert,
1843, p. 29 and 62, where southern showers of rain are twice described
with exceeding truth to nature. The royal poet visited the court of
the Emperor Justinian, several years before the birth of Mohammed,
to seek aid against his enemies. See Le Divan d] Amro Hka'is, accom-
pagne d'une traduction par le Baron MacQuckin de Slane, 1837, p. HI.
X Naheghah Dhohyani. in Silvestre de Sacy's Chrestom. Arabe, 1806,
t. iii., p. 47. On the early Ai'abian literature generally, see Weil's Die
Poet. Litteratur der Araber vor Mohammed, 1837, s. 15 and 90, as well
as Frey tag's Darstellung der Arabischen Verskunst, 1830, s. 372-392.
We may soon expect an excellent and complete version of the Arabian
poetiy, descriptive of nature, in the writings of Hamasa, from our
great poet, Friedrich Ruckert.
$ Hamasce Carmina, ed. Freytag, Part i., 1828, p. 788. "Here fin-
ishes," it is said in p. 796, " the chapter on travel and sleepiness."
62 COSMOS.
I have endeavored, in this section, to nianifest, in a frag-
mentary manner, the different influence exercised by the ex-
ternal world, or the aspect of animate and inanimate nature
at different periods of time, on the thoughts and mode of feel-
ing of different races. I have extracted from the history of
literature the characteristic expressions of the love of nature.
My object, therefore, as throughout the whole of this work,
has been, to give general rather than complete views, by the
selection of examples illustrative of the peculiar characteristics
of different epochs and different races of men. I have noticed
the changes manifested in the literature of the Greeks and
Romans, to the gradual decay of those feelings which gave
an imperishable luster to classical antiquity in the West, and
I have traced in the writings of the early fathers of the Chris-
tian Church the beautiful expression of a love of nature, de-
veloped in the calm seclusion of ah anchorite life. In consid-
ering the Indo-Germanic races (using the term in its strictest
definition), we have passed from the German poetry of the
Middle Ages to that of the highly-civilized ancient East Ari-
ans (Indians), and of the less favored West Arians, or inhab-
itants of ancient Iran. After a rapid glance at the Celtic
Gaelic songs and the recently-discovered Finnish Epos, I have
delineated the rich life of nature that breathes forth from the
exalted compositions of the Hebrews and Arabs — races of Se-
mitic or Aramaeic origin ; and thus we have traced the im-
ages reflected by the external world on the imagination of
nations dwelling in the north and southeast of Europe, in
Western Asia, in the Persian plateaux, and in the Indian
tropical regions. I have been induced to pursue this course
from the idea that, in order to comprehend nature in all its
vast sublimity, it would be necessary to present it under a
two-fold aspect, first objectively, as an actual phenomenon,
and next subjectively, as it is reflected in the feelings of man-
kind.
When the glory of the AramaBic, Greek, and Roman do-
minion, or, I might almost say, when the ancient world had
passed away, we find in the great and inspired founder of a
new era, Dante Alighieri, occasional manifestations of the
deepest sensibility to the charms of the terrestrial life of" na-
ture, whenever he abstracts himself from the passionate and
subjective control of that despondent mysticism which consti-
tuted the general circle of his ideas. The period in which
he lived followed immediately that of the decline of" the Sua-
bian Minnesingers, '^f whom I have already spoken At the
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN EARLY ITALIAN POETS. 03
close of the first canto of his Purgatorio*' Dante depicts with
inimitable grace the morning fragrance, and the trembling
light on the mirror of the gently-moved and distant sea (^7
tremolar della inarind) ; and in the fifth canto, the bursting
of the clouds, and the swelling of the rivers, when, after the
'Oattle of Campaldino, the body of Buonconte da Montefeltro
was lost in the Arno.f The entrance into the thick grove of
the terrestrial paradise is drawn from the poet's remembrance
of the pine forest near Ravenna, " la 2nneta in sul lito cli
chiassi,''\ where the matin song of the birds resounds through
the leafy boughs. The local fidelity of this picture of nature
contrasts in the celestial paradise with the " stream of light
flashing innumerable sparks,§ which fall into the flowers on
the shore, and then, as if inebriated with their sweet fra-
grance, plunge back into the stream, while others rise around
them." It would almost seem as if this fiction had its oriijin
in the poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphores-
cent condition of the ocean, when luminous points appear to
rise from the breaking waves, and, spreading themselves over
the surface of the waters, convert the liquid plain into a mov-
ing sea of sparkling stars. The remarkable conciseness of the
style of the Divma Commedia adds to the depth and earnest-
ness of the impression which it produces.
In lingering on Italian ground, although avoiding the frigid
pastoral romances, I would here refer, after Dante, to the
plaintive sonnet in which Petrarch describes the impression
* Dante, Purgaiorio, canto i., v. 115:
" L' alba vinceva 1' ora mattutina
Che fuggia 'nnanzi, si che di lontano
Conobbi il tremolar della marina" ....
t Purg., canto v., v. 109-127 :
"Ben sai come nell' aer si raccoglie
Quell' umido vapor, che in acqua riede,
Tosto che sale, dove '1 freddo il coglie" ....
X Purg., canto xxviii., v. 1-24.
$ Parad., canto xxx., v. 61-69:
" E vidi lume in forma di riviera
Fulvido di fulgori intra due rive
Dipinte di mirabil primavera.
Di tal fiumana uscian faville viva
E d' ogni parte si mettean ne' fiori,
Quasi rubin, che oro circonscrive.
Foi come inebriate dagli odori,
Riprofondavan se nel miro gurge
E s' una entrava, un altra n' uscia fuori."
I do not make any extracts from the Canzones of the Vita Nuova, b"
cause the siraiHtudes and images which they contain do not belong u
the purely natural range of terrestrial phenomena.
64 COSMOS
made on his mind by the charming Valley of Vaucluse, after
death had robbed him of Lam*a ; the smaller poems of Boi-
ardo, the friend of Hercules d'Este ; and, more recently, the
stanzas of Vittoria Colonna.*
When classical literature acquired a more generally-dif-
fused vigor by the intercourse suddenly opened with the po-
litically degenerated Greeks, we meet with the earliest evi-
dence of this better spirit in the works of Cardinal Bembo,
the friend and counselor of Raphael, and the patron of art ;
for in the JEtna Dialogue., written in the youth of the au-
thor, there is a charming and vivid sketch of the geographical
distribution of the plants growing on the declivities of the
mountain, from the rich corn-fields of Sicily to the snow-cov-
ered margin of the crater. The finished work of his raaturer
age, the Histoi-icE Venetce, characterizes still more picturesque-
ly the climate and vegetation of the New Continent.
Every thing concurred at this period to fill the imagina-
tions of men with grand images of the suddenly-extended
boundaries of the known world, and of the enlargement of hu-
man powers, which had been of simultaneous occurrence.
As, in antiquity, the Macedonian expeditions to Paropanisus
and the wooded alluvial valleys of Western Asia awakened
impressions derived from the aspect of a richly-adorned exotic
nature, whose images were vividly reflected in the works of
* I would here refer to Boiardo's sonnet, beginning,
Ombrosa selva, che il mio duolo ascolti,
and the fine stanzas of Vittoria Colonna, which begin,
Quando miro la terra ornata e bella,
Di mille vaghi ed odorati fiori ....
A fine and very characteristic description of the country seat of Fra-
castoro, on the hill of Incassi (Mons Caphius), near Verona, is given by
this writer (who was equally distinguished in medicine, mathematics,
and poetry), in his Naugerius de Poetica Dialogue. Hieron. Fracasto-
rii. Op. 1591, Part i., p. 321-326. See, also, in a didactic poem by the
same writer, lib. ii., v. 208-219 (Op., p. 636), the pleasing passage on
the culture of the Citrus in Italy. I miss with astonishment any ex-
pression of feeling connected with the aspect of nature in the letters
of Petrarch, either when, in 1345 (three years, therefore, before the
death of Laura), he attempted the ascent of Mont Ventour from Vau-
cluse, in the eager hope of beholding from thence a part of his native
land; when he ascended the banks of the Rhine to Cologne; or when
he visited the Gulf of Baiae. He lived more in the world of his classic-
al remembrances of Cicero and the Roman poets, or in the emotions of
his ascetic melancholy, than in the actual scenes by which he was sur-
rounded. (See Petrarch<B Epist. de Rebus Familiarihns, lib. iv., 1, v
3 and 4; p. 119, 156, and 161, ed. Lugdun., 1601). There is, howev
er, an exceedingly picturesque description of a great tempest which he
observed near Naples in 1343 (hb. v., 5, p. 165).
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY COLUMBUS. ()5
highly-gifted writers, even for centuries afterward, so, in like
manner, did the discovery of America act in exercising a sec-
ond and stronger influence on the western nations than that
of the crusades. The tropical world, with all the luxuriance
of its vegetation on the plains, with all the gradations of its
varied organisms on the declivities of the Cordilleras, and
with all the reminiscences of northern climates associated with
the inhabited plateaux of Mexico, New Granada, and Quito,
was now first revealed to the eyes of Europeans. Fancy,
without whose aid no truly great work can succeed in the
hands of man, lent a peculiar charm to the delineations of na-
ture sketched by Columbus and Vespucci. The first of these
discoverers is distmguished for his deep and earnest sentiment
of religion, as we find exemplified in his description of the
mild sky of Paria, and of the mass of water of the Orinoco,
which he beheved to flow from the eastern paradise, while
the second is remarkable for the intimate acquaintance he
evinces with the poets of ancient and modern times, as shown
in his description of the Brazilian coast. The religious senti-
ment thus early evinced by Columbus became converted, with
increasing years, and under the influence of the persecutions
which he had to encounter, into a feeling of melancholy and
morbid enthusiasm.
In the heroic ages of the Portuguese and Castilian races,
it was not thirst for gold alone, as has been asserted from ig-
norance of the national character at that period, but rather a
general spirit of daring, that led to the prosecution of distant
voyages. The names of Hayti, Cubagua, and Darien acted
on the imaginations of men in the beginning of the sixteenth
century in the same manner as those of Tinian and Otaheite
have done in more recent times, since Anson and Cook. If
the narrations of far-distant lands then drew the youth of the
Spanish peninsula, Flanders, Lombardy, and Southern Ger-
many, to rally around the victorious standard of an imperial
leader on the ridges of the Andes, or the burning plains of
Uraba and Core, the milder influence of a more modem civ-
ihzation, when all portions of the earth's surface were more
generally accessible, gave other motives and directions to the
restless longing for distant travels. A passionate love of the
study of nature, which originated chiefly in the north, glowed
in the breast of all ; intellectual expansion of views became
associated with enlargement of knowledge ; while the poetic
and sentimental tone of feeling, peculiar to the epoch of which
we speak, has, since the close of the last century, been identi-
66 COSMOS.
fied with literary compositions, whose forms were unknown
to former ao^es.
On casting a retrospective glance on the great discoveries
which prepared the way for this modern tone of feeling, our
attention is especially attracted by the descriptions of nature
which we owe to the pen of Columbus. It is only recently
that we have been in possession of his own ship's journal, his
letters to the Chancellor Sanchez, to the Donna Juana de la
Torre, governess of the Infant Don Juan, and to Queen Isa-
bella. I have already attempted, in my critical investigation
of the history of the geography of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries,* to show with what depth of feeling for nature the
great discoverer was endowed, and how he described the earth
and the new heaven opened to his eyes {viage nuevo al nuevo
cielo i oniindo que fasta entonces estaba en occulto) with a
beauty and simplicity of expression which can only be ade-
quately appreciated by those who are conversant with the an-
cient vigor of the language at the period in which he wrote.
' The physiognomy and forms of the vegetation, the impene-
trable thickets of the forests, "in which one can scarcely dis-
tinguish the stems to which the several blossoms and leaves
belong," the wild luxuriance of the flowering soil along the
humid shores, and the rose-colored flamingoes, which, fishing
at early morn at the mouth of the rivers, impart animation to
the scenery, all, in turn, arrested the attention of the old mar-
iner as he sailed along the shores of Cuba, between the small
Lucayan islands and the Jardinillos, which I too have visited.
Each newly-discovered land seems to him more beautiful than
the one last described, and he deplores his inability to find
words in which to express the sweet impressions awakened in
his mind. Wholly unacquainted with botany (although,
through the influence of Arabian and Jewish physicians, some
superficial knowledge of plants had been diffused in Spain),
he was led, by a simple love of nature, to individualize all the
unknown forms he beheld. Thus, in Cuba alone, he distin-
guishes seven or eight different species of palms, more beau-
tiful and taller than the date-tree {variedades de paltnas su-
pei'iores a las nuestras en su belleza y altura). He informs
his learned friend Anghiera that he has seen pines and palms
{palmeta et pineta) wonderfully associated together in one
and the same plain ; and he even so acutely observed the
vegetation around him, that he was the first to notice that
* Humboldt, Examen Critique de VHistoire de la Geographic du
nouveau 'Continent, t, iii., p 227-248.
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE HY COI.UMBU.S. 0/
there were pines on the mountains of Cibao whose fruits are
not fir-cones, but berries like the oUves of the Axarafe de Sc-
villa ; and further, as I have already remarked, Columbus*
already separated the genus Podocarpus from the family of
Abietinese,
" The beauty of the new land," says the discoverer, " far
surpasses the Campina de Cordova. The trees are bright,
with an ever-verdant foliage, and are always laden with fruit.
The plants on the ground are high and flowering. The air
is warm as that of April in Castile, and the nightingale sings
more melodiously than words can describe. At night the
song of other smaller birds resounds sweetly, and I have also
heard our grasshoppers and frogs. Once I came to a deeply-
inclosed harbor, and saw a high mountain that had never
been seen by any mortal eye, and from whence gentle waters
[lindas aguas) flowed down. The mountain was covered
with firs and variously-formed trees adorned with beautiful
blossoms. On sailing up the stream, which empties itself
into the bay, I was astonished at the cool shade,. the clear,
crystal-like water, and the number of the singing birds. I
felt as if I could never leave so charming a spot, as if a thou-
sand tongues would fail to describe all these things, and as if
my hand were spell-bound and refused to write {para hacer
relacion a los Reyes de las cosas que vian no hastaran mil
lenguas a referillo, ni la mano para lo escribir, que le pare-
cia questaba encantado)."\
We here learn, from the journal of a wholly unlettered sea-
man, the power which the beauty of nature, in its individual
forms, may exercise on a susceptible mind. Feelings ennoble
language ; for the style of the Admiral, especially when, at
the age of sixty-seven, on his fourth voyage, he relates his
wonderful dreamf on the shore of Veragua, if not more elo-
quent, is at any rate more interesting than the allegorical,
pastoral romances of Boccacio, and the two poems of Arcadia
by Sannazaro and Sydney, than Garcilasso's Salicio y Ne-
moroso, or than the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor. The
* See vol. i., p. 282.
t Journal of Columbus on his first voyage (Oct. 29, 1492; Nov.
25-29; Dec. 7-16; Dec. 21). See, also, his letter to Dona Maria de
Guzman, ama del Principe D. Juan, Dec, 1500, in Navarrete, Colec-
don de los Viages que hiciiron por mar los Espanoles, t. i., p. 43, 65, 72,
82, 92, 100, and 266.
X Navarrete, op. cit., p. 303-304, Carta del Almirante a los Reyes es-
crita en Jamaica a 7 de Julio, 1503 ; Humboldt, Examen Crit., t. iii.,
p. 231-236.
68 €osMoa.
elegiac idyllic element unfortunately predominated too long in
the literature of the Spaniards and Italians, It required all
the freshness of delineation which characterized the adven-
tures of Cervantes's Knight of La Mancha to atone for the
Galatea of the same author. Pastoral romance, however it
may be ennobled by the beauty of language and tenderness of
sentiment manifested in the works of the above-named great
writers, must, from its very nature, remain cold and weari-
some, like the allegorical and artificial productions of the Mid-
dle Ages. Individuality of observation can alone lead to a
truthful representation of nature ; thus it is supposed that the
finest descriptive stanzas in the Gerusalem^na Liberata^ may
be traced to impressions derived from the poet's recollection
of the beautiful scenery of Sorrento by which he was sur-
rounded.
**The power of stamping descriptions of nature with the im-
press of faithful individuality, which springs from actual ob-
servation, is most richly displayed in the great national epic
of Portuguese literature. It seems as if a perfumed Eastern
air breathed throughout this poem, which was written under
a tropical sky in the rocky grotto near Macao, and in the Mo-
luccas. Although I would not venture to assume that my
opinion could serve as a confirmation of the bold expression
of Friedrich Schlegel, that "the Licsiad of Camoens far sur-
passes Ariosto in richness of color and luxuriance of fancy,"t
I may be permitted to add, as an observer of nature, that in
the descriptive portions of the work, the enthusiasm of the
poet, the ornaments of diction, and the sweet tones of melan-
choly never impede the accurate representation of physical
phenomena, but rather, as is always the case where art draws
from a pure source, heighten the animated impression of the
greatness and truth of the delineations. Camoens abounds in
inimitable descriptions of the never-ceasing connection between
the air and sea — between the varying form of the cloudy can-
opy, its meteorological processes, and the different conditions
* Tasso, canto xvi., stanze 9-16.
t See Friedrich Schlegel's Sdmmtl. WerJce, bd. ii., s. 96 ; and on the
disturbing mythological dualism, and the mixture of antique fable with
Christian contemplations, see bd. x., s. 54. Camoens has tried, in
stanzas 82-84, which have not met with sufficient admiration, to justi-
fy this mythological duahsm. Tethys avows, in a naive manner, "but in
verses inspired by the noblest conception of poetry, •• that she herself,
Saturn, Jupiter, and all the host of gods, are vain fables, created by the
blind delusion of mortals, and serving only to lend a charm to song — •
A Sancta Providencia que em Jupiter aqui se representa.^'
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN CAMOENs's LUSIAD, 69
of the surface of the ocean. He describes this surface when,
curled by gentle breezes, the short waves flash beneath the
play of the reflected beams of light, and again when the ships
of Coelho and Paul de Gama contend in a fearful storm against
the wildly-agitated elements.* Camoens is, in the strictest
sense of the word, a great sea painter. He had served as a
soldier, and fought in the Empire of Morocco, at the foot of
Atlas, in the Red Sea, and on the Persian Gulf; twice he
had doubled the Cape, and, inspired by a deep love of nature,
he passed sixteen years in observing the phenomena of the
ocean on the Indian and Chinese shores. He describes the
electric fires of St. Elmo (the Castor and Pollux of the ancient
Greek mariners), " the living light, t sacred to the seaman."
He depicts the threatening water-spout in its gradual devel-
opment, " how the cloud woven from fine vapor revolves in a
circle, and, letting down a slender tube, thirstily, as it were,
sucks up the water, and how, when the black cloud is filled,
the foot of the cone recedes, and, flying upward to the sky,
gives back in its flight, as fresh water, that which it had
drawn from the waves with a surging noise. "| "Let the
book-leamed," says the poet, and his taunting words might
almost be applied to the present age, " try to explain the hid-
den wonders of this world, since, trusting to reason and science
alone, they are so ready to pronounce as false what is heard
from the lips of the sailor, whose only guide is experience."
The talent of the enthusiastic poet for describing nature is
not limited to separate phenomena, but is very conspicuous in
the passages in which he comprehends large masses at one
glance. The third book sketches, in a few strokes, the form
* Os Lusiadas de Camoes, canto i., est. 19 ; canto vi., est. 71-82. See,
also, the comparison in the description of a tempest raging in a forest,
canto i., est. 35.
t The fire of St. Elmo, " o lume vivo que a maritima genie tern por
santo, em tempo de tormenta^^ (canto v., est. 18). One flame, the Hel-
ena of the Greek mariners, brings misfortune (Plin., ii., 37) ; two flames,
Castor and Pollux, appearing with a rustling noise, " like fluttering
birds," are good omens (Stob., Eclog. Phys., i., p. 514; Seneca, Nat.
Qucsst., i., 1). On the eminently graphical character of Camoeus's de-
scriptions of nature, see the great Paris edition of 1818, in the Vida de
Camoes, by Dom Joze Maria de Souza, p. cii.
t The water-spout in canto v., est. 19-22, may be compared with the
equally poetic and faithful description o^ Lucretius, vi., 423-442. On
the fresh water, which, toward the close of the phenomenon, appears
to fall from the upper part of the column of water, see Ogden On Wa-
ter Spouts (from observations made in 1820, during a voyage from Ha-
vana to Norfolk), in Silliman's American Journal of Science, vol. xxix.,
1836, p. 254-260.
70 COSMOS.
of Europe,* from the coldest north to " the Lusitaniaii realm
and the strait where Hercules achieved his last labor." Al
lusion is constantly made to the manners and civilization of
the nations who inhabit this diversified portion of the earth
From the Prussians, Muscovites, and the races " que o Rhe
no frio lava" he hastens to the glorious plains of Hellas
" qice creastes os peitos eloquentes^ e osjuizos cle alta phanta
sia." In the tenth book he takes a more extended view.
Tethys leads Gama to a high mountain, to reveal to him the
secrets of the mechanism o±" the earth [machina do mundo),
and to disclose the course of the planets (according to the
Ptolemaic hypothesis).! It is a vision in the style of Dante,
and as the earth forms the center of the moving universe, all
the knowledge then acquired concerning the countries already
discovered, and their produce, is included in the description
of the globe.| Europe is no longer, as in the third book, the
sole object of attention, but all portions of the earth are in
turns passed in review ; even " the land of the Holy Cross"
(Brazil) is named, and the coasts discovered by Magellan, "by
birth but not by loyalty a son of Lusitania."
If I have specially extolled Camoens as a sea painter, it
was in order to indicate that the aspect of a terrestrial life
appears to have attracted his attention less powerfully. Sis-
mondi has justly remarked that the whole poem bears no
trace of graphical description of tropical vegetation, and its
peculiar physiognomy. Spices and other aromatic substances,
* Canto iii., est. 7-21. In my references I have always followed the
text of Camoens according to the editio princeps of 1572, which has
been given afresh in the excellent and splendid editions of Dom Joze
Maria de Souza-Botelho (Paris, 1818). In the German quotations I
have generally used the translation of Donner (1833). The principal
aim of the Lusiad of Camoens is to do honor to his nation. It would be
a monument well worthy of his fame, and of the nation whom he extols,
if a hall were constructed in Lisbon, after the noble examples of the
halls of Schiller and Gothe in the Grand Ducal Palace of Weimar, and
if the twelve grand compositions of my talented and deceased liiend
Gerai'd, which adorn the Souza edition, were executed in large dimen-
sions, in fresco, on well-lighted walls. The dream of the King Dom
Mauoel, in which the rivers Indus and Ganges appear to him ; the
Giant Adamastor hovering over the Cape of Good Hope {'^Eu sou
aquelle occulto e graride Cabo, a quern chamais vos outros Tormentorio'^^ ;
the murder of Ignes de Castro, and the lovely Ilha de Venus, would
all produce the most admirable effect.
t Canto X., est. 79-90. Camoens, like Vespucci, speaks of the part
of the heavens nearest to the southern pole as poor in stars (canto v.,
est. 14). He is also acquainted with the ice of the southern seas (canto
v., est. 27). t Canto x., est, 91-141.
I
DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE IN ERCILLAS ARAUC^NA. 71
together with useful products of commerce, are alone noticed
The episode of the magic island* certainly presents the most
charming pictures of natural scenery, but the vegetation, as
befits an Ilha de Veiius, is composed of " myrtles, citrons,
fragrant lemon-trees, and pomegranates," all belonging to the
climate of Southern Europe. We find a greater sense of en-
joyment from the littoral woods, and more attention devoted
to the forms of the vegetable kingdom, in the writings of the
greatest navigator of his day, Columbus ; but then, it must
be admitted, while the latter notes down in his journal the
vivid impressions of each day as they arose, the poem of Ca-
moens was written to do honor to the great achievements of
the Portuguese. The poet, accustomed to harmonious sounds,
could not either have felt much disposed to borrow from the lan-
guage of the natives strange names of plants, or to have inter-
woven them in the description of landscapes, which were design-
ed as back-grounds for the main subjects of which he treated.
By the side of the image of the knightly Camoens has often
been placed the equally romantic one of a Spanish warrior,
who served under the banners of the great Emperor in Peru
and Chili, and sang in those distant climes the deeds in which
he had himself taken so honorable a share. But in the whole
epic poem of the Araucmia, by Don Alonso de Ercilla, the
aspect of volcanoes covered with eternal snow, of torrid sylvan
valleys, and of arms of the sea extending far into the land,
has not been productive of any descriptions which may be re-
garded as graphical. The exaggerated praise which Cer-
vantes takes occasion to expend on Ercilla in the ingenious
satirical review of Don Quixote's books, is probably merely
the result of the rivalry subsisting between the Spanish and
Italian schools of poetry, but it would almost appear to have
deceived Voltaire and many modern critics. The Araucana
is certainly penetrated by a noble feeling of nationality. The
description of the manners of a wild race, who perish in
struggling for the liberty of their country, is not devoid of an-
imation, but Ercilla's style is not smooth or easy, while it is
overloaded with proper nj^,mes, and is devoid of all trace of
poetic enthusiasm.!
* Cauto ix., est. 51-63. (Consult Ludwig Kriegk, Schriften zur all-
f^emeineji Erdkunde, 18 10, s. 338.) The whole Ilha de Venus is an al-
egorical fable, as is clearly shown in est. 89 ; but the beginning of the
relation of Dora Manoel's dream describes an Indian mountain and for-
est district (canto iv., est. 70).
t A predilection for the old literature of Spain, and for the enchant-
ing region in which the Araucana of Alonso de Ercilla y Zuiiiga was
72 COSMOS.
This enthusiastic poetic inspiration is to be traced, howev-
er, in many strophes of the Ro7nancero Caballeresco ;* in the
rehgious melancholy pervading the writings of Fray Luis de
Leon, as, for instance, in his description of the charming night,
when he celebrates the eternal lights {I'esjolandores eternales)
of the starry heavens ;t and in the compositions of Calderon.
composed, has led me to read through the whole of this poem (which,
unfortunately, comprises 42,000 verses) on two occasions, once in Peru,
and again recently in Paris, when, by the kindness of a learned travel-
er, M. Ternaux Compans, I received, for the purpose of comparing it
with Ercilla, a very scarce book, printed in 1596 at Lima, and contain-
ing the nineteen cantos of the Arauco domado {com-puesto por el Licen-
ciado Pedro de Oha natural de los Infantes de Engol en Chile). Of the
epic poem of Ercilla, which Voltaire regarded as an Iliad, and Sis-
moudi as a newspaper in rhyme, the first fifteen cantos w^ere composed
between 1555 and 1563, and were published in 1569; the later cantos
^vere first printed in 1590, only six years before the wretched poem of
Pedro de Ona, which bears the same title as one of the master-works
of Lope de Vega, in which the Cacique Caupolican is also the principal
personage. Ercilla is unaffected and true-hearted, especially in those
parts of his composition which he wrote in the field, mostly on the bark
of trees and the skins of animals, for want of paper. The description
of his poverty, and of the ingratitude which he, like others, experienced
at the court of King Philip, is extremely touching, particularly at the
close of the 37th canto :
" Climas pase, mude constelaciones,
Golfos innavegables navegando,
Estendiendo Seuor, vuestra corona
Hasta casi la austral frigida zona."
" The flower of my life is past ; led by a late-earned experience, I will
renounce earthly things, weep, and no longer sing.'' The natural de-
scriptions of the garden of the sorcerer, of the tempest raised by Epo-
namon, and the delineation of the ocean (Part i., p. 80, 135, and 173;
Part ii., p. 130 and 161, in the edition of 1733), are wht)lly devoid of
life and animation. Geographical registers of words are accumulated
in such a manner that, in canto xxvii., twenty-seven proper names fol-
low each other in a single stanza of eight lines. Part ii. of the Arau-
tana is not by Ercilla, but is a continuation, in tw^enty cantos, by Diego
de Santistevan Osorio, appended to the thirty-seven cantos of Ercilla.
* See, in Romancero de Romances Caballerescos e Historicos ordena-
do, por D. Augustin Duran, Part i., p. 189, and Part ii., p. 237, the fine
strophes commencing Yba declinando el dia — Su curso y ligeras haras,
and those on the flight of King Rodrigo, beginning
"Cuaiido las pintados aves
Mudas estdn, y la tierra
A teiUa escucha los rios."
t Fray Luis de Leon, Ohras Proprias y Traducciones, dedicadas a
Don Pedro Poriocarero, 1681, p. 120: Noche serena. A deep feeling
for nature also manifests itself occasionally in the ancient mystic poetry
of the Spaniards (as, for instance, in Fray Luis de Granada, Santa Te-
resa de Jesus, and Malon de Chaide) ; but the natural pictures are gen-
erally only the external investment under which the ideal religious
conception is symbolized.
CALDERON. 73
'* At the period when Spanish comedy had attained its fullest
development," says my friend Ludwig Tieck, one of the pro-
foundest critics of dramatic literature, " we often find, in the
romanesque and lyrical meter of Calderon and his cotempo-
raries, dazzlingly beautiful descriptions of the sea, of mount-
ains, gardens, and sylvan valleys, but these are always so inter-
woven with allegorical allusions, and adorned with so much
artificial brilliancy, that we feel we are reading harmoniously
rhythmical descriptions, recurring continually with only slight
variations, rather than as if we could breathe the free air of
nature, or feel the reality of the mountain breath and the val-
ley's shade." In the play of Life is a Dreatn {la vida es
sueno), Calderon makes the Prince Sigismund lament the
misery of his captivity in a number of" gracefully-drawn con-
trasts with the freedom of all organic nature. He depicts
birds " which flit with rapid wings across the wide expanse
of heaven ;" fishes, "which but just emerged from the mud
and sand, seek the wide ocean, whose boundlessness seems
scarcely sufficient for their bold course. Even the stream
which winds its tortuous way among flowers finds a free pas-
sage across the meadow ; and I," cries Sigismund, in despair,
" I, who have more life than these, and a freer spirit, must
content myself with less freedom I" In the same manner
Don Fernando speaks to the King of Fez, in The Steadfast
Pritice, although the style is often disfigured by antitheses,
witty comparisons, and artificially-turned phrases from the
school of Gongora.^^ I have referred to these individual ex-
amples because they show, in dramatic poetry, which treats
chiefly of events, passions, and characters, that descriptions
become merely the reflections, as it were, of the disposition
and tone of feeling of the principal personages. Shakspeare,
who, in the hurry of his animated action, has hardly ever
time or opportunity for entering deliberately into the descrip-
tions of natural scenery, yet paints them by accidental refer-
ence, and in allusion to the ieelings of the principal charac-
ters, in such a manner that we seem to see them and live in
them. Thus, in the Midsuinmer Night's Dream, we live in
the wood ; and in the closing scenes of the Mercluint of Ven-
ice, we see the moonshine which brightens the warm sum-
mer's night, without there being actually any direct descrip-
tion of either. " A true description of nature occurs, howev-
* Calderon, in The Steadfast Prince, on the approach of the fleet,
A.ct i., scene 1: and on the sovereignty of the wild beasts in the forests.
Act iii., scene 2.
Vol. li — D
74 COSMOS.
er, in Hinp: Cear, where the seemingly mad Edgar represents
to hjj^ hhnd father, Gloucester, while on the plain, that they
are ascenduig Dover Clift^. The description of the view, on
looking into the depths below, actually excites a feeling of
giddiness."*
If, in Shaksceare, the inward animation of the feelings and
the grand simr)licity of the language gave such a wonderful
degree of life-like truth and individuality to the expression oi'
nature, in Milton's exalted poem of Paradise Lost the de-
scriptions are, from the very nature of the subject, more mag-
nificent than graphic. The whole richness of the poet's fancy
and diction is lavished on the descriptions of the luxuriant
beauty of Paradise, but, as in Thomson's charming didactic
poem of The SeasonSy vegetation could only be sketched in
general and more indefinite outlines. According to the judg-
ment of critics deeply versed in Indian poetry, Kalidasa's
poem on a similar subject, the Ritusanhara, which was writ-
ten more than fifteen hundred vears earlier, individualizes,
with greater vividness, the poweriiil vegetation of tropical re-
gions, but it wants the charm which, in Thomson's work,
springs from the more varied division of the year in northern
latitudes, as the transition of the autumn rich in fruits to the
winter, and of the winter to the reanimating season of Spring ;
and from the images which may thus be drawn of the labors
or pleasurable pursuits of men in each part of tne year.
If we proceed to a period nearer our own time, we observu
that, since the latter half of the eighteenth century, aehnea-
tive prose especially has developed itself with peculiar vigor-
Although the general mass of knowledge has been so exceca-
ively enlarged from the universally-extended study of nature
it does not appear that, in those susceptible of a higher dt*
gree of poetic inspiration, intellectual contemplation has sun*
under the weight of accumulated knowledge, but rather thai
as a result of poetic spontaneity, it has gained in compreheu-
siveness and elevation ; and, learning how to penetrate deep-
er into the structure of the earth's crust, has explored in th^
mountain masses of our planet the stratified sepulchers of ex
tinct organisms, and traced the geographical distribution ol
animals and plants, and the mutual connection of races
Thus, among' those who were the first, by an exciting appeal
to the imaginative faculties, powerfully to animate the senti-
* I have taken the passages di8ting:nished in the text hy marks ot
t|Uotation, and relating to Calderon and Shakspeare, from uiipuhlislic^
letters addressed to myself by Ludvvig Tieck.
MODERN PROSE WRITERS. 75
merit of enjoyment derived from communion with nature, and
consequently, also, to give impetus to its inseparable accom-
paniment, the love of distant travels, we may mention in
France Jean Jacques Rousseau, BufTon, and Bernardin de
St. Pierre, and, exceptionally to include a still living author,
I would name my old friend Auguste de Chateaubriand ;* in
Great Britain, the intellectual Playfair ; and in Germany,
Cook's companion on his second voyage of circumnavigation,
the eloquent George Forster, who M^as endowed with so pe-
culiarly happy a faculty of generalization in the study of nature.
It would be foreign to the present work were I to under-
take to inquire into the characteristics of these writers, and
investigate the causes which at one time lend a charm and
grace to the descriptions of natural scenery contained in their
universally-diffused works, and at another disturb the impres-
sions which they were designed to call forth ; but as a trav-
eler, who has derived the greater portion of his knowledge
from immediate observation, I may perhaps be permitted to
introduce a few scattered remarks on a recent, and, on the
whole, but little cultivated branch of literature. Bufibn —
great and earnest as he was — simultaneously embracing a
knowledge of the planetar)'- structures, of organization, and of
the laws of light and magnetic forces, and far more profoundly
versed in physical investigations than his cotemporaries sup-
posed, shows more artificial elaboration of style and more rhe-
torical pomp than individualizing truthfulness when he passes
from the description of the habits of animals to the delinea-
tion of natural scenery, inclining the mind to the reception of
exalted impressions rather than seizing upon the imagination
by presenting a visible picture of actual nature, or conveying
to the senses the echo, as it were, of reality. Even through-
out the most justly celebrated of his works in this department
of literature, we instinctively feel that he could never have
left Central Europe, and that he is deficient in personal ob-
servation of the tropical world, which he believes he is cor-
rectly describing. But that which we most especially miss
in the writings of the great naturalist is a harmonious mode
of connecting the representation of nature with the expression
of awakened feelings ; he is, in fact, deficient in almost all
that flows from the mysterious analogy existing between the
mental emotions of the mind and the phenomena of the per-
ceptive world,
* [This distinguished writer died July 4th of the present year
(1848).'l— Tr.
76 ' COSMOS.
A greater depth of feeling and a fresher spirit of animation
pervade the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Bernardin de
St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand. If I here allude to the per-
suasive eloquence of the first of these writers, as manifested
in the picturesque scenes of Clarens and La Meillerie on Lake
Leman, it is because, in the principal works of this zealous
but ill-instructed plant-collector — which were written twenty
years before Buflbn's fanciful Epoques de la Nature* — ^poetic
inspiration shows itself principally in the innermost peculiari-
ties of the language, breaking forth as fluently in his prose as
in the immortal poems of Klopstock, Schiller, Goethe, and
Byron. Even where there is no purpose of bringing forward
subjects immediately connected with the natural sciences, our
pleasure in these studies, when referring to the limited por-
tions of the earth best known to us, may be increased by the
charm of a poetic mode of representation.
In recurring to prose writers, we dwell with pleasure on
the small work entitled Paul et Virginie, to which Bernardin
de St. Pierre owes the fairer portion of his literary reputation.
The work to which I allude, which can scarcely be rivaled
by ^ny production comprised in the literature of other coun-
tries, is the simple picture of an island in the midst of a trop-
ical sea, in which, sometimes favored by the serenity of the
sky, and sometimes threatened by the violent conflict of the
elements, two charming creatures stand picturesquely forth
from the wild sylvan luxuriance surrounding them as with a
variegated flowery tapestry. Here, and in the Cliaumiere In-
dieniie, and even in his Etudes de la Nature, which are un-
* The succession in whicb the works referred to were published is
as follows: Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1759, Nouvelle Heloise; BuiFon,
Epoques de la Nature, 1778, but his Histoire Naturelle, 1749-1767 ; Ber-
nardin de St. Pierre, Etudes de la Nature, 1784, Paul et Virginie, 1788,
Chaumiere Indienne, 1791; George Forster, Reise nack der Sudsee,
1777, Kleine Schriften, 1794. More than half a century before the
publication of the Nouvelle Heloise, Madame de Sevigne, in her charm-
ing letters, had already shown a vivid sense of the beauty of nature,
such as was rarely expressed in the age of Louis XIV. See the fine
natural descriptions in the letters of April 20, May 31, August 15, Sep-
tember 16, and November 6, 1671, and October 23 and December 28,
1689 (Aubenas, Hist, de Madame de Sivign€, 1842, p. 201 and 427).
My reason for referring in the text to the old German poet, Paul Flem-
ming, who, from 1633 to 1639, accompanied Adam Olearius on his
journey to Muscovy and to Persia, is that, according to the convincing
authority of my friend, Vamhagen von Ense (Biographische Denkw.,
bd. iv., s. 4, 75, and 129), " the character of Flemming's compositiona
is marked with a fresh and healthful vigor, while his images of nature
are tender and full of life."
MODERN PROSE WRITERS. 77
fortunately disfigured by wild theories and erroneous physical
opinions, the aspect of the sea, the grouping of the clouds, the
rustlinof of the air amid the crowded bamboos, the waving of
the leafy crown of the slender palms, are all sketched with
inimitable truth. Bernardin de St. Pierre's master-work,
Paul et Virginie, accompanied me to the climes whence it took
its origin. For many years it was the constant companion of
myself and my valued friend and fellow-traveler Bonpland,
and often (the reader must forgive this appeal to personal feel-
ings), in the calm brilliancy of a southern sky, or when, in the
rainy season, the thunder re-echoed, and the lightning gleamed
through the forests that skirt the shores of the Orinoco, we
felt ourselves penetrated by the marvelous truth with which
tropical nature is described, with all its peculiarity of charac-
ter, in this little work. A like power of grasping individuali-
ties, without destroying the general impression of the whole,
and without depriving the subject of a free innate animation
of poetical fancy, characterizes, even in a higher degree, the
intellectual and sensitive mind of the author of Atala, Rene,
Les Marty res, and Les Voyages a V Orient. In the works of
his creative fancy, all contrasts of scenery in the remotest
portions of the earth are brought before the reader with the
most remarkable distinctness. The earnest grandeur of his-
torical associations could alone impart a character of such
depth and repose to the impressions produced by a rapid jour-
ney.
In the literature of Germany, as in that of Italy and Spain,
the love of nature manifested itself too long under the artifi-
cial form of idyl-pastoral romances and didactic poems. Such
was the course too frequently pursued by the Persian traveler
Paul Flemming, by Brockes, the sensitive Ewald von Kleist,
Hagedorn, Salomon Gessner, and by Haller, one of the great-
est naturalists of any age, whose local descriptions possess, it
must, however, be owned, a more clearly-defined outline and
more objective truth of coloring. The elegiac-idyllic element
was conspicuous at that period in the morbid tone pervading
landscape poetry, and even in Voss, that noble and profound
student of classical antiquity, the poverty of the subject could
not be concealed by a higher and more elegant finish of style.
It was only when the study of the earth's surface acquired pro-
foundness and diversity of character, and the natural sciences
were no longer limited to a tabular enumeration of marvelous
productions, but were elevated to a higher and more compre-
hensive view of comparative geography, that this finisbfd de*
78 COSMOS.
velopment of language could be employed for the purpose of
giving animated pictures of distant regions.
The earlier travelers of the Middle Ages, as, for instance,
John Mandeville (1353), Hans Schiltberger of Munich (1425),
and Bernhard von Breytenback (1486), delight us even in the
present day by their charming simplicity, their freedom of
style, and the self-confidence with which they step before a
public, who, from their utter ignorance, listen with the greater
curiosity and readiness of belief, because they have not as yet
learned to feel ashamed of appearing ignorant, amused, or as-
tonished. The interest attached to the narratives of travels
was then almost wb^lly dramatic, and the necessary and easily
introduced admixture of the marvelous gave them almost an
epic coloring. The manners of foreign nations are not so
much described as they are rendered incidentally discerrdble
by the contact of the travelers with the natives. The vege-
tation is unnamed and unheeded, with the exception of an
occasional allusion to some pleasantly-flavored or strangely-
formed fruit, or to the extraordinary dimensions of particular
kinds of stems or leaves of plants. Among animals, they de-
scribe, with the greatest predilection, first, those which exhibit
most resemblance to the human form, and, next, those which
are the wildest and most formidable. The cotemporaries of
these travelers believed in all the dangers which few of them
had shared, and the slowness of navigation and the want of
means of communication caused the Indies, as all the tropical
regions were then called, to appear at an immeasurable dis-
tance. Columbus* was not yet justified in writing to Queen
Isabella, " the world is small, much smaller than people sup-
pose."
The almost forgotten travels of the Middle Ages to which
we have alluded, possessed, however, with all the poverty of
their materials, many advantages in point of composition over
the majority of our modern voyages. They had that character
of unity which every work of art requires ; every thing was
associated with one action, and made subservient to the nar-
ration of the journey itself The interest was derived from
the simple, vivid, and generally implicitly-believed relation of
dangers overcome. Christian travelers, in their ignorance ot
what had already been done by Arabs, Spanish Jews, and
Buddhist missionaries, boasted of being the first to see and
* Letter of the Admiral from Jamaica, Jaly 7, 1503 : " El mundo e»
foco; digo que el mundo no es tan graiide como dice el vulgo''^ (Navar-
rete, Coleccion de Viages Esp., t. i., p. 300).
TRAVn.KRS OF TIIF. 14tI[ A\D 1 OTH ri^\^<'T^RIF,S. 7H
describe eveiy thing. In the midst of the obscurity in which
the East and the interior of Asia were shrouded, distance
seemed only to magnify the grand proportions of individual
forms. This unity of composition is almost wholly wanting
in most of our recent voyages, especially where their object is
the acquirement of scientific knowledge. The narrative in
the latter case is secondary to observations, and is almost
wholly lost sight of. It is only the relation of toilsome and
frequently uninstructive mountain ascents, and, above all, of
bold maritime expeditions, of actual voyages of discovery in
unexplored regions, or of a sojourn in the dreadful w^aste of the
icy polar zone, that can afford any dramatic interest, or admit
of any great degree of individuality of delineation ; for here
the desolation of the scene, and the helplessness and isolation
of the seamen, individualize the picture and excite the imag-
ination so much the more pow^erfuUy.
If, from what lias already been said, it be undeniably true
that in modern books of travel the action is thrown in the
back-ground, being in most cases only a means of linking to-
gether successive observations of nature and of manners, yet
this partial disadvantage is fully compensated for by the in-
creased value of the facts observed, the greater expansion of
natural views, and the laudable endeavor to employ the pecul-
iar characteristics of difierent languages in rendering natural
descriptions clear and distinct. We are indebted to modern
cultivation for a constantly-advancing enlargement of our field
of view, an increasing accumulation of ideas and feelings, and
the powerful influence of their mutual reaction. Without
leaving the land of our birth, we not only learn to know how
the earth's surface is fashioned in the remotest zones, and by
what animal and vegetable forms it is occupied, but v/e may
even hope to have delineations presented to us w^hich shall
vividly reflect, in some degree at least, the impressions con-
veyed by the aspect of external nature to the inhabitants of
those distant regions. To satisfy this demand, to comply with
a requirement that may be termed a species of intellectual
enjoyment wholly unknown to antiquity, is an object for which
modern times are striving, and it is an object which will be
crowned wdth success, since it is the common work of all civ-
ilized nations, and because the greater perfection of the means
of communication by sea and land renders the whole earth
more accessible, and facilitates the comparison of the most
widely-separated parts.
I have here attempted to indicate the direction in which
80 COSMOS.
the power possessed by the observer of representing' what he
has seen, the animating influence of the descriptive element,
and the multiplication and enlargement of views opened to us
on the vast theater of natural forces, may all serve as means
of encouraging the scientific study of nature, and enlarging its
domain. The writer who, in our German literature, accord-
ing to my opinion, has most vigorously and successfully opened
this path, is my celebrated teacher and friend, George Forster.
Through him began a new era of scientific voyages, the aim
of which was to arrive at a knowledge of the comparative
history and geography of different countries. Gifted with del-
icate aesthetic feelings, and retaining a vivid impression of the
pictures with which Tahiti and the other then happy islands
of the Pacific had filled his imagination, as in recent times
that of Charles Darwin,* George Forster was the first to de-
pict in pleasing colors the changing stages of vegetation, the
relations of climate and of articles of food in their influence
on the civilization of mankind, according to differences of orig-
inal descent and habitation. All that can give truth, indi-
viduaUty, and distinctiveness to the delineation of exotic na-
ture is united in his works. We trace, not only in his admi-
rable description of Cook's second voyage of discovery, but
still more in his smaller writings, the germ of that richer fruit
which has since been matured. f But alas I even to his noble,
sensitive, and ever-hopeful spirit, life yielded no happiness.
If the appellation of descriptive and landscape poetry has
sometimes been applied, as a term of disparagement, to those
descriptions of natural objects and scenes which in recent
times have so greatly embellished the literature of Germany,
France, England, and America, its application, in this sense,
must be referred only to the abuse of the supposed enlarge-
ment of the domain of art. Rhythmical descriptions of natu-
ral objects, as presented to us by Delille, at the close of a
long and honorably-spent career, can not be considered as
poems of nature, using the term in its strictest definition, not-
withstanding the expenditure of refined rules of diction and
versification. They are wanting in poetic inspiration, and
consequently strangers to the domain of poetry, and are cold
and dry, as all must be that shines by mere external polish.
* See Journal and Remarhs, by Charles Darwin, 1832-1836, in the
Narrative of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. iii., p. 479-
490, where there occurs au extremely beautiful description of Tahiti.
t On the merit of George Forster as a man and a writer, see Gervinus,
Gesch. der Poet. National-Litteratnr der Devtschen, th. v., s. 390-392
MODERN TRAVELERS. 81
But when the so-called descriptive poetry is justly blamed as
au independent form of art, such disapprobation does not cer-
tainly apply to an earnest endeavor to convey to the minds of
others, by the force of well-applied words, a distinct image of
the results yielded by the richer mass of modern knowledge.
Ought any means to be left unemployed by which an ani-
mated picture of a distant zone, untraversed by ourselves, may
be presented to the mind with all the vividness of truth, en-
abling us even to enjoy some portion of the pleasure derived
from the immediate contact with nature ? The Arabs ex-
press themselves no less truly than metaphorically when they
say that the best description is that by which the ear is con-
verted into an eye.* It is one of the evils of the present day
that an unhappy tendency to vapid poetic prose and to senti-
mental efTusions has infected simultaneously, in different coun-
tries, even the style of many justly celebrated travelers and
writers on natural history. Extravagances of this nature are
so much the more to be regretted, where the style degenerates
into rhetorical bombast or morbid sentimentality, either from
want of literary cultivation, or more particularly from the ab-
sence of all genuine emotion.
Descriptions of nature, I would again observe, may be de-
fined with sufficient sharpness and scientific accuracy, without
on that account being deprived of the vivifying breath of im-
agination. The poetic element must emanate from the in-
tuitive perception of the connection between the sensuous and
the intellectual, and of the universaHty and reciprocal limita-
tion and unity of all the vital forces of nature. The more
elevated the subject, the more carefully should all external
adornments of diction be avoided. The true efiect of a picture
of nature depends on its composition ; every attempt at an ar-
tificial appeal from the author must therefore necessarily ex-
ert a disturbing influence. He who, famihar with the great
works of antiquity, and secure in the possession of the riches
of his native language, knows how to represent with the sim-
plicity of individualizing truth that which he has received
from his own contemplation, will not fail in producing the im-
pression he seeks to convey ; for, in describing the boundless-
ness of nature, and not the limited circuit of his own mind,
he is enabled to leave to others unfettered freedom of feeling.
It is not, however, the vivid description of the richly-adorned
lands of the equinoctial zone, in which intensity of light and
of humid heat accelerates and heightens the development of
* Freytag's Darstellung der Arabischen Versknnst, 1830, s. 402.
D 2
82 COSMOS.
all organic germs, that has alone imparted the powerful at-
traction which in the present day is attached to the study of
all branches of natural science. This secret charm, excited
by a deep insight into organic life, is not limited to the trop-
ical world. Every portion of the earth offers to our view the
wonders of progressive formation and development, according
to ever-recurring or slightly-deviating types. Universal is the
awful rule of those natural powers which, amid the clouds that
darken the canopy of heaven with storms, as well as in the
delicate tissues of organic substances, resolve the ancient strife
of the elements into accordant harmony. All portions of the
vast circuit of creation — from the equator to the coldest zones
— wherever the breath of spring unfolds a blossom, the mind
may rejoice in the inspiring power of nature. Our German
land is especially justified in cherishing such a belief, for where
is the southern nation who would not envy us the great mas-
ter of poesy, whose works are all pervaded by a profound vener-
ation for nature, which is alike discernible in The Sorroivs of
Wcrther, in the Recollections of Italy, in the Metainorphoses
of Plants,, and in so many of his poems ? Who has more elo-
quently excited his cotemporaries to " solve the holy problem
of the universe," and to renew the bond which '\y\ the dawn
of mankind united together philosophy, physics, and poetry ?
Who has drawn others with a more powerful attraction to
that land, the home of his intellect, where, as he sings,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauem Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still, und hoch der Lorbeer steht!
LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN ITS INFLUENCE ON THE STUDY OP NATURE.
—GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF. THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.
—THE CHARACTER AND ASPECT OF VEGETATION IN DIFFERENT
ZONES.
Landscape painting, and fresh and vivid descriptions of
nature, alike conduce to heighten the charm emanating from
a study of the external world, which is shown us in all its di-
versity of form by both, while both are alike capable, in a
greater or lesser degree, according to the success of the at-
tempt, to combine the visible and invisible in our contempla-
tion of nature. The effort to connect these several elements
forms the last and noblest aim of delineative art, but the pres-
ent pages, from the scientific object to which they are devoted,
must be restricted to a different point of view. Landscape
painting can not, therefore, be noticed in any further relation
r.ANDSOAPK PAhVllNU. HH
thai) that of its representation of the physiogiioiny and char-
acter of different portions of the earth, and as it increases the
desire for the prosecution of distant travels, and thus incites
men in au equally instructive and charming manner to a free
communion Avith nature.
In that portion of antiquity which we specially designate
as classical, landscape painting, as well as poetic delineations
of places, could not, from the direction of the Greek and Pwo-
man mind, be regarded as an independent branch of art. Both
were considered merely as accessories ; landscape painting
being for a long time used only as the back-ground of historical
compositions, or as an accidental decoration for painted walls.
In a similar manner, the epic poet delineated the locality of
some historical occurrence by a picturesque description of the
landscape, or of the back-ground, I would say, if I may be
permitted here again to use the term, in front of which the
acting personages move. The history of art teaches us how
gradually the accessory parts have been converted into the
main subject of description, and how landscape painting has
been separated from historical painting, and gradually estab-
lished as a distinct form ; and, lastly, hov/ human figures were
employed as mere secondary parts to some mountain or forest
scene, or in some sea or garden view. The separation of these
two species — historical and landscape painting — has been thus
effected by gradual stages, which have tended to favor the
advance of art through all the various phases of its develop-
ment. It has been justly remarked, that painting generally
remamed subordinate to sculpture among the ancients, and
that the feeling for the picturesque beauty of scenery which
the artist endeavors to reproduce from his canvas was un-
known to antiquity, and is exclusively of modern origin.
Graphic indications of the peculiar characteristics of a lo-
cality must, however, have been discernible in the most an-
cient paintings of the Greeks, as instances of which we may
mention (if the testimony of Herodotus be correct)* that Man-
drocles of Samos caused a large painting of the passage of the
army over the Bosporus to be executed for the Persian king,t
and that Polygnotus painted the fall of Troy in the Lesche at
* Herod., iv., 88.
t A portion of the works of Polygnotus and Mikon (the painting of
the battle of Marathon in the Pokile at Athens) was, according to the
testimony of Hiuiei'ius, still to be seen at the end of the fourth century
(of our era), consequently when they had been executed 850 years.
(Letronne, Lettres s^nr la Peinture Hiitorique Murale. 183."), p. 2CH2 ancj
453.')
Si COSMOS.
Delphi. Among the paintings described by the elder Philos-
tvatus, mention is made of a landscape in which smoke was
seen to rise from the summit of a volcano, and lava streams
to flow into the neighboring sea. In this very complicated
composition of a view of seven islands, the most receiit com-
mentators* think they can recognize the actual representation
of the volcanic district of the iEolian or Lipari Islands north
of Sicily. The perspective scenic decorations, which were
made to heighten the effect of the representation of the mas-
ter-works of ^Eschylus and Sophocles, gradually enlarged this
branch of artt by increasing the demand for an illusive imita-
tion of inanimate objects, as buildings, woods, and rocks.
In consequence of the greater perfection to which scenog-
raphy had attained, landscape painting passed among the
Greeks and their imitators, the Romans, from the stage to
their halls, adorned with columns, where the long ranges of
wall Avere covered at first with more circumscribed views,$
but shortly afterward with extensive pictures of cities, sea-
shores, and wide tracts of pasture land, on which flocks were
grazing. ^^ Although the Roman painter Ludius, who lived
in the Augustan age, can not be said to have invented these
graceful decorations, he yet made them generally popular, ||
animating them by the addition of small figures.^ Almost at
the same period, and probably even half a century earlier, we
find landscape painting mentioned as a much-practiced art
among the Indians during the brilliant epoch of Vikramaditya.
* Philostratorum Imagines, ed. Jacobs et Welcker, 1825, p. 79 and
485. Both the learned editors defend, against former suspicions, the
authenticity of the description of the paintings contained in the ancient
Neapolitan Pinacothek (Jacobs, p. xvii. and xlvi. ; Welcker, p. Iv. and
xlvi.). Otfried Miiller conjectures that Philostratus's picture of the
islands (ii., 17), as well as that of the marshy district of the Bosporus
(i., 9), and of the fishermen (i., 12 and 13), bore much resemblance, in
their mode of representation, to the mosaic of Palestrina. Plato speaks,
in the introductory part of Critias (p. 107), of landscape painting as
the art of pictorially representing mountafns, rivers, and forests.
t Particularly through Agatharcus, or, at least, according to the rules
he established. Aristot., Poet., iv., 16 ; Vitruv., lib. v., cap. 7 ; lib. vii.
in Praef. (ed. Alois Maxinius, 1836, t. i., p. 292 ; t. ii., p. 56). Com-
pare, also, Letronne's woi-k, op. cit., p. 271-280.
X On Objects of Rhopographia, see Welcker adPhilostr. Imag., p. 397.
$ Vitruv., lib. vii., cap. 5 (t. ii., p. 91).
II Hirt., Gesch. der bildenden Kicnste bei den Alten, 1833, s. 332 ; Le>
tronne, p. 262 and 468.
H Ludius qui primus (?) instituit amcenissimam parietum picturam
(Plin., XXXV., 10). The topiaria opera of Pliny, and the varietates topi-
orum of Vitruvius. were small decoi'ative landscape paintings. The
passage quoted in the text of Kalidasa occurs in the Sakuntala. act vj
LANDSCAPE PAINTING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 85
In the cli arming drama of Sakiintala, the image of his belov-
ed is shown to King Dushmanta, who is not satisfied with
that alone, as he desires that " the artist should depict the
places which were most dear to his beloved — the Malini Riv-
er, with a sand-bank on which the red flamingoes are stand-
ing ; a chain of hills skirting on the Himalaya, and gazelles
resting on these hills." These requirements are not easy to
comply with, and they at least indicate a belief in the practi-
cability of executing such an intricate composition.
In Rome, landscape painting was developed into a separate
branch of art from the time of the Csesars ; but, if we may
judge from the many specimens preserved to us in the exca-
vations of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae, these pictures
of nature were frequently nothing more than bird's-eye views
of the country, similar to maps, and more like a delineation
of sea-port towns, villas, and artificially-arranged gardens,
than the representation of free nature. That which may
have been regarded as the habitably comfortable element in
a landscape seems to have alone attracted the Greeks and
Romans, and not that which we term the wild and romantic.
Their imitations might be so far accurate as frequent disre-
gard of perspective and a taste for artificial and conventional
arrangement permitted, and their arabesque-like compositions,
to which the critical Vitruvius was averse, often exhibited a
rhytlimically-recurring and well-conceived representation of
animal and vegetable forms ; but yet, to borrow an expression
of Otfried Miiller,* " the vague and mysterious reflection of
the mind, which seems to appeal to us from the landscape,
appeared to the ancients, from the peculiar bent of their feel-
ings, as incapable of artistic development, and their delinea
tions were sketched with more of sportiveness than earnest
ness and sentiment."
We have thus indicated the analogy which existed in the
process of development of the two means — descriptive diction
* Otfried Miiller, Archdologie der Kunst, 1830, s. 609. Having al
ready spoken in the text of the paintings. found in Pompeii and Heicu-
laneum as being compositions but little allied to the freedom of nature,
I must here notice some exceptions, which may be considered as laud-
scapes in the strict modern sense of the word. See Pitture d'' Ercolano,
vol. ii., tab. 45 ; vol. iii., tab. 53 ; and, as back-grounds in charming
historical compositions, vol. iv., tab. 61, 62, and 63. I do not refer to,
the remarkable representation in the Monumenti d^lV Instituto di Cor-
rispondenza Archeologica, vol. iii., tab. 9, since its genuine antiquity
has already been called in question by Raoal Rochette, an archaeologist
of much acuteness of obsei'vation.
8(5 COSMOS.
and graphical representations — by which the attempt to reu«
der the impressions produced by the aspect of nature appre-
ciable to the sensuous faculties has gradually attained a cer-
tain degree of independence.
The specimens of ancient landscape painting in the manner
of Ludius, which have been recovered from the excavations at
Pompeii (lately renewed with so happy a result), belong most
probably to a single and very short period, viz., that interven-
ing between Nero and Titus,* for the city had been entirely
destroyed by an earthquake only sixteen years before the cele-
brated eruption of Vesuvius.
The character of the subsequent style of painting practiced
by the early Christians remained nearly allied to that of the
true Greek and Roman schools of art from the time of Con-
stantine the Great to the beginning of the Middle Ages. A
rich mine of old memorials is opened to us in the miniatures
which adorn splendid and well-preserved manuscripts, and in
the rarer mosaics of the same period.! Rumohr makes men-
tion of a Psalter in the Barberina Library at Rome, where,
in a miniature, David is represented " playing the harp, and
surrounded by a pleasant grove, from the branches of which
nymphs look forth to listen. This personification testifies to
the antique nature of the whole picture." Since the middle
of the sixth century, when Italy was impoverished and polit-
ically disturbed, the Byzantine art in the Eastern empire still
preserved the lingering echoes and types of 9, better epoch.
Such memorials as these form the transition to the creations
* In refutation of the supposition of Du Theil ( Voyage en Italic, par
I'Abbe Barthelemy, p. 284) that Pompeii still existed in splendor un-
der Adrian, and was not completely destroyed till toward the close of
the fifth century, see Adolph von Hoff, Gesckichte der Verdnderu7igen
der Erdoberfidche, th. ii., 1824, s. 195-199.
~ t See Waagen, Kiinstwerke und Kunstler in England nnd Paris, th.
iii., 1839, s. 195-201 ; and particularly s. 217-224, where he describes
the celebrated Psalter of the tenth centuiy (in the Paris Library), which
proves how long the " antique mode of composition" maintained itself
in Constantinople. I was indebted to the kind and valuable communi-
cations of this profound connoisseur of art ('Professor Waagen, director
of the Gallery of Paintings of my native city), at the time of my public
lectures in 1828, for interesting notices on the history of art after the
period of the Roman empire. What I afterward wrote on the gratlual
development of landscape painting, I communicated in Dresden, in
the winter of 1835, to Baron von Rumohr, the distinguished and too
early deceased author of the Italienische Forschungen. I received
from this excellent man a great number of historical illustrations, which
ha even permitted me to publish if the form of my work should render
it expedient.
THll BROTHERS VAN F.YCK. 87
of the later Middle Ages, when the love for illuminated man-
uscripts had spread from Greece, in the East, through south-
ern and western lands into the Frankish monarchy, among
the Anglo-Saxons and the inhabitants of the Netherlands.
It is, therefore, a fact of no slight importance for the history
of modern art, that " the celebrated brothers Hubert and Jo-
hann van Eyck belonged essentially to a school of miniature
painters, which, since the last half of the fourteenth century,
attained to a high degree of perfection in Flanders."*
The historical paintings of the brothers Van Eyck present
us with the first instances of carefully-executed landscapes.
Neither of them ever visited Italy, but the younger brother,
Johann, enjoyed the opportunity of seeing the vegetation of
Southern Europe when, in the year 1428, he accompanied the
embassy which Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, sent to
Lisbon when he sued for the hand of the daughter of King
John I. of Portugal. In the Museum of Berlin are preserved
the wings of the famous picture which the above-named cele-
brated painters — the actual founders of the great Flemish
school — executed for the Cathedral at Ghent. On these wings,
which represent holy hermits and pilgrims, Johann van Eyck
has embellished the landscape with orange and date trees and
cypresses, which, from their extreme truth to nature, impart
a solemn and imposing character to the other dark masses in
the picture. One feels, on looking at this painting, that the
artist must himself have received the impression of a vegeta-
tion fanned by gentle breezes.
In considering the master-works of the brothers Van Eyck,
we have not advanced beyond the first half of the fifteenth
century, when the more highly-perfected style of oil painting,
which was only just beginning to replace painting in tempera,
had already attained to a high degree of technical perfection.
The taste for a vivid representation of natural forms was
awakened, and, if we would trace the gradual extension and
elevation of this feeling for nature, we must bear in mind that
Antonio di Messina, a pupil of the brothers Van Eyck, trans-
planted the predilection for landscape painting to Venice, and
that the pictures of the Van Eyck school exercised a similar
action in Florence on Domenico Ghirlandaio and other mas-
ters.t The artists at this epoch directed their efforts to a care-
* Waagen, op. cit., th. i., 1837, s. 59 ; th. iii., 1839, s. 352-359. [See
Lanzi's History of Painting, Doha's Standard Library, 1847, vol. i., p
81-87.]— Tr.
+ " Pinturicchio painted licli and well-compoaed landscapes as inde
88 ' COSMOS.
ful but almost timid imitation of nature, and the master- works
of Titian afford the earliest evidence of freedom and grandeur
in the representation of natural scenes ; but in this respect,
also, Giorgione seems to have served as a model for that great
painter. I had the opportunity for many years of admiring
in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris that picture of Titian
which represents the death of Peter Martyr, overpowered in
a forest by an Albigense, in the presence of another Domini-
can monk.* The form of the forest-trees, and their fohage,
the mountainous and blue distance, the tone of coloring, and
the lights glowing through the whole, leave a solemn impres-
sion of the earnestness, grandeur, and depth of feelings which
pervade this simple landscape composition. So vivid was
Titian's admiration of nature, that not only in the pictures of
beautiful women, as in the back -ground of his exquisitely-
formed Venus in the Dresden Gallery, but also in those of a
graver nature, as, for instance, in his picture of the poet Pie-
tro Aretino, he painted the surrounding landscape and sky in
harmony with the individual character of the subject. Anni-
bal Caracci and Domenichino, in the Bolognese school, adhered
faithfully to this elevation of style. If, however, the great
epoch of historical painting belong to the sixteenth century,
pendent decorations, in the Belvidere of the Vatican. He appears to
have exercised an influence on Raphael, in whose paintings there are
many landscape peculiarities which can not be traced to Perugino. In
Pinturicchio and his friends we also already meet with those singular,
pointed forms of mountains which, in your lectures, you were disposed
to derive from the Tyrolese dolomitic cones which Leopold von Buch
has rendered so celebrated, and which may have produced an impres-
sion on travelers and artists from the constant intercourse existing be-
tween Italy and Germany. I am more inclined to believe that these
conical forms in the earliest Italian landscapes are either very old con-
ventional modes of representing mountain forms in antique bass-reliefs
and mosaic works, or that they must be regarded as unskillfully fore-
shortened views of Soracte and similarly isolated mountains in the Cam-
pagna di Roma." (From a letter addressed to me by Carl Friedrich
von Rumohr, in October, 1832.) In order to indicate more precisely
the conical and pointed mountains in question, I would refer to the fon-
ciful landscape which forms the back-ground in Leonardo da Vinci's
universally admired picture of Mona Lisa (the consort of Francesco del
Giocondo). Among the artists of the Flemish school who have more
particularly developed landscape painting as a separate branch of art,
we must name Patenier's successor, Henry de Bles, named Civetta from
his animal monogram, and subsequently the brothers Matthew and Paul
Bril, who excited a strong taste in favor of this particular branch ot art
during their sojourn in Rome. In Germany, Albrecht Altdorfer, Durer'a
pupil, practiced landscape painting even somewhat earlier and with
greater success than Patenier.
* Painted for the Church of San Giovann? e Paolo at Venice.
LANDSCAPE PAINTING- OF 16TH AND 17tII CENTURIES. 89
that of landscape painting appertains undoubtedly to the sev-
enteenth. As the riches of nature became more known and
more carefully observed, the feeling of art was likewise able
to extend itself over a greater diversity of objects, while, at
the same time, the means of technical representation had si-
multaneously been brought to a higher degree of perfection.
The relations between the inner tone of feelings and the de-
lineation of external nature became more intimate, and, by
the links thus established between the two, the gentle and
mild expression of the beautiful in nature was elevated, and,
as a consequence of this elevation, beHef in the power of the
external world over the emotions of the mind was simultane-
ously awakened. When this excitement, in conformity with
the noble aim of all art, converts the actual into an ideal ob-
ject of fancy ; when it arouses within our minds a feeling of
harmonious repose, the enjoyment is not unaccompanied by
emotion, for the heart is touched whenever we look into the
depths of nature or of humanity.* In the same century we
find thronged together Claude Lorraine, the idyllic painter of
light and aerial distance ; Ruysdael, with his dark woodland
scenes and lowering skies ; Gaspard and Nicolas Poussin, with
their nobly-delineated forms of trees ; and Everdingen, Hob-
bima, and Cuyp, so true to life in their delineations.!
In this happy period of the development of art, a noble effort
was manifested to introduce all the vegetable forms yielded by
the North of Europe, Southern Italy, and the Spanish Penin-
sula. The landscape was embellished with oranges and lau-
rels, with pines and date-trees ; the latter (which, with the
exception of the small Chameerops, originally a native of Eu-
ropean sea-shores, was the only member of the noble family
of palms known from personal observation) was generally rep-
resented as having a snake-like and scaly trunk,^ and long
* Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gesammelte Werke, bd. iv., s. 37. See
also, on the different gradations of the life of natnre, and on the tone of
mind awakened by the landscape around, Cams, in his interesting work,
Brief en uber die Landschaftmalerei, 1831, s. 45.
t The great century of painting comprehended the works of Johann
Breughel, 1569-1625; Rubens, 1577-1640; Domenichino, 1581-1641;
Philippe de Champaigne, 1602-1674 ; Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1655 ; Gas-
par Poussin (Dughet), 1613-1675 ; Claude Lorraine, 1600-1682 ; Albert
Cuyp, 1606-1672; Jan Both, 1610-1650; Salvator Rosa, 1615-1673;
Everdingen, 1621-1675 ; Nicolaus Berghera, 1624-1683 ; Swanevelt,
1620-1690 ; Ruysdael, 1635-1681 ; Minderhoot Hobbima, Jan Wynants,
Adriaan van de Velde, 1639-1672 ; Carl Dujardin, 1644-1687.
X Some strangely-fanciful representations of date palms, which have
a knob in the middle of the leafy crown, are to be seen in an old pic
90 COSMOS.
served as the representative of tropical vegetation, as, in like
manner, Pinus pinea is even still very generally supposed to
furnish an exclusive characteristic of the vegetable Ibrms of
Italy. The contour of high mountain chains was but little
studied, and snow-covered peaks, which projected beyond the
green Alpine meadows, were, at that period, still regarded by
naturalists and landscape painters as inaccessible. The phys-
iognomy of rocky masses seems scarcely to have excited any
attempt at accurate representation, excepting where a water-
fall broke in foam over the mountain side. We may here re-
mark another instance of the diversity of comprehension man-
ifested by a free and artistic spirit in its intimate communion
with nature. Rubens, who, in his great hunting pieces, had
depicted the fierce movements of wild animals with inimita-
ble animation, succeeded, as the delineator of historical events,
in representing, with equal truth and vividness, the form of
the landscape in the waste and rocky elevated plain surround-
ing the Escurial.*
The delineation of natural objects included in the branch of
art at present under consideration could not have gained in
diversity and exactness until the geographical field of view
became extended, the means of traveling in foreign countries
facilitated, and the appreciation of the beauty and configura-
tion of vegetable forms, and their arrangement in groups of
natural families, excited. The discoveries of Columbus, Vasco
de Gama, and Alvarez Cabral, in Central America, Southern
Asia, and the Brazils ; the extensive trade in spices and drugs
carried on by the Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, and Flem-
ings, and the establishment of botanical gardens at Pisa, Pad-
ua, and Bologna, between 1544 and 1568, although not yet
furnished with hot-houses properly so called, certainly made
artists acquainted with many remarkable forms of exotic prod-
ucts, including even some that belong to a tropical vegeta-
tion. Single fruits, flowers, and branches were painted with
much natural truth and grace by Johann Breughel, whose
reputation had been already established before the close of the
sixteenth century ; but it is not until the middle of the seven-
teenth century that we meet with landscapes which reproduce
the individual character of the torrid zone, as impressed upon
the artist's mind by actual observation. The merit of the
earliest attempt at such a mode of representation belongs prob-
ably, as I find from Waagen, to the Flemish painter Franz
ture of Cima da Conegliauo, of ihe school of Belliuo (Dresden Gallery,
1835, No. 40) * Dresden Gallery, No. 917.
LAXDSC \PK PAfNTERS OF THE SEVEXTEENTH TEXTT RV. 91
Post, of Haarlem, who accompanied Prince Maurice of Nas-
sau to Brazil, where that prince, who took great interest in all
subjects connected with the tropical world, was Dutch stadt-
holder, in the conquered Portuguese possessions, from 1637 to
1644. Post continued for many years to make studies from
nature at Cape St. Augustine, in the Bay of All Saints, on
the shores tf the River St. Francisco, and at the lower course
of the Amazon.* These studies he himself partly executed
* Franz Post, or Poost, was born at Haarlem in 1620, and died there
in 1680. His brother also accompanied Count Maurice of Nassau as
an architect. Of the paintings, some representing the banks of the
Amazon are to be seen in the picture gallery at Sclileisheim, while
others are at Berlin, Hanover, and Prague. The line engravings in
Barlaus, Reise des Pnnzen Moritz von Nassau, and in the royal collec-
tion of copper-plate prints at Berlin, evince a fine conception of nature
in depicting the form of the coast, the nature of the ground, and the
vegetation. They represent Musaceae, Cacti, palms, different species
of Ficus, with the well-known board-like excrescences at the foot of
the stem, Rhizophorse, and arboi-escent grasses. The picturesque Bra
zilian voyage is made to terminate (plate iv.), singularly enough, with
a German forest of pines which surround the castle of Dillenburg. The
remark in the text, on the influence which the establishment of botanic
gardens in Upper Italy, toward the middle of the sixteenth century,
may have exercised on the knowledge of the physiognomy of tropical
forms of vegetation, leads me here to draw attention to the well-founded
fact that, in the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus, who was equally
energetic in promoting the Aristotelian philosophy and the pursuit of
the science of nature, probably had a hot-house in the convent of the
Dominicans at Cologne. This celebrated man, who was suspected of
sorcery on account of his speaking machine, entertained the King of
the Romans, William of Holland, on his passage through Cologne on the
6th of January, 1259, in a large space in the convent garden, where he
preserved fruit-trees and plants in flower throughout the winter by
maintaining a pleasant degree of heat. The account of this banquet,
exaggerated into something marvelous, occurs in ♦he Chronica Jonnnis
de Beka, written in the middle of the fourteenth century (Beka et Heda
de Episcopis Uitrajectinis, recogn. ab. Arn. Buchelio, 1643, p. 79 ; .Tour-
dain, Recherches Critiques snr V Age des Traductions d'Arisiote, 1819,
p. 331; Buhle, Gesch. dcr Philosophie, th. v., s. 296). Although the
ancients, as we find from the excavations at Pompeii, made use of
panes of glass in buildings, yet nothing has been found to indicate the
use of glass or hot houses in ancient horticulture. The mode of con-
ducting heat by the caldaria into baths might have led to the construc-
tion of such forcing or hot houses, but the shortness of the Greek and
Italian winters must have caused the want of artificial heat to be less
felt in horticulture. The Adonis gardens (Kr/Tcoc Aduvldo^), so indica-
tive of the meaning of the festival of Adonis, consisted, according to
Bockh, of plants in small pots, which were, no doubt, intended to rep-
resent the garden where Aphrodite met Adonis, who was the symbol
of the quickly- fading bloom of youth, of luxuriant growth, and of rapid
decay. The festivals of Adonis were, therefore, seasons of solemu
lamentations for women, and belonged to the festivals in which the an-
92 COSMOS. ^
as paintings, and partly etched with much spirit. To this
period belong the remarkably large oil pictures preserved in
Denmark, in a gallery of the beautiful palace of Frederiks-
borg, which were painted by Eckhout, who, in 1641, was also
on the Brazilian coast with Prince Maurice of Nassau. In
these compositions, palms, papaws, bananas, and heliconias
are most characteristically delineated, as are also brightly-plu-
maged birds, and small quadrupeds, and the form and appear
ance of the natives.
These examples of a delineation of the physiognomy of nat-
ural scenery were not followed by many artists of merit before
Cook's second voyage of circumnavigation. What Hodges did
for the western islands of the Pacific, and my distinguished
countryman, Ferdinand Bauer, for New Holland and Van
Diemen's Land, has been since done, in more recent times, on
a far grander scale, and in a masterly manner, by Moritz
Rugendas, Count Clarac, Ferdinand Bellermann, and Edward
Hildebrandt ; and for the tropical vegetation of America, and
for many other parts of the earth, by Heinrich von Kittlitz,
the companion of the Russian Admiral Llitke, on his voyage
of circumnavigation.*
cients lamented the decay of nature. As I have spoken in the text of
hot-house plants in contrast with those which grow naturally, I would
add that the ancients frequently used the term " Adonis gardens" pro-
verbially, to indicate something which had shot up rapidly, without
promise of perfect maturity or duration. These plants, which were
lettuce, fennel, barley, and wheat, and not variegated flowers, were
forced, by extreme care, into rapid growth in summer (and not in the
winter), and were often made to grow to maturity in a period of only
eight days. Creuzer, in his Symbolik mid Mythologie, 1841, th. ii., s.
427, 430, 479, und 481, supposes " that strong natural and artificial heat,
in the room in which they were placed, was used to hasten the growth
of plants in the Adonis gardens." The garden of the Dominican con-
vent at Cologne reminds us of the Greenland or Icelandic convent of
St. Thomas, where the garden was kept free from snow by being
warmed by natural thermal springs, as is related by the brothers Zeni,
in the account of their travels (1388-1404), which, from the geograph-
ical localities indicated, must be considered as very problematical.
(Compare Zurla, Viaggiatori Veneziaiii, t. ii., p. 63-69 ; and Humboldt,
Examen Critique de V Hist, de la G6ograpliie, t. ii., p. 127.) The intro-
duction in our botanic gardens of regular hot-houses seems to be of
more recent date than is generally supposed. Ripe pine-apples were
first obtained at the end of the seventeenth century (Beckmanu's His-
tory of Inventions, Bohn's Standard Library, 1846, vol. i., p. 103-106);
and Linnaeus even asserts, in the Musa Cliffortiana jiorens Hartecampi,
that the first banana which flowered in Europe was in 1731, at Vienna,
in the garden of Prince Eugene.
* These views of tropical vegetation, which designate the ''physiog-
nomy of plants," constitute, in the Royal Museum at Berlin (in the de«
DELINEATIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 93
He who, with a keen appreciation of the beauties of nature
manifested in mountains, rivers, and forest glades, has himself
traveled over the torrid zone, and seen the luxuriance and di-
versity of vegetation, not only on the cultivated sea-coasts,
but on the declivities of the snow-crowned Andes, the Hima-
laya, or the Nilgherry Mountains of Mysore, or in the primi-
tive forests, amid the net-work of rivers lying between the
Orinoco and the Amazon, can alone feel what an inexhausti-
ble treasure remains still unopened by the landscape painter
between the tropics in both continents, or in the island-world
of Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippines ; and how all the
spirited and admirable efforts already made in this portion of
art fall far short of the magnitude of those riches of nature of
which it may yet become possessed. Are we not justified in
hoping that landscape painting will flourish with a new and
hitherto unknown brilliancy when artists of merit shall more
frequently pass the narrow limits of the Mediterranean, and
when they shall be enabled, far in the interior of continents,
in the humid mountain valleys of the tropical world, to seize,
with the genuine freshness of a pure and youthful spirit, on
the true image of the varied forms of nature ?
These noble regions have hitherto been visited mostly by
travelers whose want of artistical education, and whose differ-
ently directed scientific pursuits afforded few opportunities of
their perfecting themselves in landscape painting. Only very
few among them have been susceptible of seizing on the total
impression of the tropical zone, in addition to the botanical in-
terest excited by the individual forms of flowers and leaves.
It has frequently happened that the artists appointed to ac-
company expeditions fitted out at the national expense have
been chosen without due consideration, and almost by acci-
dent, and have been thus found less prepared than such ap-
pointments required; and the end of the voyage may thus
have drawn near before even the most talented among them,
by a prolonged sojourn among grand scenes of nature, and by
frequent attempts to imitate what they saw, had more than
partmeut of miniatures, drawings, and engravings), a treasure of art
which, owing to its peculiarity and picturesque variety, is incomparably
superior to any other collection. The title of the papers edited by Von
Kittlitz is Vegetations- Ansickten der Kustenldnder und Inseln des sti2len
Oceans, aufgenomvien 1827-1829, auf der Entdecktings-reise der kais.
Russ. Corvette Senjdwin (Siegen, 1844). There is also great fidelity to
nature in the drawings of Carl Bodmer, which are engraved in a mas-
terly manner, and which greatly embellish the large work of the trav-
els of Prince Maximilian of Witd in the interior of North Americn.
94 coSiMos.
begun to acquire a certain technical mastery of their art.
Voyages of circumnavigation are, besides, but seldom of a
character to allow of artists visiting any extensive tracts of
forest land, the upper courses of large rivers, or the summits
of inland chains of mountains.
Colored sketches, taken directly from nature, are the only
means by which the artist, on his return, may reproduce the
character of distant regions in more elaborately finished pic-
tures ; and this object will be the more fully attained where
the painter has, at the same time, drawn or painted directly
from nature a large number of separate studies of the foliage
of trees ; of leafy, flov/ering, or fruit-bearing stems ; of prostrate
trunks, overgrown with Pothos and Orchidese ; of rocks and of
portions of the shore, and the soil of the forest. The posses-
sion of such correctly-drawn and well-proportioned sketches will
enable the artist to dispense with all the deceptive aid of hot-
house forms and so-called botanical delineations.
A great event in the history of the world, such as the eman-
cipation of Spanish and Portuguese America from the domin-
ion of European rule, or the increase of cultivation in India,
New Holland, the Sandwich Islands, and the southern colonies
of Africa, will incontestably impart to meteorology and the de-
scriptive natural sciences, as well as to landscape painting, a
new impetus and a high tone of feeling, which probably could
not have been attained independently of these local relations.
In South America, populous cities lie at an elevation of nearly
14,000 feet above the level of the sea. From these heights
the eye ranges over all the climatic gradations of vegetable
forais. What may we not, therefore, expect from a picturesque
study of nature, if, after the settlement of social discord and
the establishment of free institutions, a feeling of art shall at
length be awakened in those elevated regions ?
All that is expressed by the passions, and all that relates to
the beauty of the human form, has attained its highest per-
fection in the temperate northern zone under the skies of
Greece and Italy. The artist, drawing from the depths of
nature no less than from the contemplation of beings of his
own species, derives the types of historical painting alike from
free creation and from truthful imitation. Landscape paint-
ing, though not simply an imitative art, has a more material
origin and a more earthly limitation. It requires for its de-
velopment a large number of various and direct impressions,
which, when received from external contemplation, must be
fertilized by the powers of the mind, in order to be given back
LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 95
to the senses of others as a free work of art. The grander
style of heroic landscape painting is the combined result of a
profound appreciation of nature and of this inward process of
the mind.
Every where, in every separate portion of the earth, nature
is indeed only a reflex of the whole. The forms of organisms
recur again and again in different combinations. Even the
icy north is cheered for months together by the presence of
herbs and large Alpine blossoms covering the earth, and by
the aspect of a mild azure sky. Hitherto landscape painting
among us has pursued her graceful labors familiar only with
the simpler forms of our native floras, but not, on that account,
without depth of feeling and richness of creative fancy. Dwell-
ing only on the native and indigenous forms of our vegetation,
this branch of art, notwithstanding that it has been circum-
scribed by such narrow limits, has yet afforded suflicient scope
for highly-gifted painters, such as the Caracci, Gaspard Pous-
sin, Claude Lorraine, and Ruysdael, to produce the loveliest
and most varied creations of art, by their magical power of
managing the grouping of trees and the effects of light and
shade. That progress which may still be expected in the dif-
ferent departments of art, and to which I have already drawn
attention, in order to indicate the ancient bond which unites
natural science with poetry and artistic feeling, can not im-
pair the fame of the master works above referred to, for, as
we have observed, a distinction must be made in landscape
painting, as in every other branch of art, between the ele-
ments generated by the more lim.ited field of contemplation
and direct observation, and those which spring from the
boundless depth of feeling and from the force of idealizing
mental power. The grand conceptions which landscape paint-
ing, as a more or less inspired branch of the poetry of nature,
owes to the creative power of the mind, are, like man himself,
and the imaginative faculties with which he is endowed, inde-
pendent of place. These remarks especially refer to the grada-
tions in the forms of trees from Ruysdael and Everdingen,
ihrouffh the works of Claude Lorraine, to Poussin and Anni-
bal Caracci. In the great masters of art there is no indica-
tion of local limitation. But an extension of the visible hori-
zon, and an -acquaintance with the nobler and grander forms
of nature, and with the luxurious fullness of life in the tropical
world, afford the advantage of not simply enriching the ma-
terial ground- work of landscape painting, but also of inducing
more vivid impressions in the minds of less highly-gifted
U6 COSMOS.
painters, and thus heightening their powers of artistic crea-
tion.
I would here be permitted to refer to some remarks which
I pubHshed nearly half a century ago, in a treatise which has
been but little read, entitled Ideen zu einer Physio g7icmiik
der Gewdckse* and which stands in the most intimate con-
nection with the subject under consideration. He who com-
prehends nature at a single glance, and knows how to abstract
his mind from local phenomena, will easily perceive how or-
ganic force and the abundance of vital development increase
with the increase of warmth from the poles to the equator.
This charming luxuriance of nature increases, in a lesser de-
gree, from the north of Europe to the lovely shores of the
Mediterranean than from the Iberian Peninsula, Southern
Italy, and Greece, toward the tropics. The naked earth is
covered with an unequally woven, flowery mantle, thicker
where the sun rises high in a sky of deep azure, or is only
vailed by light and feathery clouds, and thinner toward the
gloomy north, where the returning frost too soon blights the
opening bud or destroys the ripening fruit. While, in the cold
zones, the bark of the trees is covered with dry moss or wdth
lichens, the region of palms and of feathery arborescent ferns
shows the trunks of Anacardia and of the gigantic species of
Ficus embellished by Cymbidia and the fragrant Vanilla.
The fresh green of the Dracontium, and the deeply-serrated
leaves of the Pothos, contrast with the variegated blossoms of
the OrchidcBB, while climbing Bauhinise, Passiflora3, and yel-
low-blossomed BanisterisB, entwining the stems of forest trees,
Rpread far and high in air, and delicate flowers are unfolded
from the roots of the Theobromae, and from the thick and
rough bark of the Crescentise and the Gustavias. In the
midst of this abundance of flowers and leaves, and this luxu-
riantly wild entanglement of climbing plants, it is often difii-
cult lor the naturalist to discover to which stem different
(lowers and leaves belong ; nay, one single tree adorned with
PauUinise, Bignonise, and Dendrobia, presents a mass of vege-
table forms which, if disentangled, would cover a considerable
space of ground.
Each portion of the earth has, however, its peculiar and
* Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, 2te Ausgabe, 1826, bd. i., s. 7, 16,
21, 36, and 42. Compai'e, also, two veiy instructive memoirs, Fried-
rich von Martius, Physiognomie des PJlanzenreichcs in Brasilien, 1824,
and M. \on Olfers, allgemeine Uebersicht von Brasilien, in Feldner'a
Reisen, 1828, th. i., s. 18-23.
TROPICAL SCENERY. 97
characteristic beauty : to the tropics belong diversity and
grandeur in the forms of plants ; to the north, the aspect of
tracts of meadow-land, and the periodic and long-desired re-
vival of nature at the earliest breath of the gentle breezes of
spring. As in the Musaceae (Pisang) we have the greatest
expansion, so in the Casuarinae and in the needle-tree we have
the greatest contraction of the leaf vessels. Firs, Thujae, and
Cypresses constitute a northern flora which is very uncommon
in the plains of the tropics. Their ever- verdant green enlivens
the dreary winter landscape, and proclaims to the inhabitants
of the north that, even when snow and ice have covered the
ground, the inner life of vegetation, like Promethean fire, is
never extinguished on our planet.
Every zone of vegetation has, besides its own attractions, a
peculiar character, which calls forth in us special impressions.
Referring here only to our own native plants, I would ask,
who does not feel himself variously affected beneath the som-
ber shade of the beech, on hills crowned with scattered pines,
or in the midst of grassy plains, where the wind rustles among
the trembling leaves of the birch ? As in different organic
beings we recognize a distinct physiognomy, and as descriptive
botany and zoology are, in the strict definition of the words,
merely analytic classifications of animal and vegetable forms,
so there is also a certain physiognomy of nature exclusively
peculiar to each portion of the earth. The idea which the
artist wishes to indicate by the expressions " Swiss nature" or
" Italian skies," is based on a vague sense of some local char-
acteristic. The azure of the sky, the form of the clouds, the
vapory mist resting in the distance, the luxuriant development
of plants, the beauty of the foliage, and the outline of the
mountains, are the elements which determine the total im-
pression produced by the aspect of any particular region. To
apprehend these characteristics, and to reproduce them visibly,
is the province of landscape painting ; while it is permitted to
the artist, by analyzing the various groups, to resolve beneath
his touch the great enchantment of nature — if I may venture
on so metaphorical an expression — as the written words of
men are resolved into a few simple characters.
But, even in the present imperfect condition of pictorial de
Uneations of landscapes, the engravings which accompany, and
too often disfigure, our books of travels, have, however, con-
tributed considerably toward a knowledge of the physiognomy
of distant regions, to the taste for voyages in the tropical zones,
and to a more active study of nature. The improvements in
Vol. II.— E
9R COSMOS. • -
landscape painting on a large scale (as decorative paintnigs.
panoramas, dioramas, and neoramas) have also increased the
generality and force of these impressions. The representations
satirically described by Vitruvius and the Egyptian, Julius
Pollux, as " exaggerated representations of rural adornments
of the stage," and w^hich, in the sixteenth century, were con-
trived by Serlio's arrangement of Coulisses to increase the de-
lusion, may now, since the discoveries of Prevost and Daguerre,
be made, in Barker's panoramas, to serve, in some degree, as
a substitute for traveling through different regions. Pano-
ramas are more productive of effect than scenic decorations,
since the spectator, inclosed, as it were, within a magical cir-
cle, and wholly removed from all the disturbing influences of
reality, may the more easily fancy that he is actually surround-
ed by a foreign scene. These compositions give rise to im-
pressions which, after many years, often become wonderfully
interwoven with the feelings awakened by the aspect of the
scenes when actually beheld. Hitherto panoramas, which are
alone effective when of considerable diameter, have been ap-
plied more frequently to the representation of cities and in-
habited districts than to that of scenes in which nature revels
in wild luxuriance and richness of life. An enchanting effect
might be produced by a characteristic delineation of nature,
sketched on the rugged declivities of the Himalaya and the
Cordilleras, or in the midst of the Indian or South American
river valleys, and much aid might be further derived by tak-
ing photographic pictures, which, although they certainly can
not give the leafy canopy of trees, would present the most
perfect representation of the form of colossal trunks, and the
characteristic ramification of the different branches.
All these means, the enumeration of which is specially com-
prised within the limits of the present work, are calculated to
raise the feeling of admiration for nature ; and I am of opinion
that the knowledge of the works of creation, and an apprecia-
tion of their exalted grandeur, would be powerfully increased
if, besides museums, and thrown open, like them, to the pub-
lic, a number of panoramic buildings, containing alternating
pictures of landscapes of different geographical latitudes and
from different zones of elevation, should be erected in our
large cities. The conception of the natural unity and the
feeling of the harmonious accord pervading the universe can
not fail to increase in vividness among men, in proportion as
the means are multiplied by which the phenomena of nature
may be more characteristically and visibly manilested.
CULTIVATION OF EXOTIC PI ANTS. 99
CULTIVATION OF TROPICAL PLANTS— CONTRAST AND ASSEMBLAGE
OF VEGETABLE FORMS.—IMPRESSIONS INDUCED BY THE PHYSIOG
NOMY AND CHARACTER OF THE VEGETATION.
Landscape painting, notwithstanding the multiphcation of
its productions by engravings, and by the recent improvements
in Hthography, is still productive of a less powerful effect than
that excited in minds susceptible of natural beauty by the im-
mediate aspect of groups of exotic plants in hot-houses or in
gardens. I have already alluded to the subject of my own
youthful experience, and mentioned that the sight of a colossal
dragon-tree and of a fan palm in an old tower of the botanical
garden at Berlin implanted in my mind the seeds of an irre-
sistible desire to undertake distant travels. He who is able
to trace through the whole course of his impressions that which
gave the first leading direction to his whole career, will not
deny the influence of such a power.
I would here consider the different impression produced by
the picturesque arrangement of plants, and their association
for the purposes of botanical exposition ; in the first place, by
groups distinguished for their size and mass, as Musacese and
Heliconise, growing in thick clumps, and alternating with
Corypha palms, Araucarise, and Mimosas, and moss-covered
trunks, from which shoot forth Dracontia, delicately-leaved
Ferns, and richly-blossoming Orchideae ; and, in the next, by
an abundance of separate lowly plants, classed and cultivated
in rows for the purpose of affording instruction in descriptive
and systematic botany. In the first case, our attention is
challenged by the luxuriant development of vegetation in
Cecropise, Carolinise, and light, feathery Bamboos ; by the
picturesque association of the grand and noble forms which
embellish the shores of the Upper Orinoco, the wooded banks
of the Amazon, or of the Huallaga, so vividly and admirably
described by Martins and Edward Poppig ; and by the senti-
ment of longing for the lands in which the current of life flows
more abundantly and richly, and of whose beauty a faint but
still pleasing image is reflected to the mind by means of our
hot-houses, which originally served as mere nurseries for sick-
ly plants.
It undoubtedly enters within the compass of landscape
painting to afford a richer and more complete picture of na-
ture than the most skillfully-arranged grouping of cultivated
plants is able to present, since this branch of art exercises an
almost magical command over masses and forms. Almost
100 COSMOS.
unlimited in space, it traces the skirts of the forest till they
are wholly lost in the aerial distance, dashes the mountain
torrent from cliff to cliff, and spreads the deep azure of the
tropical sky alike over the summits of the lofty palms and
over the vi^aving grass of the plain that bounds the horizon.
The luminous and colored effects imparted to all terrestrial
objects by the light of the thinly- vailed or pure tropical sky,
gives a peculiar and mysterious power to landscape painting,
when the artist succeeds in reproducing this mild effect of light.
The sky in the landscape has, from a profound appreciation
for the nature of Greek tragedy, been ingeniously compared to
the charm of the chorus in its general and mediative effect.*
The multiplication of means at the command of painting
for exciting the fancy, and concentrating the grandest phe-
nomena of sea and land on a small space, is denied to our
plantations and gardens, but this deficiency in the total effect
is compensated for by the sway which reality every where
exercises over the senses. When, in the Messrs. Loddijjes'
palm-house, or in the Pfauen-hisel, near Potsdam (a monu-
ment of the simple love of nature of my noble and departed
sovereign), we look down from the high gallery in the bright
noonday sun on the luxuriant reed and tree-like palms below,
we feel, for a moment, in a state of complete delusion as to
the locality to which we are transported, and we may even
believe ourselves to be actually in a tropical climate, looking
from the summit of a hill on a small grove of palms. It is
true that the aspect of the deep azure of the sky, and the im-
pression produced by a greater intensity of light, are wanting,
but, notwithstanding, the illusion is more perfect, and exer-
cises a stronger effect on the imagination than is excited by
the most perfect painting. Fancy associates with every plant
the wonders of some distant region, as we listen to the rust-
ling of the fan-like leaves, and see the changing and flitting
effect of the light, when the tops of the palms, gently moved
by currents of air, come in contact as they wave to and fro.
So great is the charm produced by reality, although the rec-
ollection of the artificial care bestowed on the plants certainly
exercises a disturbing influence. Perfect development and
freedom are inseparably connected with nature, and in the
eyes of the zealous and botanical traveler, the dried plants of
an herbarium, collected on the Cordilleras of South America
or in the plains of India, are often more precious than the as-
pect of the same species of plants within a European hot-
* Wilh. von Humboldt, in his Briefweckeel mit Schiller, 1830, s. 470.
EASTERN GARDENS. 101
house. Cultivation blots out some of the original characters
of nature, and checks the free development of the several parts
of the exotic organization.
The physiognomy and arrangement of plants and their con-
trasted apposition must not he regarded as mere objects of
natural science, or incitements toward its cultivation ; for the
attention devoted to the physiognomy of plants is likewise of
the greatest importance with reference to the art of landscape
gardening. I will not yield to the temptation here held out
to me of entering more fully into this subject, merely limiting
myself to a reference to the beginning of this section of the
present work, where, as we found occasion to praise the more
frequent manifestation of a profound sentiment of nature no-
ticed among nations of Semitic, Indian, and Iranian descent,
so also we find from history that the cultivation of parks orig-
inated in Central and Southern Asia. Semiramis caused gar-
dens to be laid out at the foot of the Mountain Bagistanos,
which have been described by Diodorus,* and whose fame in-
duced Alexander, on his progress from Kelone to the horse
pastures of Nysaea, to deviate from the direct road. The
parks of the Persian kings were adorned with cypresses, whose *
obelisk-like forms resembled the flame of fire, and were, on
that account, after the appearance of Zerduscht (Zoroaster),
first planted by Gushtasp around the sacred precincts of the
Temple of Fire. It is thus that the form of the tree itself
has led to the myth of the origin of the cypress in Paradise. f
* Diodor., ii., 13. He, however, ascribes to the celebrated gardens of
Semiramis a circumference of only twelve stadia. The district near the
pass of Bagistanos is still called the " bow or circuit of the gardens" —
Tauk-i-bostan (Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders des Grossen, 1833, s. 553).
t In the Sckahnameh of Firdusi it is said, '' a slender cypress, reared
in Paradise, did Zerdusht plant before the gate of the temple of fire"
(at Kishmeer in Khorassan). " He had written on this tall cypress that
Gushtasp had adopted the genuine faith, of which the slender tree was
a testimony, and thus did God diffuse righteousness. When many years
had passed away, the tall cypress spread and became so large that the;
hunter's cord could not gird its circumference. When its top was sur-
rounded by many branches, he encompassed it with a palace of pure
gold and caused it to be published abroad, Where is there on
the earth a cypress like that of Kishmeer? From Paradise God sent
it me, and said, Bow thyself from thence to Paradise." When the
Calif Motewelskil caused the cypresses, sacred to the Magians, to be
cut down, the age ascribed to this one was said to be 1 450 years. See
Vuller's Fragmente uber die Religion des Zoroaster, 1831, s. 71 und
114 ; and Ritter, Erdkmide. th. vi., i., s. 242. The original native place
of the cypress (in Arabic arar, wood, in Persian serio kohi) appears to
be the mountains of Busih, west of Hei'at {G4ographie d'EdHsi, trad,
par Jaubert, 1836, t. i., p. 464).
T02 COSMOS.
The gardens of the Asiatic terrestrial paradises (TTapaSeKTOi)
excited the early admiration of the inhabitants of the West ;*
and the worship of trees may be traced among the Iranians
to the remote date of the prescripts of Hom, named, in the
Zend-Avesta, the promulgator of the old law. We learn
from Herodotus the delight taken by Xerxes in the great
plane-tree in Lydia, on which he bestowed decorations of gold,
appointing one of the "immortal ten thousand" as its special
guard. t The ancient adoration of trees was connected, owing
to the refreshing and humid shadow of the leafy canopy, with
the worship of the sacred springs.
To this consideration of the primitive worship of nature be-
longs a notice of the fame attached among the Hellenic races
to the remarkably large palm-tree in the island of Delos, and
to an ancient palm-tree in Arcadia. The Buddhists of Cey-
lon venerate the colossal Indian fig-tree, the Banyan of Anu-
rahdepura, which is supposed to have sprung from the branches
of the original tree under which Buddha, as the inhabitant
of the ancient Magadha, fell into a state of beatitude, sponta-
neous extinction, nirivana.X As separate trees became ob-
"jects of adoration from the beauty of their forms, so likewise
groups of trees were venerated as groves of the gods. Pausa-
nias speaks in high terms of admiration of a grove round the
Temple of Apollo at Grynion ^olis,§ while the grove of Co-
lonus is likewise celebrated in the famous chorus of Sophocles.
* Achill. Tat, i., 25; Longiis, Past., iv., p. 108; Schafer. " Gese-
nius ( Thes. Lingum Hebr., t. ii., p. 1124) very justly advances the view
that the vi^ord Paradise belonged originally to the ancient Persian lan-
guage, but that its use has been lost in the modern Persian. Fii'dusi,
although his own name was taken from it, usually employs only the
word behischt; the ancient Persian origin of the word is, hov^rever, ex-
pressly corroborated by Pollux, in the Otiomast., ix., 3; and by Xeno-
phon {CEcon., 4, 13, and 21; Anab., i., 2, 7, and i., 4, 10; Cyrop., i.,
4, 5). In its signification of pleasure-garden, or garden, the word has
probably passed from the Persian into the Hebrew (pardes, Cant.,iv.,
13; Nehcm., ii., 8; and Eccl , ii., 5); into the Arabic (Jirdaus, plur.
faradisu, compare Alcoran, 23, 11, and Luc, 23, 43); into the Syrian
and Armenian {partes, see Ciakciak, Dizionario Armerio, 1837, p. 1194;
and Schroder, Thes. Ling. Armen., 1711, Prsef., p. 56). The derivation
of the Persian word from the Sanscrit (pradesa, or paradSsa, circuit, or
district, or foreign land), which was noticed by Benfey {Griech. Wur-
zellexikon, bd. i., 1839, s. 138), and previously by Bohlen and Gesenius,
suits perfectly in form, but not so well in sense." — Buschmann.
t Herod., vii., 31 (between Kallatebus and Sardes).
t Ritter, Erdkun.de, th. iv., 2, s. 237, 251, und 681 ; Lassen, Indische
Alterthumskunde, bd. i., s. 260.
§ Pausanias, i., 21, 9. Compare, also. Arboretum Sacrum, in Meitrsii
Op. ex recevsione Joann. Lami, vol. x., Florent., 1753, p. 777-844.
CHlNEPn rAHKS AM) (JAKDENri. 103
The feeling for nature manifested by the early cuUivated
East Asiatic nations, in the choice and the carefiil attention
of sacred objects chosen from the vegetable kingdom, was most
strongly and variously exhibited in their cultivation of parks.
In the remotest parts of the Old Continent the Chinese gar-
dens appear to have approached most nearly to what we are
now accustomed to regard as English parks. Under the vic-
torious dynasty of Han, gardens were so frequently extended
over a circuit of many miles that agriculture was injured by
them, and the people excited to revolt.* " What is it that
we seek in the possession of a pleasure garden ?" asks an an-
cient Chinese writer, Lieu-tscheu. It has been universally
admitted, throughout all ages, that plantations should com-
pensate to man for the loss of those charms of which he is de-
prived by his removal from a free communion with nature,
his proper and most delightful place of abode. " The art of
laying out gardens consists in an endeavor to combine cheer-
fulness of aspect, luxuriance of groM'th, shade, solitude, and
repose, in such a manner that the senses may be deluded by
an imitation of rural nature. Diversity, which is the main
advantage of free landscape, must therefore be sought in a
judicious choice of soil, an alternation of chains of hills
and valleys, gorges, brooks, and lakes covered with aquatic
plants. Symmetry is wearying, and ennui and disgust will
soon be excited in a garden where every part betrays con-
straint and art."t The description given by Sir George
Staunton of the great imperial garden of Zhe-hol,| north of
the Chinese wall, corresponds with these precepts of Lieu-
tscheu — precepts to which our ingenious cotemporary, who
formed the charming park of Muskau,^ will not refuse his ap-
proval.
In the great descriptive poem written in the middle of the
last century by the Emperor Kien-long, in praise of the former
Mantchou capital, Mukden, and of the graves of his ances-
tors, the most ardent admiration is expressed for free nature,
when but little embelhshed by art. The poetic prince shows
a happy power in fusing the cheerful images of the luxuriant
* Notice Historiqne sur les Jardins des Cliinois, in the Mimoires cori-
cernant Ics Chinois, t. viii., p. 309.
t See the work last quoted, p. 318-320.
t Sir George Staunton, Account of the Embassy of the Earl of Ma-
cartney to China, vol. ii., p. 24-5.
§ Prince PUckler-Muskau, Andeutungen ilber Landschaffsgdrtnerei,
1834. Compare, also, his Picturesque Descripti-jns of the Old and New-
English Parks, as well as that of the Egyptian Gardens of Scliubra.
104 COSMOS.
freshness of the meadows, of the forest-crowned hills, and the
peaceful dwellings of men, with the somber picture of the
tombs of his Ibrefathers. The sacrifices which he offers in
obedience to the rites prescribed by Confucius, and the pious
remembrance of the departed monarchs and warriors, form
the principal objects of this remarkable poem. A long enu-
meration of the wild plants and animals that are natives of
the region is wearisome, like every other didactic work ; but
the blending of the visible impressions produced by the land-
scape, which serves, as it were, for the back-ground of the pic-
ture, with the exalted objects of the ideal world, with the ful-
fillment of religious duties, together with the mention of great
historical events, gives a peculiar character to the whole com-
position. The feeling of adoration for mountains, which was
so deeply rooted among the Chinese, leads Kien-long to give a
careful delineation of the physiognomy of inanimate nature, for
which the Greeks and Romans evinced so little feelins'. The
form of the separate trees, the character of their ramification,
the direction of the branches, and the form of the foliage, are
all dwelt on with special predilection.*
If I have not yielded to the distaste for Chinese literature,
which is, unfortunately, disappearing too slowly from among
us, and if I have dwelt too long on the consideration of the
delineations of nature met with in the works of a cotemporary
of Frederic the Great, I am so much the more bound to as-
cend seven and a half centuries further back into the annals
of time, in order to refer to the poem of the Garden, by See-
ma-kuang, a celebrated statesman. The pleasure grounds de-
scribed in this poem are certainly much crowded by buildings
in the fashion of the old Italian villas, but the minister like-
wise celebrates a hermitage, which is situated amons rocks
and surrounded by high fir-trees. He extols the open view
over the broad river Kiang, crowded with vessels, and ex-
pects, with contentment, the arrival of friends, who will read
their verses to him, since they will also listen to his composi-
tions.t See-ma-kuang wrote about the year 1086, when, in
Germany, poetry was in the hands of a rude clergy, and was
not even clothed in the garb of the national tongue.
At this period, and probably five hundred years earlier, tlie
inhabitants of China, of Eastern India, and Japan, were al-
* Eloge de la Ville de Mouhden, Poeme compose par rEmpereuT
Kien-long. traduit par le P. Aniiot, 1770, p. 18, 22-25, 37, 63-68, 73-87
104, and 120.
t M&ynoirea concernant lea Chinois, t. ii., p. 643-650.
FHYSIOGNOMV OF NATURE. 105
ready acquainted with a great variety of vegetable forms.
The intimate connection which existed among the different
Buddhist sacerdotal estabUsiiments contributed its influence
in this respect. Temples, cloisters, and burying- places were
surrounded by gardens, adorned with exotic trees, and covered
by variegated flowers of different forms. Indian plants were
early difiiised over China, Corea, and Nipon. Siebold, whose
writings give a comprehensive view of all matters referring to
Japan, was the first to draw attention to the cause of the mixt
ure of the floras of remotely-separated Buddhist lands.*
The rich abundance of characteristic vegetable forms pre-
sented by the present age to scientific observation and to land-
scape painting, must act as a powerful incentive to trace the
sources w^hich have yielded us this increased knowledge and
enjoyment of nature. The enumeration of these sources must
be reserved for the history of the contemplation of nature in
the succeeding portion of this work. Here my object has been
to depict, in the reflection of the external world on the mental
activity and the feelings of mankind, those means which, in
the progress of civilization, have exercised so marked and an-
imated an influence on the study of nature. Notwithstand-
ing a certain freedom of development of the several parts, the
primitive force of organization binds all animal and vegetable
forms to fixed and constantly-recurring types, determining, in
every zone, the character that peculiarly appertains to it, or
the physiognomy of nature. We may therefore regard it as
one of the most precious fruits of European civilization, that
it is almost every where permitted to man, by the cultivation
and arrangement of exotic plants, by the charm of landscape
painting, and by the inspired power of language, to procure a
substitute for familiar scenes during the period of absence, or
to receive a portion of that enjoyment from nature which is
yielded by actual contemplation during long and not unfre-
quently dangerous journeys through the interior of distant
continents.
* Ph. Fr. von Siebold, Kruidkundige Naamlijst van Japansche ett Chi-
neescke Planten, 1844, p. 4, What a difference do we not find on com
paring the variety of vegetable forms cultivated for so many centuries
past in Eastern Asia, with those enumei'ated by Columella, in his mea-
ger poem De Cultu Hortorum (v. 95-105, 174-176, 225-271, 295-306),
and to which the celebrated garland-weavers of Athens were confined!
It was not until the time of the Ptolemies that in Egypt, and especially
in Alexandria, the more skillful gardeners appear to have devoted any
great attention to variety, particularly for winter cultivation. (Com-
pare Alheti., v., p. 196.)
E 2
106 COSMOS.
PART II.
HISTORY OF THE PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE.—
PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT AND EXTEN-
SION OF THE IDEA OF THE COSMOS AS A NATURAL UNITY.
The history of the physical contemplation of the universe
is the history of the recognition of the unity of nature, the rep-
resentation of the efforts made by man to comprehend the
combined action of natural forces on the earth and in the re-
gions of space, and hence it designates the epochs of advance-
ment in the generalization of views, being a portion of the
history of our world of thought, in as far as it refers to objects
manifested by the senses, to the form of conglomerated mat-
ter, and the forces inherent in it.
In the section of the first portion of this work, relating to
the limitation and scientific treatment of a physical description
of the universe, I hope I may have succeeded in developing
with clearness the relation existing between the separate nat-
ural sciences and the description of the universe (the science
of the Cosmos), and the manner in which this science simply
draws from these various branches of study the materials for
its scientific foundation. The history of the knowledge of the
universe, of which I here present the leading ideas, and which,
for the sake of brevity, I name either simply the history of the
Cosmos, or the histai'ij of the 'physical contemplation of the uni-
verse, must not, therefore, be confounded with the history of
the natural sciences, as given in many of our leading element-
ary works on physics and physiology, or on the morphology
of plants and animals.
In order to give some idea of what has been collected at
separate epochs under this point of view, it appears most de-
sirable to adduce separate instances illustrative of the subjects
which must either be treated of or discarded in the succeed-
ing portions of this work. The discoveries of the compound
microscope, of the telescope, and of colored polarization, belong
to the history of the Cosmos, since they have afforded the
means of discovering that which is common to all organisms ;
of penetrating into the remotest regions of space ; of distin-
guishing between reflected or borrowed light, and the light of
self-luminous bodies, or, in other words, determining whether
PHYSIOAL (CONTEMPLATION oP THE UNIVERSE. 107
»3iar light be radiated from a solid mass or from a gaseous
envelope. The enumeration of the experiments which, since
Huygens's time, have gradually led to Arago's discovery of
colored polarization, must be reserved for the history of optics.
The consideration of the development of the principles, in ac-
cordance with which variously-formed plants admit of being
classified in families, falls, in like manner, within the domain
of the history of phytognosy, or botany ; while the geography
of plants, or a study of the local and climatic distribution of
vegetation over the whole earth — alike over the solid portions
and in the basins of the sea — constitutes an important section
in the history of the physical contemplation of the universe.
The intellectual consideration of that which has led man
to an insight into the unity of nature is, as Vv^e have already
observed, as little entitled to the appellation of the complete
history of the cultivation of mankind as to that of a history
of the natural sciences. An insight into the connection of
the vital forces of the universe must certainly be regarded as
the noblest fruit of human civilization, and as the tendency to
arrive at the highest point to which the most perfect develop-
ment of the intellect can attain ; but the subject at present
under consideration must still constitute only a part of the
history of human civilization, embracing all that has been
attained by the advance of difTerent nations in the pursuit of
every branch of mental and moral culture. By assuming a
more limited physical point of view, we necessarily become
restricted to one section of the history of human knowledge,
and our attention is specially directed to the relation existing
between the knowledge that has been gradually acquired and
the whole extent of the domain of nature ; and we dwell less
on the extension of separate branches of science than on the
results capable of generalization, and the material aids con-
tributed by different ages toward a more accurate observation
of nature.
We must, above all, distinguish careftilly between an early
presentiment of knowledge and knowledge itself With the
increasing cultivation of the human race, much has passed
from the former to the latter, and by this transition the hi.«-
tory of discovery has been rendered indistinct. An intellect-
ual and ideal combination of the facts already established often
guides almost imperceptibly the course of presage, elevating it
as by a power of inspiration. How much has been enounced
among the Indians and Greeks, and during the Middle Ages,
regarding the connection of natural phenomena, which, at first,
108 COSMOS.
either vague, or blended with the most unfounded hypotheses,
has, at a subsequent epoch, been confirmed by sure experience,
and then been recognized as a scientific truth I The presen-
tient fancy and the vivid activity of spirit which animated
Plato, Columbus, and Kepler, must not be disregarded, as if
they had effected nothing in the domain of science, or as if
they tended, of necessity, to draw the mind from the investi-
gation of the actual.
As we have defined the history of the physical contempla-
tion of the universe to be the history of the recognition of
nature in the unity of its phenomena, and of the connection
of the forces of the universe, our mode of proceeding must
consist in the enumeration of those subjects by which the idea
of the unity of the phenomena has been gradually developed.
We would here distinguish :
1. The independent efibrts of reason to acquire a knowledge
of natural laws, by a meditative consideration of the phenom-
ena of nature.
2. Events in the history of the world which have suddenly
enlarged the horizon of observation.
3. The discovery of new means of sensuous perception, as
well as the discovery of new organs by which men have been
brought into closer connection, both with terrestrial objects
and with remote regions of space.
This three-fold view serves as a guide in defining the prin-
cipal epochs that characterize the history of the science of the
Cosmos. For the purpose of further illustration, I would
again adduce some examples indicative of the diversity of the
means by which mankind attained to the intellectual posses-
sion of a great portion of the universe. Under this head I
include examples of an enlarged field of natural knowledge,
great historical events, and the discovery of new organs.
The knowledge of nature, as it existed among the Hellenic
nations under the most ancient forms of physics, was derived
more from the depth of mental contemplation than from the
sensuous consideration of phenomena. Thus the natural phi-
losophy of the Ionian physiologists was directed to the funda-
mental ground of origin, and to the metamorphoses of one sole
element, while the mathematical symbolicism of the Pythago-
reans, and their consideration of numbers and forms, disclose
a philosophy of measure and harmony. The Doric-Italian
school, by its constant search for numerical elements, and by
a certain predilection for the numerical relations of space and
time, laid the foundation, as it were, of the subsequent devel-
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 109
opment of our experimental sciences. The history of the con-
templation of the universe, as I interpret its limits, designates
not so much the frequently-recurring oscillations between truth
and error, as the principal epochs of the gradual approxima-
tion to more accurate views regarding terrestrial forces and
the planetary system. It shows us that the Pythagoreans,
according to the report of Philolaiis of Croton, taught the pro-
gressive movement of the non-rotating Earth, its revolution
round the focus of the world (the central fire, hestia), while
Plato and Aristotle imagined that the Earth neither rotated
nor advanced in space, but that, fixed to one central point, it
merely oscillated from side to side. Hicetas of Syracuse, who
must, at least, have preceded Theophrastus, Heraclides Ponti-
cus, and Ecphantus, all appear to have had a knowledge of the
rotation of the Earth on its axis ; but Aristarchus of Samos,
and more particularly Seleucus of Babylon, who lived one
hundred and fifty years after Alexander, first arrived at the
knowledge that the Earth not only rotated on its own axis,
but also moved round the Sun as the center of the whole plan-
etary system. And if, in the dark period of the Middle Ages,
Christian fanaticism, and the lingering influence of the Ptol-
emaic school, revived a belief in the immobility of the Earth,
and if, in the hypothesis of the Alexandrian, Cosmas Indico-
pleustes, the globe again assumed the form of the disk of
Thales, it must not be forgotten that a German cardinal,
Nicholas de Cuss, was the first who had the courage and the
independence of mind again to ascribe to our planet, almost
a hundred years before Copernicus, both rotation on its axis
and translation in space. After Copernicus, the doctrines of
Tycho Brahe gave a retrograde movement to science, although
this was only of short duration ; and when once a large mass
of accurate observations had been collected, to which Tycho
Brahe himself contributed largely, a correct view of the struc-
ture of the universe could not fail to be speedily established.
"VVe have already shown how a period of fluctuations between
truth and error is especially one of presentiments and fanciful
hypotheses regarding natural philosophy.
After treating of the extended knowledge of nature as a si-
multaneous consequence of direct observations and ideal com-
binations, we have proceeded to the consideration of those his-
torical events which have materially extended the horizon of
the physical contemplation of the universe. To these belong
migrations of races, voyages of discovery, and military expe-
ditions. Events of this nature have been the means of ac-
110 COSMOS.
quiring a knowledge of the natural character of the Earth's
surface (as, for instance, the configuration of continents, the
direction of mountain chains, and the relative height of ele-
vated plateaux), and in the case of extended tracts of land, of
presenting us with materials for expounding the general laws
of nature. It is unnecessary, in this historical sketch, to give
a connected tissue of events, and it will be sufficient, in the
history of the recognition of nature as a whole, to refer mere-
ly to those events which, at early periods, have exercised a
decided influence on the mental efforts of mankind, and on a
more extended view of the universe. Considered in this light,
the navigation of Colseus of Samos beyond the Pillars of Her-
cules ; the expedition of Alexander to Western India ; the
dominion exercised by the Romans over the then discovered
portions of the world ; the extension of Arabian cultivation,
and the discovery of the New Continent, must all be regarded
as events of the greatest importance for the nations settled
round the basin of the Mediterranean. My object is not so
much to dwell on the relation of events that may have occur-
red, as to refer to the action exercised on the development of
the idea of the Cosmos by events, whether it be a voyage of
discovery, the establishment of the predominance of some
highly-developed language rich in literary productions, or the
sudden extension of the knowledge of the Indo- African mon-
soons.
As I have already incidentally mentioned the influence of
language in my enumeration of heterogeneous inducements, I
will draw attention generally to its immeasurable importance
in two wholly different directions. Languages, when extens-
ively diffused, act individually as means of communication
between widely-separated nations, and collectively when sev-
eral are compared together, and their internal structure and
degrees of affinity are investigated, as means of promoting a
more profound study of the history of mankind. The Greek
language, which is so intimately connected with the national
life of the Hellenic races, has exercised a magic power over
all the foreign nations with which these races came in eon-
tact.* The Greek language appears in the interior of Asia,
through the influence of the Bactrian empire, as a conveyer
of knowledge, which, a thousand years afterward, was brought
* Niebuhr, Rom. Geschichle, th. i., s. 60 ; Droysen, Gesch. der Blldimg
des Hellenistischen Staaiensystems, 1843, s. 31-34, .5G7-.573 ; Fi'ietl.
Cramer, De Studiis quce veleres ad alia) um Gentium contulerint Linguas.
1844, p. 2-13.
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. Ill
back by the Arabs to the extreme west of Europe, blended
with hypotheses of Indian origin. The ancient Indian and
Malayan tongues furthered the advance of commerce and the
intercourse of nations in the island-world of the southwest of
Asia, in Madagascar, and on the eastern shores of Africa ; and
it is also probable that tidings of the Indian commercial sta-
tions of the Banians may have given rise to the adventurous
expedition of Vasco de Gama. The predominance of certain
languages, although it unfortunately prepared a rapid destruc-
tion for the idioms displaced, has operated favorably, like
Christianity and Buddhism, in bringing together and uniting
mankind.
Languages compared together, and considered as objects of
the natural history of the mind, and when separated into fam-
ilies according to the analogies existing in their internal struc-
ture, have become a rich source of historical knowledge ; and
this is probably one of the most brilliant results of modern
study in the last sixty or seventy years. From the very fact
of their being products of the intellectual force of mankind,
they lead us, by means of the elements of their organism, into
an obscure distance, unreached by traditionary records. The
comparative study of languages shows us that races now sep-
arated by vast tracts of land are allied together, and have mi-
grated from one common primitive seat ; it indicates the course
and direction of all migrations, and, in tracing the leading
epochs of development, recognizes, by means of the more or
less changed structure of the language, in the permanence of
certain forms, or in the more or less advanced destruction of
the formative system, which race has retained most nearly
the language common to all who had migrated from the gen-
eral seat of origin. The largest field for such investigations
into the ancient condition of language, and, consequently, into
the period when the whole family of mankind was, in the strict
sense of the word, to be regarded as one living whole, presents
itself in the long chain of Indo-Germanic languages, extending
from the Ganges to the Iberian extremity of Europe, and from
Sicily to the North Cape. The same comparative study of
languages leads us also to the native country of certain prod-
ucts, which, from the earliest ages, have constituted important
objects of trade and barter. The Sanscrit names of genuine
Indian products, as those of rice, cotton, spikenard, and sugar,
have, as we find, passed into the language of the Greeks, and,
to a certain extent, even into those of Semitic origin.*
* In Sanscrit, rico is vrihi, cotton karpdsa, sugar ^sarkare, and spike-
112 COSMOS.
From the above considerations, and the examples by which
they have been iUustrated, the comparative study of languages
appears as an important rational means of assistance, by which
scientific and genuinely philological investigations may lead to
a generalization of views regarding the affinity of races, and
their conjectural extension in various directions from one com-
mon point of radiation. The rational aids toward the gradual
development of the science of the Cosmos are, therefore, of
very different kinds, viz., investigations into the structure of
languages ; the deciphering of ancient inscriptions and histor-
ical monuments in hieroglyphics and arrow-headed writing ;
the greater perfection of mathematics, especially of that pow-
erful analytic calculus by which the form of the earth, the ebb
and flow of the sea, and the regions of space are brought within
the compass of calculation. To these aids must be further
added the material inventions which have procured for us, as
it were, new organs, sharpened the power of our senses, and
enabled men to enter into a closer communication with terres-
trial forces, and even with the remote regions of space. In
order to enumerate only a few of the instruments whose in-
vention characterizes great epochs in the history of civilization,
I would name the telescope, and its too long-delayed connec-
tion with instruments of measurement ; the compound micro-
scope, which furnishes us with the means of tracing the con-
ditions of the process of development of organisms, which
Aristotle gracefully designates as " the formative activity, the
source of being;" the compass, and the different contrivances
invented for measuring terrestrial magnetism ; the use of the
nard, nanartlia. See Lassen, Indische Alterthtimskunde, bd. i., 1843, s.
245, 250, 270, 289, und 538. On ^sarhara and kanda (whence our sugar-
candy), consult my Prolegomena de Distributione Geograpkicd Planta-
rum, 1817, p. 211. " Confudisse videntur veteres sacclmrum veruni
cum Tebascbiro Bambusa?, cum quia utraque in arundinibus iuveuiun-
tur, turn etiam quia vox Sanscradana scharkara. quae hodie (ut Pers.
schakar et Hindost. schuhir) pro saccharo nostro adhibetur, observaute
Boppio, ex auctoritate Amarasinhye, proprie nil dulce {madu) significat,
sed quicquid lapidosum et arenaceum est, ac vel calculum vesica?.
Verisimile igitur, vocem scharkara initio dumtaxat tebaschirura (saccar
nombu) indicasse, postex'ius in saccharum nostrum humilioris arundinis
{tkschu, kandekschu, kanda), ex similitudine aspectus translatam esse.
Vox Bambusae ex mambu derivatur ; ex kanda nostratium voces candis
znckerkand. In tebaschiro agnoscitur Persarum schir, h. e. lac. Sanscr.
kschiramJ'^ The Sanscrit name for tabaschir is tvakkschird, bark-milk ;
milk from the bark. See Lassen, bd. i., s. 271-274. Compare, also,
Pott, Kurdische Studien in the Zeitschrift fur die Knnde des Morgcn-
landes, bd. vii., s. 163-166, and the masterly treatise by Carl RiUei', iu
his Erdkunde von Asien, bd. vi., 2, s. 2.32-237.
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 1 1 H
pendulum as a measure of time ; the barometer ; the ther-
mometer ; hygrometric and electrometric apparatuses ; and
the polariscope, in its appUcation to the phenomena of colored
polarization, in the light of the stars, or in luminous regions
of the atmosphere.
The history of the physical contemplation of the universe,
which is based, as we have already remarked, on a meditative
consideration of natural phenomena, on the connection of great
events, and on inventions which enlarge the domain of sens-
uous perception, can only be presented in a fragmentary and
superficial manner, and only in its leading features. I flatter
myself with the hope that the brevity of this mode of treat-
ment will enable the reader the more readily to apprehend the
spirit in which a picture should be sketched, whose Hmits it is
so difficult to define. Here, as in the picture of nature which
is given in the former part of this work, it will be my object
to treat the subject, not with the completeness of an individ-
ualizing enumeration, but merely by the dev^elopment of lead-
ing ideas, that indicate some of the paths which must be pur-
sued by the physicist in his historical investigations. The
knowledofe of the connection of events and their causal rela
tions is assumed to be possessed by the reader, and it will con-
sequently be sufficient merely to indicate these events, and de-
termine the influence which they have exercised on the grad-
ual increase of the knowledge of nature as a whole. Com-
pleteness, I must again repeat, is neither to be attained, nor
is it to be regarded as the object of such an undertaking. In
the announcement of the mode in which I propose treating
my subject, in order to preserve for the present work its pe-
culiar character, I shall, no doubt, expose myself again to the
animadversions of those who think less of what a book contains
than of that which, according to their individual views, ought
to be found in it. I have purposely been much more circum-
stantial with reference to the more ancient than the modern
portions of history. Where the sources of information are
less copious, the difficulty of a proper combination is increased,
and the opinions advanced then require to be supported by the
testimony of facts less generally known. I would also observe
that I have permitted myself to treat my subject with ine-
quality, where the enumeration of individual facts afforded the
advantage of imparting greater interest to the narrative.
As the recognition of the unity of the Cosmos began in an
intuitive presentiment, and with merely a few actual observa-
tions on isolated portions of the domain of nature, it seems in-
114 COSMOS.
cumbent that we should beghi our historical representation ot
the universe from some definite point of our terrestrial planet.
We will select for this purpose that sea basin around which
have dwelt those nations whose knowledge has formed the
basis of our western civilization, which alone has made an
almost uninterrupted progress. We may indicate the main
streams from which Western Europe has received the elements
of the cultivation and extended views of nature, but amid the
diversity of these streams we kve unable to trace one primitive
source. A deep insight into the forces of nature and a recog-
nition of the unity of the Cosmos does not appertain to a so-
called primitive race : a term that has been applied, amid
the alternations of historical views, sometimes to a Semitic
race in Northern Chaldea — Arpaxad (the Arrapachitis of
Ptolemy)* — and sometimes to a race of Indians and Iranians,
in the ancient Zend, in the district surrounding the sources
of the Oxus and the Jaxartes.t History, as far as it is based
on human testimony, knows of no p^^??^^^^^^'e race, no one prim-
itive seat of civilization, and no primitive physical natural
science whose glory has been dimmed by the destructive bar-
barism of later ages. The historical inquirer must penetrate
through many superimposed misty strata of symbolical myths
before he can reach that solid foundation where the earliest
germ of human culture has been developed in accordance
with natural laws. In the dimness of antiquity, which con-
stitutes, as it were, the extreme horizon of true historical
knowledge, we see many luminous points, or centers of civili-
^ zation, simultaneously blending their rays. Among these we
may reckon Egypt at least five thousand years before our
era,! Babylon, Nineveh, Kashmir, Iran, and also China, after
* Ewald, Gesckichte des VolJces Israel, bd. i., 1843, s. 332-334 ; Lassen,
Ind. AUerthumskiinde, bd. i., s. 528. Compare Rodiger, in the Zeit-
gchrift fur die Ktinde des Morgenlandes, bd. iii., s. 4, on Chaldeans and
Kurds, the latter of whom Strabo terms Kyrti.
t Bordj, the water-shed of the Onnuzd, nearly where the chain of the
Thian-schan (or Celestial Mountains), at its western termination, abuts
in veins against the Bolor (Belur-tagh), or rather intersects it, under the
name of the Asferah chain, north of the highland of Pamer (Upa-Meru,
or countiy above Meru). Compare Buruouf, Commentaire surle Yacna,
t. i., p. 239, and Addit., p. clxxxv., with Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. i.,
p. 163 ; t. ii., p. 16, 377-390.
X The principal chronological data for Egypt are as follows : " Menes,
3900 B.C. at least, and probably tolerably correct; 3430, commence-
ment of the fourth dynasty, which included the pyramid builders, Che-
phren-Schafra, Cheops-Chufu, and Mykerinos or Menkera ; 2200, inva-
sion of the Hyksos under the twelfth dynasty, to which belongs Ame-
nemha III., the builder of the original Labyrinth. A thousand years,
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 1 1 f)
the first colony migrated from the northeastern declivity of
the Kuen-lun into the lower river valley of the Hoang-ho.
at least, and probably still more, must be conjectured for the gradual
growth of a civilization which had been completed, and had in pai-*
begun to degenerate, at least 3430 years B.C." (Lepsius, in several
letters to myself, dated March, 1846, and therefore after his return from
his memorable expedition.) Compare, also, Bunsen's Considerations
on the Commencement of Universal History, w-hich, strictly defined, is
only a history of recent times, in his ingenious and learned work,
jn.gyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschickte, 1845, erstes Buch, s. 11-13.
The liistorical existence and regular chronology of the Chinese go back
to 2400, and even to 2700 before our era, far beyond Ju to Hoang-ty.
Many literary monuments of the thirteenth century B.C. are extant,
and in the twelfth century B.C. Thscheu-li records the measurement
of the length of the solstitial shadow taken with such exactness by
Tscheu-kung, in the town of Lo-yang, south of the Yellow River, that
Laplace found that it accorded perfectly with the theory of the altera-
tion of the obliquity of the ecliptic, which was only established at tlte
close of the last c^Rury. All suspicion of a measurement of the Earth's
direction derived by calculating back, falls therefore to the ground of
itself. See Edouard Biot, Sur la Constitution Politique de la Chine au
12e?Ke Siecle avant notre ere (1845), p. 3 and 9. The building of Tyre
and of the original temple of Melkarth (the Tyrian Hercules) would,
according to the account which Herodotus received from the priests
(II., 44), reach back 2760 years before our era. Compare, also, Hee-
ren, Ideen uber Politik und Verkehr der Volker, th. i., 2, 1824, s. 12.
Simplicius calculates, from, a notice transmitted by Porphyry, that the
date of the earliest Babylonian astronomical observations which were
known to Aristotle was 1903 years before Alexander the Great; and
Ideler, wdio is so profound and cautious as a chronologist, considers this
estimate in no w-ay impi-obable. See his Handhuch der Chronologie,
bd. i., s. 207 ; the Ahhandlungen der Berliner Akad. at/f das Jahr 1814, s.
217 ; and Bockh, il/e^ro/. Untersnchmigen uber die Masse des Alter thums,
1838, s. 36. Whether safe historic ground is to be found in India earlier
than 1200 B.C., according to the chronicles of Ka^XimGer {Radjataran-
gini, trad, par Troyer), is a question still involved in obscurity ; whife
Megasthenes {Indica, ed. Schwanbeck, 1846, p. 50) reckons for 153
kings of the dynasty of Magadha, from Manu to Kandragupta, from
sixty to sixty-four centuries, and the astronomer Ar}'abhatta places the
beginning of his chronology 3102 B.C. (Lassen, Ind. Alterthumsk., bd.
i., s. 473-505, 507, und 510). In order to give the numbers contained
in this note a higher significance in respect to the history of human
civilization, it will not be superfluous to recall the fact that the desti-uc-
tion of Troy is placed by the Greeks 1 184, by Homer 1000 or 950, and
by Cadmus the Milesian, the first htstorical writer araoiag the Greeks.
524 years before our era. This comparison of epochs proves at what
ditferent periods the desire for an exact record of events and enter-
prises was awakened among the nations most highly susceptible of cul-
ture, and we are involuntarily reminded of the exclamation which
Plato, in the Timceus, puts in the mouth of the priests of Sais : " O So-
lon, O Solon ! ye Greeks still remain ever children ; nowhere in Hellas
is there an aged man. Your souls are ever youthful; ye have in them
uo knowledge of antiquity, no ancient belief, no wisdom grown vener-
able by age."
116 COSMOS.
These central points involuntarily remind us of the largest
among the sparkling stars of the firmament, these eternal suns
in the regions of space, the intensity of whose brightness we
certainly know, although it is only in the case of a few that
we have been able to arrive at any certain knowledge regard-
ing the relative distances which separate them from our planet.
The hypothesis regarding the physical knowledge supposed
to have been revealed to the primitive races of men — the nat-
ural philosophy ascribed to savage nations, and since obscured
by civilization — belongs to a sphere of science, or, rather, of be-
lief, which is foreign to the object of the present work. We
find this belief deeply rooted in the most ancient Indian doc-
trine of Krischna.^^ " Truth was originally implanted in man-
kind, but, having been suffered gradually to slumber, it was
finally forgotten, knowledge returning to us since that period
as a recollection." We will not attempt tof^ecide the ques-
tion whether the races, which we at present term savage, are
all in a condition of original wildness, or whether, as the struc-
ture of their languages often allows of our conjecturing, many
among them may not be tribes that have degenerated into a
wild state, remaining as the scattered fragments saved from
the wreck of a civilization that was early lost. A more inti-
mate acquaintance with these so-called children of nature
reveals no traces of that superiority of knowledge regarding
terrestrial forces which a love of the marvelous has led men
to ascribe to these rude nations. A vague and terror-stricken
feeling of the unity of natural forces is no doubt a\vakened in
the breast of the savage, but such a feelinn: has nothins: in
common with the attempt to prove, by the power of thought,
the connection that exists among all phenomena. True cos-
mical views are the result of observation and ideal combina-
tion, and of a long-continued communion with the external
world ; nor are they a work of a single people, but the fruits
yielded by reciprocal communication, and by a great, if not
general, intercourse between different nations.
As, in the considerations on the reflection of the external
world on the powers of the imagination at the beginning of
this section of the present work, I selected from the general
history of literature examples illustrative of the expression of
an animated feeling for nature, so, in the historij of the con-
templation of the universe, I would likewise bring lor ward
from the general history of civilization whatever may serve to
* Wilhelin von Humboldt, ilehcr cine Episode des Maka-Bharata. in
his Gesammelte Werke, bd. i., s. 73.
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 117
indicate the progress that has been made toward the recogni-
tion of the unity of nature. Both portions — not separated ar-
bitrarily, but by determined principles — have the same rela-
tions to one another as the studies from vi^hich they have been
borrowed. The history of the civilization of mankind com-
prises in itself the history of the fundamental powers of the
human mind, and also, therefore, of the works in which these
powers have been variously displayed in the different depart-
ments of literature and art. In a similar manner, we recog-
nize in the depth and animation of the sentiment of love for
nature, which we have delineated according to its various
manifestations at different epochs and among different races
of men, active means of inducement toward a more careful
observation of phenomena, and a more earnest investigation
of their cosmical connection.
Owing to the diversity of the streams which have in the
course of ages so unequally diffused the elements of a more
extended knowledge of nature over the whole earth, it will be
most expedient, as we have already observed, to start in the
history of the contemplation of the external world from a sin-
gle group of nations, and for this object I select the one from
which our present scientific cultivation, and, indeed, that of
the whole of Western Europe, has originated. The mental
cultivation of the Greeks and Romans must certainly be re-
garded as very recent in comparison with that of the Egyp-
tians, Chinese, and Indians ; but all that the Greeks and Ro-
mans received from the east and south, blended with what
they themselves produced and developed, has been uninter-
ruptedly propagated on our European soil, notwithstanding
the continual alternation of historical events, and the admix-
ture of foreign immigrating races. In those regions in which
a much greater degree of knowledge existed thousands of years
earlier, a destructive barbarism has either wholly darkened
the pre-existing enlightenment, or, where a stable and complex
system of government has been preserved, together with a
maintenance of ancient customs, as is the case in China, ad-
vancement in science or the industrial arts has been very in
considerable, while the almost total absence of a free inter-
pourse with the rest of the world has interposed an insuperable
barrier to the generalization of views. The cultivated nations
of Europe, and their descendants who have been transplanted
to other continents, may be said, by the gigantic extension
of their maritime expeditions to the remotest seas, to be fa-
miliarized with the most distant shores ; and those countries
118 COSMOS.
which they do not ah'eady possess, they may threaten. Ir
the ahiiost uninterrupted course of the knowledge transmitted
to them, and in their ancient scientific nomenclature, we may
trace, as the guiding points of the history of the human race,
recollections of the various channels through which important
inventions, or, at any rate, their germs, have been conveyed
to the nations of Europe ; thus from Eastern Asia has flowed
the knowledge of the direction and declination of a freely-sus-
pended magnetic rod ; from Phoenicia and Egypt the knowl-
edge of chemical preparations, as glass, animal and vegetable
dyes, and metallic oxyds ; and from India the general use of
position in determining the increased values of a few numer-
ical signs.
Since civilization has left its most ancient seat within the
tropics or the sub-tropical zone, it has remained permanently
settled in the portion of the earth whose northern regions are
less cold than those of Asia and America under the same lati-
tude. The continent of Europe may be regarded as a western
peninsula of Asia, and I have already observed how much
general civilization is favored by the mildness of its climate,
and how much it owes to the circumstances of its variously
articulated form, first noticed by Strabo ; to its position in re-
spect to Africa, which extends so far into the equatorial zone,
and to the prevalence of the west winds, which are warm
winds in winter, owing to their passing over the surface of the
ocean. The physical character of Europe has opposed fewer
obstacles to the diffusion of civilization than are presented in
Asia and Africa, where far-extending parallel ranges of mount
ain chains, elevated plateaux, and sandy deserts interpose al-
most impassable barriers between difTerent nations.
We will therefore start in our enumeration of the principal
momenta that characterize the history of the physical consid-
eration of the universe from a portion of the earth which is,
perhaps, more highly favored than any other, owing to its
geographical position, and its constant intercourse with other
countries, by means of which the cosmical views of nations
experience so marked a degree of enlargement.
PHYSICAL. CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 119
PRINCIPAL MOMENTA THAT HAVE INFLUENCED THE HIS-
TORY OF THE PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNI-
VERSE.
THE MEDITERRANEAN CONSIDERED AS THE STARTING-POINT FOR
THE REPRESENTATION OF THE RELATIONS WHICH HAVE LAID THE
FOUNDATION OF THE GRADUAL EXTENSION OF THE IDEA OF THE
COSMOS.— SUCCESSION OF THIS RELATION TO THE EARLIEST CUL-
TIVATION AMONG HELLENIC NATIONS. — ATTEMPTS AT DISTANT
MARITIME NAVIGATION TOWARD THE NORTHEAST (BY THE ARGO-
NAUTS) ; TOWARD THE SOUTH (TO OPHIR) ; TOWARD THE WEST
(BY COLiEUS OF SAMOS).
Plato, in his PhcEclo, describes the narrow limits of the
Mediterranean in a manner that accords with the spirit of en-
larged cosmical views.* " We, who inhabit the region extend-
ing from Phasis to the Pillars of Hercules, occupy only a small
portion oFthe earth," he writes, " where we have settled our-
selves round the inner sea like ants or frogs round a swamp."
This narrow basin, on the borders of which Egyptian, Phoe-
nician, and Hellenic nations flourished and attained to a high
degree of civilization, is the point from which the most im-
portant historical events have proceeded, no less than the col-
onization of vast territories in Africa and Asia, and those
maritime expeditions which have led to the discovery of the
whole western hemisphere of the globe.
The Mediterranean shows in its present configuration the
traces of an earher subdivision into three contiguous smaller
closed basins.f
The iEgean is bounded to the south by the curved line
formed by the Carian coast of Asia Minor, and the islands of
Rhodes, Crete, and Cerigo, and terminating at the Pelopon-
* Plato, PhccdOj p. 109, B. (Compare Herod., ii., 21.) Cleomedes
supposed that the surface of the earth was depressed in the middle, iu
order to receive the Mediterraueau (Voss, Crit. Bldller, bd. ii., 1828,
8. 144 und 150).
t I first developed this idea in my Rel. Hist, du Voyage aux Region*
Equinoxiales, t. iii., p. 236, and in the Examen Crit. de V Hist, de la
Geogr. au \beme Steele, t. i., p. 36-38. See, also, Otftied JMiiller, in
the Gottingiscke gelehrte Anzeigen, 1838, bd. i., s. 376. The most west-
ern basin, which I name genei-ally the Tyrrhenian, includes, according
to Straho, the Iberian, Ligurian, and Sardinian Seas. The Syrtic basin,
east of Sicily, includes the Ausonian or Siculian, the Libyan, and the
Ionian Seas. The southern and southwestern part of the ^Egean Sea
was called Cretic, Saronic, and Myrtoic. The remarkable passage in
Aristot., De Mundo, cap. iii. (p. 393, Bekk.), refers only to the bay-like
configuration of the coasts of the MediteiTanean, and its etfect on the
ocean flowing into it.
120 COSMOS.
nesus, not I'ar from the Promontory of Malea. Further west-
ward is the Ionian Sea, the Syrtic basin, in which lies Malta.
The western extremity of Sicily here approaches within forty-
eight geographical miles of the coast of Africa. The sudden
appearance and short continuance of the upheaved volcanic
island of Ferdinandea in 1831, to the southwest of the calca-
reous rocks of Sciacca, seem to indicate an effort of nature to
reclose the Syrtic basin between Cape Grantola, Adventure
Bank, examined by Captain Smyth, Pantellaria, and the Af-
rican Cape Bon, and thus to divide it from the third western
basin, the Tyrrhenian. This last sea receives the ocean
which enters the Pillars of Hercules from the west, and sur-
rounds Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, and the small volcanic
group of the Spanish Columbrata3.
This triple constriction of the Mediterranean has exercised
a great influence on the earliest limitations, and the subse-
quent extension of Phoenician and Greek voyages of discovery.
The latter were long limited to the ^gean and Syrtic Seas.
In the Homeric times the continent of Italy was still an "un-
known land." The Phocseans opened the Tyrrhenian basin
west of Sicily, and Tartessian mariners reached the Pillars
of Hercules. It must not be forgotten that Carthage was
founded at the boundary of the Tyrrhenian and Syrtic basins.
The physical configuration of the coast-line influenced the
course of events, the direction of nautical undertakings, and
the changes in the dominion of the sea ; and the latter reacted
again on the enlargement of the sphere of ideas.
The northern shore of the Mediterranean possesses the ad-
vantage of being more richly and variously articulated than
the southern or Libyan shore, and this was, according to
Strabo, noticed already by Eratosthenes.* Here we find
three peninsulas, the Iberian, the Italian, and the Hellenic,
which, owing to their various and deeply-indented contour,
form, together with the neighboring islands and the opposite
* Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 67. The two remarkable pas-
sages of Strabo are as follows : " Eratosthenes enumerates three, and
Polybius five points of land in which Europe tei'niinates. The first-
mentioned of these writers names the projecting point w^hich extends
to the Pillars of Hercules, on which Iberia is situated ; next, that which
terminates at the Sicilian Straits, to which Italy belongs ; and, thirdly,
that which extends to Malea, and comprises all the nations between
the Adriatic, the Euxine, and the Tanais" (lib. ii., p. 109). " We be-
gin with Europe because it is of irregular form, and is the quarter most
favorable to the mental and social ennoblement of men. It is habitable
in all parts except some districts near the Tanais, which are not peopled
on account of the cold^' (lib. ii., p. 126).
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. T-^ I
coasts, many straits and isthmuses. Such a configuration of
continents and of islands that have been partly severed and
partly upheaved by volcanic agency in rows or in far project-
ing fissures, early led to geognostic views regarding eruptions,
terrestrial revolutions, and outpourings of the swollen higher
seas into those below them. The Euxine, the Dardanelles,
the Straits of Gades, and the Mediterranean, with its numer-
ous islands, were well fitted to draw attention to such a sys-
tem of sluices. The Orphic Argonaut, who probably lived in
Christian times, has interwoven old mythical narrations in his
composition. He sings of the division of the ancient Lyktonia
into separate islands, " when the dark-haired Poseidon, in an-
ger with Father Kronion, struck Lyktonia with the golden
trident." Similar fancies, which may often certainly have
sprung from an imperfect know^ledge of geographical relatione,
were frequently elaborated in the erudite Alexandrian school,
which was so partial to every thing connected with antiquity.
Whether the myth of the breaking up of Atlantis be a vague
and western reflection of that of Lyktonia, as I have else-
where shown to be probable, or whether, according to Otfried
Miiller, " the destruction of Lyktonia (Leukoma) refers to the
Samothracian legend of a great flood which changed the form
of that district,"* is a question that it is unnecessary here to
decide.
* Ukert, Geogr. dcr Griechen und Romer, th. i., abth. 2, s. 345-348,
and th. ii.,abth. 1, s. 194; Johannes v. Miiller, Werke, bd. i., s. 38 ; Hum-
boldt, Examen Critique, t. i., p. 112 and 171 ; Otfried Miiller, Minyer,
s. 64 ; and the latter, again, in a too favorable critique of my memoir
on the Mythische Geographic der Griechen {Gott. gelehrte Anzeigen,
1838). I expressed myself as follows: "In raising questions which
are of so great importance with respect to philological studies, I can
not wholly pass over all mention of that which belongs less to the de-
scription of the actual world than to the cycle of mythical geography.
It is the same with space as with time. History can not be treated
from a philosophical point of view, if the heroic ages be wholly lost
sight of. National myths, when blended with history and geography,
can not be regarded as appertaining wholly to the domain of the ideal
world. Although vagueness is one of its distinctive attributes, and sym-
bols cover reality by a more or less thick vail, myths, when intimately
connected together, nevertheless reveal the ancient source from which
the earliest glimpses of cosmography and physical science have been
derived. The facts recorded in primitive history and geography are
not mere ingenious fables, but rather the reflection of the opinion gen-
erally admitted regarding the actual world." The great investigator
of antiquity (whose opinion is so favorable to me, and whose early
death in the land of Greece, on which he had bestowed such profound
and varied research, has been universally lamented) considered, on the
contrary, that " the cliief part of the poetic idea of the earth, as it oc
Vol. IL— F
122
COSMOS.
But that which, as has already been frequently remarked,
has rendered the geographical position of the Mediterranean
most beneficial in its influence on the intercourse of nations,
is the proximity of the eastern continent, Avhere it pi-ojects
into the peninsula of Asia Minor ; the number of islands in
the jEgean Sea, which have served as a means for facilitating
the spread of civilization ;^ and the fissure between Arabia,
Egypt, and Abyssinia, through which the great Indian Ocean
penetrates under the name ol the Arabian Gulf or the Red
Sea, and which is separated by a narrow isthmus from the
Delta of the Nile and the southeastern coasts of the Mediter-
ranean. By means of all these geographical relations, the in-
fluence of the sea as a connecting element was speedily man-
ifested in the growing power of the Phoenicians, and subse-
quently in that of the Hellenic nations, and in the rapid ex-
tension of the sphere of general ideas. Civilization, in its
early seats in Egypt, on the Euphrates, and the Tigris, in
Indian Pentapotaraia and China, had been limited to lands
rich in navigable rivers ; the case was different, however, in
Phoenicia and Hellas. The active life of the Greeks, espe-
cially of the Ionian race, and their early predilection for mar-
itime expeditions, found a rich field for its development in the
remarkable configuration of the Mediterranean, and in its rel-
ative position to the oceans situated to the south and west.
curs iu Greek poeti'v, is by no means to be ascribed to actual experi
ence, which may have been invested, from credulity and love of the
marvelous, with a fabulous character, as has been conjectured especial-
ly with respect to the Phoenician maritime legends, but rather that it
vvas to be traced to the roots of the images which lie in certain ideal
presuppositions and requirements of the feelings, on which a true geo-
graphical knowledge has only gradually begun to work. From this fact
there has often resulted the interesting phenomenon that purely sub-
jective creations of a fancy guided by certain ideas become almost im-
perceptibly blended with actual countries and well-known objects of
scientific geography. Fi'om these considerations, it may be inferred
that all genuine or artificially mythical pictures of the imagination be-
long, in their proper ground-work, to an ideal world, and have no orig-
inal connection with the actual extension of the knowledge of the earth,
or of navigation beyond the Pillars of Hercules." The opinion ex-
pressed by rae in the French work agreed moi'e fully with the earlier
views of Otfried Mttller, for, in the Prolegomenon zu einer wissenschoft-
lichen Mythologie, s. 68 und 109, he said very distinctly that, '' iu myth-
ical narratives of that which is done and that w^hich is imagined, the
real and the ideal are most closely connected together." See, also, on
the Atlantis and Lyktonia, Martin, Etudes sur le Tim6c de Plalon, t. i.
p. 293-326.
* Naxos, by Ernst Curtius, 1846, s. 11; Droysen, GcschicJdc der Bil
i«;2^ des Hellenistischen Staatcnsystems. 1843, s. 4-P.
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE LMVEKSE. 123
^he existence of the Arabian Gulf as the result of the ir-
t^.^ tion of the Indian Ocean through the Straits of Bab-el-
Mandeb belongs to a series of great physical phenomena,
which could alone have been revealed to us by modern geog-
nosy. The European continent has its main axis directed
from northeast to southwest ; but almost at right angles to
this direction there is a system of fissures, which have given
occasion partly to a penetration of sea-water, and partly to
the elevation of parallel mountain chains. This inverse line
of strike, directed from the southeast to the northwest, is dis-
cernible from the Indian Ocean to the efflux of the Elbe in
Northern Germany ; in the Red Sea, the southern part of
which is inclosed on both sides by volcanic rocks ; in the Per-
sian Gulf, with the deep valleys of the double streams of the
Euphrates and the Tigris ; in the Zagros chain in Luristan ;
in the mountain chains of Hellas, and in the neighboring isl-
ands of the Archipelago ; and, lastly, in the Adriatic Sea,
and the Dalmatian calcareous Alps. The intersection* of
these two systems of geodetic lines directed from N.E. to S.W.,
and from S.E. to N.W. (the latter of which I consider to be
the more recent of the two), and whose cause must undoubt-
edly be traced to disturbances in the interior of our planet, has
exercised the most important influence on the destiny of man-
kind, and in facilitating intercourse among different nations.
This relative position, and the unequal degrees of heat experi-
enced by Eastern Africa, Arabia, and the peninsula of West-
ern India at different periods of the year, occasion a regular
alternation of currents of air (monsoons), favoring navigation
to the Myrrhifera Regie of the Adramites in Southern Arabia,
to the Persian Gulf, India, and Ceylon ; for, at the season of
the year (from April and May to October) when north winds
are prevailing in the Red Sea, the southwest monsoon is
blowing from Eastern Africa to the coast of Malabar, while
the northeast monsoon (from October to April), which favors
the return passage, corresponds with the period of the south
winds between the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and the Isthmus
of Suez.
After having sketched that portion of the earth to which
foreign elements of civilization and geographical knowledge
might have been conveyed to the Greeks from so many different
directions, we will first turn to the consideration of those na-
tions inhabiting the coasts of the Mediterranean who enjoyed
* Leopold von Buch, Ueber die Geognostischen Systeme von Deufsch
land, 8. xi. ; Humboldt, Asie Centra/ e, t. i., p. 284-286.
1154 ^ COSMOS.
an early and distinguished degree of civilization, viz., the
Egyptians, the Phoenicians, with their north and west African
colonies, and the Etrurians. Immigration and commercial
intercourse have here exercised the most powerful influence.
The more our historical horizon has been extended in modern
times by the discovery of monuments and inscriptions, as well
as by philosophical investigation of languages, the more varied
does the influence appear which the Greeks in the earliest
ages experienced from Lycia and the district surrounding the
Euphrates, and from the Phrygians allied to Thracian races.
In the Valley of the Nile, which plays so conspicuous a part
in the history of mankind, " there are well-authenticated car-
touches of the kings as far back as the beginning of the fourth
dynasty of Manetho, in which are included the builders of the
Pyramids of Giseh (Chephren or Schafra, Cheops-Chufu, and
Menkera or Mencheres)." I here avail myself of the account
of the most recent investigations of Lepsius,* whose expedi-
tion has resulted in throwing much important light on the
whole of antiquity. " The dynasty of Manetho began more
than thirty-four centuries before our Christian era, and twenty-
three centuries before the Doric immigration of the Heraclidae
into the Peloponnesus.t The great stone pyramids of Daschur,
somewhat to the south of Giseh and Sakara, are considered by
Lepsius to be the work of the third dynasty. Sculptural in-
scriptions have been discovered on the blocks of which they
are composed, but as yet no names of kings. The last dynasty
of the ancient kingdom, which terminated at the invasion of
the Hyksos, and probably 1200 years before Homer, was the
twelfth of Manetho, and the one to which belonged Ame-
nemha III., the prince who caused the original labyrinth to
be constructed, and who formed Lake Moeris artificially by
means of excavations and large dikes of earth running north
and west. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the new king-
dom began under the eighteenth dynasty (1600 years B.C.).
Rameses Miamoun the Great (Rameses II.) was the second
ruler of the nineteenth dynasty. The sculptured dehneations
which perpetuate his victories were explained to Germanicus
All that relates to Egyptian chronology and history, and which is
distinguished in the text by marks of quotation, is based on manuscript
communications which I received from my friend Professor Lepsius,
in March, 1846.
t I place the Doric immigration into the Peloponnesus 328 years
before the first Olympiad, agreeing in this respect with Otfried Miiller
(Dorier, abth. ii., s. 436).
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 125
by the priests of Thebes.* He Is noticed by Herodotus uudei
the name of Sesostris, which is probably owing to a confusion
with the almost equally victorious and powerful conqueror
Seti (Setos), who was the father of Rameses II."
I have deemed it necessary to mention these few points of
chronology, in order that where we meet with solid historical
ground, we may pause to determine the relative ages of great
events in Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece. As I have already
briefly described the geographical relations of the Mediterra-
nean, I would now also call attention to the number of cen-
turies that intervened between the epoch of human civilization
in the Valley of the Nile and its subsequent transmission to
Greece ; for, without such simultaneous reference to space and
time, it would be impossible, from the nature of our mental
faculties, to form to ourselves any clear and satisfactory pict-
ure of history.
Civilization, which was early awakened and arbitrarily
modeled in the Valley of the Nile, owing to the mental re-
quirements of the people, the peculiar physical character of
the country, and its hierarchical and political institutions, ex-
cited there, as in every other portion of the earth, an impulse
toward increased intercourse with other nations, and a tend-
ency to undertake distant expeditions and establish colonies.
But the records preserved to us by history and monumental
representations testify only to transitory conquests on land, and
to few extensive voyages of the Egyptians themselves. This
anciently and highly civilized race appears to have exercised
a less permanent influence on foreigners than many other
smaller nations less stationary in their habits. The national
cultivation of the Egyptians, w^iich, from the long course of
its development, was more favorable to masses than to indi-
viduals, appears isolated in space, and has, on that account,
probably remained devoid of any beneficial result for the ex-
tension of cosmical views. Rameses Miamoun (who lived from
1388 to 1322 B.C., and therefore 600 years before the first
Olympiad of Corcebus) undertook distant expeditions, having,
according to the testimony of Herodotus, penetrated into Ethi-
opia (where Lepsius believed that he found his most southern
arcliitectural works at Mount Barkal) through Palestinian
Syria, and crossed from Asia Minor to Europe, through the
* Tac, Annal., ii., 59. In the Papyrus of Sallier (Campagnes de
Siaostris) Chainpollion fouud the names of the Javaui or louni, and
that of the Luki (lonians and Lycians ?). See Bunsen, u^gypten, buch.
i., 8. 60.
126 COSMOS.
lands of the Scythians and Thracians, to Colchis and the
River Phasis, where those of his soldiers who were weary of
their wanderings remained as settlers. Rameses was also the
first, according to the priests, " who, by means of his long ships,
subjected to his dominion the people who inhabited the coasts
of the Erythrean Sea. After this achievement, he continued
his course until he came to a sea which was not navigable,
owing to its shallowness."* Diodorus expressly says that Se-
sostris (Rameses the Great) penetrated into India beyond the
Ganges, and that he brought captives back with him from
Babylon. " The only certain fact with reference to Eg}'ptian
navigation is, that, from the earliest ages, not only the Nile,
but the Arabian Gulf, was navigated. The celebrated cop-
per mines near Wadi-Magaha, on the peninsula of Sinai, were
worked as early as the Iburth dynasty, under Cheops-Chufu.
The sculptural inscriptions of Hamamat on the Cosseir road,
which connected the Valley of the Nile with the western
coasts of the Red Sea, go back as far as the sixth dynasty.
Attempts were made under Rameses the Greatt to form the
* Herod., ii., 102 and 103 ; Diod. Sic, i., 55 and 56. Of the memo-
rial pillars (^arrj'kaL) which Rameses Miamoun set up as tokens of victoiy
in the comitries through which he passed, Herodotus expressly names
three (ii., 106): '-one in Palestinian Syria, and two in Ionia, on the
road from the Ephesian territory to Phocaea, and from Sardis to Smyr-
na." A rock inscription, in which the name of Rameses is frequently
met with, has been found near the Lycus in Syria, not far from Beirut
(Berytus), as well as another ruder one in the Valley of Karabel, near
Nymphio, and, according to Lepsius, on the road from the Ephesian
territory to Phocfea. Lepsius, in the Ann. delV Institule Archeol., vol.
X., 1838, p. 12; and in his letter from Smyrna, Dec, 1845, published
in the Archdologische Zeitung, Mai, 1846, No. 41, s. 271-280. Kiepert,
in the same periodical, 1843, No. 3, s. 35. Whether, as Heeren be-
lieves (see in his Geschichte der Staaten des Alterthums, 1828, s. 76),
the great conqueror penetrated as far as Persia and Western India, " as
Western Asia did not then contain any great empire" (the building of
Assyrian Nineveh is placed only 1230 B.C.), is a question that will un-
doubtedly soon be settled from the rapidly advancing discoveries now
made in archfeology and phonetic languages. Strabo (lib. xvi., p. 760)
speaks of a memorial pillar of Sesostris near the Strait of Deire, now
known as Bab-el-Mandeb. It is, moreover, also very probable, that
even in " the Old Kingdom," above 900 years before Rameses Miamoun,
Egyptian kings may have undertaken similar military expeditions into
Asia. It was under Setos II., the Pharaoh belonging to the nineteenth
dynasty, and the second successor of the great Rameses Miamoun, that
Moses went out of Egypt, and this, according to the researches of Lep-
sius, was about 1300 years before our era.
f According to Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, but not according to
Herodotus. See Letronne, in the Rdvue des deux Mondes, 1841, t.
xxvii., p. 219 ; and Droysen, Bildung des Hellenist. Staatensystems, s. 735.
PHYsrcAT. roYTrMPi.ATirix OF Tuv. rxiviinsF,. 1*27
canal from Suez, probably for the purpose of facilitating in-
tercourse with the land of the Arabian copper mines." More
considerable maritime expeditions, as, for instance, the fre-
quently contested, but not, I think, improbable* circumnavi-
gation of Africa under Neku II. (611—595 B.C.), were con-
tided to Phoenician vessels. About the same period or a little
earlier, under Neku's father, Psaramitich (Psemetek), and
somewhat later, after the termination of the civil war under
Amasis (Aahmes), Greek mercenaries, by their settlement at
Naucratia, laid the foundation of a permanent foreign com-
merce, and by the admission of new elemeMs, opened the way
for the gradual penetration of Hellenism into Lower Egypt.
Thus was introduced a germ of mental fireedom and of greater
independence of local influences — a germ which was rapidly
* To the important opinions of Rennell, Heereu, and Sprengel, who
are inclined to believe in the reality of the circumnavigation of Libya,
we must now add that of a most profound philologist, Etienue Quatre-
mere (MSmoires de I' Acad, des Inscriptions, t. xv., Pcirt ii., 1845, p. 380-
388). The most convincing argument for the truth of the report of
Herodotus (iv., 42) appears to me to be the observation which seems
to him so incredible, viz., " that the mariners who sailed round Libya
(from east to west) had the sun on their right hand." In the Mediter-
ranean, in sailing from east to west, from Tyre to Gadeira, the sun at
noon was seen to the left only. A knowledge of the possibility of such
a navigation must have existed in Egypt previous to the time of Neku
II. (Nechos), as Herodotus makes him distinctly command the Phoeni-
cians " to return to Egypt through the passage of the Pillars of Her-
cules." It is singular that Strabo, who (lib. ii., p. 98) discusses at such
length the attempted circumnavigation of Eudoxus of Cyzicus under
Cleopatra, and mentions fragments of a ship from Gadeira which were
found on the Ethiopian (eastern) shore, considers the accounts given of
the circumnavigations actually accomplished as Bergaic fables (lib. ii.,
p. 100); but he does not deny the possibility of the circumnavigation
itself (lib. i., p. 38), and declares that from the east to the west thei-e
is but little that remains to its completion (lib. i., p. 4). Strabo by no
means agreed to the extraordinary isthmus hypothesis of Hipparchus
and Marinus of Tyre, according to which Eastern Africa is joined to
the southeast end of Asia, and the Indian Ocean converted into a Med-
iterranean Sea. (Humboldt, Examen Crit. de VHist. de la Geogra-
pkie, t. i., p. 139-142, 145, 161, and 229; t. ii., p. 370-373). Strabo
quotes Herodotus, but does not name I^echos, whose expedition he
confounds with one sent by Darius round Southern Persia and Arabia
(Herod., iv., 44). Gosselin even proposed, somewhat too boldly, to
change the reading from Darius to Nechos. A counterpart for the
horse's head of the ship of Gadeira, which Eudoxus is said to have ex-
hibited in a market-place in Egypt, occurs in the remains of a ship of
the Red Sea, which was brought to the coast of Crete by westerly cur-
rents, according to the account of a very tnist worthy Arabian historian
(Masudi, in the Morvdj-al-dzeheh, Quatremere, p. 389, and Reiuaud
Relation d^s Voyages dans V Inde. 1845, t. i., p, xvi., andt. ii,, p. A(j^.
128 COSMOS.
and powerfully developed during the penod of the new cos-
mical views that succeeded the Macedonian conquest. The
opening of the Egyptian ports under Psammitich is an event
of very great importance, as the country up to that period, at
least at its northern extremity, had for a long time been com-
pletely closed to strangers, as Japan is at the present day.*
In our enumeration of the non-Hellenic civilized nations
■v^'ho dwelt around the basin of the Mediterranean — the most
ancient seat and the starting point of our mental cultivation —
we must rank the PhcEnicians next to the Egyptians. This
race is to be regarded as the most active in maintaining inter-
course between the nations from the Indian Ocean to the west
and north of the Old Continent. Although circumscribed in
many spheres of mental cultivation, and less familiar with the
fine arts than with mechanics, and not endowed with the grand
form of creative genius common to the more highly-gifted in
habitants of the Valley of the Nile, the Phoenicians, as an ad-
venturous and commercial race, and especially by the estab-
lishment of colonies (one of which far surpassed the parent
city in political power), exerted an influence on the course of
ideas, and on the diversity and number of cosraical views,
earlier than all the other nations inhabiting the coasts of the
Mediterranean. The Phoenicians made use of Babylonian
weights and measures,! and, at least since the Persian domin-
ion, employed stamped metallic coinage as a monetary curren-
cy, which, strangely enough, was not known in the artificial-
ly-arranged political institutions of the highly-cultivated Egyp-
tians, But that by which the Phoenicians contributed most
powerfully to the civilization of the nations v/ith which they
came in contact was the general spread of alphabetical writ-
ing, v/hich they had themselves employed for a long period.
Although the whole mythical relation of the colony of Cadmus
in Boeotia remains buried in obscurity, it is not the less certain
that the Hellenes obtained the alphabetical characters long
known as Phoenician symbols by means of the commercial in-
^ Diod., lib. i., cap. 67, 10; Herod., ii., 154, 178, and 182. On the
probability of the existence of intercourse between Egypt and Greece,
before the time of Psammeticbus, see the ingenious observations of
Ludwig Ross, in Hellenika, where he expresses himself as follows, bd.
i., 1846, s. V. and x. "In the times immediately preceding Psammeti-
chus, there was in both countries a period of internal disturbance, which
must necessarily have brought about a diminution and partial interrup
tion of intercourse."
t Bbckh, Meterologische Untersuchungen uber Gewichte, Munzfusse
und Masse des Aliei'thums in ihrem Zusammenhang, 1838, s. 12 und273
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 129
tercourse subsisting between the lonians and the Phoenicians.^
According to the views which, since ChampolHcn's great dis-
covery, have been generally adopted regarding the earlier con-
dition of the development of alphabetical writing, the Phoeni-
cian as well as the Semitic characters are to be regarded as a
phonetic alphabet, that has. originated from pictorial writing,
and as one in which the ideal signification of the symbols is
wholly disregarded, and the characters are considered as mere
signs of sounds. Such a phonetic alphabet was, from its very
nature and fundamental character, syllabic, and perfectly able
to satisfy all requirements of a graphical representation of
the phonetic system of a language. " As the Semitic written
characters," says Lepsius, in his treatise on alphabets, " pass-
ed into Europe to Indo-Germanic nations, who showed through-
out a much stronger tendency to define strictly between vowels
and consonants, and were by that means led to ascribe a high-
er significance to the vowels in their languages, important and
lasting modifications were effected in these syllabic alphabets. "t
The endeavor to do away with syllabic characters was very
strikingly manifested among the Greeks. The transmission
of Phoenician signs not only facilitated commercial intercourse
among the races inhabiting almost all the coasts of the Med-
iterranean, and even the northwest coast of Africa, by form-
ing a bond of union that embraced many civilized nations,
but these alphabetical characters, when generalized by their
graphical flexibility, were destined to be attended by even
higher results. 'They became the means of conveying, as an
imperishable treasure, to the latest posterity, those noble fruits
developed by the Hellenic races in the different departments
of the intellect, the feelings, and the inquiring and creative
faculties of the imagination.
The share taken by the Phoenicians in increasing the ele-
ments of cosmical contemplation was not, however, limited
to the excitement of indirect inducements, for they widened
the domain of knowledge in several directions by independent
inventions of their own. A state of industrial prosperity, based
on an extensive maritime commerce, and on the enterprise
manifested at Sidon in the manufacture of white and colored
* See the passages collected in Otfried MuUer's Minyer, s. 115, and
in his Dorier, abth. i., s. 129; Franz, Elementa Epigraphices Grceccs,
1840, p. 13, 32, and 34.
t Lepsius, in his memoir, Ueber die Anordnung und Verwandtschaft
des Semiiiscken, Indischen, Alt-Persischen, Alt-j^gypiischen tmd yTlthio-
pischen Alphabets, 1836, s. 23, 28, und 57 ; Gesenius, Scriptures PhcB
nicia Monumenta, 1837, p. 17.
F 2
130 COSMOS.
glass-wares, tissues, and purple dyes, necessarily led to ad-
vancement in mathematical and chemical knowledge, and
more particularly in the technical arts. " The Sidonians,"
writes Strabo, " are described as industrious inquirers in as-
tronomy, as well as in the science of numbers, to which they
have been led by their skill in arithmetical calculation, and
in navigating their vessels by night, both of which are indis-
pensable to commerce and maritime intercourse."* In order
to give some idea of the extent of the globe opened by the
navigation and caravan trade of the Phoenicians, we will
mention the colonies in the Euxine, on the Bithynian shore
(Pronectus and Bithynium), which were probably settled at a
very early age ; the Cyclades, and several islands of the ^Egean
Sea, first known at the time of the Homeric bard ; the south
of Spain, rich in silver (Tartessus and Gades) ; the north of
Africa, west of the Lesser Syrtis (Utica, Hadrumetum, and
Carthage) ; the tin and amber lands of the north of Europe :t
* Strabo, lib. xvi., p. 757.
t The locality of the " land of tin" (Britain and the Scilly Islands) is
more easily determined than that of the " amber coast ;" for it appears
very improbable that the old Greek denomination KaaaLvepoc, which
was already in use in the Homeric times, is to be derived from a
mountain in the southwest of Spain, called Mount Cassius, celebrated
for its tin ore, and which Avienus, who was well acquainted with the
country, placed between Gaddir and the mouth of a small southern
Iberus (Ukert, Geogr. der Griechen vnd Romer, theil ii., abth. i., s. 479).
Kassiteros is the ancient Indian Sanscrit w^ord kasttra. Dan in Ice-
landic ; zimi in German ; tin in English and Danish ; and tenn in Swed-
ish, are rendered, in the Malay and Javanese language, by timah; a
similarity of sound which calls to mind that of the old German word gJes-
sum (the name applied to transparent amber), with the modern German
glas, glass. . The names of wares and articles of commerce pass from
one nation to another, and into the most different families of languages.
Through the intercourse which the Phoenicians maintained with the
eastern coast of India, by means of their factories in the Persian Gulf,
the Sanscrit word kastira, which expressed so useful a product of
Farther India, and still exists among the old Aramaeic idioms in the
Arabian word kasdir, may have become known to the Greeks even
before Albion and the British Cassiterides had been visited (Aug. Willi,
v. Schlegel, in the Indische Bibliothek, bd. ii., s. 393; Benfey, Indien,
s. 307; Pott, Etymol. Forschungen, th. ii., s. 414 ; Lassen, Indische Al-
terthumskunde, bd. i., s. 239). A name often becomes a historical mon-
ument, and the etymological analysis of languages, however it may be
derided, is attended by valuable results. The ancients were also ac-
quainted with the existence of tin — one of the rarest metals — in the
country of the Artabri and the Callaici, in the northwest part of the
'^berian continent (Strabo, lib. iii., p. 147 ; Plin., xxxiv., c. 16), which
was nearer of access than the Cassiterides ((Estrymnides of Avienus),
from the Mediterranean. When, before embai'king for the Canaries,
I was in Galicia in 1799, mining operations, although of very inferior
PUYtJiUAL CONTK.Mri,ATl()\ oF Tlli: UNlVERriK. 131
*
slaI two commercial factories in the Persian Gulf* (the Ba-
hariaii islands, Tylos and Aradus).
The amber trade, which was probably directed first to the
west Cimbrian shoresj and subsequently to the land of the
nature, were still carried on in the granitic mountains (see my Rel. Hist.,
t. i., p. 51 and 53). The occurrence of tin is of some geognostic im-
portance, on account of the former connection of Galicia, the peninsula
of Brittany, and Cornwall.
* Etienne Quatremere, op. cit., p. 363-370.
t The opinion early expressed (see Heinzen's Neue Kielisclies Maga-
zin, th. ii., 1787, s. 339; Sprengel, Gesch. der Geogr. Entdeckungen,
1792, s. 51; Voss, Krit. Blatter, bd. ii., s. 392-403) that amber wjis
Ijrought by sea at first only from the west Cimbrian coast, and that it
reached the Mediterranean chiefly by land, being brought across the in
tervening countries by means of inland barter, continues to gain in va-
lidity. The most thorough and acute investigation of this subject is
contained in Ukert's memoir Ueber das Electrum, in Die Zeltschrift j'ii
Alterthumswissenschaft, Jahr 1838, No. 52-55, s. 425-452. (Compare
witli it the same author's Geographie der GriecJien und Romer, tli. ii.,
abth. 2, 1832, s. 25-36; th. iii., i., 1843, s. 86, 175, 182, 320, und 349.)
Tile Massilians, who, under Pytheas, advanced, according to Heeren,
after the Phoenicians, as far as the Baltic, hardly penetrated beyond the
mouths of the Weser and the Elbe. Pliny (iv., 16) placed the amber
islands (Glessaria, also called Austrania) decidedly west of tlie Cim-
brian promontory, in the German Sea; and the connection with the ex-
pedition of Germanicus suflSciently teaches us that the island signified
is not in the Baltic. The great effect of the ebb and flood tides in the
estuaries which throw up amber, whei'e, according to the expression of
Servius, " mare vicissim turn accedit, tum recedit," applies to tlie coasts
between the Holder and the Cimbrian Peninsula, but not to the Baltic,
in which the island of Baltia is placed by Timaeus (Plin., xxxvii., 2).
Abalus, a day's journey from an £estuarium, can not, therefore, be the
Kurish Nehrung. See, also, on the voyage of Pytheas to the west shores
of Jutland, and on the amber trade along the whole coast of Skage as
far as the Netherlands, Werlauff, Bidrag til den Nordiske Ravhandeln
Historic (Kopenh., 1835). In Tacitus, and not in Pliny, we find the
first acquaintance with the glesfeum of the shores of the Baltic, in tlie
land of the iEstui (^Estuorum gentium) and of the Venedi, concerning
whom the great philologist Shaffarik {Slawische Alterthumer, th. i., s.
151-165) is uncertain whether they were Slaves or Germani. The
more active direct connection with the Samland coast of the Baltic, and
with the Esthonians, by means of the over-land route through Pannonia,
by Carnuntum, which was first followed by a Roman knight under Nero,
appears to me to have belonged to the later times of the" Roman Cn'sais
(Voigt, Gesch. Preusseri's, bd. i., s. 85). The relations between the
Prussian coasts and the Greek colonies on the Black Sea are proved
by fine coins, struck probably before the eighty-fifth Olympiad, wljich
have been recently found in the Netz district (Lewezow, in the Ah-
handl. der Berl. Akad. der Wiss. aus dem Jahr 1833, s. 181-224). The
electron, the sun-stone of the very ancient my thus of the Eridaniis (Plin..
xxxvii., cap. 2), the amber stranded or buried on the coast, was, no doubt,
frequently brought to the south, both by land and by sea, from very
different districts. Tiie " amber which was found buried at two places
132 COSMOS.
\
yEstii oa the Baltic, OM^ed its origin to the daring perseverance
of Phoenician coasting traders. Its subsequent extension af-
fords a remarkable example in the history of the contempla-
tion of the universe, of the influence which may be exercised
on the establishment of international intercourse, and on the
extension of the knowledge of large tracts of land, by a predi-
lection for even a single product. In the same manner as the
Phoceean Massilians conveyed British tin through the whole
extent of Gaul to the shores of the Rhone, amber passed from
people to people through Germany and the territory of the
Celts, on both sides of the Alps, to the Padus, and through
Pannonia to the Borysthenes. This inland trade thus first
connected the inhabitants of the coasts of the North Sea with
those living on the shores of the Adriatic and the Euxine.
The Phoenicians of Carthage, and probably those inhabit-
ing the cities of Tartessus and Gades, which had been colon-
ized two hundred years earlier, visited a considerable portion
of the northwest coast of Africa, even beyond Cape Bojador,
although the Chretes of Hanno is neither the Chremetes of
the Meteorologica of Aristotle, nor yet our Gambia.* Here
were situated the numerous Tyrian cities, whose numbers were
estimated by Strabo at 300, which were destroyed by Pharu-
sians and Nigritians. Among these was Cerne (Dicuil's Gau-
lea according to Letronne), the principal station for ships, as
well as the chief emporium of the colonies on the coast. The
Canary Islands and the Azores (which latter were regarded
by Don Fernando, the son of Columbus, as the Cassiterides
in Scythia was, in part, very dark colored." Amber is still collected
near Kaltschedansk, not far from Kamensk, on the Ural ; and we have
obtained at Katharinenburg fragments imbedded in lignite. See G.
Rose, Reise nach dem Ural, bd. i., s. 48i; and Sir Roderic Murchison,
in the Geology of Russia, vol. i., p. 366. The petrified wood which
frequently surrounds the amber had early attracted the attention of the
ancients. This resin, which was, at that time, regarded as so precious
a product, was ascribed either to the black poplar (according to the
Chian Scymnus, v. 396, p. 367, Letronne), or to a tree of the cedar or
pine genus (according to Mithridates, in Plin., xxxvii., cap. 2 and 3).
The recent admirable investigations of Prof. Goppert, at Breslau, have
show^n that the conjecture of the Roman collector was the moi'e correct.
Respecting the petrified amber-tree (Pinites succifer) belonging to an
extinct vegetation, see Berendt, Organische Reste im Bernstein, bd. i.,
abth. 1, 1845, s. 89.
* On the Chremetes, see Aristot., Meteor., lib. i., p. 350 (Bekk.)} and
on the most southern points of which Hanno makes mention in his
ship's journal, see my Rel. Hist., t. i., p. 172; and Examen Crit. de la
G6og., t. i., p. 39, 180, and 288 ; t. iii., p. 135. Gosselin. Recherches svr
la G^og. System, des Anciens, t. i., p. 94 and 98 ; Ukeit, tti. i.. 1 . s. 61-66
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 133
discovered by the Carthaginians), and the Orkneys, Faroe Isl-
ands, and Iceland, became the respective M^estern and north-
ern intermediate stations for passing to the New Continent
They indicate the two directions by which the European por-
tion of the human race first became acquainted with the na-
tives of North and Central America. This consideration give?
a great, and, I might almost say, a cosmical importance to the
question whether and how early the Phoenicians of the mother
country, or those of the Iberian and African settlements (Ga-
deira, Carthage, and Cerne), were acquainted with Porto Santo
Madeira, and the Canary Islands. In a long series of events,
we willingly seek to trace the first and guiding link of the
chain. It is probable that fully 2000 years elapsed from the
foundation of Tartessus and Utica by PhoBnicians, to the dis-
covery of America by the northern course, that is to say, to
Eric Randau's voyage to Greenland, "which was followed by
voyages to North Carolina ; and that 2500 years intervened
before Christopher Columbus, starting from the old Phoenician
settlement of Gadeira, made the passage by the southM^est
route. ^
In accordance with the requirements for the generalization
of ideas demanded by the present work, I have considered the
discovery of a group of islands lying only 168 miles from the
African shore as the first member of a long series of similarly-
directed eflbrts, but I have made no allusion to the Elysiwn,
the Isla7ids of the Blessed, fabled by the poetic visions of
fancy, as situated on the confines of the earth, in an ocean
warmed by the rays of the near setting sun. All the enjoy-
ments of life and the choicest products of nature were sup-
posed to be placed at the remotest distance of the terrestrial
globe. f The ideal land — the geographical myth of the Elys-
ion — was removed further to the west, even beyond the Pil-
lars of Hercules, as the knowledge of the Mediterranean was
extended among the Hellenic races. True cosmical knowl-
edge, and the earUest discoveries of the Phoenicians, regard-
* Strabo, lib. xvii., p. 826. The destruction of Phoenician colonies by
Nigrilians (lib. ii., p. 131) appears to indicate a very southern locality;
more so, perhaps, than the crocodiles and elephants mentioned by Han-
no, since both these were certainly, at one period, found north of the
desert of Sahara, in Maunisia, and in the whole western Atlas country,
as is proved from Strabo, lib. xvii., p. 827 ; iElian., De Nat. Anim., vii.,
2 ; Plin., v., 1, and from many occurrences in the wars between Ronid
and Carthage. See, on this important subject, referring to the geogra-
phy of animals, .Cuvier, Ossemens Fossiles, 2 ed., t. i., p. 7i, and Qua-
tremere, op. cit., p. 391-394. + Herod., iii., lOfi.
134 COSMOb'.
ing- whose precise period no certain tidings have come down
to us, did not probably give rise to this myth of the " Islands
of the Blessed," the application to which was made subse-
quently. Geographical discovery has merely embodied a phan-
tom of the imagination, to which it served as a substratum.
Later writers (as an unknown compiler of the Collection oj
Wonderful Relatione ascribed to Aristotle, who made use of
rimsBus, and more especially of Diodorus Siculus) have spoken
af " Pleasant Islands," which must be supposed to be the Ca-
naries, and of the great storms to which their accidental dis-
covery is due. It is said that " Phcenician and Carthaginian
vessels, which were sailing toward the settlements already
then founded on the coast of Libya, were driven out to sea."
This event is supposed to have occurred in the early period of
the Tyrrhenian navigation, and in that of the contest between
the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians and PhcEnicians. Statins Sebosus
and the Numidian king Juba first gave names to the separate
islands, but, unfortunately, not Punic names, although undoubt-
edly in accordance with notices taken from Punic works. As
Plutarch says that Sertorius, when driven away from Spain,
wished to save himself and his attendants, after the loss of his
fleet, on a group of two Atlantic islands, ten thousand stadia
to the west of the mouth of the Bsetis, it has been supposed
that he meant to designate the two islands of Porto Santo and
Madeira,^ which were clearly indicated by Pliny as the Pur-
* I have treated iu detail this often-contested subject, as well as the
passages of Diodorus (v. 19 and 20), and of the Pseudo-Aristot. {Mirah.
Anscult., cap. 85, p. 172, Bekk.), in another work {Examen Crit., t. i.,
p. 130-139; t. ii., p. 158 and 169; t. iii., p. 137-140). The compilatiou
of the Mirab. AusculL appears to have been of a date prior to the end
of the first Punic war, since, in cap. 105, p. 211, it describes Sardinia
as under the dominion of the Carthaginians. It is also worthy of notice
that the wood-clad island, which is mentioned in this work, is described
as uninhabited (therefore not peopled by Guanches). The whole group
of the Canary Islands was inhabited by Guanches, but not the island of
Madeira, in which no inhabitants were found either by John Gonzalves
and Tristan Vaz in 1519, or, still earlier, by Robert Masham and Aiiim
Dorset (supposing their Crusoe-like narrative to possess a character oi
veracity). Heeren applies the description of Diodorus to Madeira alone ;
yet he thinks that in the account of Festus Avienus (v. 164), who is sj
conversant with Punic writings, he can recognize the frequent volcanic
earthquakes of the Peak of TeneritFe. (See Ideen uber Politik und Han ■
del, th. ii., abth. i., 1826, s. 106.) To judge from the geographical con-
nection, the description of Avienus would appear to indicate a more
northern locality, perhaps even the Kronic Sea. {Exameu Crit., t. iii.,
p. 138.) Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii., 15) also notices the Punic
sources of which Juba availed himself. Respecting the probability ol
the Semitic origin of the appellation of the Canary Islands (the dog
PflVSlCAL CONTEMl'LATION OF THE UNIVERSE. J 3;")
purarisB. The strong oceanic current, which is directed be-
yond the Pillars of Hercules from northwest to southeast, might
long have prevented the coast navigators from discovering the
islands most remote from the continent, and of which only the
smaller, Porto Santo, was found to be inhabited in the fif-
teenth century ; and, owing to the curvature of the Earth,
the summit of the great volcano of Teneriffe could not be
seen, even with a strong refraction, by Phoenician mariners
sailing along the coast, although I found, from my own ob-
servations, that it was discernible from the slight elevations
that surround Cape Bojador,* especially in cases of eruption,
and by the reflection of a high cloud resting over the volcano.
It is even asserted that eruptions of Mount -^tna have been
seen, in recent times, from Mount Taygetos in Greece.!
island of Pliny's Latin etymology!), see Credner's Bihlische Vorstellung
vom Paradiese, in IW^ew^ s Zeitschr. fiir die Historische Theologie, bd. vi.,
1836, s. 166-186. Joaquim Jose da Costa de Macedo, in a work en-
titled Memoria em que se pretende provar que os Arabes nao conhccerao
as Canarias antes dos Portuguezes, 1844, has recently collected all that
has been written from the most ancient times to the Middle Ages re-
specting the Canary Islands. Where history, so far as it is founded on
certain and distinctly-expressed evidence, is silent, there remain only
different degrees of probability ; but an absolute denial of all facts in
the world's history, of which the evidence is not distinct, appears to me
no happy application of philological and historical criticism. The many
indications which have come down to us from antiquity, and a careful
consideration of the relations of geographical proximity to ancient un-
doubted settlements on the African shore, lead me to believe that the
Canary Islands were known to the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks,
and Romans, perhaps even to the Etruscans.
* Compare the calculations in my Rel. Hist., t. i., p. 140 and 287.
The Peak of Teneriffe is distant 2° 49' of an arc from the nearest point
of the African coast. In assuming a mean refraction of 0'08, the sum-
mit of the Peak may be seen from a height of 1291 feet, and, therefore,
from the Montanas Negras, not far from Cape Bojador. In this calcu
lation, the elevation of the Peak above the level of the sea has been
taken at 12,175 feet; Captain Vidal has recently determined it trigo
nometrically at 12,405, and Messrs. Coupvent and Dumoulin, baromet-
rically, at 12,150. (D'Urville, Voyage au Pole Sud, Hist., t. i., 1842, p
31, 32.) But Lancerote, with a volcano, la Corona, 1918 feet in height
(Leop. V. Buch, Canarische Inseln, s. 104), and Fortaventura, lie much
nearer to the main land than Teneriffe ; the distance of the first-named
island being 1° 15', and that of the second 1° 2'.
t Ross has only mentioned this assertion as a report {Hellenika, bd.
i., 8. xi.). May the observation not have rested on a mere deception?
If we take the elevation of ^Etna above the sea at 10,874 feet (lat. 37*^
45', long, from Paris 12° 41'), and that of the place of observation, on
the Taygetos (Mount Elias), at 7904 feet (lat. 36° 57', long, from Paris
20° 1'), and the distance between the two at 352 geographical miles,
we have for the point from which light was emitted above iEtna, and
was visible on Taygetos, fully 48.675 feet, which is four and a half
136 COSMOS.
In the enumeration of the elements of an extended knowl-
edge of the universe, which were early brought to the Greeks
from other parts of the Mediterranean basin, we have hither-
to followed the Phcenicians and Carthaginians in their inter-
course with the northern tin and amber lands, as well as in
their settlements near the tropics, on the west coast of Africa.
It now, therefore, only remains for us to refer to a voyage of
the PhcEnicians to the south, when they proceeded 4000 geo-
graphical miles east of Cerne and Hanno's Western Horn, far
within the tropics, to the Prasodic and Indian Seas. What-
ever doubt may exist regarding the localization of the distant
gold lands (Ophir and Supara), and whether these gold lands
are the western coasts of the Indian Peninsula or the eastern
shores of Africa, it is, at any rate, certain that this active,
enterprising Semitic race, who so early employed alphabetical
writing, had a direct acquaintance with the products of the
most difierent climates, from the Cassiterides to the south of
the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, far within the tropics. The
Tyrian flag floated simultaneously in the British and Indian
Seas, The Phoenicians had commercial settlements in the
northern parts of the Arabian Gulf, in the ports of Elath and
Ezion-Geber, as well as on the Persian Gulf at Aradus and
Tylos, where, according to Strabo, temples had been erected,
which, in their style of architecture, resembled those on the
Mediterranean.* The caravan trade, which was carried on
by the Phoenicians in seeking spices and incense, was directed
to Arabia Felix, through Palmyra, and to the Chaldean or
Nabathseic Gerrha, on the western or Arabian side of the Per-
sian Gulf
The expeditions sent by Hiram and Solomon, and which
were undertaken conjointly by Tyrians and Israelites, sailed
from Ezion-Geber through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to
Ophir (Opheir, Sophir, Sophora, the Sanscrit Supara of Ptol-
emy).! Solomon, who loved pomp, caused a fleet to be con-
times greater than the elevation of -^tna. If, however, we might as-
sume, as my friend Professor Encke has remarked, the reflecting sur-
face to be 184 miles froraiEtna and 168 miles from Taygetos, its height
above the sea would only require to be 1829 feet.
* Strabo, lib. xvi., p. 767, Casaub. According to Polybius, it would
seem that the Euxine and the Adriatic Sea were discernible from
Mount Aimon — an assertion ridiculed by Strabo (lib. vii., p. 313)
Compare Scymuus, p. 93.
t Ou the synonym of Ophir, see my Examen Crit. de V Hist, de la
Giographie, t. ii., p. 42. Ptolemy, in lib. vi., cap. 7, p. 15G, speaks of
a Sapphara, the metropolis of Arabia ; and in lib. vii., cap. 1, p. 168, of
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 137
structed at the Red Sea, and Hiram supplied him with expe-
rienced Phoenician seamen, and Tyrian vessels, " ships of
Tarshish."* The articles of commerce which were brought
from Ophir were gold, silver, sandal-wood {algunimin), pre-
cious stones, ivory, apes {kophim), and'peacocks {thiikkiim).
These are not Hebrew, but Indian names.t It would appear
highly probable, from the careful investigations of Gesenius,
Benfey, and Lassen, that the Phcenicians, who had been early
Supara, in the Gulf of Camboya (Barigazenus Sinus, according to Hesy-
chius), as " a district rich in gold !" Supara signifies in Indian a fair
shore (Lassen, Diss, de Taprobane, p. 18, and Indische Alterthumskunde,
bd. i., s. 107 ; also Professor Keil, of Dorpat, Ueher die Hiram-Salomo'
nische Schiffahrt nach Ophir und T arsis, s. 40-45).
* On the question whether ships of Tarshish mean ocean ships, or
whether, as Michaelis contends, they have their name from the Phoeni-
cian Tarsus, in Cilicia, see Keil, op. cit., s. 7, 15-22, and 71-84.
t Gesenius, Thesaurus Linguce Hebr., t. i., p. 141 ; and the same in
the Encycl. of Ersch and Gruber, sect, iii., th. iv., s. 401 ; Lassen, Ind.
Alterthumskunde, bd. i., s. 538 ; Reinaud, Relation des Voyages f aits par
les Arabes dans Vlnde et en Chine, t. i., 1845, p. xxviii. The learned
Quatremere, who, in a veiy recently-published treatise {M6m. de V Acad,
des Inscriptions, t. xvi.. Part ii., 1845, p. 349-402), still maintains, with
Heereu, that Ophir is the east coast of Africa, has explained the word
thukkiim {thukkiyyim) as parrots, or Guinea-fowls, and not peacocks (p.
375). Regarding Sokotora, compare Bohlen, Das alte Indien, th. ii., s,
139, with Benfey, Indien, s. 30-32. Sofala is described by Edrisi (in
Amedee Jaubert's translation, t. i., p. 67), and subsequently by the
Portuguese, after Gama's voyage of discovery {Barros, Dec. i,, liv. x.,
cap. i. ; Part ii., p. 375 ; Ktilb, Geschichte der Entdeckungsreisen, th. i.,
1841, s. 236), as a country rich in gold. I have elsewhere drawn atten-
tion to the fact that Edrisi, in the middle of the twelfth centuiy, speaks
of the application of quicksilver in the gold-washings of the negroes of
this district, as a long-known process of amalgamation. When we bear
in mind the great frequency of the interchange of r and /, we find that
the name of the East African Sofala is perfectly represented by that of
Sophara, which is used, with several other fonns, in the version of the
Septuagint, for the Ophir of Solomon and Hiram. Ptolemy also, as has
been already noticed, was acquainted with a Sapphara, in Arabia (Rit-
ter, Asien, bd. viii., 1, 1846, s. 252), and a Supara in India. The signif-
icant (Sanscrit) names of the mother country had been conferred on
neighboring or opposite coasts, as we find, under similar relations in
the present day, in the Spanish and English parts of America. The
trade to Ophir might thus, according to my view, be extended in the
same manner as a Phoenician expedition to Tartessus might touch at
Gyrene and Carthage, Gadeira and Cerne, and as one to the Cassiterides
might touch at the Artabrian, British, and East Cimbrian coasts. It is
nevertheless remarkable that incense, spices, silk, and cotton cloth are
not named among the wares from Ophir, together with ivor}', apes, and
peacocks. The latter are exclusively Indian, although, on account of
their gradual extension to the west, they were frequently termed by
the Greeks " Median and Persian birds ;" the Samians even supposed
them to have belonged originally to Samos, on account of their being
138 COSMOS.
made acquainted with the periodic prevalence jf the monsoons
through their colonies on the Persian Gulf, and their inter-
course with the inhabitants of Gerrha, must have visited the
western coasts of the Indian Peninsula. Christopher Colum-
bus was even persuaded that Ophir (the El Dorado of Solo-
mon) and Mount Sopora were a portion of Eastern Asia, the
Chers<mesus Aurea of Ptolemy, =^ As it appears difficult to
form an idea of Western India as a fruitful source of gold, it
will, I think, scarcely be necessary to refer to the " gold-seek-
ing ants" (or to the unmistakable account given by Ctesias
of a foundery in which, however, gold and iron were said, ac-
cording to his account, to be fused together),! it being sufficient
to direct attention to the geographical proximity of Southern
Arabia, of the island of Dioscorides (the Diu Zokotora of the
moderns, a corruption of the Sanscrit Dvipa Sukhatara), cul-
tivated by Indian colonists, and to the auriferous coast of
Sofala in Eastern Africa. Arabia and the island last referred
to, to the southeast of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, may be
regarded as affording intermediate links of connection between
the Indian Peninsula and Eastern Africa for the combined
commerce of the Hebrews and Phcenicians. The Indians had,
reared by the priests in the sanctuary of Hera. From a passage in
Eustathius {Comm. in Iliad, t. iv., p. 225, ed. Lips., 1827) on the sacred-
ness of peacocks in Libya, it has been unjustly inferred that the raug
also belonged to Africa.
* See the remarks of Columbus on Ophir and el Monte Sopora,
" which Solomon's fleet Could not reach within a term of three years,"
in Navarrele, Viages 2/J)escubrimientos que hici6ron los Espanoles, t. i.,
p. 103. In another work, the great discoverer says, still in the hope
of reaching Ophir, " the excellence and power of the gold of Ophir
can not be described ; he who possesses it does what he will in this
w^orld ; nay, it even errables hi«i to draw souls from purgatory to para-
dise" (" Uega a que echa las animas al paraiso"). Carta del Almirante,
escrita en la Jamaica, 1503 ; Navarrete, t. i., p. 309. (Compare my
Examen Critique, t. i., p. 70 and 109 ; t. ii., p. 38-44 ; and on the prop-
er duration of the Tarshish voyage, see Keil, op. cit., s. 106.)
t Ctesice Cnidii Operum Reliquice, ed. Felix Baehr, 1824, cap. iv. and
xii., p. 248, 271, and 300. But the accounts collected by the physician
at the Persian court from native sources, which are not, therefore, alto-
/^ether to be rejected, refer to districts in the north of India, and from
these the gold of the Daradas must have come by many circuitous routes
to Abhira, the mouth of the Indus, and the coast of Malabar. (Com-
pare vay Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 157, and Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskunde,
bd. i., s. 5.) May not the wonderful story related by Ctesias of an
Indian spring, at the bottom of which iron was found, which was very
malleable when the fluid gold had i-un off', have been based on a mis-
understood account of a fovmdery ? The molten iron was probably
taken for gold owing to its color, and when the yellow color had disap-
peared in cooling, the blacJi mass of iron was found below it.
PHVHICAL CONTEMPLATION OF TUK I'MVnjtSE. 139
from the earliest time, made settlements in the eastern part
of Africa, and on the coasts immediately opposite their native
country ; and the traders to Ophir might have found, in the
basin of the Erythreian and Indian Seas, other sources of gold
besides India itself
Less influential than the Phcenicians in extending the geo
graphical sphere of our views, and early affected by the Greek
influence of a band of Pelasgian Tyrrhenians, who invaded
their country from the sea, the Etruscans present themselves
to our observation as a gloomy and stern race. They carried
on no inconsiderable inland trade to distant amber countries,
through Northern Italy and across the Alps, where a via
sacra^ was protected by all the neighboring tribes. The
primitive Tuscan race of the Rasenae appears to have follow-
ed almost the same road on their way from Rhaetia to the
Padus, and even further southward. In accordance with our
object, which is always to seize on the most general and per-
manent features, we would here consider the influence v/hich
the general character of the Etruscans exercised on the most
ancient political institutions of Rome, and through these on
the whole of Roman life. It may be said that the reflex ac-
tion of this influence still persists in its secondary and remote
political eflects, inasmuch as, for ages, Rome stamped her
character, with more or less permanence, on the civilization
and mental culture of mankind. f
A peculiar characteristic of the Tuscans, which demands
our special notice in the present work, was their inclination
for cultivating an intimate connection with certain natural
phenomena. Divination, which was the occupation of their
equestrian hierarchical caste, gave occasion for a daily observ-
ation of the meteorological processes of the atmosphere. The
Fulguratores, observers of lightning, occupied themselves in
investigating the direction of the lightning, with " drawing it
down," and " turning it aside. "| They carefully distinguished
* Aristot., Mirab. Auscult., cap. 86 and 111, p. 175 and 225, Bekk.
+ Die Etrusker, by Otfried MQller, abth. ii., s. 350 ; Niebuhr, Rdmische
Geschickle, th. ii,, s. 380.
t The story formerly current in Germany, and reported on the testi-
mony of Father Angelo Cortenovis, that the tomb described by Varro
of the hero of Clusium, Lars Porsena, ornamented with a bi'onze hat
and bronze pendant chains, was an apparatus for collecting atmospher-
ical electricity, or for conducting lightning (as were also, according to
Michaelis, the metal points on Solomon's temple), was related at a time
when men were inclined to attribute to the ancients the remains of a
supernaturally-revealed primitive knowledge of physics, which was,
however, soon again obscured. The most important notice of the rela-
140 COSMOS.
between flashes of liffhtninsf from the higher regions of the
clouds, and those which Saturn, an earth god,* caused to
ascend from below, and which were called Saturnine-terres-
trial lightning, a distinction which modern physicists have
thought worthy of especial attention. Thus were established
regular official notices of the occurrence of storms. f The
Aqucdicium, the art of discovering springs of waters, which
was much practiced by the Etruscans, and the drawing forth
of water by their Aquileges, indicate a careful investigation
of the natural stratification of rocks and of the inequalities of
the ground. Diodorus, on this account, extols the Etruscans
as industrious inquirers of nature. We may add to this com-
mendation that the patrician and powerful hierarchical caste
of the Tarquinii offered the rare example of favoring physical
science.
We have spoken of the ancient seats of human civilization
in Egypt, Phoenicia, and Etruria, before proceeding to the
highly-gifted Hellenic races, with whose culture our own civ-
tions between lightning and conducting metals (which it was not diffi-
cult to discover) appeai-s to me to be that of Ctesias {Indica, cap. 4, p.
16.9, ed. Lion; p. 248, ed. Baehr). " He had possessed, it is said, two
iron swords, presents from the King Artaxerxes Mnemon, and from
Parysatis, the mother of the latter, which, when planted in the earth,
averted clouds, hail, and strokes of lightning. He had himself seen the
results of this operation, for the king had twice made the experiment
before his eyes." The great attention paid by the Etruscans to the
meteorological processes of the atmosphere in all that differed from the
ordinary course of natural phenomena, makes it certainly a cause for
regret that nothing has come down to us from the books of the Fulgu-
ratores. The epochs of the appearance of great comets, of the fall of
meteoric stones, and of showers of falling stars, were no doubt recoi-ded
in them, as in the more ancient Chinese annals made use of by Edonard
Biot. Creuzer {Symholik und Mythologie der alien Volker, th. iii., 1842,
s. 659) has endeavored to prove that the natural features of Etruria acted
on the peculiar direction of mind of its inhabitants. A '• calling forth"
of the lightning, which is ascribed to Prometheus, calls to mind the
strange pretended "drawing down" of hghtning by the Fulguratores.
This operation consisted, however, in a mere conjuration, which was
probably not more efficacious than the skinned ass's head, supposed, in
accordance with Etruscan religious usages, to have the faculty of pre-
serving against tiie danger of thunder-storms.
* Otfr. Miiller, Etntsker, abth. ii., s. 162-178. It would appear that,
in accordance with the veiy complicated Etruscan augur-theory, a dis-
tinction was made between the "soft reminding lightnings propelled
by Jupiter by his own independent power, and the violent electrical
means of chastisement which he could only send forth in obedience to
established constitutional prescriptions, after consulting with the other
twelve gods" (Seneca, Nat. Qua;st.,\i., p. 41). J
t Joh. Lydus, De Ostentis. ed. Hase, p. 18, in proefat. "
PHYSICAL CONTEiMPLATlON OF THE UNIVEBiJI,. i41
ilization is most deeply rooted, and from whom we have de-
rired a considerable portion of our early knowledge of other
nations, and of our views regarding the universe. We have
considered the basin of the Mediterranean in its characteristic
configuration and position, and the influence of these relations
on the commercial intercourse established with the western
coasts of Africa, the extreme north, and the Indo- Arabian
Sea. No portion of the earth has been the theater of greater
changes of power, or of greater or more animated activity un-
der the influence of mental guidance. This movement was
transmitted far and enduringly by the Greeks and Romans,
especially after the latter had destroyed the PhcEnicio-Cartha-
ginian power. That which we term the beginning of history
is, therefore, only the period when later generations awoke to
self-consciousness. It is one of the advantages of the present
age that, by the brilliant progress that has been made in gen-
eral and comparative philology, by the careful investigation
of monuments and their more certain inferpretation, the views
of the historical inquirer are daily enlarged, and the strata of
remote antiquity gradually opened, as it were, before our eyes.
Besides the civilized nations of the Mediterranean which we
have just enumerated, there are many others who show traces
of ancient cultivation ; among these we may mention the
Phrygians and Lycians in Western Asia, and the Turduli and
Turdetani in the extreme West.=^ Of the latter, Strabo ob-
serves, " they are the most cultivated of all the Iberians ; they
employ the art of writing, and have MTitten books containing
memorials of ancient times, and also poems and laws set in
verse, for which they claim an antiquity of six thousand years."
I have dwelt on these separate examples in order to show
how much of ancient cultivation, even among European na-
tions, has been lost without our being able to discover any
trace of its existence, and how the history of the earliest con-
templation of the universe must continue to be limited to a
very narrow compass.
Beyond the forty-eighth degree of latitude, north of the Sea
of Azof and of the Caspian, between the Don, the Wolga, and
the Jaik, where the latter flows from the southern auriferous
ft
* Strabo, lib. iii., p. 139, Casaub. Compare Wilhelm von Humboldt,
Ueber die Urbezookner Hispaniens, 1821, s. 123 und 131-136. The Iberiau
alphabet has been successfully investigated in our own times by M. de
Saulcy; the Phrygian, by the ingenious discoverer of arrow-headed
writing, Grotefend ; and the Lycian, by Sir Charles Fellovves. f Com-
pare Ross, Hellenika, bd. i., s. xvi.)
142 COSMOS.
Uralian Mountains, Europe and Asia are, as it were, iused to-
gether by flat steppes. Herodotus, in the same manner as
Pherecydes of Syros had previously done, regarded the whole
of northern Scythian Asia (Siberia) as belonging to Sarmatian
Europe, and even as forming a portion of Europe itself.* To-
ward the south, our quarter of the globe is sharply separated
from Asia, but the far-projecting peninsula of Asia Minor and
the richly- varied ^gean Archipelago (serving as a bridge be-
tween the two separate continents) have ajETorded an easy
passage for different races, languages, customs, and manners.
Western Asia has, from the earliest ages, been the great thor-
oughfare for races migrating from the east, as was the north-
west of Greece for the Illyric races. The ^gean Archipelago,
which was in turn subject to Phoenician, Persian, and Greek
dominion, was the intermediate link between Greece and the
far East.
When Phrygia was incorporated with Lydia, and both
merged into the Persian empire, the contact led to the gen-
eral extension of the sphere of ideas among Asiatic and Eu-
ropean Greeks. The Persian rule was extended by the war-
like expeditions of Cambyses and Darius Hystaspes from Gy-
rene and the Nile to the fruitful lands of the Euphrates and
the Indus. A Greek, Scylax of Karyanda, was employed to
explore the course of the Indus, from the then-existing terri-
tory of Caschmeer (Kaspapyrus)t to its mouth. An active
intercourse was carried on between Greece and Egypt (with
Naucratis and the Pelusian arm of the Nile) before the Per-
sian conquest, and even under Psammitichus and Amasis.f
These extensive relations of intercourse with other nations
drew many Greeks from their native land, not only for the
purpose of establishing those distant colonies which we shall
consider in a subsequent part of the present work, but also as
hired soldiers, who formed the nucleus of foreign armies in
Carthage, § Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and in the Bactrian dis-
trict of the Oxus.
A deeper insight into the individuality and national char-
acter of the different Greek races has shown that, if a grave
* Herod., iv., 42 (Schweighauser ad Herod., t. v., p. 204). Com.
pare Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 54 and 577.
t Regarding the most probable etymology of Kaspapyrus of Heca
taeus {Fragm., ed. Klausen, No. 179, v. 94), and the Kaspatyrus of
Herodotus (iii., 102, and iv., 44), see ray Asie Ceiitrale, t. i., p. 101-104
X Regarding Psammitichus and Aahmes, see ante, p. 127.
% Droysen, Geschichte der Bildung des Hellenistischen Staatensysfemg
1843. 8. 23.
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION' OF THE UNIVERSE. HiJ
and reserved exclusiveness prevailed among the Dorians, and
in part, also, among the yEolians, we must, on the other hand,
ascribe to the gayer Ionic race a mobility of mind, which, un-
der the stimulus of an eager spirit of inquiry, and an ever-
wakeful activity, was alike manifested in a faculty for mental
contemplation and sensuous perception. Directed by the ob-
jective bent of their mode of thought, and adorned by a luxu-
riance of fancy in poetry and in art, the lonians scattered the
beneficent germs of progressive cultivation wherever they estab-
lished their colonies in other countries.
As the landscape of Greece was so strikingly characterized
by the peculiar charm of an intimate blending of land and sea,
the configuration of the coast-line to which this character was
owing could not fail early to aAvaken in the minds of the
Greeks a taste for navigation, and to excite them to an active
commercial intercourse and contact with foreign nations.*
The maritime dominion of the Cretans and E^hodians was fol-
lowed by the expeditions of the Samians, Phocseans, Taphians,
and Thesprotians, which were, it must be owned, originally
directed to plunder and to the capture of slaves. Hesiod's
disinclination to a sea-faring life is probably to be regarded
merely as the expression of an individual opinion, or as the re-
sult of a timid ignorance of nautical affairs, which may have
prevailed on the main land of Greece at the early dawn of
civilization. On the other hand, the most ancient legends
and myths abound in reference to distant expeditions by land
and sea, as if the youthful imagination of mankind delighted
in the contrast between its own ideal creations and a limited
reality. In illustration of this sentiment we may mention the
expeditions of Dionysus and Hercules (Melkarth in the tem-
ple at Gadeira) ; the wanderings of lo ;t of the often-resusci-
tated Aristeas ; and of the Hyperborean magician Abaris, in
whose "guiding arrow"| soijie commentators have supposed
that they recognized the compass. In these narratives we trace
* See ante, p. 25.
t Volker, Mythische GeograpJdeder Griechen und Romer, th. i., 1832,
8. 1-10 ; Klausen, Ueber die VVanderungen der lo und des Herakles, iu
Niebuhr and Brandis Rhemische Museen fur Philologie, Geschichte rmd
Griech. Philosophie, Jahrg., iii., 1829, s. 293-323.
X In the myth of Abaris (Herod., iv., 36), the magician does not travel
through the air on an arrow, but he carries the arrow, " which Pythag-
oras gave him (Jambl., De Vila Pythag., xxix., p. 194, Kiessling), in
order that it may be useful to him in all difficulties on his long journey."
Creuzer, Symbolik, th. ii., 1841, s. 660-664. On the repeatedly disap-
pearing and reappearing Arimaspiau bard, Aristeas of Proconnesus, see
Herod., iv., 13-15.
144 COSMOS.
the reciprocal reflection of passing events and ancient cosmical
views, and the progressive modification w^hich the latter efiect-
ed in these mythical representations of history. In the wslyl-
derings of the heroes returning from Troy, Aristonicus makes
Menelaus circumnavigate Africa more than five hundred years
before Neco sailed from Gadeira to India.*
At the period which we are here considering, of the history
of Greece before the Macedonian expeditions into Asia, there
occurred three events which exercised a special influence in
extending the views of the Greeks regarding the universe.
These events were the attempts to penetrate beyond the basin
of the Mediterranean toward the east ; the attempts toward
the west ; and the establishment of numerous colonies from
the Pillars of Hercules to the northeastern extremity of the
Euxine, which, by the more varied form of their political con-
stitution, and by their furtherance of mental cultivation, were
more influential than those of the Phoenicians and Cartha-
ginians in the iEgean Sea, Sicily, Theria, and on the north
and west coasts of Africa.
The advance toward the East, about twelve centuries be-
fore our era, or one hundred and fifty years after Rameses
Miamoun (Sesostris), is known in history as the expedition
of the Argonauts to Colchis. The true version of this event,
which is clothed in a mythical garb, and concealed under a
blending of ideal images, is simply the fulfillment of a national
desire to open the inhospitable Euxine. The myth of Prome-
theus, and the unbinding of the fire-kindling Titan on the
Caucasus by Hercules, during his expedition to the East ; the
ascent of lo from the Valley of the Hybritesf to the heights
of the Caucasus : the myth of Phryxus and Helle, all indicate
* Strabo, lib. i., p. 38, Casaub.
t Probably the Valley of the Don or of the Kuban. See ray Asie Cen-
trale, t. ii., p. 164. Pherecydes expressly says {Fragm. 37, ex Schol.
Apollon., ii., 1214) that the Caucasus burned, and that, therefore, Ty-
phon fled to Italy ; a notice from which Klausen, in the work already
mentioned, s. 298, explains the ideal relation of the " fire-kindler"
{■KvpKaevg), Prometheus, to the burning mountain. Although the geog-
nostical constitution of the Caucasus (which has been recently so ably
investigated by Abich), and its connection with the volcanic chain of
the Thianschan, in the interior of Asia (which I think I have shown in
my Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 55-59), render it in no way improbable that
reminiscences of great volcanic eruptions may have been preserved in
the nost ancient traditions of men, yet we may rather assume that a
bold and somewhat hazardous spirit of etymological conjecture may
have led the Greeks to the hypothesis of the burning. On the Sanscrit
etymologies of Graucasus (or shining mountain), see Bohlen's and Bur-
nouf 's statements, in my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 109.
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 1 lo
the same direction of the course on which the early PhoBnician
navigators had adventured.
Before the migrations of the Dorians and -Cohans, the Boeo-
tian Orchomenus, near the eastern extremity of the Lake of
Copais, was already a rich commercial city of the Minyans.
The Argonautic expedition hegan at lolcus, the principal seat
of the Thessalian Minyans, on the Pagasaean Gulf. The
locality of the myth, considered with respect to the aim of the
undertaking, after having been variously modified* at different
times, was finally associated with the mouth of the Phasis
(Rion), and with Colchis, a seat of ancient civilization, instead
of with the uncertain and remote land of ^a. The expedi-
tions of the Milesians and their numerous colonial cities on
the Euxine enabled them to obtain a more exact knowledge
of the eastern and northern limits of that sea, and thus gave
a more definite outline to the geographical portion of the myth.
A number of important new views was thus simultaneously
opened. The Caspian had long been known only on its west-
ern coast ; and even Hecatseus regarded this shore as the west-
ern boundary of the encircling Eastern Ocean. f The father
of history was the first who taught that the Caspian Sea was
a basin closed on all sides, a fact which, after him, was again
contested, for six centuries, until the time of Ptolemy.
* Otfried Muller, Minyer, s. 247, 254, und 274. Homer was not ac-
quainted with the Phasis, or with Colchis, or with the Pillars of Her-
cules ; but the Phasis is named by Hesiod. The mythical traditions con-
cerning the return of the Argonauts through the Phasis into tlie Eastern
Ocean, and across the " double" Triton Lake, formed either by the
conjectured bifurcation of the Ister, or by volcanic earthquakes {A&ie
Centrale, t. i., p. 179 ; t. iii., p. 135-137 ; Otfr. MUller, Minyer, s. 357),
are especially important in arriving at a knowledge of the earliest views
regarding the form of the continents. The geographical phantasies of
Peisandros, Timagetus, and Apollonius of Rhodes were continued until
late in the Middle Ages, and showed themselves sometimes as bewilder-
ing and deterring obstacles, and sometimes as stimulating incitements
to actual discoveries. This reaction of antiquity on later times, when
men suffered themselves to be led more by opinions than by actual ob-
servations, has not been hitherto sufficiently considered in the history
of geography. My object is not merely to present bibliographical
sources from the literature of different nations for the elucidation of the
facts advanced in the text, but also to introduce into these notes, which
permit of gi-eater freedom, such abundant materials for reflection as I
have been able to derive from ray own experience and from long-con-
tinued literary studies.
t Hecat(Ei, Fragm., ed. Klausen, p. 39, 92, 98, and 119. See, also,
my investigations on the history' of the geography of the Caspian Sea,
from Herodotus down to the Arabian El-Istachri, Edrisi, and Ibu-el-
Vardi, on the Sea of Anil, and on the bifurcation of the Oxus and the
Ara.xes, in my Asie Centrale. '. ii.. :'. H'.^^-^nr
Vol. II.— G
146 COSMOS.
At the northeastern extremity of the Black Sea a wide field
was also opened to ethnology. Astonishment was felt at the
multiplicity of languages among the different races,* and the
necessity for skillful interpreters (the first aids and rough in-
struments in a comparative study of languages) was keenly
felt. The intercourse established by barter and trade was
carried from the Meeotic Gulf, then supposed to be of very
vast extent, over the Steppe where the central Kirghis horde
now pasture their flocks, through a chain of the Scythio-Sco-
lotic tribes of the Argippseans and Issedones,t whom I regard
as of Tndo-Germanic origin, to the Arimaspes on the northern
declivity of the Altai Mountains, who possessed large treasures
in gold.$ Here, therefore, we have the ancient realm of the
* Cramer, De Studiis qucB veteres ad aliarum gentium co7itvlcrint Liu'
guas, 1844, p. 8 and 17. The ancient Colchians appear to have been
identical with the tribe of the Lazi (Lazi, gentes Colchorum, Pliu., vi.,
4 ; the Aa^oL of Byzantine writers) ; see Vater (Professor in Kasan),
Der Argonautenzug mis den Quellen dargestellt, 1845, Heft, i., s. 24;
Heft, ii., s. 45, 57, und 103. In the Caucasus, the names Alani (Alane-
thi, for the land of the Alani), Ossi, and Ass may still be heard. Ac-
cording to the investigations begun with a truly philosophic and philo-
logical spirit by George Rosen in the Valleys of the Caucasus, the Ian
guage spoken by the Lazi possesses remains of the ancient Colchian
idiom. The Iberian and Grussic family of languages includes the La-
zian, Georgian, Suanian, and Mingrelian, all belonging to the group of
the Indo-Germanic languages. The language of the Osseti bears a great
er affinity to the Gothic than to the Lithuanian.
t On the relationship of the Scythians (Scolotes or Sacse), Alani,
Goths, Massagetee, and the Yueti of the Chinese historians, see Klaproth,
in the commentary to the Voyage du Comte Potocki, t. i., p. 129, as
well as my Asie Centrale, t. i., f>. 400 ; t. ii., p. 252. Procopius him-
self says very definitely {De Belio Gothico, iv., 5, ed. Bonn, 1833, vol.
ii., p. 476), that the Goths were formerly called Scythians. Jacob
Grimm, in his i-ecently-published work, Ueher Jornandes, 1846, s. 21,
has shown the identity of the Getce and the Goths. The opinion of Nie-
buhr (see his Untersuchungen uber die Geten vnd Sartnaten, in his Kleine
Historische tind Philologische Schriften, Ite Sammlung, 1828, s. 362,
364, und 395), that the Scythians of Herodotus belong to the family of
the Mongolian tribes, appears the less probable, since these tribes,
partly under the yoke of the Chinese, and partly under that of the Ha-
kas or Kirghis (Xcp;^;iV of Menander), still lived, far in the east of Asia,
round Lake Baikal, in the beginning of the thirteenth century. He-
rodotus distinguishes also the bald-headed Argippajans (iv., 23) from the
Scythians ; and if the first-named are characterized as " flat-nosed,"
they have, at the same time, a " long chin," which, according to my
experience, is by no means a physiognomical characteristic of tlie Cal
mucs, or of other Mongolian races, but leather of the blonde (German
izing?) Usun and Tingling, to whom the Chinese historians ascriba
' long horse faces."
t On the dwelling-place of the Arimaspes, and on the gold trade of
PHYSICAL CONTEiMFLATlON OF THE UNIVERSE. 147
Griffins, the seat of the meteorological myth of the Hyperbo-
reans,* which has wandered with Hercules far to the West.
We may conjecture that the portion of Northern Asia above
alluded to, which has again, in our days, become celebrated
by the Siberian gold washings, as w^ell as the large quantity
of gold accumulated, in the time of Herodotus, by the Gothic
tribe of the Massagetse, must have become an important source
of wealth and luxury to the Greeks, by means of the inter-
course opened with the Euxine. I place the locality of this
source of wealth between the o3d and 55th degrees of latitude.
The region of the gold-sand, of which the travelers were in-
fornqed by the Daradas (Darder or Derder), mentioned in the
Mahabharata, and in the fragments collected by Megasthenes,
and which, owing to the accidental double meaning of the
names of some animals,t has been associated with the often-
Nortbwestem Asia iu the time of Herodotus, see my Asie Centrale, t.
i., p. 389-407.
* " The story of the Hyperboreans is a meteorological myth. The
wind of the mountains (B'C)reas) is beheved to issue from the Rhipean
Mountains, while beyond these mountains there prevail a calm air and
a genial climate, as on the Alpine summits, beyond the region of clouds.
In this we trace the dawn of a physical science, which explains the
distribution of heat and the diffei-ence of climates by local causes, by
the direction of predominating winds, the vicinity of the sun, and the
action of a saline or humid principle. The consequence of these sys-
tematic ideas was the assumption of a certain independence supposed
to exist between the climate and the latitude of the place ; thus the
myth of the Hyperboreans, connected by its origin with the Dorian
w^orship of Apollo, which was primitively Boreal, may have proceeded
from the north toward the west, thus following Hercul^in his prog-
ress toward the sources of the Ister, to the island of E^^thia, and to
the gardens of the Hesperides. The Rhipes, or Rhipean Mountains,
have also a meteorological meaning, as the word indicates. They are
the mountains of impulsion, or of the glacial souffle (/6i7r^), the place
from which the Boreal tempests are unloosened." — Asie Centrale, t. i.,
p. 392, 403.
t In Hindostanee there are two words which might easily be con-
founded, as Wilford has already remarked, one of which is tschiuntd,
a kind of large black ant (whence the diminutive tschiunfi, tschinti, the
small common ant) ; the other tsckifd, a spotted panther, the little hunt-
ing leopard (the Felis jubata, Schreb.). This word (tsckiid) is the
Sanscrit tschitra, variegated or spotted, as is shown by the Bengalee
name for the animal {tschitdbdgh and tschitihdgh, from bdgh, Sanscrit
wyaghra, tiger). — (Buschmann.) In the Mahabharata (ii., 1860) there
is a passage recently discovered, in which the ant-gold is mentioned.
" Wilso invenit (Journ. of the Asiat. Soc, vii., 1843, p. 143), mention-
em fieri etiam in Indicis litteris bestiaiiim auruni effodientium, qiias,
quum terram effbdiant, eodem nomine (pipilica) atque formicas ludi
nuncupant." Compare Schwanbeck. in Megasth. Indicis, 1846, p. 73.
It struck me to see that, iu the basuliic districts of the Mexican liigh
148 COSMOS.
repeated fable of the gigantic ants, is situated within a more
southern latitude of 35^ or 37°. This region must, according
to one of two combinations, be situated either in the Thibetian
highlands east of the Bolor chain, between the Plimalaya and
Kuen-lun, west of Iskardo, or north of the latter mountain
chain toward the desert of Gobi, which has likewise been de-
scribed as an auriferous district by the accurate Chinese ob-
server and traveler Hiuen-thsang, who lived at the beginning
of the seventh century of our era. How much more accessi-
ble must the gold of the Arimaspes and Massagetee have been
to the traders in the Milesian colonies on the northern shores
of the Euxine I I have alluded to these sources of wealth
for the purpose of not omitting to mention a fact which may
be regarded as an important and still active result of the open-
ing of the Euxine, and of the first advance of the Greeks to-
ward the East.
The great event of the Doric migrations, and of the return
of the Heraclidse into Peloponnesus, which was productive of
such important changes, falls about one hundred and fifty
years after the demi-mythical expedition of the Argonauts,
which is synonymous with the opening of the Euxine to Greek
navigation and commercial intercourse. This navigation si-
multaneously gave occasion to the founding of new states and
new governments, and to the establishment of a colonial sys
tem designating an important period in the life of the Hel-
lenic races, and it has further been most influential in extend-
ing the sphere of cosmical views, based upon intellectual cul-
ture. Europe and Asia thus owed their more intimate con-
nection to the establishment of the colonies, which formed a
continuous chain from Sinope (Dioscurias) and the Tauric
Panticapseum to Saguntum and Cyrene, the latter of which
was founded by the inhabitants of the rainless island of Thera.
No nation of antiquity possessed more numerous, and, on
the whole, more powerful colonial cities than the Greeks. It
must, however, be remembered, that a period of four hundred
«r five hundred years intervened between the establishment
of the most ancient ^olian colonies, among which Mytilene
and Smyrna were pre-eminently distinguished, and the founda-
tion of Syracuse, Croton, and Cyrene. The Indians and Ma-
layans made only weak attempts to found colonies on the east-
ern coast of Africa, in Zokotora (Dioscorides), and in the South
Asiatic Archipelago. Among the PhcBuicians a highly-devel-
lands, the ants bring together heaps of shining grains of hyalite, wbicb
I was able to collect out of their hillocks.
PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 149
oped colonial system had been extended over a larger space
than that occupied by the Greeks, stretching, although Avith
wide intervals between the stations, from the Persian Gulf to
Cerne on the western coast of Africa. No mother country
ever established a colony which was as powerful from conquests,
and as famed for its commercial undertakings, as Carthage.
But, notwithstanding this greatness, Carthage stood far below
that degree of mental and artistical cultivation which has
enabled the Greek colonial cities to transmit to us so many
noble and lasting forms of art.
It must not be forgotten that many populous Greek cities
flourished simultaneously in Asia Minor, the ^Egean Sea,
Lower Italy, and Sicily ; and that, like Carthage, the coloni-
al cities of Miletus and Massilia again founded other colonies ,
that Syracuse, when at the zenith of her power, fought against
Athens, and the army of Hannibal and Hamilkar ; and that
Miletus was, for a long time, the first commercial city in the
world after Tyre and Carthage. While a life so rich in en-
terprise was being developed externally by the activity of a
people whose internal condition was frequently exposed to
violent agitations, new germs of national intellectual develop-
ment were continually called forth with the increase of pros-
perity and the transmission to other nations of native cultiva
tion. One common language and religion bound together the
most distant members of the whole body, and it was by this
union that the small parent country was brought within the
wider circle embraced by the life of other nations. Foreign
elements were incorporated in the Hellenic world, without, on
that account, depriving it of any portion of its great and char-
acteristic independence. The influence of contact with the
East, and with Egypt before it had been connected with Per-
sia, and above one hundred years before the irruption of Cam-
byses, was, no doubt, from its very nature, more permanent
than the influence of the colonies of Cecrops from Sais, of
Cadmus from Phcenicia, and of Danaus and Chemmis, whose
existence has so often been contested, and is, at any rate,
wrapped in the deepest obscurity.
The characteristics by which the Greek colonies differed so
widely from all others, especially from the less flexible Phoe-
nicians, and which affected the whole organization of their
system, arose from the individuality and the primitive dif-
ferences existing in the tribes which constituted the whole
mother country, and thus gave occasion to a mixture of con-
necting and separating forces in the colonies as well as ui
150 COSMOS.
Greece itself. These contrasts occasioned diversities in the
direction of ideas and feelings, and in the form of poetry and
harmonious art, and created a rich fullness of life, in which
all the apparently hostile elements were dissolved, according
to a higher law of universal order, into a gentle harmonious
unison.
Notwithstanding that Miletus, Ephesus, and Colophon were
Ionic ; Cos, Rhodes, and Halicarnassus Doric ; and Croton
and Sybaris Achaic, the power and the inspired poetry of the
Homeric song every where made their power appreciable in
the midst of this diversity of cultivation, and even in Lower
Italy, in the many contiguous colonial cities founded by differ-
ent races. Amid the most firmly-rooted contrasts in man-
ners and political institutions, and notwithstanding the fluc-
tuations to which the latter were subject, Greece retained its
nationality unbroken, and the wide domain of ideal and art-
istic creations achieved by the separate tribes was regarded as
the common property of the whole nation.
It still remains for me to mention, in the present section,
the third point, which we have already indicated as having,
conjointly with the opening of the Euxine, and the establish-
ment of colonies on the basin of the Mediterranean, exercised
so marked an influence on the history of the contemplation of
the universe. The foundation of Tartessus and Gades, where
a temple was dedicated to the wandering divinity Melkart (a
son of Baal), and of the colonial city of Utica, which was older
than Carthage, remind us that the Phoenicians had already
navigated the open sea for many centuries before the Greeks
passed beyond the straits termed by Pindar the " Gadeirian
Gate."* In the same manner as the Milesians in the East,
by the way of the Euxine, t established relations of interna-
tional contact which laid the foundation of an inland trade
* Strabo, lib. iii., p. 172 (Bockh, Find. Fragm., v., 155). The expe-
ditiou of Colaeus of Samos falls, according to Otfr. MuUer {Prolegomena
zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie), in Olymp. 31, and according to
Letronne's investigation {Essai sur les Idees Cosmograpkiqnes qui se rat-
tachent au nom d! Atlas, p. 9), in Olymp. 35, 1, or in the year 640. The
epoch depends, however, on the foundation of Cyrene, which is placed
by Otfr. Miiller between Olymp. 35 and 37 {Minyer, s. 344, Prolegome-
na, s. 03) ; for in the time of Colseus (Herod., iv., 152), the way from
Thera to Libya was not as yet known. Zumpt places the foundation
of Carthage in 878, and that of Gades in 1100 B.C.
t According to the manner of the ancients (Strabo, lib. ii., p. 126), 1
reckon the whole Euxine, together with the Maeotis (as required by
physical and geological views), to be included in the corpmon basin ol
the great " Inner Sea."
PHVS^IOAL CONTEMPLATION OF THK UNIVERSE. 151
between the north of Europe and Asia, and subsequently with
the Oxus and Indus, so the Samians* and Phoca;anst were
the first among the Greeks who endeavored to penetrate from
the basin of the Mediterranean toward the west.
Colseus of Samos sailed for Egypt, where, at that time, an
intercourse had begun, under Psammitichus, M'^ith the Greeks,
which probably was only the renewal of a former connection.
He was driven by easterly st^^rms to the island of Platasa, and
from thence Herodotus significantly adds, '* not without divine
direction," through the straits into the ocean. The accident-
al and unexpected commercial gain in Iberian Tartessus con-
duced less than the discovery of an entrance into an unknown
world (whose existence was scarcely conjectured as a mythical
creation of fancy) toward giving to this event importance and
celebrity v.'herever the Greek language was understood on the
shores of the Mediterranean. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules
(earlier known as the Pillars of Briareus, of JEgseon, and of
Cronos), at the western margin of the earth, on the road to
Elysium and the Hesperides, the primeval waters of the cn--
cling Oceannsij: were first seen, in which the source of all riv-
ers was then sought.
At Phasis the navigators of the Euxine again found them-
selves on a coast beyond which a Su7Z Lake was supposed to
be situated, ana south of Gadeira and Tartessus their eyes for
the first time ranged over a boundless waste of waters. It
was this circumstance which, for fifteen hundred years, gave
to the gate of the inner sea a peculiar character of import-
ance. Ever striving to pass onward, Phoenicians, Greeks,
Arabs, Catalans, Majorcans, Frenchmen from Dieppe and La
Rochelle, Genoese, Venetians, Portuguese, and Spaniards in
turn attempted to advance across the Atlantic Ocean, long
held to be a miry, shallow, dark, and misty sea, Mare iene-
hrosum ; until, proceeding from station to station, as it were,
these southern nations, after gaining the Canaries and the
* Herod., iv., 152.
t Herod., i., 1G3, where even the discovery of Tartessus is ascribet
to the PhoccBans ; but the commercial euterpiise of the Phocceaus was
seventy years after the time of Colasus of Samos, according to Ukert
Geogr. der Griecheti und Romer, th. 1, i., s. 40).
X According to a fragment of Phavorinus, UK<-avQ^ (and therefore
'jyijv also) are not Greek words, but merely borrowed from the barba
rians (Spohn, De Nicephor. Blemm. duobus Opvsculis, 1818, p. 23). My
brother was of opinion that they were connected with the Sanscrit roots
'*gha and ogh. (See my Examen Criiique de V Hist, de la Geogr., t. i
p 33 and 182.)
153 COSMOS.
Azores, finally came to the New Continent, which, however,
had already been reached by the Northmen at an earlier pe-
riod and from a different direction.
While Alexander was opening the far East, the great Stag-
irite=* was led, by a consideration of the form of the earth, to
conceive the idea of the proximity of India to the Pillars of
Hercules ; while Strabo had even conjectured that there might
be " many oilier habitable tracts of la7id\ in the northern
hemisphere, perhaps in the parallel which passes through
those Pillars, the island of Rhodes and ThinaB, between the
coasts of Western Europe and Eastern Asia." The hypothe-
sis of the locality of such lands, in the prolongation of the
major axis of the Mediterranean, was connected with a grand
geographical view of Eratosthenes, current in antiquity, and
in accordance with which the whole of the Old Continent, in
its widest extension from west to east, and nearly in the thir-
ty-sixth degree of latitude, was supposed to present an almost
continuous line of elevation. $
The expedition of Colseus of Samos does not, however, alone
indicate an epoch in which the Hellenic races, and the na-
tions to whom their cultivation was transmitted, developed
new views that led to the extension of maritime expeditions,
but it also immediately enlarged the sphere of ideas. The
great natural phenomenon which, by the periodic elevation of
the level of the sea, exhibits the connection existing between
the earth, and the sun, and moon, now first permanently ar-
rested the attention of men. In the African Syrtic Sea this
phenomenon had appeared to the Greeks to be accidental, and
had not unfrequently been attended by danger. Posidonius,
who had observed the ebb and flow of the sea at Ilipa and
* AristoL, De Ccelo, ii., 14 (p. 298, b., Bekk.); Meteor., ii., 5 (p. 3G2,
Bekk.). Compare my Examen Critique, t. i., p. 125-130. Seneca ven-
tures to say {Nat. Qtccest., in prsefat., 11), " Coutemnet curiosus spec-
tator domicilii (teiTae) angustias. Quantum enim est quod ab ultimis
littoribus Hispaniae usque ad Indos jacet ? Paucissimorum dierum
spatium, si navem suus ventus implevit." (Examen Critique, t. i., p.
158.)
t Strabo, lib. i., p. 65 and 118, Casaub. (Examen Critique, t. i., p.
152.)
t In the Diapliragma of Dicaearchus, by which the earth is divided.
the elevation passes through the Taurus, tlie chains of Demavend and
Hindoo-Coosh, the Northei-n Thibetian Kuen-lun, and the mountains of
the Chinese provinces Sse-tschuan and Kuang-si, vv^hich are perpetually
covered with snow. See my oi^ogi-aphical researches on these lines of
elevation in my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 104-114, 118-164; t. ii., p. 413
and 438.
INFLUENCE OF THE iVTACCDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 158
Gadeira, compared his observations with the facts of which he
was informed by the experienced Phoenicians concerning the
influence supposed to be exercised by the moon.*
EXPEDITIONS OF THE MACEDONIANS UNDER ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
—CHANGES IN THE RELATIONS OF THE WORLD.— FUSION OF THE
WEST WITH THE EAST.— THE GREEKS PROMOTE THE INTERMIX-
TURE OF RACES FROM THE NILE TO THE EUPHRATES, THE JAX-
ARTES, AND THE INDUS.— SUDDEN EXTENSION OF COSMICAL VIEWS,
BOTH BY MEANS OF DIRECT OBSERVATION OF NATURE, AND BY THE
RECIPROCAL INTERCOURSE C^ ANCIENT CIVILIZED AND INDUSTRIAL
NATIONS.
The campaigns of the Macedonians under Alexander the
Great, the downfall of the Persian dominion, the rising inter-
course with Western India, and the action of the Grseco-Bac-
trian empire, which continued to prevail for one hundred and
sixteen years, may be regarded as among the most important
social epochs in the process of the development of the history
of mankind, as far as it indicates a closer connection of South-
ern Europe with the southwest of Asia, the Nile, and Libya.
Independently of the almost immeasurable extension opened
to the sphere of development by the advance of the Macedo-
nians, their campaigns acquired a character of profound moral
greatness by the incessant efforts of the conqueror to amalga-
mate all races, and to establish, under the noble influence of
Hellenism, a unity throughout the world.t The foundation
of many new cities at points, the selection of which indicates
higher aims, the arrangement and classification of an inde-
pendently responsible form of government for these cities, and
the tender forbearance evinced by Alexander for national cus-
toms and national forms of worship, all testify that the plan
of one great and organic whole had been laid. That which
was perhaps originally foreign to a scheme of this kind devel-
oped itself subsequently from the nature of the relations, as is
always the case under the influence of comprehensive events.
If we remember that only fifty-two Olympiads intervened
from the battle of the Granicus to the destructive irruption
into Bactria of the Sacae and Tochi, we shall be astonished
at the permanence and the magical influence exercised by the
* Strabo, lib. iii., p. 173 (Examen Crit., t. iii., p. 98).
t Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders des Grossen, s. 544 ; the same in hi«
Oesch. der Bildung des Hellenistischen Staatensy stems, s. 23-34, 588-
592, 748-755.
G 2
154 COSMOS.
introduction from the west of Hellenic cultivation. This cul-
tivation, blended with the knowledge of the Arabians, the mod-
ern Persians and Indians, extended its influence in so great a
degree even to the time of the Middle Ages, that it is often
difficult to determine the elements which are due to Greek
hteratuie, and those which have originated, independently of
all admixture, from the inventive spirit of the Asiatic races.
The principle of unity, or, rather, the feeling of the benefi-
cent political influence incorporated in this principle, was deep-
ly implanted in the breast of the great conqueror, as is testified
by all the arrangements of his poiity ; and its application to
Greece itself was a subject that had already early been incul-
cated upon him by his great teacher. In the Politica of Aris
totle we read as follows :* •' The Asiatic nations are not de-
ficient in activity of mind and artistic ingenuity, yet they live
in subjection and servitude without evincing the courage nec-
essary for resistance, while the Greeks, valiant and energetic,
living in freedom, and, therefore, well governed, 77iight, if they
%vere united into mie state, exercise dominion over all barba-
rians." Thus wrote the Stagirite during his second stay at
Athens,! before Alexander had passed the Granicus. These
dogmas of the philosopher, however corc-rary to nature he
may have professed to consider an unlimited dominion (the
7ran6aaiXeia), no doubt made a more vivid impression on the
conqueror than the fantastic narrations of Ctesias respecting
India, to which August Wilhelm von Schlegel, and, prior to
him, Ste. Croix, ascribed so important an influence. $
In the preceding pages we have attempted to give a brief
delineation of the sea as a means of furthering international
contact and union, and of the influence exercised in this re-
spect by the extended navigation of the Phoenicians, Cartha-
ginians, Tyrrhenians, and Etruscans. We have further shown
how the Greeks, whose maritime power was strengthened by
numerous colonies, endeavored to penetrate beyond the basin
of the Mediterranean toward the east and the west by the
Argonautic expedition from lolcus, and.by the voyage of Co-
Iseus of Samos ; and, lastly, how the fleet of Solomon and
Hiram visited distant gold lands in their voyages to Ophii
through the Red Sea. The present section will lead us to the
* Aristot., Polit., vii., 7, p. 1327, Bekker. (Compare, also, iii., 16,
and the remarkable passage of Eratosthenes in Strabo, lib. i., p. Q^ and
97, Casaub.) t Stahr, Aristotelia, th. ii., s. 114.
X Ste. Croix, Examen Critique des Historiens cf Alexandre, p. 731.
(Schlegel, Ind. Bibliotkek, bd. i., s. 1.50.)
INFLUENCR OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMrAIGNS. 155
mierior of a great continent, through different routes opened
to inland trade and river navigation. In the short period of
twelve years are compressed the campaigns in Western Asia
and Syria, with the battles of the Granicus, and the passes of
Issus ; the taking of Tyre, and the easy conquest of Egypt ;
the Persico- Babylonian campaign, when the dominion of tlie
Achsemenidse was annihilated at Arbela, in the plain of Gau-
gamela ; the expedition to Bactria and Sogdiana, between the
Hindoo-Coosh and the Jaxartes (Syr) ; and, lastly, the bold
advance into the country of the five rivers, the Pentapotamia
of Western India. Alexander founded Greek colonies almost
every where, and diffused Greek manners and customs over
the vast tracts of land that extend from the Temple of Am-
nion in the Libyan Oasis, and from Alexandria on the West-
ern Delta of the Nile to Alexandria on the Jaxartes, the pres-
ent Khodjend in Fergana.
The extension of the sphere of new ideas — and this is the
point of view from which the Macedonian expeditions and the
prolonged duration of the Bactrian empire must be considered
— was owing to the magnitude of the space made known, and
to the variety of climates manifested from Cyropolis on the
Jaxartes (in the latitude of Tiflis and Rome) to the eastern
delta of the Indus at Tira, under the tropic of Cancer. To
these we may further add the wonderful diversity in the con-
figuration of the country, which alternated in luxurious and
fruitful districts, jn arid plains and snow-crowned mountain
ranges ; the novelty and gigantic size of animal and \egeiable
forms ; the aspect and geographical distribution of races of
men of various color ; the actual contact with Oriental na-
tions in some respects so highly gifted and enjoying a civiliza-
tion of almost primitive antiquity, and an acquaintance with
their religious myths, systems of philosophy, astronomical
knowledge, and astrological phantasies. In no age, except-
ing only the epoch of the discovery and opening of tropical
America, eighteen centuries and a half later, has there been
revealed, at one time and to one race, a richer field of new
views of nature, or a greater mass of materials for laying the
foundation of a physical knowledge of the earth, and of com-
parative ethnological science. The vividness of the impres-
sion thus produced is testified by the whole literature oi' the
West, and is also manifested by the doubts — such as accom-
pany, in all cases, an appeal to the imagination in the descrip-
tion of natural scenery — which were excited in Greek, and
subsequently in Roman writers, by the narrations of Megas-
150 COSMOS.
tlienes, Nearchus, Aristob.ilus, and other companions of A1(!X-
ander's campaigns. These narrators, influenced by the tone
of feehng characteristic of their age, and closely connecting
together facts and individual opinions, have experienced the
varying fate of all travelers, meeting at first with bitter ani-
madversion, and subsequently with a milder judgment. The
latter has been more frequent in our own day, since a more pro-
found study of Sanscrit, a more general knowledge of geo-
graphical names, the discovery of Bactrian coins in Topes,
and, above all, an actual acquaintance with the country and
its organic productions, have placed more correct elements of
information at the disposal of the critic than those yielded to
the partial knowledge of the caviling Eratosthenes, or of Strabo
and Pliny.*
If we compare, according to diflerences in longitude, the
length of the Mediterranean with the distance from west to
east which separates Asia Minor from the shores of the Hypha-
sis (Beas), from the Altars of Return, we shall perceive that
* Compare Schwaubeck, '■'■Be fide Megaslhenis et pretio" in his edi-
tion of that writer, p. 59-77. Megastheues frequently visited Pahbo-
thra, the court of the King of Magadha. He was deeply initiated in
the study of Indian chronology, and relates " how, in past times, the
All had three times come to freedom ; how three ages of the world had
run their course, and how the fourth had begun in his own time" (Las-
sen, Indische Alterthumshunde, bd. i., s. 510). Hesiod's doctrine of four
ages of the world, as connected with four great elementary destruc-
tions, which together embrace a period of 18,028 years, is also to be
met with among the Mexicans. (Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleres et
Monumens des Peuples indigenes de V Amirique, t. ii., p. 119-129.) A
remarkable proof of the exactness of Megasthenes has beea discovered
in modern times by the study of the Rigveda and of the Maliabharata.
Consult what Megasthenes relates concerning " the land of the long-
living blessed beings" in the most northeni parts of India — the land tf
Uttarakuru (probably north of Kashmeer, toward Belurtagh), which
according to his Greek views, he associates with the supposed " thou-
sand years of the life of the Hyperboreans." (Lassen, in the Zeitschrift
fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, bd. ii., s. 62.) A tradition mentioned
by Ctesias (who has been too long esteemed below his merits), of a
sacred place in the northern desert, may be noticed in connection with
this point. {Ind., cap. viii., ed. Baehr, p. 249 and 285.) The marti-
choras mentioned by Aristotle {Hig^. de Animal., ii., 3, § 10; t. i., p.
51, Schneider), the griffin half eagle and half lion, the kartazonon no-
ticed by iElian, and a one-horned wild ass, are certainly spoken of by
Ctesias as real animals ; they were not, however, the creations of his
inventive fancy, for he mistook, as Heeren and Cuvier have remarked,
the piptured forms of symbolical animals, seen on Pei-sian monuments.
for representations of strange beasts still living in the remote parts of
India. There is, however, as Guigniaut has well observed, nnich diffi
culty in identifying the martichoras with Persepolitan symbols. (Creu
Zer, Religions de V Antiqnif.6 i Nnf.es et Eclaircissements, V 720.)
INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 157
the geographical knowledge of the Greeks was doubled in ex-
tent in the course of a few years. In order to define more
accurately that which we have termed the mass of materials
added to the sciences of natural philosophy and physical geog-
raphy by the different campaigns and by the colonial institu-
tions of Alexander, I would first refer to the diversity in the
form of the earth's crust, which has, however, only been more
specially made known to us by the experiments and researches
of recent times. In the countries through which he passed,
low lands, deserts, and salt steppes devoid of vegetation (as on
the north of the Asferah chain, which is a continuation of the
Thian-schan, and the four large cultivated alluvial districts
of the Euphrates, the Indus, Oxus, and Jaxartes), contrasted
with snow-clad mountains, having an elevation of nearly
20,000 feet. The Hindoo-Coosh, or Indian Caucasus of the
Macedonians, which is a continuation of the North Thibetian
Kuen-lun, west of the south transverse chain of Bolor, is di-
vided in its prolongation toward Herat into two great chains
bounding Kafiristan,* the southern of which is the loftier of
the two. Alexander passed over the plateau of Bamian,
which lies at an elevation of about 8500 feet, and in which
men supposed they had found the cave of Prometheus,! to the
crest of the Kohibaba, and beyond Kabura along the Choes,
crossing the Indus somevv^hat to the north of the present At-
tok. A comparison between the low Tauric chain, with
which the Greeks were familiar, and the eternal snow sur-
mounting the range of the Hindoo-Coosh, and which, accord-
ing to Burnes, begins at an elevation of 13,000 feet, must
have given occasion to a recognition, on a more colossal scale,
of the superposition of difierent zones of climate and vegeta-
tion. In active minds direct contact with the elementary
world produces the most vivid impression on the senses. And
thus we find that Strabo has described, in the most perfectly
truthful characters, the passage across the mountainous dis-
trict of the Paropanisadse, where the army with difficulty
cleared a passage through the snow, and where arborescent
vegetation had ceased.^
* I have considered these intricate orographical relations in my Asie
Centrale, t. ii., p. 429-434.
t Lassen, in the Zeitschrift fur die Kiinde des Morgenl., bd. i.. s. 230.
X The country between Bamian and Ghori. See Carl Zimmer-
mann's excellent orographical work Uebersichtsblatt von Afghanistan,
1842. (Compare Strabo, lib. xv., p. 725 ; Diod. Sicul., xvii., 82 ; Menn.
Meletem. Hist., 1839, p. 2.5 and 31; Ritter, Ueber Alexanders Fddziig
am Indischcn Kavkasus, in the Abkandl. der Berl. Aknd.. of tln^ \c;u
158 COSMOS.
More certain knowledge was now transmitted to the West
from the Macedonian colonies respecting those Indian products
of nature and art which had hitherto been only imperfectly
known from commercial mtercourse, or from the narrations
of Ctesias of Cnidus, who lived seventeen years at the court
of Persia as physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon. Among the
objects thus made known we must reckon irrigated rice-iields,
for whose cultivation Aristobulus gives special directions ; the
cotton-tree, and the fine tissues and the paper for which it*
furnished the materials ; spices and opium ; wine made from
rice and the juice of palms, whose Sanscrit name of tola has
been preserved in the works of Arrian ;t sugar from the sugar-
cane,! which is certainly often confounded in the Greek and
Roman writers with the tabascliir of the bamboo reed ; wool
from the great Bombax-tree ;§ shawls made of the Thibetian
goat's hair; silken (Seric) tissues ;|| oil from the white sesa-
mum (Sanscrit tila) ; attar of roses and other perfumes ; lao
(Sanscrit lakscha, in the vulgar tongue lakkha) ;ir and, last-
ly, the hardened Indian wutz-steel.
Besides the knowledge of these products, which soon be-
came objects of universal commerce, and many of which were
transported by the Seleucidee to Arabia,** the aspect of a rich-
1829, s. 150; Droyseii, Bildung des Hellenist. Staatensy stems, s. 614.)
I write Paropariisus, as it occurs in all the good codices of Ptolemy,
and not Paropaiuisus. I have explained the reasons in my Asie Centrale,
t. i., p. 114-118. (See, also, Lassen, zur Gesch. der Griechischen und
Indoskythischen Kunige, s. 128). * Strabo, lib. xv., p. 717, Casaub.
t Tala, the name of the palm Borassus flabelliformis, which is very
characteristically termed by Amarasinha " a king of the grasses." Ar-
rian, Ind., vii., 3.
X The woi'd tabaschir is deduced from the Sanscrit tvakkschird (bark
milk). In 1817, in the histoi'ical additions to my work De distribii-
iione Geographicd Plantarum, secundum cosli, iemperiem et altitudinem
Montium, p. 215, I drew attention to the fact that the companions of
Alexander learned to know the true sugar of the sugar-cane of the In-
dians as well as the tabaschir of the bamboo. (Strabo, lib. xv., p. 693 ;
Peripl. Maris Erythr., p. 9.) Moses of Chorene, who lived in the mid-
dle of the fifth century, was the first (Geogr., ed. Whiston, 1736, p. 364)
who circumstantially described the preparation of sugar from the juice
of the Saccharum officinarum, in the province of Chorasan.
§ Strabo, lib. xv., p. 694.
II Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, bd. iv., 1, s. 437; bd. vi., 1, s. 698;
Lassen, Lid. AUerthumskunde, bd. i., s. 317-323. The passage in Aris-
totle's Hist, de Animal., v. 17 (t. i., p. 209, ed. Schneider), relating to
the web of a great horned caterpillar, refers to the island of Cos.
^ Thus luKKOi; ;:|;pu^urivof in the Peripl. Maris Erythr., p. 5 (Las-
Ben, s. 316).
** Plin., Hist. Nat., xvi., 32. (On the introduction of rare Asiatic
plants into Egypt by 'he Ptolemies, see Pliny, xii., 14 and 17.)
INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAUi \\S. 1 5{)
(y-embellished tropical nature speedily yielded the Greeks en-
joyments of another kind. The gigantic forms of hitherto
unknown animals and plants filled their imaginations with
the most exciting images. Writers, whose dry scientific style
is usually devoid of all animation, became poetic when they
described the characteristics of animals, as, for instance, ele-
phants ; or when they spoke of the height of trees, whose
summits can not be reached by the arrow in its flight, and
whose leaves are larger than the shields of the infantry ; of
" the bamboo, a ligh4;, feathery, tree-like grass," " each of
whose jointed parts (internodia) may serve for a many-oared
keel ;" or of the Indian fig-tree, that takes root by its branches,
and whose stem has a diameter of twenty-eight feet, and
which, as Onesicritus remarked, with much truth to nature,
forms " a leafy canopy similar to a tent, supported by numer-
ous pillars." The tall, arborescent ferns, which, according
to my opinion, constitute the greatest ornament of tropical
scenery, are never mentioned by Alexander's companions,* al-
though they speak of the noble, fan-like umbrella palm, and
the delicate and ever-fresh green of the cultivated banana.f
The knowledge of a great portion of the earth may now be
said to have been opened for the first time. The objective
world began to assume a preponderating force over that of
mere subjective creation ; and while the fruitful seeds yielded
by the language and literature of the Greeks were scattered
* Humboldt, De distrib. Geogr. Plantarum, p. 178.
t I have often corresponded, since the year 1827, with Lassen on the
remarkable passage in Pliny, xii., 6: " Major alia (arbor") pomo et su-
avitate pra?cellentior, quo sapienies Indorum vivunt. Folium alas avi-
um imitatur, longitudine trium cubitorum, latitudine du(im. Fructum
cortice mittit, admirabilem succi dulcedine ut uno quaternos satiet.
Arbori nomen palcB, pomo arience.'^ The following is the result of my
learned friend's investigation: " Amarasinha places the banana {musa,
pisang) at the head of all nutritive plants. Among the many Sanscrit
names which he adduces are varanabuscha, bhanuphala (jun fruit), and
moko, whence the Arabic mauza. Phala (pala) is fruit in general, and
it is therefore only by a misunderstanding that it has been taken for the
name of the plant. In Sanscrit, varana without buscha is not used as
the name of the banana, although the abbreviation may have been
characteristic of the popular language. Varana would be in Greek
ovapeva, which is certainly not very far removed from ariena.^^ (Com-
pare Lassen, Ind. Alterthumshtnde, bd. i., p. 262; my Essai Politiqne
tur la Nouv. Espagne, t. ii., 1827, p. 382 ; and Relat. Hist., t. i. j). 491.)
The chemical connection of the nourishing araylum with sugar was de-
tected both by Prosper Alpinus and Abd-AUatif, and they sought to ex
plain the origin of the banana by the insertion of the sugar-cane, oi th..
pweet date fruit, into the root of the colocasia (Abd-AUatif, Relation de
''jCf^yylf. tiad. par Silvestre de Sacy. p. 28 and 10.5).
160 COSMOS.
abroad by the conquests of Alexander, scientific observation
and the systematic arrangement of the knowledge already ac-
quired were elucidated by the doctrines and expositions of
Aristotle.* We here indicate a happy coincidence of favoring
relations, for, at the very period when a vast amount of new
materials was revealed to the human mind, their intellectual
conception was at once facilitated and multiplied through the
direction given by the Stagirite to the empirical investigation
of facts in the domain of nature, to the profound consideration
of speculative hypothesis, and to the development of a lan-
guage of science based on strict definition. Thus Aristotle
must still remain, for thousands of years to come, as Dante
has gracefully termed him,
" II maestro di color cite sannoy\
The belief in the direct enrichment of Aristotle's zoological
knowledge by means of the Macedonian campaigns has, how-
ever, either wholly disappeared, or, at any rate, been rendered
extremely uncertain by recent and more carefully-conducted
researches. The wretched compilation of a life of the Stag-
irite, which was long ascribed to Ammonius, the son of Her-
mias, had contributed to the difilision of many erroneous
views, and, among others, to the belief thatj the philosopher
accompanied his pupil as far, at least, as the shores of the
Nile.§ The great work on Animals appears to have been
written only a short time after the Meteor ologica, the date
of which would seem, from internal evidence, II to fall in the
* Compare, on this epoch, Wilhelm von Humboldt's work, Ueher
die Kawi'Sprache nnd die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbanes,
bd. i., s. ccl. und ccliv. ; Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders des Gr., e. .547 ; and
Hellenist. Staatensystem, s. 24. t Dante, Inf., iv., 1.30.
X Compare Cuvier's assertions in the Biographie Universelle, t. ii.,
1811, p. 458 (and unfortunately again repeated in the edition of 1843,
t. ii., p. 219), with Stahr's Aristotelia, th. i., s. 15 und 108.
$ Cuvier, A^ihen he was engaged on the Life of Aristotle, inclined to
the belief of the philosopher having accompanied Alexander to Egypt,
" whence," he says, " the Stagirite must have brought back to Athena
(Olymp. 112, 2) all the materials for the Historia Animalium." Subse-
quently (1830) the distinguished French naturalist abandoned this opin
ion, because, after a more careful examination, he remarked " that the
descriptions of Egyptian animals were not sketched from life, but from
notices by Herodotus." (See, also, Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Nat-
urelles, publiee par Magdeleine de Saint Agy, t. i., 1841, p. 136.)
II To these internal indications belong the statement of the perfect
insulation of the Caspian Sea ; the notice of the great comet, which ap-
peared under Nicomachus when holding the office of archon, Olymp.
109, 4 (according to Corsini), and which is not to be confounded with
that which Von Boguslawski has lately named the comet of Aristotle
INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. IGl
106th, or, at the latest, in the 111th Olympiad, and, there-
fore, either fourteen years before Aristotle came to the court
of Philip, or, at the furthest, three years before the passage
across the Granicus. It must, however, be admitted, that
some few facts may be advanced as evidence against this as
sumption of an early completion of the nine books of Aristo-
tle's History of Animals. Among these must be reckoned the
accurate knowledge possessed by Aristotle of the elephant, the
bearded horse-stag (hippelaphus), the Bactrian two-humped
camel, the hippardion, supposed to be the hunting-tiger (gue-
pard), and the Indian buffalo, which does not appear to have
been introduced into Europe before the time of the Crusades.
But here it must be remarked that the native place of this
large and singular stag, having a horse's mane, which Diard
and Duvancel sent from Eastern India to Cuvier, who gave
to it the name of Cervus Aristotelis, is, according to Aristo-
tle's own account, not the Indian Pentapotamia traversed by
Alexander, but Arachosia, west of Candahar, which, together
with Gedrosia, constituted one satrapy of ancient Persia.*
(under the Arcliou Asteus, Olymp. 101, 4 ; Aristot., Meteor., lib. i., cap.
6, 10 ; vol. i., p. 395, Ideler ; and which is probably identical with the
comets of 1695 and 1843 ?) ; and, lastly, the mention of the destruction
of the temple at Ephesus, as well as of a lunar rainbow, seen on two
occasions in the course of fifty years. (Compare Schneider, ad Aristot.,
Hist, de Animalibus, vol. i., p. xl., xlii., ciii., and exx. ; Ideler, ad Aris-
tot. Meteor., vol. i., p. x. ; and Humboldt, Asie Cent., t. ii., p. 168.) We
know that the Historia Animalium " was written later than the Meteor-
ologica,^' from the fact that allusion is made in the last-named work
to the former as to a work about to follow (Meteor., i., 1, 3, and iv.,
12, 13).
* The five animals named in the text, and especially the hippelaphus
(horse-stag with a long mane), the hippardion, the Bactrian camel, and
the buffalo, are instanced by Cuvier as proofs of the later composition
of Aristotle's Historia Animalium (Hist, des Sciences Nat., t. i., p. 154).
Cuvier, in the fourth volume of his admirable Recherckcs sur les Osse^
mens Fossiles, 1823, p. 40-43 and 502, distinguishes between two Asiatic
stags with manes, which he calls Cervus hippelaphus and Cervus Aris-
totelis. He originally regarded the first-named, of which he had seen
a living specimen in London, and of which Diard had sent him skins
and antlers from Sumatra, as Aristotle's hippelaphus from Arachosia
(Hist, de Animal.fU., 2, $ 3, and 4, t. i., p. 43, 44, Schneider); but he
afterward thought that a stag's head, sent to him from Bengal by Du-
vaucel, agreed still better, according to the drawing of the entire large
animal, with the Stagirite's description of the hippelaphus. This stag,
which is indigenous in the mountains of Sylhet in Bengal, in Nepaul,
and in the country east of the Indus, next received the name of Cervus
Aristotelis. If, in the same chapter in which Aristotle speaks geiierall>
of animals with manes, the horse-stag (Equicervus), and the Indiar
guepard, or hunting tiger (Felis jubata), are both understood, Schneide^
162 COSMOS.
May not the knowledge of the form and habits of the animals
above referred to, and which, for the most part, was comprised
in short notices, have been transmitted to Aristotle, independ-
ently of the Macedonian campaigns, either from Persia or from
Babylon, which was the seat of a widely-extended foreign com-
mercial intercourse ? Owing to the utter ignorance that pre-
vailed at this time of the preparation of alcohol,* nothing but
(t. iii., p. 66) considers the reading rrupScov preferable to that of to
CTrTrdijdcov. The latter reading would be best interpreted to mean the
giratFe, as Pallas also conjectures (Spicileg. Zool., fasc. i., p. 4). If Aris-
totle had himself seen the guepard, and not merely heard it described,
how could he have failed to notice non-retractile claws in a feline ani-
mal ? It is also surprising that Aristotle, who is always so accurate, if,
as August Wilhelm von Schlegel maintains, he had a menagerie near
his residence at Alliens, and had himself dissected one of the elephants
taken at Arbela, should have failed to describe the small opening near
the temples of the animal, where, at the rutting season, a strong-smell-
ing fluid is secreted, often alluded to by the Indian poets. (Schlegel's
Indiscke Bibliothek, bd. i., s. 163-166.) I notice this apparently trifling
circumstance thus particularly, because the above-mentioned small aper
ture was made known to us from the accounts of Megasthenes, to whom,
nevertheless, no one would be led to ascribe anatomical knowledge.
(Strabo, lib. xv., p. 704 and 705, Casaub.) I find nothing in the differ-
ent zoological works of Aristotle which have come down to us that nec-
essarily implies his having had the opportunity of making direct ob-
servations on elephants, or of his having dissected any. Although it is
most probable that the Hisioria Animalium was completed before Alex-
ander's campaigns in Asia Minor, there is undoubtedly a possibility that
the work may, as Stahr supposes {Aristotelia, th. ii., s. 98), have con-
tinued to receive additions until the end of the author's life, Olymp.
114, 3, and therefore three years after the death of Alexander ; but we
have no direct evidence on this subject. That which we possess of
the correspondence of Aristotle is undoubtedly not genuine (Stahr, th.
i., s. 194-208; th. ii., s. 169-234) ; and Schneider says very confidently
(Hist, de Animal., t. i., p. xl.), " hoc enim tauquam certissimum sumere
mihi licebit, scriptas comitum Alexandri notitias post mortem demum
regis fuisse vulgatas."
* I have elsewhere shown that, although the decomposition of sul-
phuret of mercury by distillation is described in Dioscorides (Mat. Med.,
v. 110, p. 667, Saracen.), the first description of the distillation of a
fluid (the distillation of fresh w^ater from sea water) is, however, to be
found in the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias to Aristotle's
work De Meteorol. See my Examen Critique de VHistoire de la Giogra-
phie, t. ii., p. 308-316, and Joannis (Philoponi), Grammatici in libra de
Generat. et Alexaiidri Aphrod., in Meteorol. Comm., Venet., 1527, p. d7,
b. Alexander of Aphrodisias in Caria, the learned commentator of the
Meteorologica of Aristotle, lived under Septimius Severus and Caracal-
la ; and although he calls chemical apparatuses ;\;vi«:a opyava, yet a
passage in Plutarch {De hide et Osir., c. 33) proves that the word Cke-
mie, applied by the Greeks to the Egyptian art, is not derived from
:j;£6). Hoefer {Histoirc de la Chimie, t. i., p. 91, 195, and 219 ; t. ii..
p. 109).
INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 163
the skins and bones of animals, and not the soft parts capable
of dissection, could be sent from remote parts of Asia to Greece.
However probable it may be that Aristotle received the most
liberal aid from Philip and Alexander for the furtherance of
his studies in physical science, for procuring an immense num-
ber of zoological specimens both from Greece and the neigh-
boring seas, and for forming a collection of books unique in
that age, and which passed successively into the hands, first
of Theophrastes, and afterward of Neleus of Skepsis, we must
nevertheless regard the accounts of" the presents of eight hund-
red talents, and the maintenance of so many thousand col
lectors, overseers of fish-ponds, and bird-keepers," as mere ex-
aggerations of a later period, or as traditions misunderstood by
Pliny, AthensBUs, and -^lian.*
The Macedonian campaign, Avhich opened so large and
beautiful a portion of the earth to the influence of one sole
highly-gifted race, may therefore certainly be regarded, in the
strictest sense of the word, as a scientific expedition, and,
moreover, as the first in which a conqueror had surrounded
himself with men learned in all departments of science, as
naturalists, geometricians, historians, philosophers, and artists.
The results that w^e owe to Aristotle are not, however, solely
to be referred to his own personal labors, for he acted also
through the intelligent men of his school who accompanied
the expedition. Among these shone pre-eminently Callisthe-
nes of Olynthus, the near kinsman of the Stagirite, w^ho had
* Compare Sainte-Croix, Examen des Historiens d' Alexandre, 1810,
p. 207 ; and Cuvier, Histoire des Sciences Naturelles, t. i., p. 137, with
Schneider, ad ATdstot. de Historid Animalinm, t. i., p. xlii., xlvi., and
Stahr, Aristotelia, th. i., s. 116-118. If, therefore, the tiausmis^^ion of
specimens from Egypt and the interior of Asia seems to be highly im-
probable, yet the latest \vi-itings of our great anatomist, Johannes Mtil-
ler, show with what wonderful delicacy Aristotle dissected the fishes
of the Greek seas. See the learned treatise of Johannes Muller, on the
adherence of the ovum to the uterus, in one of the two species of the
genus Mustelus living in the Mediterranean, which in its fcetal state
possesses a placenta of the vitelline vesicle connected with the uterine
placenta of the mother, and his researches on the yakeog Aeiof of Aristo
tie, in the Ahhandl. der Berliner Akad. aus dem Jahr 1840, s. 192-197.
(Compare Aristot., Hisi. Anim., vi., 10, and De Gener. Anini., iii., 3.)
The distinction and detailed analysis of the species of cuttle-fish, the
description of the teeth of snails, and the organs of other gasteropodes
all testify to the delicate nicety of Aristotle's own anatomical examina-
tions. Compare Hist. Anim., iv., 1 and 4, with Lebert, in Mliller's
Archiv der Physiologie, 1846, s. 463 uud 467. I myself, in 1797, called
the attention of modern naturalists to the form of snails' teeth. See
my Versuche ilber die gereizfe Muskel iind Nervenfaser, bd. i., s. 261 .
164 COSMOS.
already, before the campaign, composed a work on .Botany
and a treatise on the organs of vision. Owing to the rigi6
austerity of his morals, and the unchecked freedom of hii
speech, he was regarded with hatred by Alexander himself
who had already fallen from his noble and elevated mode ol
thought, and by the flatterers of the prince. Callisthenet
undauntedly preferred liberty to life ; and when, in Bactria -
he was implicated, although guiltless, in the conspiracy 6s,
Hermolaus and the pages, he became the unhappy occasioi
of Alexander's exasperation against his former instructor
Theophrastes, the warm friend and fellow-disciple of Callis
thenes, had the generosity to undertake his defense after his
fall. Of Aristotle we only know that he recommended pru-
dence to his friend before his departure ; for being, as it would
appear, familiar with a court life from his long sojourn with
Philip of Macedon, he counseled him to " converse as little
as possible with the king, and, where necessity required that
he should do so, always to coincide with the views of the sov-
ereign
"#
Aided by the co-operation of chosen men of the school of
the Stagirite, Callisthenes, who was already conversant with
nature before he left Greece, gave a higher direction to the
investigations of his companions in the extended sphere of ob-
servation now first opened to them. The richness of vegeta-
tion and the diversity of animal forms, the configuration of the
soil and the periodical rising of great rivers, no longer sufficed
to engage exclusive attention, for the time was come when man
and the different races of mankind, in their manifold gradations
of color and of civilization, could not fail to be regarded, ac-
cording to Aristotle's own expression, t " as the central point
and the object of all creation, and as the beings in whom the
divine nature of thought was first made manifest." From the
little that remains to us of the narratives of Onesicritus, who
was so much censured in antiquity, we find that the Mace-
donians were astonished, on penetrating far to the East, to
meet with no African, curly-haired negroes, although they
found the Indian races spoken of by Herodotus as " dark col-
ored, and resembling Ethiopians."! The influence of the at-
mosphere on color, and the difTerent effect produced by dry and
moist winds, were carefully noticed. In the early Homeric
* Valer. Maxim., vii., 2: '* ut cum roge aut rarissime aut quam ju
cundissime locjueretur."
t Aristot., Polit,, i., 8, and Eth. ad Eudemum, vii., 14.
t Strabo, lib, xv., p. 690 and 695. Herod., iii., 101.
INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 165
ages, and even long after that period, the dependence of the
temperature of the air on latitude was wholly unknown, and
the relations of east and west then constituted the whole ther-
mic meteorology of the Greeks. The countries lying to the
east were regarded as near the sun — su7i lands, and the in-
habitants as " colored by the near sun-god in his course with
a sooty luster,* and their hair dried and crisped with the heat
of his rays."
Alexander's campaigns first gave occasion to a comparison,
on a grand scale, between the African races which predomin-
ated so much in Egypt with the Arian races beyond the Ti-
gris and the ancient Indian Aborigines, who were very dark
colored, but not woolly haired. The classification of mankind
into varieties, and their distribution over the surface of the
earth, which is to be regarded rather as a consequence of his-
torical events than as the result of protracted climatic rela-
tions (when the types have been once firmly fixed), together
with the apparent contradiction between color and places of
abode, were subjects that could not fail to produce the most
vivid impression on the mind of thoughtful observers. We
still find, in the interior of the great Indian continent, an ex-
tensive territory, which is inhabited by a population of dark,
almost black aborigines, totally different from the lighter-col-
ored Arian races, who immigrated at a subsequent period.
Among these we may reckon, as belonging to the Vindhya
races, the Gonda, the Bhilla in the forest districts of Malava
and Guzerat, and the Kola of Orissa. The acute observer
Lassen regards it as probable that, at the time of Herodotus,
the black Asiatic races, " the Ethiopians of the sun-rising,"
which resembled the Libyans in the color of their skin, but
not in the character of their hair, were diffused much fur-
ther toward the northwest than at present.! In like man-
ner, in the ancient Egyptian empire, the actual woolly-hair-
* Thus says Theodectes of Phaselis: see vol. i., p. 353. Northern
tracts of land were considered to lie more toward the west, and south-
ern countries to the east. Consult Vblcker, Ueher Homerische Geogra'
phie und Weltkunde, s. 43 und 87. The indefinite meaning of the word
Indies, even at that age, as connected with ideas of position, of the com-
plexion of the inhabitants, and of precious products, contributed to the
extension of these meteorological hypotheses ; for Western Arabia, the
countries between Ceylon and the mouth of the Indus, Troglodytic
Ethiopia, and the African rayrrli and cinnamon lands south of Cape
A.roma, were all termed India. (Humboldt, Examen Crit., t. ii., p. 35.)
t Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskunde, bd. i , s. 369, 372-375, 379, und 389;
Bitter, Asien, bd. iv., 1, s. 446.
166 COSMOS.
ed negro races, which were so frequently conquered by other
nations, moved their settlements far to the north of Nubia.*
The enlargement of the sphere of ideas, which arose from
the contemplation of numerous hitherto unobserved physical
phenomena, and from a contact with different races, and an
acquaintance with their contrasted forms of government, wag
not, unfortunately, accompanied by the fruits of ethnological
comparative philology, as far as the latter is of a philosophical
nature depending on the fundamental relations of thought, or
is simply historical. f This species of inquiry was wholly un-
known to classical antiquity. But, on the other hand, Alex-
ander's expedition added to the science of the Greeks those
materials yielded by the long-accumulated knowledge of more
anciently civilized nations. I would here especially refer to
the fact that, with an increased knowledge of the earth and
its productions, the Greeks likewise obtained from Babylon a
considerable accession to their knowledge of the heavens, as
we find from recent and carefully-conducted investigations.
The conquest of Cyrus the Great had certainly greatly dimin-
ished the glory of the astronomical college of the priests in the
Oriental capital. The terraced pyramid of Belus (at once a
temple, a grave, and an observatory, from which the hours of
the night were proclaimed) had been given over to destruction
by Xerxes, and was in ruins at the time of the Macedonian
campaign. But from the very fact of the dissolution of the
close hierarchical caste, and owing to the formation of many
schools of astronomy, $ Callisthenes was enabled (and as Sim-
* The geographical distribution of mankind can no more be determ-
ined in entire continents by degrees of latitude than that of plants and
animals. The axiom advanced by Ptolemy {Geogr., lib. i., cap. 9), that
north of the parallel of Agisymba there are no elephants, rhinoceroses,
or negroes, is entirely unfounded {Examen Critique, t. i., p. 39). The
doctrine of the univez'sal influence of the soil and climate on the intel-
lectual capacities and on the civilization of mankind, was peculiar to the
Alexandrian school of Ammonius Sakkas, and more especially to Lou
ginus. See Proclus, Comment, in Tim., p. 50.
t See Georg. Curtius, Die Sprachvergleichvng in ikrem Verhultniss
zur Classischen Philologie, 1845, s. 5-7, and his Bildiing der Tempora
und Modi, 1846, s. 3-9. (Compare, also, Pott's Article, Indogermani-
scker Sprachstamm, in the Allgem. Encyklopddie of Ersch and Gruber,
sect, ii., th. xviii., s. 1-112.) Investigations on language in general, in
as far as they touch upon the fundamental relations of thought, are,
however, to be found in Aristotle, where he develops the connection
of categories with grammatical relations. See the luminous statement
of this comparison in Adolf Trendelenburg's Histor. Beitrdge zur Pki-
losophie, 1846, th. i., s. 23-32.
t The schools of the Orchenes and Borsipenes (Strabo, lib. xvi.. j-
INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 167
plicius maintains, in accordance with the advice of Aristotle)
to send to Greece observations of the stars for a very long pe-
riod (Porphyrins says for 1903 years) before Alexander's en-
trance into Babylon, Ol. 112, 2. The earliest Chaldean ob-
servations mentioned by Almagest (probably the oldest which
Ptolemy found available for his object) only go back 721 years
before our era, that is to say, to the first Messenian war. It
is certain " that the Chaldeans knew the mean motions of the
moon with an exactness which induced the Greek astronomers
to employ their calculations for the foundation of a lunar the-
ory."* The planetary observations to which they Avere led
by their ancient love of astrology appear also to have been
used for the true construction of astronomical tables.
The present is not the place to decide how much of the
Pythagorean views regarding the true structure of the heavens,
the course of the planets, and of the comets which, according
to Apollonius Myndius, return in long regulated orbits,! may
be due to the Chaldeans. Strabo calls the mathematician
Seleucus a Babylonian, and distinguished him in this manner|
Irom the Erythraean, who measured the tides of the sea. It
is sufficient to remark that the Greek zodiac was most prob-
ably taken from " the Dodecatemoria of the Chaldeans, and
that, according to Letronne's important investigations, § it does
739). In this passage four Chaldean mathematicians are indicated by
name, in conjunction with the Chaldean astronomei's. This circum-
stance is so much the more important in an historical point of view,
because Ptolemy always mentions the observers of the heavenly bodies
under the collective name of Xaldaloi, as if the obseI•^'ations at Babylon
wei'e only made collectively in collegiate bodies (Ideler, Handbtich der
Chronologie, bd. i., 1825, s. 198).
* Ideler, op. cit., bd. i., s. 202, 20G, und 218. When a doubt is ad-
vanced I'egarding the astronomical observations said to have been sent
by Callisthenes fi'om Babylon to Greece, on the ground that there is no
frace of these observations of a Chaldean priestly caste to be found in
the writings of Aristotle (Delambre, Hist, de V Astronomie A?icienne, t. i.,
p. 308), it is forgotten that Aristotle, in speaking (De Ccelo, lib. ii., cap.
12) of an occultation of Mars by the Moon, observed by himself, ex-
pressly adds, that " similar obsers'ations had been made for many years
on the other planets by the Egyptians and the Babylonians, many of
which have come to our knowledge." On the probable use of astro-
nomical tables by the Chaldeans, see Chasles, in the Comptes Rendus de
VAcad^mie des Sciences, t. xxiii., 1846, p. 852-854.
+ Seneca, Nat. Qucsst., vii., 17.
X Compare Strabo, lib. xvi., p. 739, with lib. iii., p. 174.
§ These investigations were made in the year 1824 (see Guigniaut,
Religions de VAntiqtiiti, oitvrage traduit de V Allcmand de F. Creiizer,
t. i.. Part ii., p. 928). See a more recent notice by Letronne, in the
Journal des Savans. 1839. p. 338 and 492, as well as the Av,ali/$e Cri-
168 COSMOS.
not go further back than to the beginning of the sixth century
before our era."
The direct result of the contact of the Hellenic races with
nations of Indian origin at the time of the Macedonian expe-
dition is wrapped in obscurity. In a scientific point of view
the gain was probably inconsiderable, since Alexander did not
advance beyond the Hyphasis, in the land of the five rivers
(the Pantschanada), after he had traversed the kingdom of
Porus between the Hydaspes (Jelum), skirted by cedars* and
the Acesines (Tschinab) ; he reached the point of junction,
however, between the Hyphasis and the Satadru, the Hesidrus
of Pliny. Discontent among his troops, and the apprehension
of a general revolt in the Persian and. Syrian provinces, forced
the hero to the great catastrophe of his return, notwithstand-
ing his wish to advance to the Ganges. The countries trav-
ersed by the Macedonians were occupied by races who were
but imperfectly civilized. In the territories intervening be-
tween the Satadru and the Yamuna (the district of the Indus
and Ganges), an insignificant river, the sacred Sarasvati, con-
stitutes an ancient classical boundary between the "pure,
worthy, pious" worshipers of Brahma in the East, and the
"impure kingless" tribes in the West, which are not divided
into castes. t Alexander did not, therefore, reach the true seat
tique des Representations Zodiacales en Egypte, 1846, p. 15 and 34.
(Compai'e with these Ideler, Ueber den Ursprung des Thierkreises, in
the Abhandlvngen der Akademie der Wissenschafien zu Berlin aiis dem
Jahr 1838, s. 21.)
* The magnificent groves of Cedrus deodvara, which are most fre-
quently met with at an elevation of from 8000 to nearly 12,000 feet on
the Upper Hydaspes (Behut), which flows through the Pilgrim's Lake
in the Alpine Valley of Kashmeer, supplied the materials for the fleet
of Nearchus (Burnes's Travels, vol. i., p. 60). The trunk of this cedar
is often forty feet in circumference, according to the observation of Di'.
HofFmeister, the companion of Prince Waldemar of Prussia, who was
unhappily too early lost to science by his death on the battle field.
t Lassen, in his Pentapotamia Indica, p. 25, 29, 57-62, and 77 ; and
also in his Indische Alterthumskunde, bd. i., s. 91. Between the Saras-
vati in the northwest of Delhi, and the rocky Drischadvati, there lies,
according to Menu's code of laws, Brahmavarta, a priestly district of
Brahma, established by the gods themselves; on the other hand, in the
wider sense of the word, Aryavarta, the land of the worthy (Arians),
designates in the ancient Indian geography the whole country east of
the Indus, between the Himalaya and the Vindhya chain, to the south
of which the ancient non-Arian aboriginal population began. Madhya
Desa, the middle land referred to in the text, see vol. i., p. 35, was only
a portion of Aryavarta. Compare my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 204, and
Lassen, Ind. Altertkumsk., bd. i., s. 5, 10, und 93. The ancient Indian
free states, the territories of the "kingless" (condemned by orthodox
INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. ICD
of higher Indian civilization. Seleucus Nicator, the founder
of the great empire of the Seleucidse, penetrated from Baby-
lon toward the Ganges, and established political relations with
the powerful Sandrocottus (Tschandraguptas) by means of
the repeated missions of Megasthenes to Pataliputra.*
In this manner a more animated and lasting contact was
established with the most civilized portions of Madhya Desa
(the middle land). There were, indeed, learned Brahmins
living as anchorites in the Pendschab (Pentapotamia), but we
do not know whether those Brahmins and Gymnosophists were
acquainted with the admirable Indian system of numbers, in
which the value of a few signs is derived merely from position,
or whether, as we may however conjecture, the value of posi-
tion was already at that time known in the most civilized
portions of India. What a revolution would have been effect-
ed in the more rapid development and the easier application
of mathematical knowledge, if the Brahmin Sphines, who ac-
companied Alexander, and who was known in the army by
the name of Calanos — or, at a later period, in the time of Au-
gustus, the Brahmin Bargosa — before they voluntarily ascend-
ed the scaffold at Susa and Athens, could have imparted to
the Greeks a knowledge of the Indian system of numbers in
such a manner as to admit of its being brought into general
use L The ingenious and comprehensive investigations of
Chasles have certainly shown that the method of the Abacus
or Algorismus of Pythagoras, as we find it explained in the
geometry of Boethius, was nearly identical with the Indian,
numerical system based upon the value of position, but this
method, which long continued devoid of practical utility among
the Greeks and Romans, first obtained general application in
the Middle Ages, and especially when the zero had been sub-
stituted for a vacant space. The most beneficent discoveries
have often required centuries before they were recognized and
fully developed.
Eastern poets), were situated between the Hydraotes and the Hyp basis
(the present Ravi and Beas).
* Megasthenes, Indica, ed. Schwanbeck, 1846, p. 17.
Vol. II.— H
170 COSMOS.
EXTENSION OF THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE UNDER THE
PTOLEMIES.— MUSEUM AT SERAPEUM. — PECULIAR CHARACTER OF
> THE DIRECTK)N OF SCIENCE AT THIS PERIOD. — ENCYCLOPEDIC
LEARNING.— GENERALIZATION OF THE VIEWS OF NATURE RESPECT-
ING THE EARTH AND THE REGIONS OF SPACE.
After the dissolution of the Macedonian empire, which in-
cluded territories in three continents, those germs were vari-
ously developed which the uniting and combining system oi
government of the great conqueror had cast abroad in a fruit-
ful soil. The more the national exclusiveness of the Hellenic
mode of thought vanished, and the more its creative force of
inspiration lost in depth and intensity, the greater was the in-
crease in the knowledge acquired of the connection of phenom-
ena by a more animated and extensive intercourse with other
nations, as well as by a rational mode of generalizing views
of nature. In the Syrian kingdom, under the Attalidae of
Pergamus, and under the Seleucida) and the Ptolemies, learn-
ing was universally favored by distinguished rulers. Grecian-
Egypt enjoyed the advantage of political unity, as well as that
of a geographical position, by which the traffic of the Indian
Ocean was brought within a few miles of the Mediterranean:!
by the influx of the Arabian Gulf from the Straits of Bab-el-
Mandeb to Suez and Akaba (running in the line of intersec-
tion that inclines from south-southeast to north-northwest).*
The kingdom of the Seleucidas did not enjoy the same ad
vantage of maritime trade as that afibrded by the form and
configuration of the territories of the Lagides (the Ptolemies),
and its stability was endangered by the dissensions fomented
by the various nations occupying the different satrapies. The
traffic carried on in the Seleucidean kingdom was besides more
an inland one, limited to the course of rivers or to the caravan
routes, which defied all the natural obstacles presented by
snow-capped mountain chains, elevated plateaux, and extens-
ive deserts. The great inland caravan trade, whose most
valuable articles of barter were silk, passed from the interior
of Asia, from the elevated plains of the Seres, north of Uttara
Kuru, by the stony towerf (probably a fortified caravansery),
south of the sources of the Jaxartes, through the Valley of the
Oxus to the Caspian and Black Seas. On the other hand,
the principal traffic of the Ptolemaic empire was, in the strict-
* See ante, p. 123.
t Compare my geographical researches, in Aue ( entrale, t. i., p. 145
and 151-157: t. ii., p. 179.
INFLUENCE OF THE PTOLEMAIC EPOCH. 171
est sense of the word, a sea trade, notwithstanding the anima-
tion of the navigation on the Nile, and the communication be-
tween the banks of the river, and the artificially constructed
roads along the shores of the Red Sea. According to the
grand views of Alexander, the newly-founded Egyptian city
of Alexandria and the ancient Babylon were to have consti-
tuted the respective, eastern and western capitals of the Mace-
donian empire ; Babylon never, at any subsequent period,
realized these hopes, and the prosperity of Seleucia, which was
built by Seleucus Nicator on the Lower Tigris, and had been
connected by canals with the Euphrates,* contributed to its
entire downfall.
Three great rulers, the three first Ptolemies, whose reigns
occupied a whole century, gave occasion, by their love of sci-
ence, their brilliant institutions for the promotion of mental
culture, and their unremitting endeavors for the extension of
maritime trade, to an increase of knowledge regarding distant
nations and external nature hitherto unattained by any peo
pie. This treasure of genuine, scientific cultivation passed
from the Greek settlers in Egypt to the Romans. Under
Ptolemseus Philadelphus, scarcely half a century after the
death of Alexander, and even before the first Punic war had
shaken the aristocratic republic of the Carthaginians, Alexan-
dria was the greatest commercial port in the world, forming
the nearest and most commodious route from the basin of the
Mediterranean to the southeastern parts of Africa, Arabia,
and India. The Ptolemies availed themselves with unpre-
cedented success of the advantages held out to them by a
route which nature had marked, as it were, for a means of
universal intercourse with the rest of the world by the direc-
tion of the Arabian Gulf,t and whose importance can not even
now be duly appreciated until the savage violence of Eastern
nations, and the injurious jealousies of Western powers, shall
simultaneously diminish. Even after it had become a Ro-
man province, Egypt continued to be the seat of immense
wealth, for the increased luxury of Rome, under the Ccesars,
reached to the territory of the Nile, and turned to the uni-
versal commerce of Alexandria for the chief means of its sat-
isfaction.
The important extension of the sphere of knowledge regard-
ing external nature and difl^erent countries under the Ptole-
mies was mainly owing to the caravan trade in the interior
" • PHu., vi., 26(?).
♦ See Droysen, Gesck. des Hellenistischen Staatensy stems, s. 749.
172 COSMOS.
of Africa by Cyrene and the Oases ; to the conquest in Ethi-
opia and Arabia Felix under Ptolemy Euergetes : to the mar«
itime trade with the whole of the western peninsula of India,
from the Gulf of Barygaza (Guzerat and Cambay), along the
shores of Canara and Malabar (Malayavara, a territory of
Malaya), to the Brahminical sanctuaries of the promontory
of Comorin (Kumari),* and to the large island of Ceylon
(Lanka in the Ramayana, and known to the cotemporaries
of Alexander as Taprobane, a corruption of the native name).t
Nearchus had already materially contributed to the advance
of nautical knowledge by his laborious five months' voyage
along the coasts of Gedrosia and Caramania (between Patta-
la, at the mouths of the Indus, and the Euphrates).
Alexander's companions were not ignorant of the existence
of the monsoons, by which navigation was so greatly ikvored
between the eastern coasts of Africa and the northern and
western parts of India. After having spent ten months in
navigating the Indus, between Nicsea on the Hydaspes and
Pattala, with a view of opening the river to a universal traf-
fic, Nearchus hastened, at the beginning of October (Ol. 113,
3), to sail from Stura, at the mouth of the Indus, since he
knew that his passage would be favored by the northeast and
east monsoons to the Persian Gulf along the coasts running
in the same parallel of latitude. The knowledge of this re-
markable local law of the direction of the winds subsequently
imboldened navigators to attempt to sail from Ocelis, on the
Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, across the open sea to Muzeris
(south of Mangolar), the great Malabar emporium of trade,
to which products from the eastern shores of the Indian pen-
insula, and even gold from the distant Chryse (Borneo ?),
were brought by inland trade. The honor of having first ap-
plied the new system of Indian navigation is ascribed to an
otherwise unknown seaman named Hippalus, but considerable
doubt is attached to the age in which he lived. J
* See Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, bd. i., s. 107, 153-158.
t A corruption of Tdmbapanni. This Pali form sounds in Sanscrit
Tdmraparni. The Greek form Taprobane gives half the Sanscrit
{Tdmbra, Tabro) and half the Pali. (Lassen, op. cit., s. 201. Com-
pare Lassen, Diss, de Taprobane Insula, p. 19.) The Laccadives (lakke
lor lakscha, and dive for dwipa, one hundred thousand islands), as well
as the Maldives (Malayadiba, islands of Malabar), were known to Al-
exandrian mariners.
t Hippalus is not generally supposed to have lived earlier than the
time of Claudius ; but this view is improbable, even though under the
first Lagides, a great portion of the Indian products were only pro-
cured in Arabian markets. The southwest monsoon was, moreover
INFLUENCE OF THE PTOLEMAIC EPOCH. 173
The history of the contemplation of the universe embracer
the enumeration of all the means which have brought nations
into closer contact vjiih one another, rendered larger portions
of the earth more accessible, and thus extended the sphere of
human knowledge. One of the most important of these
means was the opening of a road of commimi cation from the
Red Sea to the Mediterranean by means of the Nile. At the
point where the scarcely-connected continents present a line
of bay-like indentations, the excavation of a canal was begun,
if not by Sesostris (Rameses Miamoun), to whom Aristotle and
Strabo ascribe the undertaking, at any rate by Neku, although
the work was relinquished in consequence of the threaten-
ing oracular denunciations directed against it by the priests.
Herodotus saw and described a canal completed by Darius
Hystaspes, one of the Achsemenidae, which entered the Nile
somewhat above Bubastus. This canal, after having fallen
into decay, was restored by Ptolemy Philadelphus in so perfect
a manner that, although (notwithstanding the skillful arrange-
ment of sluices) it was not navigable at all seasons of the
year, it nevertheless contributed to facilitate Ethiopian, Ara
bian, and Indian commerce at the time of the Roman domin-
ion under Marcus Aurelius, or even as late as Septimius Se-
verus, and, therefore, a century and a half after its construc-
tion. A similar object of furthering international communi-
cation through the Red Sea led to a zealous prosecution of
the works necessary for forming a harbor in Myos Hormos and
Berenice, which was connected with Coptos by means of an
admirably made artificial road.*
All these various mercantile and scientific enterprises of the
Lagides were based on an irrepressible striving to acquire new
territories and penetrate to distant regions, on an idea of con-
nection and unity, and on a desire to open a wider field of
action by their commercial and political relations. This di
rection of the Hellenic mind, so fruitful in results, and which
had been long preparing in silence, was manifested, under its
itself called Hippalus, and a portion of the Eiythreau oi- Indian Ocean
was known as the Sea of Hippalus. Letronne, in the Journal des Sa-
vans, 1818, p. 405; Reinaud, Relation des Voyages dans VInde, t. i.,
p. XXX.
* See the reseai'ches of Letronne on the construction of the canal
between the Nile and the Red Sea, from the time of Neku to the Calif
Omar, or during an interval of more than 1300 yeai-s, in the Revue dei
deux Mondes, t. xxvii., 1841, p. 215-235. Compare, also, Letronne, De
la Civilisation Egyplienne depuis Psammitichus jusqnW la conqu^te
d' Alexandre. 1845, p. lG-19.
Jf.74: COSMOS.
noblest type., in the efforts made by Alexander in his campaign
to fuse together the eastern and western worlds. Its exten-
sion mider the Lagides characterizes the epoch which I would
here portray, and must be regarded as an important advance
toward the attainment of a knowledge of the universe in its
character of unity.
As far as abundance and variety in the objects presented to
the contemplation are conducive to an increased amount of
knowledge, we might certainly regard the intercourse existing
between Egypt and distant countries ; the scientific exploring
expeditions into Ethiopia at the expense of the government ;*
distant ostricht and elephant hunts ; and the establishment of
menageries of wild and rare animals in the " kind's houses of
Bruchium" as means of incitement toward the study of nat-
ural history,! and as amply sufficient to furnish empirical
science with the materials requisite for its further develop-
ment ; but the peculiar character of the Ptolemaic period, as
well as of the whole Alexandrian school, which retained the
same individuality of type until the third and fourth centuries,
manifested itself in a different direction, inclining less to an
immediate observation of particulars than to a laborious accu-
mulation of the results of that which had already been noted
by others, and to a careful classification, comparison, and men-
* Meteorological speculations on the remote causes of the swelling
of the Nile gave occasion to some of these journeys, since, as Strabo
expresses it (lib. xvii,, p. 789 and 790), " Philadelphus was constantly-
seeking new diversions and new objects of interest from a desire for
knowledge and from bodily weakness."
t Two hunting inscriptions, " one of which principally records the
elephant hunts of Ptolemy Philadelphus," were discovered and copied
from the colossi of Abusimbel (Ibsambul) by Lepsius during his
Egyptian journey (compare, on this subject, Strabo, lib. xvi., p. 769
and 770; iElian, De Nat. Anim., iii., 34, and xvii., 3 ; Athenaeus, v., p.
196). Although Indian ivory was an article of export from Barygaza,
according to the Periplus Maris ErythrcBi, yet, from the statement of
Cosmas, ivory would also appear to have been exported from Ethiopia
to the western peninsula of India. Elephants have withdrawn more
to the south in Eastern Africa, also, since ancient times. According to
the testimony of Polybius fv., 84), when African and Indian elephants
were opposed to each other on fields of battle, the sight, smell, and
cries of the larger and stronger Indian elephants drove the African ones
to flight. The latter were probably never employed as war elephants
in such large numbers as in Asiatic expeditions, where Kandragupta
had assembled 9000, the powerful King of the Prasii 6000, and Akbar
an equally large number. (Lassen, Ind. Alter thumskunde, bd i.. e.
305-307.)
X Athen., xiv,, p. 654. Compare Parthey, Das Alexandrinische Mu-
$cum, eine Preisschrift, s. 55 und 171.
INFI, HENCE OF THE PTOLEMAIC EPOCH. 17.1
lal elaboration of these results. During a period of many
centuries, and until the powerful mind of Aristotle was re-
vealed, the phenomena of nature, not regarded as objects of
acute observation, were subjected to the sole control of ideal
interpretation, and to the arbitrary sway of vague presenti-
ments and vacillating hypotheses, but from the time of the
Stagirite a higher appreciation for empirical science was man-
ifested. The facts already kno-svn were now first critically ex-
amined. As natural philosophy, by pursuing the certain path
of induction, gradually approached nearer to the scrutinizing
character of empiricism, it became less bold in its speculations
and less fanciful in its images. A laborious tendency to accu-
mulate materials enforced the necessity for a certain amount
of polymathic learning ; and although the works of different
distinguished thinkers occasionally exhibited precious fruits,
these were unfortunately too often accompanied, in the decline
of creative conception among the Greeks, by a mere barren
erudition devoid of animation. The absence of a careful at-
tention to the form as well as to animation and grace of dic-
tion, has likewise contributed to expose Alexandrinian learn-
ing to the severe animadversions of posterity.
The present section would be incomplete if it were to omit
a notice of the accession yielded to general knowledge by the
epoch of the Ptolemies, both by the combined action of extern-
al relations, the foundation and proper endowment of several
large institutions (the Alexandrian Museum and two libraries
at Bruchium and Rhakotis),* and by the collegiate association
of so many learned men actuated by practical views. This
encyclopedic species of knowledge facilitated the comparison
of observations and the generalization of natural views.f The
* The libraiy m the Bruchium, which was destroyed in the burning
of the fleet under Julius Caesar, was the more ancient. The hbrary at
Rhakotis formed a part of the " Serapeum," where it was connected
with the museum. By the liberality of Antoninus, the collection of
books at Pergamus was joined to the library of Rhakotis.
t Vacherot, Histoire Critique de V Ecole d Alexandrie, 1846, t. i., p. v.
aind 103, The institute of Alexandria, like all academical corporations,
together with the good arising from the concurrence of many laborers,
and from the acquisition of material aids, exercised also some nar-
rowing and restraining influence, as we find from numerous facts fur-
nished by antiquity. Adrian appointed his tutor, Vestinus, high-priest
of Alexandria (a sort of minister presiding ov^er the management of
public worship), and at the same time head of the museum (or presi-
dent of the academy). (Letronne, Recherches pour servir a I' Histoire
de VEgypte pendant la Domination des Grecs et des Romains 18"23. p.
251.)
176 COSMOS.
great scientific institution which owes its origin to the lirsi oi
the Ptolemies long enjoyed, among other advantages, that of
being able to give a free scope to the differently directed pur-
suits of its members, and thus, although founded in a foreign
country, and surrounded by nations of different races, it could
still preserve the characteristics of the Greek acuteness of
mind and a Greek mode of thought.
A few examples must suffice, in accordance with the spirit
and form of the present work, to show how experiments and
observations, under the protecting influence of the Ptolemies,
acquired their appropriate recognition as the true sources of
knowledge regarding celestial and terrestrial phenomena, and
how, in the Alexandrian period, a felicitous generalization of
views manifested itself conjointly with a laborious accumula-
tion of knowledge. Although the difierent Greek schools of
philosophy, when transplanted to Lower Egypt, gave occasion,
by their Oriental degeneration, to many mythical hypotheses
regarding nature and natural phenomena, mathematics still
constituted the firmest foundation of the Platonic doctrines
inculcated in the Alexandrian Museum ;^ and this science
comprehended, in the advanced stages of its development, pure
mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy. In Plato's high ap-
preciation of mathematical development of thought, as well
as in Aristotle's morphological views, which embraced all or-
ganisms, we discover the germs of the subsequent advances of
physical science. They became the guiding stars which led
the human mind through the bewildering fanaticism of the
Park Ages, and prevented the utter destruction of a sound
and scientific manifestation of mental vigor.
The mathematician and astronomer, Eratosthenes of Gy-
rene, the most celebrated of the Alexandrian librarians, em-
ployed the materials at his command to compose a system of
universal geography. He freed geography from mythical le-
gends, and, although himself occupied with chronology and
history, separated geographical descriptions from that admix-
ture of historical elements with which it had previously been
not ungracefully embodied. The absence of these element*,
v/as, however, satisfactorily compensated for by the introduc
* Fries, GeschicJUe der Philosophie, bd. ii., s. 5 ; and the same au
thor's Lehrbuch der Naturlehre, th. i., s. 42. Compare, also, the con
siderations on the influence which Plato exercised on the foundation
of the experimental sciences by the application of mathematics, in
Brandis, Geschi'chfe der Grieckisch-Romischen Philosophie, th. ii., abth
i.. 8. 276.
INFLUENCE OF THE PTOLEMAIC EPOCH. 177
tion of mathematical considerations on the articulation and
expansion of continents ; by geognostic conjectures regarding
the connection of mountain chains, the action of clouds, and
the former submersion of lands, which still bear all the traces
of having constituted a dried portion of the sea's bottom. Fa-
vorable to the oceanic sluice-theory of Strabo of Lampsacus,
the Alexandrian Hbrarian was led, by the behef of the former
swelling of the Euxine, the penetration of the Dardanelles,
and the consequent opening of the Pillars of Hercules, to an
important investigation of the problem of the equal level of
the whole " external sea* surrounding all continents." An
additional proof of this philosopher's power of generalizing
views is afforded by his assertions that the whole continent
of Asia is traversed by a continually-connected mountain chain,
running from west to east in the parallel of Rhodes (in the
diaphragm of Dicaearchus).t
An animated desire to arrive at a generalization of views —
the consequence of the intellectual m.ovement of the age —
gave rise to the first Greek measurement of degrees between
Syene and Alexandria,, and this experiment may be regarded
as an attempt on the part of Eratosthenes to arrive at an ap-
proximative determination of the circumference of the Earth.
In this case, it is not the result at which he arrived from the
imperfect premises afforded by the JBe?natists which excites
our interest, but rather the attempt to rise from the narrow
limits of one circumscribed land to a knowledge of the mag-
nitude of the whole earth.
A similar tendency toward generalization may be traced in
the splendid progress made in the scientific knowledge of the
heavens in the epoch of the Ptolemies. I allude here to the
determination of the places of the fixed stars by the earliest
Alexandrian astronomers, Aristyllus and Timochares ; to Aris-
tarchus of Samos, the cotemporary of Cleanthes, who, conver-
sant with ancient Pythagorean views, ventured upon an in-
* Ou the physical and geognostical opinions of Eratosthenes, see Stra-
bo, lib. i., p. 49-56 ; lib. ii., p. 108.
t Strabo, Kb. xi., p. 519 ; Agathem, in Hudson, Geogr. Grcec. Min.,
vol. ii., p. 4. Oa the accuracy of the grand orographic views of Eratos-
thenes, see my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 104-150, 198, 208-227, 413-415 ;
t. ii., p. 367 and 414-435 ; and Examen Critique de VHist. de la GSogr.,
t. i., p. 152-154. I have purposely called the measurement of a degree
made by Eratosthenes as the first Hellenic one, since a very ancient
Chaldean determination of the magnitude of a degree in camels' paces
is not improbable. See Chasles, Recherches sur V Astronomie IndietvM
et ChaidSenne, in the Comptes Rendus de VAcad. des Sciences, t. xxiii.,
1846, p. 851.
H 2
178 COSMOS.
vestigation of the construction of the universe, and who was
the first to recoo^nize the immeasurable distance of the reofion
of fixed stars from our small planetary system ; nay, he even
conjectured the two-fold motion of the earth round its axis and
round the sun ; to Seleucus of Erythrsea (or of Babylon),^ who,
a century subsequent to this period, endeavored to establish
the hypothesis of the Samian philosopher, which, resembling
the views of Copernicus, met with but little attention during
that age ; and, lastly, to Hipparchus, the founder of scientific
astronomy, and the greatest astronomical observer of antiquity.
Hipparchus was the actual originator of astronomical tables
among the Greeks,! and was also the discoverer of the pre-
cession of the equinoxes. On comparing his own observations
of fixed stars (made at Rhodes, and not at Alexandria) with
those made by Timochares and Aristyllus, he was led, proba-
bly without the apparition of a new star,$ to this great dis-
covery, to which, indeed, the earlier Egyptians might have
attained by a long-continued observation of the heliacal rising
of Sirius.§
A peculiar characteristic of the labors.of Hipparchus is the
use he made of his observations of celestial phenomena for the
determination of geographical position. Such a connection
between the study of the earth and of the celestial regions, mu-
tually reflected on each other, animated through its uniting
influences the great idea of the Cosmos. In the new map of
the world constructed by Hipparchus, and founded upon that
of Eratosthenes, the geographical degrees of longitude and
latitude were based on lunar observations and on the measure-
ments of shadows, wherever such an application of astronom-
* The latter appellation appears to me the more correct, since Strabo,
lib. xvi., p. 739, quotes, " Seleucus of Seleucia, among several very hon-
orable men, as a Chaldean, skilled in the study of the heavenly bodies."
Seleucia, on the Tigris, a flourishing commercial city, is probably the
one meant. It is indeed singular that Strabo also speaks of a Seleucus,
an exact observer of the tides, and terms him, too, a Babylonian (lib.
i., p. 6), and subsequently (lib. iii., p. 174), perhaps from carelessness,
an Erythraean. (Compare Stobseus, Eel. Phys., p. 440.) "
t Ideler, Handbuch der Chro7iologie, bd. i., s. 212 und 329.
t Delarabre, Histoire de V Astronomie Ancienne, t. i., p. 290.
$ Bockh has entered into a discussion, in his Philolaos, s. 118, as to
whether the Pythagoreans were early acquainted, through Egyptian
sources, with the precession, under the name of the motion of the heav-
ens of the fixed stars. Letronne {Observations sur les Representations
Zodiacales qui nous restent de V Antiquiti, 1824, p. 62) and Ideler (in his
Handbuch der ChronoL, bd. i., a. 192) vindicate the exclusive claim of
Hipparchus to this discovery.
i\ii,rF,\<M: or rmo i"roi,i;MAic epoch. 179..
ical observations was admissible. AVhile the hydraulic clock
of Ctesibius, an improvement on the earlier clepsydra, must
have yielded more exact measurements of time, determinations
in space must likewise have improved in accuracy, in conse-
quence of the better modes of measuring angles, which the
Alexandrian astronomers gradually possessed, from the period
. of the ancient gnomon and the scaphe to the invention of as-
trolabes, solstitial armils, and linear dioptrics. It was thus
that man, and step by step, as it were, by the acquisition of
new organs, arrived at a more exact knowledge of the move-
ments of the planetary system. Many centuries, however,
elapsed before any advance was made toward a knowledge of
the absolute size, form, mass, and physical character of the
heavenly bodies.
Many of the astronomers of the Alexandrian Museum were
not only distinguished as geometricians, but the age of the
Ptolemies was, moreover, a most brilliant epoch in the prose-
cution of mathematical investigations. In the same century
there appeared Euclid, the creator of mathematics as a science,
ApoUonius of Perga, and Archimedes, who visited Egypt, and
was connected through Conon with the school of Alexandria.
The long period of time which leads from the so-called geo-
metrical analysis of Plato, and the three conic sections of Me-
naechmes,* to the age of Kepler and Tycho Brahe, Euler and
Clairaut, D'Alembert and Laplace, is marked by a series of
mathematical discoveries, without which the laws of the mo
tion of the heavenly bodies and their mutual relations in the
regions of space would not have been revealed to mankind.
While the telescope serves as a means of penetrating space,
and of bringing its remotest regions nearer to us, mathematics,
by inductive reasoning, have led us onward to the remotest
regions of heaven, and brought a portion of them within the
range of our possession ; nay, in our own times — so propitious
to extension of knowledge — the application of all the elements
yielded by the present condition of astronomy has even reveal-
ed to the intellectual eye a heavenly body, and assigned to it
its place, orbit, and mass, before a single telescope had been
directed toward it.f
* Ideler, on Eudoxus, s. 23.
t The planet discovered by Le Vemer.
180 COSMOS.
UNIVERSAL DOMINION OF THE ROMANS.— INFLUENCE OF A VAST PO
LITICAL UNION ON COSMICAL VIEWS.— ADVANCE OF GEOGRAPHY
BY MEANS OF INLAND TRADE.— STRABO AND PTOLEMY.-THE FIRST
ATTEMPTS TO APPLY MATPIEJMATICS TO OPTICS AND CHEMISTRY.—
PLINY'S ATTEMPTS TO GIVE A PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE UNI-
VERSE.— THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY PRODUCTIVE OF, AND FAVOR-
ABLE TO, THE FEELING OF THE UNITY OF MANKIND.
In tracing the intellectual advance of mankind and the
gradual extension of cosmical views, the period of the uni-
versal dominion of the Romans presents itself to our consider-
ation as one of the most important epochs in the history of the
world. We now, for the first time, find all the fruitful dis-
tricts which surround the basin of the Mediterranean asso-
ciated together in one great bond of political union, and even
connected wnth many vast territories in the East.
The present would seem a fitting place again to remind my
readers* that the general picture I have endeavored to draw
of the history of the contemplation of the universe acquires,
from this condition of political association, an objective unity
of presentation. Our civilization, understanding the term as
being synonymous with the intellectual development of all the
nations included in the European Continent, may be regarded
as based on that of the inhabitants of the shores of the Medi-
terranean, and more directly on that of the Greeks and Ro-
mans. That which we, perhaps too exclusively, term classical
literature, received the appellation from the fact of its being
recognized as the source of a great portion of our early knowl-
edge, and as the means by which the first impulse was aAvak-
ened in the human mind to enter upon a sphere of ideas and
feelings most intimately connected with the social and intel-
lectual elevation of the different races of men.f In these
considerations we do not by any means disregard the import-
ance of those elements which have flowed in a variety of dif-
ferent directions — ^from the Valley of the Nile, Phoenicia, the
Euphrates, and the Indus, into the great stream of Greek and
Roman civilization ; but even for these elements we are orig-
inally indebted to the Greeks and to the Romans, who were
Burrounded by Etruscans and other nations of Hellenic de-
scent. How recent is the date of any direct investigation,
interpretation, and secular classification of the great monu-
ments of more anciently civilized nations I How short is the
time that has elapsed since hieroglyphics and arrow-headed
* See ante, p. 110, 113, 117, and 141.
t VVilheliTJ vqn Hiilnboldt, tle'^er die KatoiSprache, bil. i., s. xxxvii
INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 181
chaiacters were first deciphered, and how numerous are the
armies and the caravans which, for thousands of years, have
passed and repassed without ever divining their import !
The hasin of the Mediterranean, more especially in its va
ried northern peninsulas, certainly constituted the starting
point of the intellectual and political culture of those nations
who now possess what we may hope is destined to prove an
imperishable and daily increasing treasure of scientific knowl-
edge and of creative artistic powers, and who have spread
civilization, and, with it, servitude at first, but subsequently
freedom, over another hemisphere. Happily, in our hemi-
sphere, under the favor of a propitious destiny, unity and di-
versity are gracefully blended together. The elements taken
up have been no less heterogeneous in their nature than in the
affinities and transformations eftected under the influence of
the sharply-contrasting peculiarities and individual character-
istics of the several races of men by Avhom Europe has been
peopled. Even beyond the ocean, the reflection of these con-
trasts may still be traced in the colonies and settlements which
have already become powerful free states, or which, it is hoped,
may still develop for themselves an equal amount of political
freedom.
The Roman dominion, in its monarchical form under the
Ceesars, considered according to its area,* was certainly ex-
ceeded in absolute magnitude by the Chinese empire under the
dynasty of Thsin and the Eastern Han (from thirty years be-
fore to one hundred and sixteen years after our era), by the
Mongolian empire under Genghis Khan, and by the present
area of the Russian empire in Europe and Asia ; but, with
the single exception of the Spanish monarchy — as long as it
extended over the new world — there has never been combined
under one scepter a greater number of countries favored by
climate, fertility, and position, than those comprised under the
Roman empire from Augustus to Constantino.
This empire, extending from the western extremity of Eu-
rope to the Euphrates, from Britain and part of Caledonia to
Gsetulia and the confines of the Libyan desert, manifested not
* The superBcial area of the Roman empire under Augustus is calcu-
lated by Professor Berghaus, the author of the excellent Physical Atlas,
at rather more than 400.000 geographical square miles (according to the
boundaries assumed by Heeren, in his Geschickte der Staaten des Alter'
thums., s. 403-470), or about one fourth greater than the extent of
1,600,000 square miles assigned by Gibbon, in his History of the Declvnt
and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol, i., chap, i., p. 39, but which h« m
deed gives as a very uncertain estimate.
182 COSMOS.
only the greatest diversities in the form of the ground, in
organic products and physical phenomena, but it also ex-
hibited mankind in all the various gradations from civiliza'
tion to barbarism, and in the possession of ancient knowledge
and long-practiced arts, no less than in the imperfectly-lighted
dawn of intellectual awakening. Distant expeditions were
prosecuted with various success to the north and south, to the
amber lands, and under -^Hus Gallus and Balbus, to Arabia,
and to the territory of the Garamantes. Measurements of
the whole empire were begun even under Augustus, by the
Greek geometricians Zenodoxus and Polycletus, while itinera-
ries and special topographies were prepared for the purpose of
being distributed among the different governors of the prov-
inces, as had already been done several hundred years before
in the Chinese empire.* These were the first statistical la-
bors instituted in Europe. Many of the prefectures were trav-
ersed by Roman roads, divided into miles, and Adrian even
visited his extensive dominions from the Iberian Peninsula to
Judea, Egypt, and Mauritania, in an eleven years' journey,
which was not, however, prosecuted without frequent inter-
ruptions. Thus the large portion of the earth's surface, which
was subject to the dominion of the Romans, was opened and
rendered accessible, realizing the idea of the pervius orbis with
more truth than we can attach to the prophecy in the chorus
of the Medea as regards the whole earth. t
The enjoyment of a long peace might certainly have led us
to expect that the union under one empire of extensive coun-
tries having the most varied climates, and the facility with
which the officers of state, often accompanied by a numerous
train of learned men, were able to traverse the provinces,
would have been attended, to a remarkable extent, by an ad-
vance not only in geography, but in all branches of natural
science, and by the acquisition of a more correct knowledge of
the connection existing among the phenomena of nature : yet
such high expectations were not fulfilled. In this long period
of undivided Roman empire, embracing a term of almost four
centuries, the names of Dioscorides the Cilician and Galen of
Pergamus have alone been transmitted to us as those of ob-
servers of nature. The first of these, who increased so con-
siderably the number of the described species of plants, is far
* Veget., De Re Mil., iii., 6.
t Act ii., V. 371, in the celebrated prophecy which, from the time of
the son of Columbus, was interpreted to relate to the discovei-v of
America.
r\FrJTRN<^K r,V 'J'HK ItoM.W EMPfKK. 183
inferior to the philosophically combining Theophrastes, while
the delicacy of his manner of dissecting, and the extent of his
physiological discoveries, place Galen, who extended his ob-
servations to various genera of animals, " very nearly as high
as Aristotle, and, in some respects, even above him." This
judgment embodies the views of Cuvier.*
Besides Dioscorides and Galen, our attention is called to a
third and great name — that of Ptolemy. I do not mention
him here as an astronomical systematizer or as a geographer,
but as an experimental physicist, who measured refraction,
and who may, therefore, be regarded as the founder of an im-
portant branch of optical science, although his incontestable
claim to this title has been but recently admitted.! How-
ever important were the advances made in the sphere of or-
ganic life and in the general views of comparative zootomy,
our attention is yet more forcibly arrested by those physical
experiments on the passage of a ray of light, which, preceding
the period of the Arabs by an interval of five hundred years,
mark the first step in a newly-opened course, and the earliest
indication of a striving toward the establishment of mathe-
matical physics.
The distinguished men whom we have already named as
shedding a scientific luster on the age of the imperial rulers
of Rome were all of Greek origin. The profound arithmeti-
cian and algebraist Diophantus (who was still unacquainted
with the use of symbols) belonged to a later period.:}: Amid
the difierent directions presented by intellectual cultivation in
the Roman empire, the palm of superiority remained with the
Hellenic races, as the older and more happily-organized peo-
* Cuvier, Hist, des Sciences Naturetles, t. i., p. 312-328.
t Liber Ptholemei de Opticis sive Aspectihis ; a rare manuscript of the
Royal Library at Paris (No. 7310), which I examined on the occasion of
discovering a remarkable passage on the refraction of rays in Sextus Em-
piricus {adversus Astrologos, lib. v., p. 351, Fabr.). The extracts which
I made from the Paris manuscript in 1811 (therefore before Delambre
and Venturi) will be found in the introduction to my Recueil d* Obser-
vations Astronomiques, t. i., p. Ixv.-lxx. The Greek original has not been
preserved to us, and we have only a Latin translation of two Arabic
manuscripts of Ptolemy's Optics. The name of the Latin translator
was Amiracus Eugenins, Siculus. Compare Venturi, Comment, scpra la
Storia e le Teorie delV Ottica, Bologna, 1814, p. 227 ; Delambre, Hist,
de V Astronomic Ancienne, 1817, t. i., p. 61, and t. ii., p. 410-432.
t Letronne shows, from the occurrence of the fanatical murder of
the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, that the much-contested epoch of
Diophantus can not be placed later than the year 389 (Sur V Orisrinf
Qrecqiie des Zodiaqi/es prefendns Egyptiens, 1837, p. 26).
184 COSMOS,
pie , but, after the gradual downfall of the Egypto- Alexan-
drian, school, the dimmed sparks of knowledge and of intellect-
ual investigation were scattered abroad, and it was not until
a later period that they reappeared in Greece and Asia Minor.
As is the case in all unlimited monarchies embracing a vast
extent of the most heterogeneous elements, the efforts of the
Roman government were mainly directed to avert, by miU-
tary restraint and by means of the internal rivalry existing in
their divided administration, the threatened dismemberment
of the political bond ; to conceal, by an alternation of severity
and mildness, the domestic feuds in the house of the Caesars ;
and to give to the diiierent dependencies such an amount of
peace, under the sway of noble rulers, as an unchecked and
patiently-endured despotism is able periodically to afford.
The attainment of universal sway by the Romans certainly
emanated from the greatness of the national character, and
from the continued maintenance of rigid morals, coupled with
a high sense of patriotism. When once universal empire was
attained, these noble qualities were gradually weakened and
altered under the unavoidable influence of the new relations
induced. The characteristic sensitiveness of separate individ-
uals became extinguished with the national spirit, and thus
vanished the two main supports of free institutions, publicity
and individuality. The eternal city had become the center
of too extended a sphere, and the spirit was wanting which
ought to have permanently animated so complicated a state.
Christianity became the religion of the state when the empire
was already profoundly shaken, and the beneficent effects of
the mildness of the new doctrine were frustrated by the dog-
matic dissensions awakened by party spirit. That dreary
contest of knowledge and of faith had already then begun,
which continued through so many centuries, and proved, un-
der various forms, so detrimental to intellectual investigation.
If the Roman empire, from its extent and the form of con-
stitution necessitated by its relations of size, was wholly un-
able to animate and invigorate the intellectual activity of
mankind, as had been done by the small Hellenic republics
in their partially-developed independence, it enjoyed, on the
other hand, peculiar advantages, to which we must here al-
lude. A rich treasure of ideas was accumulated as a conse-
quence of experience and numerous observations. The ob-
jective world became considerably enlarged, and was thus
prepared for that meditative consideration of natural phenom
ena which has ''characterized recent times. National inter
INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 185
course was animated by the Roman dominion, and the Latin
tongue spread over the whole West, and over a portion of
Northern Africa. In the East, Hellenism still predominated
long after the destruction of the Bactrian empire under Mith-
ridates I., and thirteen years before the irruption of the Sacae
or Scythians.
With respect to geographical extent, the Latin tongue
gained upon the Greek, even before the seat of empire had
been removed to Byzantium. The reciprocal transfusion of
these two highly-organized forms of speech, which were so
rich in literary memorials, became a means for the more com-
plete amalgamation and union of different races, while it was
likewise conducive to an increase of civilization, and to a
greater susceptibility for intellectual cultivation, tending, as
PHny says, " to humanize men and to give them one common
country."*
However much the languages of the barbarians, the dumb,
dykcoaaoL, as Pollux terms them, may have been generally
despised, there were some cases in which, according to the
examples of the Lagides, the translation of a literary work
from the Punic was undertaken in Rome by order of the
authorities ; thus, for instance, we find that Mago's treatise
on agriculture was translated at the command of the Roman
Senate.
While the empire of the Romans extended in the Old Con-
tinent as far westward as the northern shores of the Mediter-
ranean— reaching to its extremest confines at the holy prom-
ontory— its eastern limit, even under Trajan, who navigated
the Tigris, did not advance beyond the meridian of the Per-
sian Gulf. It was in this direction that the progress of the
international contact produced by inland trade, whose results
were so important with respect to geography, was most strong-
ly manifested during the period under consideration. After
the downfall of the Grseco-Bactrian empire, the reviving
power of the Arsacidee favored intercourse with the Seres, al-
though only by indirect channels, as the Romans were im-
peded by the active commercial intervention of the Parthians
* This beneficial influence of civilization, exemplified by the exteu
siou of a language iu exciting feelings of general good will, is finely
characterized in Pliny's praise of Italy: "omnium terrarum alumna
eadem et parens, numine Deiim electa, quae sparsa congregaret imperia,
ritusqae molliret, et tot populonim discordes ferasque linguas sermonia
commercio contraheret, colloquia, et humanitatem homini daret, brev-
iterque una cunctarura gentium in toto orbe patria fieret." (Plin, Hist.
Nat., iii., 5.\
186 COSMOS.
from entering into relations of direct intercourse with the in-
habitants of the interior of Asia. Movements, which ema-
nated from the remotest parts of China, produced the most
rapid, although not long-persisting changes in the political
condition of the vast territories which lie between the volcanic
celestial mountains (Thian-schan) and the chain of the Kuen-
lun in the north of Thibet. A Chinese expedition subdued
the Hiungnu, levied tribute from the small territory of Kho-
tan and Kaschgar, and carried its victorious arms as far as
the eastern shores of the Caspian. This great expedition,
which was made in the time of Vespasian and Domitian, M'^as
headed by the general Pantschab, under the Emperor Mingti,
of the dynasty of Han, and Chinese writers ascribe a grand
plan to the bold and fortunate commander, maintaining that
he designed to attack the Roman empire (Tathsin), but was
deterred by the admonitory counsel of the Persians.* Thus
there arose connections between the shores of the Dead Sea,
the Schensi, and those territories on the Oxus in which an
animated trade had been prosecuted from an early age with
the nations inhabiting the coasts of the Black Sea.
The direction in which the stream of immigration inclined
in Asia was from east to west, while in the New Continent
it was from north to south. A century and a luilf before our
era, about the time of the destruction of Corinth and Car-
thage, the first impulse to that " immigration of nations,"
which did not, however, reach the borders of Europe until
five hundred years afterward, was given, by the attack of the
Hiungnu (a Turkish race confounded by De Guignes and Jo-
hann Miiller with the Finnish Huns) on the fair-haired and
blue-eyed Yueti (Getae ?), probably of Indo-Germanic descent,!
and on the Usun, who dwelt near the wall of China. In this
manner the stream of population flowed from the upper river
* Klaprotb, Tableaux Historiques de VAsie, 1826, p. 65-67.
t To this fair-haired, blue-eyed Indo-Germanic, Gothic, or Arian race
of Eastern Asia, belong the Usun, Tingling, Hutis, and great Yueti. The
last are called by the Chinese writers a Thibetian nomadic race, who,
three hundred years before our era, migrated to the district between
the upper course of the Hoang-ho and the snowy mountains of Nan-
schan. I here recall this descent, as the Seres (Plin., vi., 22) are also
described as "rutilis comis et caeruleis oculis." (Compare Ukert,
Geogr. der Griech. tmd Rdmer, th. iii., abth. 2, 1845, s. 275.) We are
indebted for the knowledge of these fair-haired races (who, in the
most eastern part of Asia, gave the first impulse to what has been called
"the great migration of nations") to the reseai-ches of Abel Remusat
and Klaproth, which belong to the most brilliant historical discoveries
of our age.
INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 187
valleys of the Hoang-ho westward to the Don and the Danube,
and the opposite tendencies of these currents, which at first
brought the different races into antagonist conflict in the north-
ern parts of the Old Continent, ended in establishing friendly
relations of peace and commerce. It is when considered from
this point of view that great currents of migration, advancing
like oceanic currents between masses which are themselves
unmoved, become objects of cosmical importance.
In the reign of the Emperor Claudius, the embassy of Ra-
chias of Ceylon came to Rome by way of Egypt. Under
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (named An-tun by the writers of
the history of the dynasty of Han), Roman legates visited the
Chinese court, having come by sea by the route of Tunkin.
We here observe the earliest traces of the extended intercourse
of the Romans with China and India, since it is highly prob-
able that the knowledge of the Greek sphere and zodiac, as
well as that of the astrological planetary week, was not jjen-
erally diffused until the first century of our era, and that it was
then effected by means of this intercourse between the two
countries.* The great Indian mathematicians Warahamihira,
Brahmagupta, and perhaps even Aryabhatta, lived at a more
recent period than that under consideration ;t but the elements
of knowledge, either discovered by Indian' nations, frequently
in different and wholly independent directions, or existing
among these ancient civilized races from primitive ages, may
have penetrated into the West even before the time of Dio-
phantus, by means of the extended commercial relations exist-
ing between the Ptolemies and the Caesars. I will not here
attempt to determine what is due to each individual race and
epoch, my object being merely to indicate the different chan-
nels by which an interchange of ideas has been effected.
The strongest evidence of the multiplicity of means, and
the extent of the advance that had been made in general in-
tercourse, is testified by the colossal works of Strabo and Ptol-
emy. The gifted geographer of Arnasea does not possess the
numerical accuracy of Hipparchus, or the mathematical and
* See Letronne, in the Observations Critiques et Arcli^ologiqiies s^ir
les Representations Zodiacales de VAntiquite, 1824, p. 99, as well as his
later work, Sur VOrigine Grecqve des Zodiaques jpretendxis Egypii^is.
1837, p. 27.
t The sound inquirer, Colebrooke, places Warahamihira in the fifth,
Brahmagupta at the end of the sixth century, and Aryabhatta rather in
definitely between the years 200 and 400 of our era. (Compare Holtz.
mann, Ueber den Griechischen Ursprung des Indischen Thierkreises,
1841, 8. 23.)
188 COSMOS.
geographical information of Ptolemy ; but his work surpasses
all other geographical labors of antiquity by the diversity of
the subjects and the grandeur of the composition. Strabo, as
he takes pleasure in informing us, had seen with his own eyes
a considerable portion of the Roman empire, " from Armenia
to the Tyrrhenian coasts, and from the Euxine to the borders
of Ethiopia." After he had completed the historical work of
Polybius by the addition of forty-three books, he had the cour-
age, in his eighty-third year,* to begin his work on geography.
He remarks, " that in his time the empire of the Romans
and Parthian s had extended the sphere of the known world
more even than Alexander's campaigns, from which Eratos-
thenes derived so much aid." The Indian trade was no lon-
ger in the hands of the Arabs alone ; and Strabo, when in
Egypt, remarked with astonishment the increased number of
vessels passing directly from Myos Hormos to India. t In
imagination he penetrated beyond India as far as the eastern
shores of Asia. At this point, in the parallel of the Pillars of
Hercules and the island of Rhodes, where, according to his
idea, a connected mountain chain, a prolongation of the Tau-
rus, traversed the Old Continent in its greatest width, he con-
jectured the existence oi another conthie?tt between the west
of Europe and Asia. " It is very possible," he writes,^ " that
* On the reasons on which we base our assertion of the exceedingly
late commencement of Strabo's work, see Groskurd's German transla-
tion, th. i., 1831, s. xvii.
t Strabo, lib. i., p. 14 ; lib. ii., p. 118; lib. xvi., p. 781 ; lib. xvii., p.
789 and 815.
X Compare the two passages of Strabo, lib. i., p. 65, and lib. ii., p. 118
(Humboldt, Examen Critique de VHist. de la Geographie, t. i., p. 152-
i54). In tiie important new edition of Strabo, published by Gustav
Kramer, 1844, th. i., p. 100, '• the parallel of Athens is read for the par-
allel of Thinae, as if Thintu had first been named in the Pseudo-Arrian,
in the Periplus Maris Riibri." Dodvvell places the Periplus under
Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, while, according to Letronne, it
was written under Septimius Severus and Caracalla. Although five
passages in Strabo, according to all our manuscripts, have Thince, yet
lib. ii., p. 79, 86, 87, and, above all, 82, in which Eratosthenes himself
is named, prove decidedly that the reading should be the " parallel of
Athens and Rhodes." These two places were confounded, as old geog-
raphers made the peninsula of Attica extend too far toward the south.
It would also appear surprising, supposing the usual reading Qiviov
KVKTiot; to be the more correct, that a particular parallel, the Diaphragm
of DiciJiarchus, should be called after a place so little known as that of
the Sines (Tsin). However, Cosmas ludicopleustes also connects hia
Tzinitza (Thinee) with the chain of mountains which divides Persia and
the Romanic districts no loss than the whole habitable world into two
parts, subjoining the remarkable observation that this division is accord-
INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 189
m the same temperate zone, near the parallel of Thinse or
Athens, which passes through the Atlantic Ocean, besides the
world we inhabit, there may be one or more other worlds peo-
pled by beings different from ourselves." It is astonishing
that this expression did not attract the attention of Spanish
writers, who, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, be-
lieved that they every where, in classical authors, found the
traces of a knowledge of the New World.
" Since," as Strabo well observes, " in all works of art
which are designed to represent something great, the object
aimed at is not the completeness of the individual parts," his
chief desire, in his gigantic work, is pre-eminently to direct
attention to the form of the whole. This tendency toward a
generalization of ideas did not prevent him, at the same time,
from prosecuting researches wliich led to the establishment of
a large number of admirable physical results, referring more
especially to geognosy.* He entered, hke Posidonius and Po-
lybius, into the consideration of the influence of the longer or
shorter interval that occurred between each passage of the sun
across the zenith ; of the maximum of atmospheric heat un-
der the tropics and the equator ; of the various causes which
give rise to the changes experienced by the earth's surface ;
ing to the " belief of the Indian philosophers and Brahmins." Com-
pare Cosmas, in Montfaucou, Collect, nova Patrum., t. ii., p. 137 ; and
my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. xxiii., 120-129, and 194-203; t. ii., p. 413.
Cosmas and the Pseudo-Arrian, Aga theme ros, according to the learned
investigations of Professdr Franz, decidedly ascribe to the metropolis
of the Sines a high northern latitude (nearly in the parallel of Rhodes ■
and Athens) ; while Ptolemy, misled by the accounts of mariners, has
no knowledge except of a Thinae three degrees south of the equator
(Gcogr., i., 17). I conjecture that Thinas merely meant, generally, a
Chinese emporium, a harbor in the land of Tsin, and that, therefore,
one Thinae (Tzinitza) may have been designated north of the equator,
and another south of the equator.
* Strabo, lib. i., p. 49-60 ; lib. ii., p. 95 and 97 ; lib. vi., p. 277 ; lib.
xvii., p. 830. On the elevation of islands and of continents, see partic-
ularly lib. i., p. 51, 54, and 59. The old Eleat Xenophanes was led to
conclude, from the numerous fossil marine productions found at a dis-
tance from the sea, that " the present dry ground had been raised from
the bottom of the sea" (Origen, Philosophumena, cap. 4). Apuleius
collected fossils at the time of the Antonines from the Gaetulian (Mauri-
tanian) Mountains, and attributed them to the Deucalion flood, to which
he ascribed the same character of universality as the Hebrews to the
Deluge of Noah, and the Mexican Azteks to that of the Coxcox. Pro-
fessor Franz, by means of very careful investigation, has refuted the
belief entertained by Beckmann and Cuvier, that Apuleius possessed a
collection of specimens of natural history. (See Beckmann's History
9f Inventions, Bohn's Standard Library (1846), vol. i., p. 285 ; and Hist,
des Sciences Nat., t. i- p. 350 ;
190 COSiMOS.
of the breaking forth of originally closed seas ; of the general
level of the sea, which was already recognized by Archimedes ;
of oceanic currents ; of the eruption of submarine volcanoes ,
of the petrifactions of shells and the impressions of fishes ; and,
lastly, of the periodic oscillations of the earth's crust, a subject
that most especially attracts our attention, since it constitutes
the germ of modern geognosy . Strabo expressly remarks that
the altered limits of the sea and land are to be ascribed less
to small inundations than to the upheaval and depression of
the bottom, for " not only separate masses of rock and islands
of different dimensions, but entire continents, may be upheav-
ed." Strabo, like Herodotus, was an attentive observer of the
descent of nations, and of the diversities of the different races
of men, whom he singularly enough calls " land and air ani-
mals, which require much light.'.'* We find the ethnological
distinction of races most sharply defined in the Commenta-
ries of Julius Csesar, and in the noble eulogy on Agricola by
Tacitus.
Unfortunately, Strabo's great work, which was so rich in
facts, and whose cosmical views we have already alluded to,
remained almost wholly unknown in Roman antiquity until
the fifth century, and was not even then made use of by that
universal collector, Pliny. It was not until the close of the
Middle Ages that Strabo exercised any essential influence on
the direction of ideas, and even then in a less marked degree
than that of the more mathematical aniJ more tabularly con-
cise geography of Claudius Ptolemaeus, which was almost
wholly wanting in views of a truly physical character. This
latter work served as a guide to travelers as late as the six-
teenth century, while every new discovery of places was al-
ways supposed to be recognized in it under some other appel-
lation.
In the same manner as natural historians long continued
to include all recently-discovered plants and animals under
the classifying definitions of Linnseus, the earliest maps of the
New Continent appeared in the Atlas of Ptolemy, which
AgathodsBmon prepared at the same time that, in the remot-
est part of Asia among the highly-civilized Chinese, the west-
ern provinces of the empire were already marked in forty-four
divisions. t The Universal Geography of Ptolemy has indeed
the advantage of presenting us with a picture of the whole
world represented graphicaUy in outlines, and numerically in
determinations of places, according to their parallels of longi-
* Strabo, lib. xvii., p. 810. t Carl Ritter, Asien, th. v., s. 560.
INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 191
lude and latitude, and to the length of the day ; but, notwith-
standing the constant reference to the advantages of astro
nomical results over mere itinerary measurements by land and
sea, it is, unfortunately, impossible to ascertain, among these
uncertain positions (upward of 2500 of which are given), the
nature of the data on which they are based, and the relative
probability which may be ascribed to them, from the itinera-
ries then in existence.
The entire ignorance of the polarity of the magnetic needle,
and, consequently, of the use of the compass (which, twelve
centuries and a half before the time of Ptolemy, under the
Chinese Emperor Tsing-wang, had been used, together with a
ivay measurer, in the construction of the magnetic cars),
caused the most perfect of the itineraries of the Greeks and
Romans to be extremely uncertain, owing to the deficiency
of means for learning with certainty the direction or the line
which formed the angle with the meridian.*
In proportion as a better knowledge has been acquired, in
modern times, of the Indian and ancient Persian (or Zend)
languages, we are more and more astonished to find that a
great portion of the geographical nomenclature of Ptolemy
may be regarded as an historical monument of the commercial
relations existing between the West and the remotest regions
of Southern and Central Asia.t We may reckon the knowl-
edge of the complete insulation of the Caspian Sea as one of
the most important results of these relations, but it was not
* See a collection of the most striking instances of Greek and Roman
errors, regarding the directions of different mountain chains, in the in-
troduction to my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. xxxvii.-xl. Most satisfactory
investigations respecting the uncertainty of the numerical bases of Ptol-
emy's positions are to be found in a treatise of Ukert, in the Rheinische
Museum fur Philologie, Jahrg., vi., 1838, s. 314-324.
+ For examples of Zend and Sanscrit words which have been pre
served to us in Ptolemy's Geography, see Lassen, Diss, de Taproban.
Insula, p. 6, 9, and 17; Bumouf's Comment, stir le Yaqna, t. i., p,
xciii.-cxx. and clxxxi.-clxxxv. ; and my Examen Crit. de VHist. de la
G6ogr., t. i., p. 45-49. In a few cases Ptolemy gives both the Sanscrit
names and their significations, as, for the island of Java, " barley island,"
'\a6a6Lov, 6 arjuaivet KpLdfjg vfjaoq, Ptol., vii., 2 (Wilhelm von Humboldt.
Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, bd. i., s. 60-63). According to Buschmaniv
the two-stalked barley, Hordeum distichon, is still termed in the princi-
pal Indian languages (as in Hindostanee, Bengalee, and Nepaulese, and
in the Mahratta, Guzerat, and Cingalese languages), as well as in Per-
sian and Malay, yava, dschav, or dschau, and in the language of Orissa,
yaa. (Compare the Indian translation of the Bible, in the passage Joh.,
vi., 9, and. 13, and Ainslie, Materia Medica of Hindo start, Madras, 1813,
p. 217.)
192 COSMOS.
until after a period of five hundred years that the accuracy ot
the fact was re-estabUshed by Ptolemy. Herodotus and Aris-
totle entertained correct views regarding this subject, and the
latter fortunately wrote his Metem-ologica before the Asiatic
campaigns of Alexander. The Olbiopolites, from whose lips
the father of history derived his information, were well ac-
quainted with the northern shores of the Caspian Sea, between
Cuma, the Volga (Rha), and the Jaik (Ural), but there were
no indications that could lead to the supposition of its connec-
tion with the Icy Sea. Very different causes led to the de-
ception of Alexander's army, when, passing through Hecatom-
pylos (Damaghan) to the humid forests of Mazanderan, at
Zadrakarta, a little to the west of the present Asterabad, they
saw the Caspian Sea stretching northward in an apparently
boundless expanse of waters. This sight first gave rise, as
Plutarch remarks in his Life of Alexander, to the conjecture
that the sea they beheld was a bay of the Euxine.* The
Macedonian expedition, although, on the whole, extremely
favorable to the advance of geographical knowledge, neverthe-
less gave rise to some errors which long held their ground.
The Tanais was confounded with the Jaxartes (the Araxes
of Herodotus), and the Caucasus with the Paropanisus (the
Hindoo-Coosh). Ptolemy was enabled, during his residence
in Alexandria, as well as from the expeditions of the Aorsi,
whose camels brought Indian and Babylonian goods to the
Don and the Black Sea,t to obtain accurate knowledge of the
countries which immediately surrounded the Caspian (as, for
instance, Albania, Atropatene, and Hyrcania). If Ptolemy,
in contradiction to the more correct know^ledge of Herodotus,
believed that the greater diameter of the Caspian Sea inclined
from west to east, he might, perhaps, have been misled by a
vague knowledge of the former great extension of the Scythian
gulf (Karabogas), and the existence of Lake Aral, the earliest
definite notice of which we find in the work of a Byzantine
author, Menander, who wrote a continuation of Agathias.$
It is to be regretted that Ptolemy, who had arrived at so
correct a knowledge of the complete insulation of the Caspian
(after it had long been considered to be open, in accordance
with the hypothesis of four gulfs, and even according to sup-
* See my Examen Crit. de VHist. de la Giographie, t. ii., p. 147-188
t Strabo, lib. xi., p. 506.
X MeBander, De Legationibus Barbarorum ad Romanos, et Romano-
rum ad Gentes, e rec. Bekkeri et Niebuhr, 1829, p. 300, 619, 623, and
628.
INFLUENCE OF THE ICOMAN EMPIRE. 193
posed reflections of similar forms on the moon's disk),* should
not have relinquished the myth of the unknown south land
connecting Cape Prasum with Cattigara and Thinse {Sina-
7'ur)i Met?-opolis), joining, therefore, Eastern Africa with the
land of Tsin (China). This myth, which supposes the Indian
Ocean to be an inland sea, was based upon views which may
be traced from Marinus of Tyre to Hipparchus, Seleucus the
Babylonian, and even to Aristotle. f We must limit ourselves,
in these cosmical descriptions of the progress made in the con-
templation of the universe, to a few examples illustrative of
the fluctuations of knowledge, by which imperfectly-recognized
facts were so often rendered still more obscure. The more the
extension of navigation and of inland trade led to a hope that
the whole of the earth's surface might become known, the
more earnestly did the ever- wakeful imagination of the Greeks,
especially in the Alexandrian age under the Ptolemies and
under the Roman empire, strive by ingenious combinations to
fuse ancient conjectures with newly-acquired knowledge, and
thus speedily to complete the scarcely sketched map of the
earth. We have already briefly noti<i;ed that Claudius Ptole-
mseus, by his optical inquiries, which have been in part pre-
served to us by the Arabians, became the founder of one branch
of mathematical physics, which, according to Theon of Alex-
andria, had already been noticed, with reference to the refrac-
tion of rays of light, in the Catoptrica of Archimedes.f We
may esteem it as an important advance when physical phenom-
ena, instead of being simply observed and compared together
(of which we have memorable examples in Greek antiquity,
in the comprehensive pseudo-Aristotelian problems, and in
Roman antiquity in the works of Seneca), are intentionally
evoked under altered conditions, and are then measured.^
* Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunce, p. 921, 19 (compare my Examen
Crit., t. i., p. 145-191). I have myself met, among highly-informed
Persians, with a repetition of the hypothesis of Agesianax, according to
which, the marks on the moon's disk, in which Plutarch (p. 935, 4)
thought he saw " a peculiar kind of shining mountains" (volcanoes ?),
were merely the reflected images of terrestrial lands, seas, and isth-
muses. These Persians would say, for instance, '' What we see through
telescopes on the surface of the moon are the reflected images of ouv
own countr}'."
t Ptolem., lib. iv., cap. 9; lib. vii., cap. 3 and 5. Compare Letrouue,
in \he Journal de$ Savans, 1831, p. 476-480, and 545-555 ; Humboldt,
Examen Crit., t. i., p. 144. 161, and 329; t. ii., p. 370-373.
X Delambre, Hist, de V Astronomie Ancienne, t. i., p. liv. ; t. ii., p. 551,
Theon never makes any mention of Ptolemy's Optics, although he lived
fully two centuries after him.
§ It is often difficult, in reading ancient works on physics, to decide
Vol. II.— I
194 COSMOS.
This latter mode of proceeding characterizes the investiga-
tions of Ptolemy on the refraction of rays in their passage
through media of unequal density. Ptolemy caused the rays
to pass from air into water and glass, and from water into
glass, under different angles of incidence, and he finally ar-
ranged the results of these physical experiments in tables.
This measurement of a physical phenomenon called forth at
will, of a process of nature not dependent upon a movement
of the waves of light (Aristotle, assuming a movement of the
medium between the eye and the object), stands wholly iso-
lated in the period which we are now considering.* This age
presents, with respect to investigation into the elements of na
ture, only a few chemical experiments by Dioscorides, and, as
I have already elsewhere noticed, the technical art of collect-
ing fluids by the process of distillation. t Chemistry can not
be said to have begun until man learned to obtain mineral
acids, and to employ them for the solution and liberation of
substances, and it is on this account that the distillation of sea
water, described by Alexander of Aphrodisias under Caracalla,
IS so worthy of notice. It designates the path by which man
gradually arrived at a knowledge of the heterogeneous nature
of substances, their chemical composition, and their mutual
aiiinities.
The only names which we can bring forward in connection
with the study of organic nature are the anatomist Marinus ;
Rufus of Ephesus, who dissected apes, and distinguished be-
tween nerves of sensation and of motion ; and Galen of Pcr-
gamus, who eclipsed all others. The natural history o^ uii-
mals by ^lian of Prseneste, and the poem on fishes by Op-
pianus of Cilicia, contain scattered notices, but no facts based
on personal examination. It is impossible to comprehend how
the enormous multitudes of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopot-
amuses, elks, lions, tigers, panthers, crocodiles, and ostriches,
which for upward of four centuries were slain in the Roman
whether a particular result has sprung from a phenomenon purposely
called forth or accidentally observed. Where Aristotle {De Casio, iv.,
4) treats of the weight of the atmosphere, which, however, Ideler ap-
pears to deny {Meteorologia veterum GrcECorum et Romanorum, p. 23),
he says distinctly, ** an inflated bladder is heavier than an empty one."
The experiment must have been made with condensed air, if actually
tried.
* Aristot., De Anima., ii., 7 ; Biese, Die Philosophic des AristoL, bd.
ii., s. 147.
t Joannis {Philoponi) Grammatici, in libr. De Generat., and Alex-
andri Aphrodis., in Meteorol. Comment. (Venet.. 1527), p. 97, b. Com-
pare my Examen Critique, t. ii., p. 306-312
INFLUtA'CE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 19;?
circus, should have failed to advance the knowledge of com-
parative anatomy.* I have already noticed the merit of
Dioscorides in regard to the collection and study of plants,
and it only remains, therefore, to observe that his works exer-
cised the greatest influence on the botany and pharmaceutical
chemistry of the Arabs. The botanical garden of the Ro-
man physician Antonius Castor, who lived to be upward of a
hundred years of age, was perhaps laid out in imitation of the
botanical gardens of Theophrastes and Mithridates, but it did
not, in all probability, lead to any further advancement in
science than did the collection of fossil bones formed by the
Emperor Augustus, or the museum of objects and products of
nature which has been ascribed on very slight foundation to
Apuleius of Madaura.t
The representation of the contributions made by the epoch
of the Roman dominion to cosmical knowledge would be in-
complete were I to omit mentioning the great attempt made
by Caius Plinius Secundus to comprise a description of the
universe in a work consisting of thirty-seven books. In the
whole of antiquity, nothing similar had been attempted ; and
although the work grew, from the nature of the undertaking,
into a species of encyclopaedia of nature and art (the author
himself, in his dedication to Titus, not scrupling to apply to
his work the then more noble Greek expression EyKVfc^onat-
dela, or conception and popular sphere of universal knowledge),
yet it must be admitted that, notwithstanding the deficiency of
an internal connection among the different parts of which the
whole is composed, it presents the plan of a physical descrip-
tion of the universe.
The Historia Naturalis of Pliny, entitled, in the tabular
view which forms what is known as the first book, Historia
Mundi, and in a letter of his nephew to his friend Macer still
more aptly, NaturcB Hiatoria, embraces both the heavens and
the earth, the position and course of the heavenly bodies, the
meteorological processes of the atmosphere, the form of the
* The Numidiaa Metellus caused 142 elephants to be killed in the
circus. In the games which Pompey gave, 600 lions and 406 panthers
were assembled. Augustus sacrificed 3500 wild beasts in the national
festivities, and a tender husband laments that he could not celebrate
the day of his wife's death by a sanguinary gladiatorial fight at Verona,
** because contrary winds had detained in port the panthers which had
been bought in Africa !" (Plin., Episi., vi., 34.)
t See ante, p. 190. Yet Apuleius, as Cuvier remarks (Hist, des Scien-
ces Nalurelles, t. i., p. 287). was the first to describe accurately the bony
hook in the second and third stomach of the Aplysiae.
196 COSMOS.
earth's surface, and all terrestrial objects, from the vegetable
mantle with which the land is covered, and the raollusca of
the ocean, up to mankind. Man is considered, according to
the variety of his mental dispositions and his exaltation of
these spiritual gifts, in the development of the noblest crea-
tions of art. I have here enumerated the elements of a gener-
al knowledge of nature which lie scattered irregularly through-
out diflerent parts of the work. " The path on which I am
about to enter," says Pliny, with a noble self-confidence, " is
untrodden {non trita auctoribus via) ; no one among my own
countrymen, or among the Greeks, has as yet attempted to
treat of the whole of nature under its character of universal-
ity {nemo apud Grcecos qui unus omnia tractaverit). If my
undertaking should not succeed, it is, at any rate, both beau-
tiful and noble {pulclirum, atque magnificuni) to have made
the attempt."
A grand and single image floated before the mind of the
intellectual author ; but, suffering his attention to be distract-
ed by specialities, and wanting the living contemplation of na-
ture, he was unable to hold fast this image. The execution
was incomplete, not merely from a superficiality of views, and
a want of knowledge of the objects to be treated of (here we,
of course, can only judge of the portions that have come down
to us), but also from an erroneous mode of arrangement. We
discover in the author the busy and occupied man of rank,
who prided himself on his wakefulness and nocturnal labors,
but who, undoubtedly, too often confided the loose web of an
endless compilation to his ill-informed dependents, while he was
himself engaged in superintending the management of public
affairs, when holding the place of Governor of Spain, or of a
superintendent of the fleet in Lower Italy. This taste for
compilation, for the laborious collection of the separate ob-
servations and facts yielded by science as it then existed, is
by no means deserving of censure, but the want of success that
has attended Pliny's undertaking is to be ascribed to his inca-
pacity of mastering the materials accumulated, of bringing the
descriptions of nature under the control of higher and more
general views, or of keeping in sight the point of view pre-
sented by a comparative study of nature. The germs of such
nobler, not merely orographic, but truly geognostic views, were
to be met with in Eratosthenes and Strabo ; but Pliny never
made use of the works of the latter, and only on one occasion
of those of the former ; nor did Aristotle's History of Animals
teach him ^heir division into large classes based upon internal
INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 197
organization, or lead him to adopt the method of induction,
. which is the only safe means of generalizing results.
Beginning with pantheistic considerations, Pliny descends
from the celestial regions to terrestrial objects. He recognizes
the necessity of representing the forces and the glory of na-
ture {naturcB vis atque 7najestas) as a great and comprehen-
sive whole (I would here refer to the motto on the title of my
work), and at the beginning of the third book he distinguishes
between general and special geography ; but this distinction
is again soon neglected when he becomes absorbed in the dry
nomenclature of countries, mountains, and rivers. The great-
er portions of Books VIII.-XXVII., XXXIII. and XXXIV.,
XXXVI. and XXXVII., consist of categorical enumera-
tions of the three kingdoms of nature. Pliny the Younger,
in one of his letters, justly characterizes the work of his un-
cle as " learned and full of matter, no less various than Na-
ture herself {opus diffusum, eruditum, nee minus varium
qitum ipsa ')iatiird)r Many things which have been made
subjects of reproach against Pliny as needless and irrelevant
admixtures, rather appear to me deserving of praise. It has
always aflbrded me especial gratification to observe that he
refers so frequently, and with such evident partiality, to the
influence exercised by nature on the civilization and mental
development of mankind. It must, however, be admitted,
that his points of connection are seldom felicitously chosen (as,
for instance, in VII., 24-47 ; XXV., 2 ; XXVI., 1 ; XXXV.,
2 ; XXXVI., 2-4 ; XXXVIL, 1). Thus the consideration
of the nature of mineral and vegetable substances leads to the
introduction of a fragment of the history of the plastic arts,
but this brief notice has become more important, in the pres-
ent state of our knowledge, than all that we can gather re-
garding descriptive natural history from the rest of the work.
The style of Pliny evinces more spirit and animation than
true dignity, and it is seldom that his descriptions possess any
degree of pictorial distinctness. We feel that the author has
drawn his impressions from books and not from nature, how-
ever freely it may have been presented to him in the dilierent
regions of the earth which he visited. A grave and somber
tone of color pervades the whole composition, and this senti-
mental feeling is tinged with a touch of bitterness whenever
he enters upon the consideration of the conditions of man and
his destiny. On these occasions, almost as in the writings of
Cicero, although with less simplicity of diction,* the aspect of
* " Est enira aniraofum ingenior unique naiurale quoddam quasi pab
198 COSMOS.
the grand unity of nature is adduced as productive of encour-
agement and consolation to man.
The conclusion of the Historia Naturalis of Pliny — the
greatest Roman memorial transmitted to the literature of the
Middle Ages — is composed in a true spirit of cosmical descrip-
tion. It contains, in the condition in which we have possessed
it since 1831,* a brief consideration of the comparative natu-
ral history of countries in different zones, a eulogium of South-
ern Europe between the Mediterranean and the chain of the
Alps, and a description in praise of the Hesperian sky, " where
the temperate and gentle mildness of the climate had," accord-
ing to a dogma of the older Pythagoreans, " early hastened
the liberation of mankind from barbarism."
The influence of the Roman dominion as a constant element
of union and fusion required the more urgently and forcibly to
be brought forward in a history of the contemplation of the
universe, since we are able to recognize the traces of this in
fluence in its remotest consequences even at a period when
the bond of political union had become less compact, and was
even partially destroyed by the inroads of barbarians. Clau-
dian, who stands forth in the decline of literature during the
latter and more disturbed age of Theodosius the Great and
his sons, distinguished for the endowment of a revived poetic
productiveness, still sings, in too highly laudatory strains, of
the dominion of the Romans.!
Hcec est, in gremium victos qnce sola recepit,
Humannmque genus communi nomine fovit,
Matris, non domince, ritu ; civesque vocavit
Q,uos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.
Hujus pacijicis debemus moribus omnes
Quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes. ...
External means of constraint, artificially-arranged civil m-
stitutions, and long-continued servitude, might certainly tend
to unite nations by destroying the individual existence of each
one ; but the feeling of the unity and common condition of
the whole human race, and of the equal rights of all men, has
a nobler origin, and is based on the internal promptings of the
ulam consideratio contemplatioque naturae. Erigimur, elatiores fieri
videmur, humana despicimus, cogitantesque supera atque ccslestia hsec
nostra, ut exigua et minima, contemnimus." (Cic, Acad., ii., 41.)
* Plin., xxxvii., 13 (ed. Sillig., t. v., 1836, p. 320). All earlier edi-
tions closed with the words " Hispaniam qnacunque ambitur nyri.''
The conclusion of tlie work was discovered in 1831, in a Bamberg ^ w
dex, by Herr Ludwig v. Jan, professor at Schweinfurt.
t Claudian, in Secundum Consulatum Stillichonis, v. 150-155.
INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN E:MFIUE. 19^
spiiit and on the force of religious convictions. Christianity
has materially contributed to call forth this idea of the unity
of the human race, and has thus tended to exercise a favor-
able influence on the humaiiization of nations in their morals,
manners, and institutions. Although closely interwoven with
the earliest doctrines of Christianity, this idea of humanity
met with only a slow and tardy recognition ; for at the time
when the new faith was raised at Byzantium, from political
motives, to be the established religion of the state, its adher-
ents were already deeply involved in miserable party dissen-
sions, while intercourse with distant nations was impeded, and
the foundations of the empire were shaken in many directions
by external assaults. Even the personal freedom of entire
races of men long found no protection in Christian states from
ecclesiastical land-owners and corporate bodies.
Such unnatural impediments, and many others which stand
in the way of the intellectual advance of mankind and the
ennoblement of social institutions, will all gradually disappear.
The principle of individual and political freedom is implanted
in the ineradicable conviction of the equal rights of one sole
human race. Thus, as I have already remarked,* mankind
presents itself to our contemplation as one great fraternity and
as one independent unity, striving for the attainment of one
aim — the free development of moral vigor. This considera-
tion of humanity, or, rather, of the tendency toward it, which,
sometimes checked, and sometimes advancing with a rapid
and powerful progressive movement — and by no means a dis-
covery of recent times — belongs, by the generalizing influence
of its direction, most specially to that which elevates and
animates cosmical life. In delineating the g:reat epoch of the
history of the universe, which includes the dominion of the
Romans and the laws which they promulgated, together with
the beginning of Christianity, it would have been impossible
not to direct special attention to the manner in vv'hich the
religion of Christ enlarged these views of mankind, and to
the mild and long-enduring, although slowly-operating, influ-
ence which it exercised on general, intellectual, nio?-ii.l, and
Bocial development.
* See vol. i., p. 358: and compare, also, Wilhelm von HnijAoldt,
Ud>er die Katvi-Sprache, bd. i., s. xxxviii.
*•/
'^00 COSMOS.
INVASION OF THE ARABS— INTELLECTUAL APTITUDE OF THIS BRANCH
OF THE SEMITIC RACES.— INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN ELEMENTS ON
THE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN CULTURE.— THE INDIVIDUALITY
OF THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE ARABS.— TENDENCY TO A
COMMUNION WITH NATURE AND PHYSICAL FORCES.— MEDICINE AND
CHEMISTRY.— EXTENSION OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.— ASTRONOMY
AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES IN THE INTERIOR OF CONTINENTS
In the preceding sketch of the history of the physical con
templation of the universe we have already considered four
principal momenta in the gradual development of the recog-
nition of the unity of nature, viz. :
1 . The attempts made to penetrate from the basin of the
Mediterranean eastward to the Euxine and Phasis ; south-
ward to Ophir and the tropical gold lands; and westward,
through the Pillars of Hercules, into the " all-encircling
ocean."
2. The Macedonian campaign under Alexander the Great.
3. The age of the Ptolemies.
4. The universal dominion of the Romans.
We now, therefore, proceed to consider the important influ-
ence exercised on the general advancement of the physical and
mathematical sciences, first, by the admixture of the foreign
elements of Arabian culture with European civilization, and,
six or seven centuries later, by the maritime discoveries of the
Portuguese and Spaniards ; and likewise their influence on
the knowledge of the earth and the regions of space, with re-
spect to form and measurement, and to the heterogeneous
nature of matter, and the forces inherent in it. The dis-
covery and exploration of the New Continent, through the
range of its volcanic Cordilleras and its elevated plateaux,
where climates are ranged in strata, as it were, above one
another, and the development of vegetation within 120 de-
grees of latitude, undoubtedly indicates the period which has
presented, in the shortest period of time, the greatest abund-
ance of new physical observations to the human mind.
From this period, the extension of cosmical knowledge
ceased to be associated with separate and locally-defined polit-
ical occurrences. Great inventions now first emanated from
spontaneous intellectual power, and were no longer solely
excited by the influence of separate external causes. The
human mind, acting simultaneously in several directions,
created, by new combinations of thought, new organs, by
which the human eye could alike scrutinize the remote re
THE ARABS. 201
gioiis of space, and the delicate tissues of animal and vege-
table structures, which serve as the very substratum of life.
Thus the whole of the seventeenth century, whose commence-
ment was brilliantly signalized by the great discovery of the
telescope, together with the immediate results by which it was
attended — from Galileo's observation of Jupiter's satellites,
of the crescentic form of the disk of Venus, and the spots on
the sun, to the theory of gravitation discovered by Newton —
ranks as the most important epoch of a newly-created physical
astronomy. This period constitutes, therefore, from the unity
of the efforts made toward the observation of the heavenly
bodies, and in mathematical investigations, a sharply-defin-
ed section in the great process of intellectual development,
which, since then, has been characterized by an uninterrupt-
ed progress.
In more recent times, the difficulty of signalizing separate
momenta increases in proportion as human activity becomes
more variously directed, and as the new order of social and
political relations binds all the various branches of science in
one closer bond of union. In some few sciences, whose devel-
opment has been considered in the history of the physical con-
templation of the universe, as, for instance, in chemistry and
descriptive botany, individual periods may be instanced, even
in the most recent time, in which great advancement has been
rapidly made, or new views suddenly opened ; but, in the his-
tory of the contemplation of the universe, which, from its very
nature, must be limited to the consideration of those facts re-
garding separate branches of science which most directly relate
to the extension of the idea of the Cosmos considered as one
natural whole, the connection of definite epochs becomes im-
practicable, since that which we have named the process of
intellectual development presupposes an uninterrupted simul-
taneous advance in all spheres of cosmical knowledge. At
this important point of separation between the downfall of the
universal dominion of the Romans and the introduction of a
new and foreign element of civilization by means of the first
direct contact of our continent with the land of the tropics, it
appears desirable that we should throw a general glance over
the path on which we are about to enter.
The Arabs, a people of Semitic origin, partially dispelled
the barbarism which had shrouded Europe lor upward of two
hundred years after the storms by which it had been shaken,
from the aggressions of hostile nations. The Arabs lead us
back to the imperishable sour-ces of Greek philosophy ; and*
12
202 COSMOS.
besides the influence thus exercised on scientific cultivation,
they have also extended and opened new paths in the domain
of natural investigation. In our continent these disturbing
storms began under Valentinian I., when the Huns (of Finn-
ish, not Mongolian origin) penetrated beyond the Don in the
closing part of the fourth century, and subdued, first the Alani,
and subsequently, with their aid, the Ostrogoths. In the re-
mote parts of Eastern Asia, the stream of migratory nations
had already been moved in its onward course for several cen-
turies before our era. The first impulse was given, as we
have already remarked, by the attack of the Hiungnu, a
Turkish race, on the fair-haired and blue-eyed Usuni, prob-
ably of Indo-Germanic origin, who bordered on the Yueti
(Geti), and dwelt in the upper river valley of the Hoang-ho,
in the northwest of China. The devastating stream of mi-
gration directed from the great wall of China, which was
erected as a protection against the inroads of the Hiungnu (214
B.C.), flowed on through Central Asia, north of the chain of
the Celestial Mountains. These Asiatic hordes were unin-
fluenced by any religious zeal before they entered Europe, and
some writers have even attempted to show that the Moguls
were not as yet Buddhists when they advanced victoriously to
Poland and Silesia.* Wholly different relations imparted a
peculiar character to the warlike aggressions of a more southern
race — the Arabs.
Remarkable for its form, and distinguished as a detached
branch of the slightly-articulated continent of Asia, is situated
the peninsula of Arabia, between the Red Sea and the Persian
Gulf, the Euphrates and the Syro-Mediterranean Sea.t It is
the most western of the three peninsulas of Southern Asia,
* If, as has often been asserted, Charles Martel, by his victery at
Tours, protected Central Europe against the Mussulman mvasion, it can
not be maintained, with equal justice, that the retreat of the Moguls
after tt© battle of Liegnitz prevented Buddhism from penetrating to
the shores of the Elbe and the Rhine. The Mongolian battle, which
was fought in the plain of Wahlstatt, near Liegnitz, and in which Duke
Henry the Pious fell fighting bravely, took place on the 9th of April,
1241, four years after Kaptschak (Kamtschatka) and Russia became sub-
ject to the Asiatic horde, under Batu, the grandson of Genghis Khan.
T3ut the earliest introduction of Buddhism among the Mongolians took
place in the year 1247, when, in the east at Leang-tscheu, in the Chi-
nese province of Schensi, the sick Mongolian prince Godan caused the
Sakya Pandita, a Thibetian archbishop, to be sent for, in order to cure
and convert him. (Klaproth, in a MS. fragment, *' Ueber die Verbreitung
des Buddhismus im ostlichen nnd nordlichen Asien.^') The Mongolians
have never occupied themselves with the conversion of conquered na-
tions, t See vol. i., p. 291.
THE ARABS. 20?
and its vicinity to Egypt, and to a European sea-basin, gives
it signal advantages in a political no less than a commercial
point of view. In the central parts of the Arabian Peninsula
lived the tribe of the Hedschaz, a noble, and valiant race, un-
learned, but not wholly rude, imaginative, and, at the same
time, devoted to the careful observation of all the processes ol
free nature manifested in the ever-serene vault of heaven and
on the surface of the earth. This people, after having con-
tinued for thousands of years almost without contact with the
rest of the world, and advancing chiefly in nomadic hordes,
'suddenly burst forth from their former mode of life, and, ac-
quiring cultivation from the mental contact of the inhabitants
of more ancient seats of civilization, converted and subjected
to their dominion the nations dwelling between the Pillars of
Hercules and the Indus, to the point where the Bolor chain
intersects the Hindoo-Coosh. They maintained relations of
commerce as early as the middle of the ninth century simul-
taneously with the northern countries of Europe, with Mada-
gascar, Eastern Africa, India, and China ; diffused languages,
money, and Indian numerals, and founded a powerful and
long-enduring communion of lands united together by one
common religion. In these migratory advances great prov-
inces were often only temporarily occupied. The swarming
hordes, threatened by the natives, only rested for a while, ac-
cording to the poetical diction of their own historians, " like
groups of clouds which the winds ere long will scatter abroad."
No other migratory movement has presented a more striking
and instructive character ; and it would appear as if the de-
pressive influence manifested in circumscribing mental vigor,
and which was apparently inherent in. Islamism, acted less
powerfully on the nations under the dominion of the Arabs
than on Turkish races. Persecution for the sake of religion
was here, as every where, even among Christians, more the
result of an unbounded, dogmatizing despotism than the con-
sequence of any original form of belief or any religious con-
templation existing among the people. The anathemas of
the Koran are especially directed against superstition and the
worship of idols among races of Aramssic descent.*
* Hence the contrast between the tyrannical measures of Motewek-
kil, the tenth calif of the house of the Abbassides, against Jews and
Christians (Joseph von Hammer, Ueher die Ldnderverwaltung nnter dent
Chalifnte, 183.5, s. 27, 85, und 117), and the mild tolerance of wiser
rulers in Spain (Conde, Hist, de la Dominacion de los Arabcs en Espana,
t. i.. 1820. p. 67). It should also be remembered that Omar, after the
taking sf .lerusalem, tolerated every rite of Christian worship, and con-
204 COSMOS.
As the life of nations is, independently of mental culture,
determined by many external conditions of soil, climate, and
vicinity to the sea, we must here remember the great varie-
ties presented by the Arabian peninsula. Although the first
impulse toward the changes effected by the Arabs in the
three continents emanated from the Ismaelitish Hedschaz, and
owed its principal force to one sole race of herdsmen, the lit-
toral portions of the peninsula had continued for thousands of
years open to intercourse with the rest of the world. In or-
der to understand the connection and existence of great and
singular occurrences, it is necessary to ascend to the primitive *
causes by which they have been gradually prepared.
Toward the southwest, on the Erythrean Sea, lies Yemen,
the ancient seat of civilization (of Saba), the beautiful, fruit-
ful, and richly-cultivated land of the Joctanidse.* It produced
incense (the lebormh of the Hebrews, perhaps the Boswellia
thurifera of Colebrooke),t myrrh (a species of Amyris, first ac-
cluded a treaty with the patiiai'ch favorable to the Christians. {Fund'
gruben des Orietits, bd. v., s. 68.)
** It would appear from tradition that a branch of the Hebrews mi-
grated to Southern Arabia, under the name of Jokthan (Qachthan), be-
fore the time of Abraham, and there founded flourishing kingcloms.
(Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, bd. i., s. 337 und 450.)
t The tree which furnishes the Ax'abiau incense of Hadramaut, cele-
brated from the earliest times, and which is never to be found in the
island of Socotora, has not yet been discovered and determined by any
botanist, not even by the laborious investigator Ehrenberg. An article
similar to this incense is found in Eastern India, and particularly in
Buzidelcund, and is exported in considei-able quantities from Bombay
to China. This Indian incense is obtained, according to Colebrooke
(Asiatic Researches, vol. ix., p. 377), from a plant made known by Rox-
burgh, Boswellia thurifera or serrata (included in Kunth's family of Bur-
seracece). As, from the very ancient commercial connections between
the coasts of Southern Arabia and Western India (Gildemeister, Scrip-
torum Arabum Loci de Rebus Indicis, p. 35), doubts might be enter-
tained as to whether the /Itfiavof of Theophrastus (the thus of the Ro-
mans) belonged originally to the Arabian peninsula, Lassen's remark
(Indische Alterthumskunde, bd. i., s. 286), that incense is called "ya-
■wana, Javanese, i. e., Arabian," in Amara-Koscha, itself becomes vei7
important, apparently implying that this product is brought to India
from Arabia. It is called Turuschka' pindakd' sihlo (three names sig-
nifying incense) " ydwano " in Amara-Koscha. {Amarakocha, publ. par
A. Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Part i., 1839, p. 156.) Dioscorides also
distinguishes Arabian from Indian incense. Carl Ritter, in his excel-
lent monograph on the kinds of incense (Asien, bd. viii., abth. i., s.
356-372,) remarks very justly, that, from the similarity of climate, this
species of plant {Boswellia thurifera) might be diSused from India
through the south of Persia to Arabia. The American incense ( Oliba-
num Americqnum of our Pharmacopoeias) is obtained from Idea guja'
nensis, Aubl., and Jcica iacamahaca, which Bonplaiid i\m\ nivselT tVe*
THE ARABS. 205
curately described by Ehrenberg), and the so-called balsam of
Mecca (the Balsamodendron Gileadense of Kunth). These
products constituted an important branch of commerce be-
tween the contiguous tribes and the Egyptians, Persians, and
Indians, as well as the Greeks and Romans ; and it was
owing to their abundance and luxuriance that the country
acquired the designation of "Arabia Felix," which occurs as
early as in the writings of Diodorus and Strabo. In the
southeast of the peninsula, on the Persian Gulf, and opposite
the Phoenician settlements of Aradus and Tylus, lay Gerrha,
an important emporium for Indian articles of commerce.
Although the greater part of the interior of Arabia may be
termed a barren, treeless, and sandy waste, we yet meet in
Oman, between Jailan and Basna, with a whole range of
well-cultivated oases, irrigated by subterranean canals ; and
we are indebted to the meritorious activity of the traveler
Wellsted for the knowledge of three mountain chains, of which
the highest and wood-crowned summit, named Dschebel-Akh-
dar, rises six thousand feet above the level of the sea near
Maskat.* In the hilly country of Yemen, east of Loheia, and
in the littoral range of Hedschaz, in Asyr, and also to the east
of Mecca, at Tayef, there are elevated plateaux, whose perpet-
ually low temperature was known to the geographer Edrisi.t
The same diversity of mountain landscape characterizes the
peninsula of Sinai, the Copper-land of the Egyptians of the
old kingdom (before the time of the Hyksos), and the stony
valleys of Petra. I have already elsewhere spoken of the
Phoenician commercial settlements on the most northern por-
tion of the Red Sea, and of the expeditions to Ophir under
Hiram and Solomon, which started from Ezion-Geber.t Ara-
bia, and the neighboring island of Socotora (the island of Di
oscorides), inhabited by Indian colonists, participated in the
quently found growing on the vast grassy plains (llanos) of Calaboso, in
South America. Idea, like Boswellia, belongs to the family of Burse-
racecB.
The red pine (Pinus ahies, Linn.) produces the common incense of
our churches. The plant which bears myrrh, and which Bruce thought
he had seen (Ainslie, Materia Medica of Hindostan, Madras, 1813, p.
29), has been discovered by Ehrenberg near el-Gisau in Ai'abia, and
has been described by Nees von Esenbeck, from the specimens col-
lected by him, under the name oi Balsamodendron myrrha. The Balsa-
modendron Kotaf of Kunth, an Amyris of Forskaal, was long errone
ously regarded as the true myrrh-tree.
* Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, 1838, vol. i., p. 272-289.
t Jomard, Etudes Geogr. et Hist, sur V Arable, 1839, p. 14 and 32.
X See ante, p. 136.
206 COSMOS
universal tiafKc with India and the eastern coasts of Africa.
The natural products of these countries were interchanged for
those of Hadramaut and Yemen. " All they from Sheba
shall come," sings the Prophet Isaiah of the dromedaries of
Midian ; "they shall bring gold and incense."* Petra was
the emporium for the costly wares destined for Tyre and Sidon,
and the principal settlement of the Nabatsei, a people once
mighty in commerce, whose primitive seat is supposed by the
philologist Quatremere to have been situated among the Ger-
rhoean Mountains, on the Lower Euphrates. This northern
portion of Arabia maintained an active connection with other
civilized states, from its vicinity to Egypt, the diffusion of
Arabian tribes over the Syro-Palestinian boundaries and the
districts around the Euphrates, as well as by means of the
celebrated caravan track from Damascus through Emesa and
Tadmor (Palmyra) to Babylon. Mohammed himself, who
had sprung from a noble but impoverished family of the Ko-
reischite tribe, in his mercantile occupation, visited, before he
appeared as an inspired prophet and reformer, the fair at Bosra
on the Syrian frontier, that at Hadramaut, the land of incense,
and more particularly that held at Okadh, near Mecca, which
continued during twenty days, and whither poets, mostly Bed-
ouins, assembled annually, to take part in the lyric competi-
tions. I mention these individual facts referring to interna^,
tional relations of commerce, and the causes from which they
emanated, in order to give a more animated picture of the
circumstances which conduced to prepare the way for a uni-
versal change.
The spread of Arabian population toward the north reminds
us most especially of two events, which, notwithstanding the
obscurity in which their more immediate relations are shroud-
ed, testify that even thousands of years before Mohammed,
the inhabitants of the peninsula had occasionally taken part
in the great universal traffic, both toward the West and East,
in the direction of Egypt and of the Euphrates. The Semitic
or Aramaeic origin of the Hyksos, who put an end to the old
kingdom under the twelfth dynasty, tv/o thousand two hund-
red years before our era, is now alinost universally admitted
by all historians. Even Manetho says, " Some maintain that
these herdsmen were Arabians." Other authorities call them
PliQBnicians, a term which was extended in antiquity to the
inhabitants of the Valley of the Jordan, and to all Arabian
races. The acute Ewald. refers especially tc the Amalekites,
* Tfeai-sj^. c\\. Ix.. V. a.
THE ARABS. 207
who originally lived in Yemen, and then spread themselves
beyond Mecca and Medina to Canaan and Syria, appearing
in the Arabian annals as rulers over Egypt in the time of Jo-
seph* It seems extraordinary that the nomadic races of the
Hyksos should have been able to subdue the ancient powerful
and well-organized kingdom of the Egyptians. Here the more
freely-constituted nation entered into a successful contest with
another long habituated to servitude, but yet the victorious
Arabian immigrants were not then, as in more modern times,
inspired by religious enthusiasm. The Hyksos, actuated by
fear of the Assyrians (races of Arpaschschad), established their
festivals and place of arms at Avaris, on the eastern arm of
the Nile. This circumstance seems to indicate attempted ad-
vances on the part of hostile warlike bodies, and a great mi-
gration westward. A second event, which occurred probably
a thousand years later, is mentioned by Diodorus on the au-
thority of Ctesias.f Ariseus, a powerful prince of the Himy-
arites, entered into an alliance with Ninus, on the Tigris, and
after they had conjointly defeated the Babylonians, he returned
laden with rich spoils to his home in Southern Arabia.^
Although a free pastoral mode of life may be regarded as
predominating in the Hedschaz, and as constituting that of a
great and powerful majority, the cities of Medina and of Mec-
ca, with its ancient and mysterious temple holiness, the Kaa-
ba, are mentioned as important places, much frequented by
foreigners. It is probable that the complete and savage wild-
ness generated by isolation was unknown in those districts
which we term river valleys, and which were contiguous to
coasts or to caravansery tracks. Gibbon, who knew so well
how to consider the conditions of human life, draws attention
to the essential differences existing between a nomadic life in
the Arabian peninsula and that described by Herodotus and
Hippocrates, in the so-called land of the Scythians, since in
the latter region no portion of the pastoral people ever settled
* Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, bd. i., s. 300 und 450 ; Bunsen,
j^gyplen, buch iii., s. 10 und 32. The traditions of Medes and Per-
sians in Northern Africa indicate veiy ancient migrations toward the
West. They have been connected with the various versions of the
myth of Hercules, and with the Phoenician Melkarth. (Compare Sal
lust, Belliim Jugnrth., cap. 18, drawn from Panic writings by Hiempsal <
and Pliny, v. 8.) Strabo even terms the Maurusians (inhabitants of
Mauritania) "Indians who had come with Hercules."
t Diod. Sic, lib. ii., cap. 2 and 3.
X Ctesice Cnidii Operum Reliquice, ed. Baehr, Fragmenta Assyriaca,
p. 421; and Carl Muller. iu Dind'orf's edition of Herodotus (Par., 1844).
p. 13-ir^.
208 COSMOS.
in cities, while in the great Arabian peninsula the country
people still hold communion with the inhabitants of the towns,
whom they regard as of the same origin as themselves.* In
the Kirghis steppe, a portion of the plain inhabited by the
ancient Scythians (the Scoloti and Sacee), and which exceeds
in extent the area of Germany, there has never been a city
for thousands of years, and yet, at the time of my journey in
Siberia, the number of the tents ( Yurti or Kibitkes) occupied
by the three nomadic hordes exceeded 400,000, which would
give a population of 2,000,000.1 It is hardly necessary to
enter more circumstantially into the consideration of the effect
produced on mental culture by such great contrasts in the
greater or less isolation of a nomadic life, even where equal
mental qualifications are presupposed.
In the more highly-gifted race of the Arabs, natural adapt
ability for mental cultivation, the geographical relations we
have already indicated, and the ancient commercial intercourse
of the littoral districts with the highly-civilized neighboring
states, all combine to explain how the irruption into Syria and
Persia, and the subsequent possession of Egypt, were so speed-
ily able to awaken in the conquerors a love for science and a
tendency to the pursuit of independent observation. It was
ordained in the wonderful decrees by which the course of
events is regulated, that the Christian sects of Nestorians,
which exercised a very marked influence on the geographical
diffusion of knowledge, should prove of use to the Arabs even
before they advanced to the erudite and contentious city of
Alexandria, and that, protected by the armed followers of the
creed of Islam, these Nestorian doctrines of Christianity were
enabled to penetrate far into Eastern Asia. The Arabs were
first made acquainted with Greek literature through the Syr-
ians, a kindred Semitic race, who had themselves acquired a
knowledge of it only about a hundred and fifty years earlier
through the heretical Nestorians.:]: Physicians, who had been
educated in the scholastic establishments of the Greeks, and
in the celebrated school of medicine founded by the Nestorian
Christians at Edessa in Mesopotamia, were settled at Mecca
as early as Mohammed's time, and there lived on a footing of
friendly intercourse with the Prophet and Abu-Bekr.
* Gibbon, Hist, of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol
ix., chap. 50, p. 200 (Leips., 1829).
t Humboldt, Asie Centr., t. ii., p. 128. *
X Jourdain, Recherches Critiques sur VAge des Tradncticfns d' Aristots,
1819. p. 81 and 87.
THE ARABS. 209
The school of Edessa, a prototype of the Benedictine schools
of Monte Cassino and Salerno, gave the first impulse to a sci-
entific investigation of remedial agents yielded from the min-
eral and vegetable kingdoms. When these establishments
were dissolved by Christian fanaticism, under Zeno the Isau-
rian, the Nestorians were scattered over Persia, where they
soon attained to political importance, and founded at Dschon-
disapur, in Khusistan, a medical school, which was afterward
much frequented. They succeeded, toward the middle of the
seventh century, in extending their knowledge and their doc-
trines as far as China, under the Thang dynasty, 572 years
after Buddhism had penetrated thither from India.
The seeds of Western civilization, which had been scatter-
ed over Persia by learned monks and by the philosophers of
the last Platonic school at Athens, persecuted by Justinian,
had exercised a beneficial influence on the Arabs during their
first Asiatic campaigns. However faint the sparks of knowl-
edge difiiised by the Nestorian priesthood might have been,
their peculiar tendency to the investigation of medical phar-
macy could not fail to influence a race which had so lonc^
lived in the enjoyment of a free communion with nature, and
which preserved a more vivid feeling for every kind of natural
investigation than the Greek and Italian inhabitants of cities.
The cosmical importance attached to the age of the Arabs
depends in a great measure on the national characteristics
which we are here considering. The Arabs, I would again re-
mark, are to be regarded as the actual founders of physical sci-
ence, considered in the sense which we now apply to the words.
It is undoubtedly extremely difiicult to associate any abso-
lute beginning with any definite epoch of time in the history
of the mental world and of the intimately-connected elements
of thought. Individual luminous points of knowledge, and
the processes by which knowledge was gradually attained,
may be traced scattered through very early periods of time.
How great is the difference that separates Dioscorides, who
distilled mercury from cinnabar, from the Arabian chemist
Dscheber ; how widely is Ptolemy, as an optician, removed
from Alhazen ; but we must, nevertheless, date the founda-
tion of the physical sciences, and even of natural science, from
the point where new paths were first trodden by many difi^er-
ent investigators, although with unequal success. To the mere
contemplation of nature, to the observation of the phenomena
accidentally presented to the eye in the terrestrial and celes-
tial regions of space, succeeds investigation into the actual, an
210 COSMOS.
estimate by the measurement of magnitudes and the duration
of motion. The earliest epoch of such a species of natural ob-
servation, although principally limited to organic substances,
was the age of Aristotle. There remains a third and higher
stage in the progressive advancement of the knowledge of
physical phenomena, which embraces an investigation into
natural forces, and the powers by which these forces are en-
abled to act, in order to be able to bring the substances liber-
ated into new combinations. The means by which this lib-
eration is effected are experiments, by which phenomena may
be called forth at will.
The last-named stage of the process of knowledge, which
was almost wholly disregarded in antiquity, was raised by the
Arabs to a high degree of development. This people belong-
ed to a country which enjoyed, throughout its whole extent,
the climate of the region of palms, and in its greater part that
of tropical lands (the tropic of Cancer intersecting the penin-
sula in the direction of a line running from Maskat to Mecca),
and this portion of the world was therefore characterized by
the highly-developed vital force pervading vegetation, by which
an abundance of aromatic and balsamic juices was yielded to
man from various beneficial and deleterious ves^etable sub-
stances. The attention of the people must early have been
directed to the natural products of their native soil, and those
brought as articles of commerce from the accessible coasts of
Malabar, Ceylon, and Eastern Africa. In these regions of the
torrid zone, organic forms become individualized within very
limited portions of space, each one being characterized by in-
dividual products, and thus increasing the communion of men
with nature by a constant excitement toward natural observ-
ation. Hence arose the wish to distinguish carefully from one
another these precious articles of commerce, which were so
important to medicine, to manufactures, and to the pomp of
temples and palaces, and to discover the native region of each,
which was often artfully concealed from motives of avarice.
Starting from the staple emporium of Gerrha, on the Persian
Gulf, and from Yemen, the native district of incense, numer-
ous caravan tracks intersected the whole interior of the Ara-
bian peninsula to Phoenicia and Syria, and thus every where
diffused a taste for and a knowledge of the names of these
powerful natural products.
The science of medicine, which was founded by Dioscorides
in the school of J^lexandria, when considered with reference to
its scientific development, is essentially a creation of the Arabs,
THE ARABS. 211
to whom the oldest, and, at the same time, one of the richest
sources of knowledge, that of the Indian physicians, had been
early opened.* Chemical pharmacy was created by the Arabs,
while to them are likewise due the first official prescriptions
regarding the preparation and admixture of different remedial
agents — the dispensing recipes of the present day. These
were subsequently diffused over the south of Europe by the
school of Salerno. Pharmacy and Materia Medica, the first
requirements of practical medicine, led simultaneously, in two
directions, Ao the study of botany and to that of chemistry.
From its narrow sphere of utility and its limited application,
botany gradually opened a wider and freer field, comprehend-
ing investigations into the structure of organic tissues and
their connection with vital forces, and into the laws by which
vegetable forms are associated in families, and may be distin-
guished geographically according to diversities of climate and
differences of elevation above the earth's surface.
From the time of the Asiatic conquests, for the mainte-
nance of which Bagdad subsequently constituted a central point
of power and civilization, the Arabs spread themselves, in the
short space of seventy years, over Egypt, Cyrene, and Car-
thage, through the whole of Northern Asia to the far remote
western peninsula of Iberia. The inconsiderable degree of
cultivation possessed by the people and their leaders might
certainly incline us to expect every demonstration of rude bar
barism ; but the mythical account of the burning of the Alex
andrian Library by Amru, including the account of its appli-
cation, during six months, as fuel to heat 4000 bathing rooms,
rests on the sole testimony of two writers who lived 580 years
after the alleged occurrence took place. "I" We need not here
describe how, in more peaceful times, during the brilliant
epoch of Al-Mansur, Haroun Al-llaschid, Mamun, and Mota-
sem, the courts of princes, and public scientific institutions,
were enabled to draw together large numbers of the most dis
tinguished men, although without imparting a freer devclop-
* On the knowledge which the Arabs derived from the Hindoos re-
garding the Materia Medica, see Wilson's important investigations in the
Oriental Magazine of Calcutta, 1823, February and March ; and those
of Royle, in liis Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine, 1837, p. 56-
59, 64-G6, 73, and 92. Compare an account of Arabic pharmaceutical
writings, translated from Hindostanee, in Ainslie (Madras edition), p
289.
t Gibbon, vol. ix., chap, li., p. 392 ; Heeren. Gesch. des Stndimns dei
Classischen Lilteratnr, bd. i., 1797, s. 44 und 72 ; Sticy, Ahd-AUatif, p
240; Parthey, Das Alexandnnische Museum. 1S38. s. ll)().
212 COSMOS.
merit to the mental culture of the mass of the people. It is
not my object in the present work to give a characteristic
sketch of the far-extended and variously-developed literature
of the Arabs, or to distinguish the elements that spring from
the hidden depths of the organization of races, and the natu-
ral unfolding of their character, from those which are owing to
external inducements and accidental controlling causes. The
solution of this important problem belongs to another sphere ol
ideas, while our historical considerations are limited to a frag-
mentary enumeration of the various elements which have con-
tributed, in mathematical, astronomical, and physical science,
toward the diffusion of a more general contemplation of the
universe among the Arabs.
Alchemy, magic, and mystic fancies, deprived by scholastic
phraseology of all poetic charm, corrupted here, as elsewhere,
in th^ Middle Ages, the true results of inquiry ; but still the
Arabs have enlarged the views of nature, and given origin to
many new elements of knowledge, by their indefatigable and
independent labors, while, by means of careful translations into
their own tongue, they have appropriated to themselves the
fruits of the labors of earlier cultivated generations. Atten-
tion has been justly drawn to the great difference existing in
the relations of civilization between immigrating Germanic
and Arabian races.* The former became cultivated after their
immigration ; the latter brought with them from their na-
tive country not only their religion, but a highly-polished lan-
guage, and the graceful blossoms of a poetry which has not
been wholly devoid of influence on the Provencals and Minne-
smgers.
The Arabs possessed remarkable qualifications alike for ap-
propriating to themselves, and again diffusing abroad, the seeds
of knowledge and general intercourse, from the Euphrates to
the Guadalquivir, and to the south of Central Africa. They
exhibited an unparalleled mobility of character, and a tenden-
cy to amalgamate with the nations whom they conquered,
wholly at variance with the repelling spirit of the Israelitish
castes, while, at the same time, they adhered to their national
character, and the traditional recollections of their original
home, notwithstanding their constant change of abode. No
other race presents us with more striking examples of extens-
ive land journeys, undertaken by private individuals, not only
for purposes of trade, but also with the view of coUeoting iu-
* Heinrich Ritter, Gesch. der Chrlst'ichen Pkilosofhie. th. i;i., 1844,
«. 669-676.
THE ARABS. 213
formation, surpassing in these respects the travels of the Bud-'
dhist priests of Thibet and China, Marco Polo, and the Chris-
tian missionaries, who were sent on an embassy to the Mon-
golian princes. Important elements of Asiatic knowledge
reached Europe through the intimate relations existing be-
tween the Arabs and the natives of India and China (for at
the close of the seventh century, under the califate of the
Ommajades, the Arabs had already extended their conquests
to Kaschgar, Kabul, and the Punjaub).* The acute investi-
gations of Reinaud have taught us the amount of knowledge
regarding India that may be derived from Arabian sources.
The incursion of the Moguls into China certainly disturbed
the intercourse with the nations beyond the Oxus, but the
Moguls soon served to extend the international relations of the
Arabs, from the light thrown on geography by their observa-
tions and careful investigations, from the coasts of the Dead
Sea to those of Western Africa, and from the Pyrenees to
Scherif Edrisi's marsh lands of Wangarah, in the interior of
Africa.f According to the testimony of Frahn, Ptolemy's ge-
ography was translated into Arabic by order of the Calif Ma-
mun, between the years 813 and 833 ; and it is not improba-
ble that several fragments of Marinus Tyrius, which have not
come down to us, were employed in this translation.!
Of the long series of remarkable geographers presented to
us in the literature of the Arabs, it will be sufficient to name
the first and last, El-Istachri and Alhassan (Johannes Leo
Africanus).§ Geography never acquired a greater acquisition
* Reinaud, in three late writings, which show how much may still
be derived from Arabic and Persian, as well as Chinese sources ; Frag-
merits Arabes et Persans inidits relatifs a V Inde antirieurement au Xle
Steele de Vere Chr6tienne, 1845, p. xx.-xxxiii. ; Relation des Voyages
faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans V Inde et a la Chine dans le IXt
Steele de notre ere, 1845, t. i., p. xlvi. ; M6moire G6og. et Hist, sur V Inde
d'apres les ecrivains Arabes. Persans, et Chinois, anterieurement an milieu
du onzieme Siecle de Vere Chretienne, 1846, p. 6. The second of these
memoirs of the learned Oriental scholar is based on the incomplete
treatise of the Abbe Renaudot, Anciennes Relations des Indes, et de la
Chine, de deux Voyageurs Mahometans, 1718. The Arabic manuscript
contains only one notice of a voyage, that of the merchant Soleiman,
who embarked on the Persian Gulf in the year 851. To this notice is
added what Abu-Zeyd-Hassan, of Syraf, in Farsistan, who had never
traveled to India or China, had learned from other well-informed mer-
chants, t Reinaud et Fave, Du Feu Grigeois, 1845, p. 200.
X Ukert, Ueber Marinus Tyrivs und Ptolemans die Geographeii, in the
Rheinische Museum fur Philologie, 1839, s. 329-33-2 ; Gildemeister, De
Rebtis Indicis, pars 1, 1838, p. 120; Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 191.
% The " Oriental Geography of Ebn-Haukal," vvhiclj Sir Williacr.
214 COSMOS.
of facts, even from the discoveries of the Portuguese and Span-
iards. Within fifty years after the death of the Prophet, the
Arabs had already reached the extremest western coasts of
Africa and the port of Asfi. Whether the islands of the
£ruansches were visited by Arabian vessels subsequently, as I
was long disposed to conjecture, to the expedition of the so-
called Almagrurin adventurers to the Ma7'e tenebrosum, is a
question thaf has again been lately regarded as doubtful.*
The presence of a great quantity of Arabian coins, found bur-
i-^d in the lands of the Baltic, and in the extreme northern
parts of Scandinavia, is not to be ascribed to direct inter-
•^ourse with Arabian vessels in those regions, but to the wide-
ly-diffused inland trade of the Arabs. f
Geography was no longer limited to a representation of the
relations of space, and the determinations of latitude and lon-
gitude, which had been multiplied by Abul-Hassan, or to a
description of river districts and mountain chains ; but it rath-
er led the people, already familiar with nature, to an acquaint-
ance with the organic products of the soil, especially those of
the vegetable world. | The repugnance entertained by all the
Ouseley published in London in 1800, is that of Abu-Ishak el-Istachri,
and, as Frahn has shown (Ibn Fozlan, p. ix., xxii., and 256-263), is
half -1 century older than Ebn-Haukal. The maps which accompany
the " Book of Climates^^ of the year 920, and of which there is a fine
manuscript copy in the library of Gotha, have afforded me much aid in
my observations on the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Aral {Asie Centrale,
t. ii., p. 192-196). We have lately been put in possession of an edition
of IstAchri, and a German translation {Liber Climatum, ad similittidinem
Codicis Oothani delineandum, cur. J. H. Moeller, Goth., 1839 ; Das
Buch der Lander, translated from the Arabic by A. D. Mordtmanu,
Hamb., 1845).
* Compare Joaquioi Jose da Costa de Macedo, Memoria em que se
fretende provar que as Arabes nao conkecerao as Canarias antes dot
Portuguezes (Lisboa, 1844, p. 86-99, 205-227, with Humboldt, Examen
Crit. de V Hist, de la Geograpkie, t. ii., p. 137-141.
t Leopold von Ledebur, Ueber die in den Baltischen Ldndern gefun
denen Zeugnisse eines Handels-Verkehrs mit deni Orient zur Zeit der
Arabischen Weltherrschaft, 1840, s. 8 und 75.
t The determinations of longitude which Abul-Hassan All of Moroc-
co, an astronomer of the thirteenth century, has embodied in his work
on the astronomical instruments of the Arabs, are all calculated from
the first meridian of Aiiu. M. Sedillot the younger first directed tha
attention of geographers to this meridian. I have also made it an ob-
ject of careful inquiry, because Columbus, who was always guided b)
Cardinal d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, in his fantasies regarding the difference
of form between the eastern and western hemispheres, makes mention
of an Isla de Arin: "centro de el hemispherio del quel hablc Tolorvea
y qu^s debaxo la linea equinoxial entre el Sino Arabico y air-uel dv
Persia." (Compare J. J. Sedillot, Trait6 des Instrumens Astronnmitmtu
THE ARABS. 215
adherents of Islamism toward anatomical investigations im-
peded their advance in zoology. They remained contented
with that which they were able to appropriate to themselves
from translations of the works of Aristotle and Galen ;* but,
des Arabes, publ. par L. Am. Sedillot, t. i., 1834, p. 312-318 ; t. ii., 1835,
px'eiace, with Humboldt's Examen Crit. de VHist. de la Geogr., t. iii.,
p. 64, and Asie Cenirale, t. iii., p. 593-596, in which the data occur
which I derived from the Mappa Mundi of AlHacus of 1410, in the
" Alphonsine Tables^'' 1483, aud iu iSIadrignano's Itinerarium Portugal-
IcJisium, 1508. It is singular that Edrisi appears to know nothing of
Khobbet Arin (Cancadora, moi-e properly Kaukder). Sedillot the
younger (in the M^moire surles System es Giographiques des Grecs et des
Arabes, 1842, p. 20-25) places the meridian of Arin in the group of the
Azores, while the learned commentator of Abulfeda, Reiuaud {Memoire
sur VInde anterieurement au Xle siecle de Vere Chretienne d'apres les
^crivains Arabes et Persans, p. 20-24), assumes that " the word Arin
has originated by confusion from Azyn, Ozein, and Odjein, an old seat of
cultivation (according to Burnouf, Udjijayani in Malwa), the ^O^r/vj] of
Ptolemy. Tliis Ozene was supposed to be in the meridian of Lanka,
and in later times Arin was conjectured to be an island on the coast of
Zanguebar. perhaps the Eaavvov of Ptolemy." Compare, also, Am.
Sedillot, M6m. sur les Instr. Astron. des Arabes, 1841, p. 75.
* The Calif Al-Mamun caused many valuable Greek manuscripts to
be purchased in Constantinople, Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, and to be
translated direct from Greek into Arabic, in consequence of the earlier
Arabic versions having long been founded on Syrian translations (Jour-
dain, Recherches Crit. sur V Age et sur V Origine des Traductions Latines
d! Aristote, 1819, p. 85, 88, and 226). Much has thus been rescued by
the exertions of Al-Mamun, which, without the Arabs, would have
been wholly lost to us. A similar service has been rendered by Ar-
menian translations, as Neumann of Munich was the first to show. Un-
happily, a notice by the historian Guezi of Bagdad, which has been
preserved by the celebrated geographer Leo Africanus, in a memoir
entitled De Viris inter Arabes illustribus, leads to the conjecture that
at Bagdad itself many Greek originals, which were believed to be use-
less, were burned; but this passage may not, perhaps, refer to import-
ant manuscripts already translated. It is capable of several interpre
tations, as has been shown by Bernhardy {Grundriss der Griech. Litte-
ratnr, th. i., s. 489), in opposition to Heeren's Geschichte der Classischen
Litteratur, bd. i., s. 135. The Arabic translations of Aristotle have
often been found serviceable in executing Latin versions of the original,
as, for instance, the eight books of Physics, and the History of Animals;
but the larger and better part of the Latin translations have been made
direct from the Greek (Jourdaiu, Rech. Crit. sur VAge des Traductions
d^Aristote, p. 230-236). An allusion to the same two-fold source may
be recognized in the memorable letter of the Emperor Frederic H. of
Hoheustaufen, in which he recommends the translations of Aristotle
which he presents, in 1232, to his universities, and especially to that of
Bologna. This letter expresses noble sentiments, and shows that it
was not only the love of natural history which taught Frederic H. to
appreciate the philosophical value of the " Compilationes varias qufp
ab Aristotele aliisque philosophis sub Grjecis Arabicisque vocabulis an-
tiquitus editar- sunt." He writes as follows : •' We have from our earliest
216 COSMOS.
nevertheless, the zoological history of Avicemia, in the posses-
sion of the Royal Library at Paris, differs from Aristotle's
work on the same subject.* As a botanist, we must name
Ibn-Baithar of Malaga, whose travels in Greece, Persia, In-
dia, and Egypt entitle him to be regarded with admiration
for the tendency he evinced to compare together, by independ-
ent observations, the productions of different zones in the East
and Wcst.t The point from whence all these efibrts ema-
nated was the study of medicine, by which the Arabs long
ruled the Christian schools, and for the more perfect develop-
ment of which Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), a native of Aschena, near
Bokhara, Ibn-Roschd ( Averroes) of Cordova, the younger Sera-
pion of Syria, and Mesne of Maridin on the Euphrates, avail-
ed themselves of all the means yielded by the Arabian cara-
van and sea trade. I have purposely enumerated the widely-
removed birth-places of celebrated Arabian literati, since they
are calculated to remind us of the great area over which the
peculiar mental direction and the simultaneous activity of the
Arabian race extended the sphere of ideas.
The scientific knowledge of a more anciently-civilized race
— the Indians — was also drawn within this circle, when, un-
youth striven to attain to a more intimate acquaintance with science,
although the cares of government have withdrawn us from it ; we have
delighted in spending our time in the careful reading of excelle-at works,
in order that our soul might be enlightened and strengthened by exer-
cise, without which the life of man is wanting both in rule and in free-
dom (ut anima? clarius vigeat instrumentum in acquisitione scientise,
sine qua mortalium vita nou regitur liberaliter). Libros ipsos tamquam
praemium amici Caesaris gratulantur accipite, et ipsos antiquis philoso-
phorum operibus, qui vocis vestrae ministerio reviviscunt, aggregantes
in auditorio vestro." (Compare Jom-dain, p. 169-178, and Friedrich
von Raumer's excellent work Geschichie der Hohenstaufen, bd. iii.,
1841, s. 413.) The Arabs have served as a uniting link between an-
cient and modern science. If it had not been for them and their love
of translation, a great portion of that which the Greeks had either
formed themselves, or derived from other nations, would have been
lost to succeeding ages. It is when considered from this point of view
• that the subjects which have been touched upon, though apparently
merely linguistic, acquire general cosmical interest.
* Jourdain, in his Traductions d'Aristote, p. 135-138, and Schneider,
Adnot. ad Aristotelis de Animalibus Hist., lib. ix., cap. 15, speak ofMi-
chael Scot's translation of Aristotle's Historia Animalium, and of a sim-
ilar work by Avicenna (Manuscript No. 6493, in the Paris Library).
t On Ibn-Baithai", see Sprengel, Gescli. der Arzneykunde, th. ii., 1823,
s. 468 ; ' and Royle, On the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine, p. 28. We
have possessed, since 1840, a German translation of Ibn-Baithar, under
the title Grosse Zusammenstellung uber die Krdfte der bekannten ein-
fachen Heil- nnd Nahrungs-mittel., translated from the Arabic by J. v.
Soatheimer. 2 bandes.
THE ARABS. ^ 217
der the Califate of Haroun Al-Raschid, several important
works, probably those known under the half-fabulous name of
Tscharaka and Susruta,* were translated from the Sanscrit
into Arabic. Avicenna, who possessed a powerful grasp of
mind, and who has often been compared to Albertus Magnus,
affords, in his work on Materia Medica, a striking proof of the
influence thus exercised by Indian literature. He is acquaint-
ed, as the learned Royle observes, with the true Sanscrit name
of the Deodwar of the snow-crowned Himalayan Alps, which
had certainly not been visited by any Arab in the eleventh
century, and he regards this tree as an alder, a species of ju-
niper, from which oil of turpentine was extracted.! The sons
of Averroes lived at the court of the great Hohenstaufen, Fred-
eric II., who owed a portion of his knowledge of the natural
history of Indian animals and plants to his intercourse with
Arabian literati and Spanish Jews, versed in many languages. |
The Calif Abdurrahman I. himself laid out a botanical gar-
den at Cordova, § and caused rare seeds to be collected by his
own travelers in Syria and other countries of Asia. He plant-
ed, near the palace of Rissafah, the first date-tree known in
Spain, and sang its praises in a poem expressive of plaintive
longing for his native Damascus.
The most powerful influence exercised by the Arabs on
general natural physics was that directed to the advances of
* Royle, p. 35-65. Susruta, the sou of Visvamitra, is considered by
Wilson to have been a cotemporary of Rama. We have a Sanscrit edi-
tion of his work (The Sus'ruta, or System of Medicine taught by Dhati'
wantari, and composed by his disciple Sus'ruta, ed. by Sri Madhusfidana
Gupta, vol. i., ii., Calcutta, 1835, 1836), and a Latin translation, Sus'7-u-
tas. dyurvedas. Id est Medicince Systema a venerabili D'havantare demon-
stratum, a Susruta discipulo compositum. Nuiic pr. ex Sanskrita in Lat-
iuum sermonem vertit Franc. Hessler, Erlangae, 1844, 1847, 2 vols.
t Avicenna speaks of the Deiudur (Deodar), of the genus 'abJiel (Ju-'
niperus) ; and also of an Indian pine, which gives a peculiar milk, syr
deiudar (fluid turpentine).
X Spanish Jews from Cordova transmitted the opinions of Avicenna
to Montpellier, and principally contributed to the establishment of its
celebrated medical school, which was framed according to Arabian
models, and belongs to the twelfth century. (Cuvier, Hist, des Sciences
Naturelles, t. i., p. 387.)
$ Respecting the gardens of the palace of Rj^safah, which was built
by Abdurrahman Ibn-Moavvijeh, see History o/ the Mohammedan Dy-
nasties in Spain extracted from Ahmed Ibn-Mohammed Al-Makkari, by
Pascual de Gayangos, vol. i., 1840, p. 209-211. " En su Huerta planto
el Rey Abdurrahman una palma que era entonces (756) unica, y de
ella procedierou todas las que huy en Espana. La vista del arbol acren-
taba mas que templaba su melancolia." (Antonio Coude, Hist, de la
Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana. t. i., p. 169.)
Vol. II.— K
218 , COSMOS.
chemistry, a science for which this race created a new era
It must be admitted that alchemistic and new Platonic fan-
cies were as much blended with chemistry as astrology with
astronomy. The requirements of pharmacy, and the equally
urgent demands of the technical arts, led to discoveries which
were promoted, sometimes designedly, and sometimes by a
happy accident depending upon alchemistical investigation
into the study of metallurgy. The labors of Geber, or rather
Djaber (Abu-Mussah-Dschafar-al-Kufi), and the much more
recent ones of Razes (Abu-Bekr Arrasi), have been attended
by the most important results. This period is characterized
by the preparation of sulphuric and nitric acids,* aqua regia,
preparations of mercury, and of the oxyds of other metals, and
by the knowledge of the alcoholic process of fermentation.!
The first scientific foundation, and the subsequent advances of
chemistry, are so much the more important, as they imparted
a knowledge of the heterogeneous character of matter, and
the nature of forces not made manifest by motion, but which
now led to the recognition of the importance of comjjosition,
no less than to that of the perfectibility of form assumed in
accordance with the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato. Dif-
ferences of form and of composition are, however, the elements
of all our knowledge of matter — the abstractions which we
believe capable, by means of measurement and analysis, of
enabling us to comprehend the whole universe.
It is difficult, at present, to decide what the Arabian chem-
ists may have acquired through their acquaintance with In-
dian literature (the writings on the Rasayana) ,% from the
* Tlie preparation of nitric acid and aqua regia by Djaber (more
properly Abu-Mussah-Dschafar) dates back more than tive hundred
years before Albertus Magnus and Raymond Lully, and almost seven
hundred years before the Erfurt monk, Basilius Valentiiius. The dis-
covery of these decomposing (dissolving) acids, which constitutes an
epoch in the history of science, was, however, long ascribed to the three
last-named experimentalists.
t For the rules given by Razes for the vinous fermentation of amylum
and sugar, and for the distillation of alcohol, see Hofer, Hist, de la
Chimie, t. i., p. 325. Although Alexander of Aphrodisias {Joannis
Philoponi Grammatici, in libr. de Generatione et Interitu Comm., Venet.,
1527, p. 97), properly speaking, only gives a circumstantial descrijitiou
of distillation from sea water, he also draws attention to the fact that
wine may likewise be distilled. This statement is the more remark-
able, because Aristotle (Meteorol., ii., 3, p. 358, Bekker) had advanced
the erroneous opinion that in natural evaporation fresh water only rose
from wine, as from the salt water of the sea,
t The chemistry of the Indians, embracing alchemistic arts, is called
rasayana (t-asa. juice or fluid, also quicksilver ; and dyana. course or
THE ARABS. 219
ancient technical arts of the Egyptians ; the new alchemistic
precepts of the pseudo-Democritus and the Sophist Synesius ;
or even from Chinese sources, through the agency of the
Moguls. According to the recent and very careful investiga-
tions of a celebrated Oriental scholar, M. Reinaud, the inven-
tion of gunpowder,* and its application to the discharge of
hollow projectiles, must not be ascribed to the Arabs. Has-
san Al-Rammah, who wrote between 1285 and 1295, was not
acquainted with this application ; while, even in the twelfth
century, and, therefore, nearly two hundred years before Ber-
thold Schwarz, a species of gunpowder was used to blast the
rock in the Rammelsberg, in the Harz Mountains. The in-
vention of an air thermometer is also ascribed to Avicenna
from a notice by Sanctorius, but this notice is very obscure,
and six centuries passed before Galileo, Cornelius Drebbel, and
the Academia del Chnento, by the establishment of an exact
lUeasurer of heat, created an important means for penetrating
into a Avorld of unknown phenomena, and comprehending the
cosmical connection of effects in the atmosphere, the super-
imposed strata of the ocean, and the interior of the earth, thus
revealing phenomena whose regularity and periodicity excite
our astonishment. Among the advances which science owes
to the Arabs, it will be sufficient to mention Alhazen's work
on Refraction, partly borrowed, perhaps, from Ptolemy's Op-
tics, and the knowledge and first application of the pendulum
as a means of measuring time, due to the great astronomer
Ebn-Junis t
process), and forms, according to Wilson, the seventh division of the
dyur- Veda-, the " science of life, or of the prolongation of life." (Royle,
Hindoo Medicine, p. 39-48.) The Indians have been acquainted from
the earliest times (Royle, p. 131) with the application of mordants in
calico or cotton printing, an Egyptian art, which is most clearly de-
scribed in Pliny, lib. xxxv., cap. 11, No. 150. The word " chemistry^^
indicates literally " Egyptian art," the art of the black laud ; for Plu-
tarch {De hide et Osir., cap. 33) knew that the Egyptians called their
country XijfiLa, from the black earth. The inscription on the Rosetta
stone has Chmi. I find this word, as applied to the analytic art, first in
the decrees of Diocletian against " the old writings of the Egyptians
which treat of the ';^77/im' of gold and silver" (Trepi xw^o.^ dpyvpov Kal
Xpvaov). Compare my Examen Crit. de V Hist, de la GSographie et de
V Astronomie Nantique, t. ii., p. 314.
** Reinaud et Fave, Du Feu Gregeois, des Feux de Gverre et des OH-
gines de la Poudre a Canon, t. i., 184.5, p. 89, 97, 201, and 211 ; Piobert
Trait6 d'Artillerie, 1836, p. 25 ; Beckmaun, Tecknologie, s. 342.
t Laplace, Precis de VHist. de l^ Astronomie, 1821, p. GO; and Am.
S6dillot, Mimoire sur les Instrnmens Astr. des Arabes, 1?41, p. 44.
Thomas Young {Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical
220 coSiMOs.
Although the purity and rarely-disturbed transparency of
the sky of Arabia must have especially directed the attention
Arts, 1807, vol. i., p. 191) does not either doubt that Ebn-Junis, at the
end of the tenth century, applied the pendulum to the measurement of
time, but he ascribes the first combination of the pendulum with wheel
work to Sanctorius, in 1612, therefore fortj^-four years before Huygens.
With reference to the very elaborately constructed clock included in
the presents which Haroun Al-Raschid, or, rather, the Calif Abdallah,
sent, two hundred years earlier, from Persia to Chai'lemagne at Aix-la-
Chapelle, Eginhard distinctly says that it was moved by water (Horo-
fogium ex aurichalco arte mechanica mirifice compositum, in quo duo-
decim horarum cursus ad clepsidram vertebatur) ; Einhardi Annales,
in Pertz's Monumenta Germanice Historica, Scriptorum, t. i., 1826, p.
195. Compare H. Mutius, De Germanornm Origine, Gestis, &c.
Chronic, lib. viii., p. 57, in Pistorii Germanicorum Scriptorum, t. ii.,
Francof., 1584 ; Bouquet, Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, t. v., p.
333 and 354. The hours were indicated by the sound of the fall of
small balls, and by the coming forth of small horsemen from as many
opening doors. The manner in which the water acted in such clocks
may indeed have been very different among the Chaldeans, who
" weighed time" (determining it by the weight of fluids), and in the
clepsydras of the Greeks and the Indians ; for the hydraulic clock-work
of Ctesibius, under Ptolemy Euergetes II., which marked the (civil)
hours throughout the year at Alexandria, was never known, according
to Ideler, under the common denomination of K?ieipv6pa. (Ideler's
Handbuch der Chronologic, 1825, bd. i., s. 231.) According to the de-
scription of Vitruvius (lib. ix., cap. 4), it was an actual astronomical
clock, a " horologiura ex aqua," a very complicated " machina hydrau-
lica," working by toothed wheels (versatilis tympani denticuli jequales
alius alium impellentes). It is therefore not improbable that the Arabs,
who were acquainted with the improved mechanical constructions in
use under the Roman empire, may have succeeded in constructing an
hydraulic clock with wheel-work (tympana quae nonnulli rotas appel-
lant, Grseci autam TTEphoxo- Vitruvius, x., 4). Leibnitz {Annales Im-
perii Occidentis Brunsvicenses, ed. Pertz, t. i., 1843, p. 247) expresses
his admiration of the construction of the clock of Haroun Al-Raschid
{Abd-Allatif, trad, par Silvestre de Sacy, p. 578). The piece of mech-
anism which the sultan sent from Egypt, in 1232, to the Emperor Fred-
eric II., seems, however, to have been much more remarkable. It was
a large tent, in which the sun and moon were moved by mechanism,
and made to rise and set, and show the hours of the day and night at
correct intervals of time. In the Annales Godefridi Monachi S. Panta-
leonis apud Coloniam Agrippinam, it is said to have been a " tentorium,
in quo imagines solis et lunae artificialiter mota? cursum suum certis et
debitis spaciis peragratit, et horas diei et noctis infallibiliter indicant."
{Frekeri Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores, t. i., Argentor., 1717, p. 398.)
The monk Godefridus, or whoever else may have written the annals
of those years in the chronicle composed for the convent of St. Panta-
leon at Cologne, which was probably the work of many different authors
(see Bohmer, Pontes Rerum Germanicarum, bd. ii., 1845, s. xxxiv.-
xxxvii.), lived in the time of the great Emperor Frederic II. himself.
The emperor caused this curious work, the value of which was esti-
mated at 20,000 marks, to be preserved at Venusium, with other treas-
ures. (Fried, von Raumer, Gescli. der Hohenstaufen, bd. iii., S' 430.)
THE ARABS. 221
of the people, in their early uncultivated condition, to the
motions of the stars, as we learn from the fact that the stellar
worship of Jupiter, practiced under the Lachmites by the race
of the Asedites, included Mercury, which, from its proximity
to the sun, is less frequently visible, it would nevertheless
appear that the remarkable scientific activity manifested by
the Arabs in all branches of practical astronomy is to be
ascribed less to native than to Chaldean and Indian influ-
ences. Atmospheric conditions merely favored that which
had been called forth by mental qualifications, and by the
contact of highly-gifted races with more civilized neighboring
nations. How many rainless portions of tropical America, as
Cumana, Core, and Payta, enjoy a still more transparent at
raiosphere than Egypt, Arabia, and Bokhara I A tropical sky,
and the eternal clearness of the heavens, radiant in stars and
nebulous spots, undoubtedly every where exercise an influence
on the mind, but they can only lead to thought, and to the
solution of mathematical propositions, where other internal
and external incitements, independent of climatic relations,
aflect the national character, and where the requirements of
religious and agricultural pursuits make the exact division of
time a necessity prompted by social conditions. Among cal
culating commercial nations (as the Phoenicians) ; among
constructive nations, partial to architecture and the measure-
ment of land (as the Chaldseans and Egyptians), empirical
rules of arithmetic and geometry were early discovered ; but
these are merely capable of preparing the way for the estab-
lishment of mathematical and astronomical science. It is
only in the later phases of civilization that the established
regularity of the changes in the heavens is known to be re-
flected, as it were, in terrestrial phenomena, and that, in ac-
cordance with the words of our great poet, we seek the " fixed
pole." The conviction entertained in all climates of the regu-
larity of the planetary movements has contributed more than
any thing else to lead man to seek similar laws of order in the
moving atmosphere, in the oscillations of the ocean, in the
That a movement like that of the vault of heaven shoiilJ have been
given to the whole tent, as has often been asserted, appears to me very-
improbable. In the Chronica Monasterii Hirsaugiensis, edited by
Trithemius, we find scarcely any thing beyond a mere repetition of
the passage in the Annales Godefridi, without any information regard-
ing the mechanical construction. {Joh. Trithemii Opera Historica,
Part ii., Francof., 1601, p. 180.) Reinaud says that the movement was
imparted " par des ressorts caches." {Extraits des Historiens Arabo.\
relatifs aux Gnerres des Croisades, 1809, p. 43.5.)
222 COSMOS.
periodic course of the magnetic needle, and in the distribution
of organisms over the earth's surface.
The Arabs were in possession of planetary tables* as early
as the close of the eighth century. We have already observed
that the Sus7'uta, the ancient incorporation of all the medical
knowledge of the Indians, was translated by learned men be-
longing to the court of the Calif Haroun Al-Raschid — a proof
of the early introduction of Sanscrit literature. The Arabian
mathematician Albiruni even went to India for the purpose
of studying astronomy. His writings, which have only recent-
ly been made accessible to us, prove how intimately he had
made himself acquainted with the country, traditions, and
comprehensive knowledge of the Indians. t
However much the Arabian astronomers may have owed to
the earlier civilized nations, and especially to the Indian and
Alexandrian schools, they have, nevertheless, considerably ex-
tended the domain of astronomy by their own practical en-
dowments of mind ; by the number and direction of their ob-
servations ; the improvement of their instruments for angular
measurement ; and their zealous efforts to rectify the older ta-
bles by a comparison with the heavens. In the seventh book
of the Almagest of Abul-Wefa, Sedillot found a notice of the
important inequality in the moon's longitude, which disappears
at the syzygies and quadratures, attains its maximum at the
octants, and has long been regarded, under the name oi varia-
tion, as the discovery of Tycho Brahe.J The observations of
* On the Indian tables which Alphazari and Alkoresmi translated
into Arabic, see Chasles, Recherches sur V Astronomie Indienne, in the
Compies Rendus des Stances de VAcad. des Sciences, t. xxiii., 1846, p.
846-850. The substitution of the sine for the arc, which is usually
ascribed to Albategnius, in the beginning of the tenth century, also
belongs originally to the Indians; tables of sines are to be found in the
Surya-Siddhanta.
t Reinaud, Fragments Arales relatifs a Vlnde, p. xii.-xvii., 96-126,
and especially 135-160. Albiruni's proper name was Abul-Ryhan.
He was a native of Byrun, in the Valley of the Indus, and a friend of
Avicenua, with whom he lived at the Arabian academy which had
been formed in Charezm. His stay in India, and the composition of
his history of that country ( TaHkhi-Hind), of which Reinaud has made
known the most remarkable fragments, belong to the years 1030-1032.
X Sedillot, MaUriaitx pour servir a V Histoire comparie des Sciences
Mathematiques chez les Grecs et les Orientattx, t. i., p. 50-89 ; also in
the Comptes Rendus de VAcad. des Sciences, t. ii., 1836, p. 202; t. xvii.,
1843, p. 163-173 ; t. xx., 1845, p. 1308. In opposition to this opinion,
Biot maintains that the fine discovery of Tycho Brahe by no means
belongs to Abul-Wefa, and that the latter was acquainted, not with the
" variation," but only with the second part of the ** evection." {Journal
Ebn-Junis in Cairo have become extremely important with
reference to the perturbations and secular changes of the orbits
of the two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn.* The meas-
urement of a degree, which the Calif Al-Mamun caused to be
made in the great plain of Sindschar, between Tadmor and
Rakka, by observers whose names have been transmitted to
us by Ebn-Junis, has proved less iknportant in its results than
by the evidence which it affords of the scientific culture of the
-Arabian race.
We must regard among the results yielded by the reflection
of this culture, in the West, the astronomical congress held
at Toledo, in Christian Spain, under Alfonso of Castile, in
which the Rabbin Isaac Ebn Sid Hazan played an import-
ant part ; and in the far East, the obser^'^atory founded by
Ilschan Holagu, the grandson of the great conqueror Genghis
Khan, on a hill near Meraghar, and supplied with many in-
struments. It was here that Nassir Eddin, of Tus, in Kho-
rassan, made his observations. These individual facts deserve
to be noticed in a history of the contemplation of the universe,
since they tend vividly to remind us of how much the Arabs
have effected in difiusing knowledge over vast tracts of terri-
tory, and in accumulating those numerical data which contrib-
uted, in a great degree, during the important period of Kepler
and Tycho, to lay the foundation of theoretical astronomy,
and of correct views of the movements of the heavenly bodies.
The spark kindled in those parts of Asia which were peopled
by Tartars spread, in the fifteenth century, westward to Sa-
marcand, where Ulugh Beig, of the race of Timour, establish-
ed, besides an observatory, a gymnasium after the manner of
the Alexandrian Museum, and caused a catalogue of stars to
be drawn up, which was based on wholly ncAV and independent
observations.!
Besides making laudatory mention of that which we owe
to the natural science of the Arabs in both the terrestrial and
celestial spheres, we must likewise allude to their contribu-
tions in separate paths of intellectual development to the gen-
des Savant, 1843, p. 513-532, 609-626, 719-737 ; 1845, p. 146-166 ; and
Comptes Rendus, t. xx., 1845, p. 1319-1323.)
* Laplace, Expos, du Systeme du Monde, note 5, p. 407.
t On the observatoty of Meragba, see Delambre, Histoire de V Astro-
nomie du Moyen Age, p. 198-203 : and Am. Sedillot, M^m. sur les In-
strumens Arabes, 1841, p. 201-205, where the gnomon is described with
a circular opening. On the peculiarities of the star catalogue of Ulugh
Beisr, see J. J. Sedillot, Traiti des Instrumeiis Astronomiques des Arabea,
18Ji4, p. 4
224 COSMOS.
eral mass of mathematical science. According to the most
recent works which have appeared in England, France, and
Germany* on the history of mathematics, we learn that " the
algebra of the Arabs originated from an Indian and a Greek
source, which long flowed independently of one another." Tlie
Compendium of Algebra which the Arabian mathematician
Mohammed Ben-Musa (the Chorowazneir), framed by com
mand of the Calif Al-Mamun, was not based on Diophantus,
but on Indian science, as has been shown by my lamented and
too-early deceased friend, the learned Friedrich Rosen ;t and
it would even appear that Indian astronomers had been called
to the brilliant court of the Abbassides as early as the close
of the eighth century, under Almansur. Diophantus was, ac
cording to Castri and Colebrooke, first translated into Arabic
by Abul- Wefa Buzjani, toward the close of the tenth century.
The process of establishing a conclusion by a progressive ad
vance from one proposition to another, which seems to have
been unknown to the ancient Indian algebraists, was acquired
by the Arabs from the Alexandrian school. This noble in-
heritance, enriched by their additions, passed in the twelfth
century, through Johannes Hispalensis and Gerhard of Cre-
mona, into the European literature of the Middle Ages.i " In
the algebraic works of the Indians, we find the general solu-
tion of indeterminate equations of the first degree, and a far
more elaborate mode of treating those of the second, than has
been transmitted to us in the writings of the Alexandrian phi-
losophers ; there is, therefore, no doubt, that if the works of the
Indians had reached us two hundred years earlier, and were
not now first made known to Europeans, they might have
acted very beneficially in favoring the development of modem
analysis."
The same (channels and the same relations which led the
* Cole'orooke, Algebra with ArithmefAc and ATenstiraiio7i, from the
Sanscrit of Brahmagupta and Bhascara, Loud., 1817. Chasles, Apercit
Historique sur VOrigine et le Developpement des Methodes en G6ometrie,
1837, p. 416-502 ; Nesselmanu, Versuch einer kritischen Geschichte der
Algebra, th. i., s. 30-61, 273-276, 302-306.
t Algebra of Mohammed Ben-Musa, edited and translated by F. Rosen,
1831, p. viii.,72, and 196-199. The mathematical knowledge of India
was extended to Cliina about the year 720 ; but this was at a period
when many Ai'abians were akeady settled in Canton and other Chi
nese cities. Reinaud, Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes dam
VInde et a la Chine, t. i., p. cix. ; t. ii., p. 36.
X Chasles, Histoire de VAlgebre, in the Comptes Rendus, t. xiii., 1841,
p. 497-.')24. 601-626. Compare, also, Libri, in the same volume, p.
THE ARABS. 225
Arabs to a knowledge of Indian algebra^ enabled them also to
obtain, in the ninth century, Indian numerals from Per&ia and
the shores of the Euphrates. Persians were established at
that period as revenue collectors on the Indus, and the use of
Indian numerals was gradually transmitted to the revenue
officers of the Arabs in Northern Africa, opposite the shores
of Sicily. Nevertheless, the important historical investiga-
tions of the distinguished mathematician Chasles* have ren-
dered it more than probable, according to his correct interpre-
tation of the so-called Pythagorean table in the Geometry of
Boethius, that the Christians in the West were familiar with
Indian numerals even earlier than the Arabs, and that thev
were acquainted with the use of nine figures or characters,
according to their position value, under the name of the system
of the abacus.
The present is not a fitting place to enter more fully into
the consideration of this subject, which I have already treated
, of in two papers (written in 1819 and 1829), and presented to
the Academic des InscHptions at Paris, and the Academy of
Sciences at Berlin ;t but, in our attempts to solve a historical
* Chasles, Apcrcu Histortque des Methodes en Geometrie, 1837, p.
464-472 ; also iu the Comptes Rendus de VAcad. des Sciences, t. viii.,
1839. p. 78; t. ix., 1839, p. 449 ; t. xvi., 1843, p. 156-173, and 218-246;
t. xvii., 1843, p. 143-154.
t Humboldt, Ueber die hei versckiedenen Vdlhern ublichen Systeme von
Zahlezeichen tind fiber den Ur sprung des Stellemoerthes in den Indischen
ZaJtlen, in CrelVs Journal fur die reine und angewandte Mathematik, bd.
iv. (1829), s. 205-231. Compare, also, my Examen Crit. de VHist. de
la Geographic, t. iv., p. 275. The simple enumeration of the different
methods which nations, to whom the Indian arithmetic by position was
unknown, employed for expressing the multiplier of the fundamental
groups, furnishes, in my opinion, an explanation of the gradual rise or
origin of the Indian system. If we express the number 3568, either
perpendicularly or horizontally, by means of " indicators," correspond-
ing to the different divisions of the abacus (thus, M^C^X^P), we shall
easily perceive that the group-signs (MCXI) might be omitted. But
our Indian numbers are, however, nothing more than these indicators
— the multipliers of the different groups. We are also reminded of this
designation by indicators by the ancient Asiatic Suanpan (the reckon-
ing machine which the Moguls introduced into Russia), which has suc-
cessive rows of strings, to represent thousands, hundreds, tens, and
units. These strings would bear in the numerical example just cited,
3, 5, 6, and 8 balls. In the Suanpan there is no apparent group-sign ;
the group-signs are the positions themselves; and these positions (strings)
are occupied by units (3, 5, 6, and 8) as multipliers or indicators. In
both ways, whether by the figurative (the written) or by the palpable
arithmetic, we arrive at the value of position and at the simple use of
nine numbers. If a string be without any ball, the place wiU be left
blank iu writing If a group (a member of the progression) be want
K 2
226 ' COSMOS.
problem, concerning which much yet remains to be elucida-
ted, the question arises, whether position-value — the ingenious
ing, the vacuum is graphically filled by the symbol of a vacuum {sunya,
sifron, tzuphra). In the " Method of Euiocius,'' I find in the group of
the myriads the first trace of the exponential or indicational system of
the Greeks, which was so influential in the East: M", M^, M^, desig-
nate 10,000, 20,000, 30,000. That which is here alone applied to the
myriads, passes among the Chinese and the Japanese, who derived
their knowledge from the Chinese two hundred years before the Chris-
tian era, through all the multiples of the groups. In the Gobar, the
Arabian "dust-writing" (discovered by my deceased friend and teacher
Silvestre de Sacy, in a manuscript in the libraiy of the old Abbey of
St. Germain des Prcs), the group-signs are points — therefore zeros or
ciphers ; for in India, Thibet, and Persia, zeros and points are identical.
In the Gobar, 3 • is written for 30 ; 4 • • for 400 ; and G •*• for GOOO. The
Indian numbers, and the knowledge of the value of position, must be
more modern than the separation of the Indians and the Arians ; for the
Zend nation only used the far less convenient Pehlwi numbers. The
conjecture of the successive improvements that have been made in the
Indian notation appears to me to be supported by the Tamul system,
which expresses units by nine characters, and all other values by group-
signs for 10, 100, and 1000, with multipliers added to the left. The
singular apc6/j.ol '1v6ikoI, in a scholium of the monk Neophytos, discov-
ered by Pi'of. Brandis in the library of Paris, and kindly communicated
to me for publication, appear to corroborate the opinion of such a grad-
ual process of improvement. The nine characters of Neophytos are,
with the exception of the 4, quite similar to the present Persian; but
the value of these nine units is raised to 10, 100, 1000 fold by writing
o o
one, two, or three ciphers or zero-signs above them ; as 2 for 20, 2 4
oo oo
for 24, 5 for 500, and 3 6 for 306. If we suppose points to be used
instead of zeros, we have the Arabic dust-writing, Gobar. As my
brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt, has often remarked of the Sanscrit,
that it is very inappropriately designated by the terms "Indian" and
"ancient Indian" language, since there are in the Indian peninsula
several very ancient languages not at all derived from the Sanscrit, so
the expression Indian or ancient Indian arithmetical charactei's is also
very vague, and this vagueness applies both to the form of the charac-
ters and to the spirit of the methods, which sometimes consist in mere
juxtaposition, sometimes in the employment of coefficients and indica-
tors, and sometimes in the actual value of position. Even the existence
of the cipher or zero is, as the scholium of Neophytos shows, not a
necessary condition of the simple position-value in Indian numerical
characters. The Indians who speak the Tamul language have arith-
metical symbols which diifer from their alphabetical characters, and of
which the 2 and the 8 have a faint resemblance to the 2 and tlie 5 of
the Devanagari figures (Rob. Anderson, Rudiments of Tamul Grammar,
1821, p. 135) ; and yet an accurate comparison proves that the Tamul
arithmetical characters are derived from the Tamul alphabetical writing.
According to Carey, the Cingalese are still more different from tho
Devanagari characters. In the Cingalese and in the Tamul, there is
no position-value or zero-sign, but symbols for the groups of tens, hund-
reds, and thousands. The Cingalese work, like the Romans, by juxta
position, the Tamuls by coefficients. Ptolemy uses the present zero
TMK Al!M:S. 227
application of position — which occurs in the Tuscan abacus,
and in the Suampan of Inner Asia, has been tvv^ice independ-
ently invented, in the East under the Ptolemies, and in the
West ? or whether the system of position-value may not have
been transferred by the direction of universal traffic from the
Indian w^estern peninsula to Alexandria, and subsequently
have been given out amid the renewed dreams of the Pytha-
goreans as an invention of the founder of their sect ? The
bare possibility of ancient and wholly unknown combinations
anterior to the sixtieth Olympiad is scarcely worthy of notice.
Wherefore should a feeling of similar requirements not have
severally given rise, among highly-gifted nations of difierent
origin, to combinations of the same ideas ? •
While the algebra of the Arabs, by means of that which
they had acquired from the Greeks and Indians, combined
with the portions due to their own invention, acted so bene-
ficially on the brilliant epoch of the Italian mathematicians
of the Middle Ages, notwithstanding a great deficiency in
symbolical designations, we likewise owe to the same people
the merit of having furthered the use of the Indian numerical
system from Bagdad to Cordova by their writings and their
extended commercial relations. Both these effects — the si-
multaneous diffusion of the knowledge of the science of num-
bers and of numerical symbols with value by position — have
variously, but powerfully, favored the advance of the mathe-
matical portion of natural science, and facilitated access to the
more abstruse departments of astronomy, optics, physical geog-
raphy, and the theories of heat and magnetism, which, with-
out such aids, would have remained unopened.
The question has often been asked, in the history of nations,
v/hat would have been the course of events if Carthage had
conquered Rome and subdued the West ? " We may ask
with equal justice," as Wilhelm von Humboldt* observes,
" what would be the condition of our civilization at the pres-
ent day if the Arabs had remained, as they long did, the sole
possessors of scientific knowledge, and had spread themselves
permanently over the West ? A less favorable result would
sign to i-epresent the descending negative scale for degrees and minutes
both in his Ahnagest and in his Geography. The zero-sign was conse-
quently in use in the West much earlier than the epoch of the invasion
of the Arabs. (See my work above cited, and the memoir printed in
Crell's Mathematical Journal, p. 215, 219, 223, and 227.)
* Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber 4ie Kawi-Sprache, bd. i., s. cclxii.
Compare, also, the excellent desciiption of the Arabs in Herder's Ideen
zur Gesch. d-er Maischeit, book xix., 4 and 5.
228 COSMOS.
probably have supervened in both cases. It is to the same
causes which procured for the Romans a dominion over the
world — the Pwoman spirit and character — and not to external
and merely adventitious chances, that we owe the influence
exercised by the Romans on our civil institutions, our laws,
languages, and culture. It was owing to this beneficial in-
fluence, and to the intimate alliance of races, that we were
rendered susceptible to the influence of the Greek mind and
language, while the Arabs directed their consideration princi-
pally only to those scientific results of Greek investigation
which referred to the description of nature, and to physical,
astronomical, and purely mathematical science." The Arabs,
by carefully preserving the purity of their native tongue, and
the delicacy of their figurative modes of expression, were en-
abled to impart the charm of poetic coloring to the expression
of feeling and of the noble axioms of wisdom ; but, to judge
from what they were under the Abbassides, had they built on
the same foundation with which we find them familiar, it is
scarcely probable that they could have produced those works
of exalted poetic and creative art, which, fused together in one
harmonious accord, are the glorious fruits of the mature season
of our European culture.
PERIOD OF OCEANIC DISCOVERIES.-OPENING OF THE WESTERN HEM-
ISPHERE.—EXTENSION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, AND THOSE
EVENTS WHICH LED TO OCEANIC DISCOVERIES— COLUMBUS, SE-
BASTIAN CABOT, AND GAMA— AMERICA AND THE PACIFIC— CABRIL-
LO, SEBASTIAN VIZCAINO, MENDANA, AND QUIROS.— THE RICHEST
ABUNDANCE OF MATERIALS FOR THE FOUNDATION OF PHYSICAL GE-
OGRAPHY IS PRESENTED TO THE NATIONS OF WESTERN EUROPE.
The fifteenth century belongs to those remarkable epochs
in which all the efforts of the mind indicate one determined
and general character, and one unchanging striving toward
the same goal. The unity of this tendency, and the results
by which it was crowned, combined with the activity of whole
races, give to the age of Columbus, Sebastian Cabot, and
Gama, a character both of grandeur and enduring splendor.
In the midst of two different stages of human culture, the
fifteenth century may be regarded as a period of transition,
which belongs both to the Middle Ages and to the beginning
of more recent times. It is the age of the greatest discover-
ies in space, embracing almost all degrees of latitude and all
elevations of the earth's surface While this period douliled
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 229
the number of the works of creation known to the inhabitants
of Europe, it Ukewise offered to the intellect new and powerful
incitements toward the improvement of natural sciences, in
the departments of physics and mathematics.*
The world of objects now, as in Alexander's campaigns,
although with still more overwhelming power, manifested
itself to the combining mind in nidividual forms of nature, and
in the concurrent action of vital forces. The scattered images
of sensuous perception were gradually fused together into one
concrete whole, notwithstanding their abundance and divers-
ity, and terrestrial nature was conceived in its general char-
acter, and made an object of direct observation, and not of
vague presentiments, floating in varying forms before the im-
agination. The vault of heaven revealed to the eye, which
was as yet unaided by telescopic powers, new regions, unknown
constellations, and separate revolving nebulous masses. At
no other period, as we have already remarked, were a greater
abundance of facts, and a richer mass of materials for the es-
tablishment of comparative physical geography, presented to
any one portion of the human race. At no other period have
discoveries in the material world of space called forth more
extraordinary changes in the manners and well-being of men,
and in the long-enduring condition of slavery of a portion of
the human race, and their late awakening to political freedom ;
nor has any other age afforded so large an extension to the
field of view by the multiplication of products and objects of
barter, and by the establishment of colonies of a magnitude
hitherto unknown.
On investigating the course of the history of the universe,
we shall discover that the germ of those events which have
imparted any strongly-marked progressive movement to the
human mind may be traced deeply rooted in the track of pre-
ceding ages. It does not lie in the destinies of mankind that
all should equally experience mental obscuration. A princi-
ple of preservation fosters the eternal vital process of advanc-
ing reason. The age of Columbus attained the object of its
destination so rapidly because a track of fruitful germs had
already been cast abroad by a number of highly-gifted men,
who formed, as it were, a lengthened beam of light amid the
darkness of the Middle Ages, One single century — the thir-
teenth— shows us Roger Bacon, Nicolaus Scotus, Albertus
Magnus, and Vincentius of Beauvais. The mental activity.
* Compare Humboldt, Examen Cril. de VHist. de la Giografhic, t
i., p. viii. and xix.
230 COSMOS.
once awakened, was soon followed by an extension of geo-
graphical knowledge. When Diego Ribero returned, in the
year 1525, from the geographical and astronomical congress
which had been held at the Puente de Caya, near Yelves, for
the purpose of settling the contentions that had arisen regard-
ing the boundaries of the two empires of the Portuguese and
the Spaniards, the outlines of the new continent had been
already laid down from Terra del Fuego to the coasts of Lab-
rador. On the western side of America, opposite to Asia, the
advance was, of course, less rapid, although Rodriguez Cabrillo
had penetrated further northward than Monterey as early as
1543 ; and notwithstanding that this great and daring mar-
iner met his death in the Canal of Santa Barbara, in New
California, the pilot, Bartholomeus Ferreto, conducted the ex-
pedition to the 43d degree of latitude, where Vancouver's
Cape Oxford is situated. The emulous enterprise of the
Spaniards, English, and Portuguese, directed to one and the
same object, was then so great, that fifty years sufficed to de-
termine the external configuration or the general direction of
the coasts of the countries in the Western hemisphere.
Although the acquaintance of the nations of Europe with
the western part of the earth is the main subject of our con-
sideration in this section, and that around which the numer-
ous relations of a more correct and a grander view of the
universe are grouped, we must yet draw a strong line of sepa-
ration between the undoubted first discovery ol" America, in
its northern portions, by the Northmen, and its subsequent
rediscovery in its tropical regions. While the Califate still
flourished under the Abbassides at Bagdad, and Persia was
under the dominion of the Samanides, whose age was so fa-
vorable to poetry, America was discovered in the year 1000
by Leif, the son of Eric the Red, by the northern route, and
as far as 41^ 30' north latitude. =* The first, although acci-
dental, incitement toward this event emanated from Norway.
Toward the close of the ninth century, Naddod was driven by
* Parts of America were seen, although no landing wai made on
them, fourteen years before Leif Erickssou, in the voyage which Bjaine
Herjulfsson undertook from Greenland to the southward in 986. Leif
first saw the land at the island of Nantucket, 1° south of Boston ; then
in Nova Scotia ; and, lastly, in Newfoundland, which was subsequent-
ly called " Litla Hellulaud," but never " Vinland." The gulf, which
divides Newfoundland from the mouth of the great river St. Lawrence,
was called by the Northmen, who had settled in Iceland and Green-
land, Markland's Gulf. See Caroli Christiani Raj'n Anliquitatcs Ame.r-
icance, 1845, p. 4, 421, 423, and 463.
OCEANIC DISCOVEHfRSi. 231
etorms to Iceland while attempting to reach the Faroe Islands,
which had already been visited by the Irish. The first settle-
ment of the Northmen was made in 875 by Ingolf. Green-
land, the eastern peninsula of a land which appears to be
every where separated by the sea from America proper, was
early seen,* although it was first peopled from Iceland a hund-
red years later (983). The colonization of Iceland, which
Naddod first called Snow-land, SnjolancL was carried through
Greenland in a southwestern direction to the New Continent.
The Faroe Islands and Iceland must be considered as in-
termediate stations and starting points for attempts made to
reach Scandinavian America. In a similar manner, the set-
tlement at Carthage served the Tyrians in their efforts to
reach the Straits of Gadeira and the port of Tartessus ; and
thus, too, Tartessus, in its turn, led this enterprising people
from station to station on to Cerne, the Gauleon (Ship Island)
of the Carthaginians.f
Notwithstanding the proximity of the opposite shores of
Labrador {Hellula7id it niikla), one hundred and twenty-five
years elapsed from the first settlement of the Northmen in
Iceland to Leif 's great discovery of America. So small were
the means possessed by a noble, enterprising, but not wealthy
race for furthering navigation in these remote and dreary re-
gions of the earth. The littoral tracts of Vinland, so called
by the German Tyrker from the wild grapes which were
found there, delighted its discoverers by the fruitfulness of the
soil and the mildness of its climate when compared with Ice-
land and Greenland. This tract, which was named by Leif
the " Good Vinland" ( Vinland it goda), comprised the coast
line between Boston and New York, and consequently parts
of the present states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Con-
necticut, between the parallels of latitude of Civita Vecchia
and Terracina, which, however, correspond there only to mean
annual temperatures of 47 ^'8 and 52^' 1.$ This was the prin-
* Gumibjorn was wrecked, iu 876 or 877, on the rocks subsequently
called by his name, which were lately rediscovered by Captain Graah.
Gunnbjoin saw the east coast of Greenland, but did not land upon it.
(Rafn, Antiquit. Amer., p. 11, 93, and 304.)
t See an^e, p. 132.
X These mean annual temperatures of the eastern coast of America,
under the parallels of 42° 25' and 41^ 15', correspond in Europe to the
latitudes of Berlin and Paris, places which are situated 8^ or 10° more
to the north. Besides, the decrease of mean annual temperature from
lower to higher latitudes is here so rapid, that, in the interval of latitude
between Boston and Philadelphia, which is 2^^ 41', an increase of one
232 COSMOS.
cipal settlement of the Northmen. The colonists had olitrii
to contend with a very warlike race of Esquimaux, who then
extended further to the south under the name of the Skralin-
ger. The first Bishop of Greenland, Eric Upsi, an Icelander,
undertook, in 1121, a Christian mission to Vinland ; and the
name of the colonized country has even heen discovered in old
national songs of the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands.*
The activity and bold spirit of enterprise manifested by the
Greenland and Icelandic adventurers are proved by the cir-
cumstance that, after they had established settlements south
of 41° 30' north latitude, they erected three boundary pillars
on the eastern shores of Baffin's Bay, at the latitude of 72°
55', on one of the Woman's Islands,! northwest of the present
most northern Danish colony of Upernavick. The Runic in-
scriptions, which were discovered in the autumn of the year
1824, contain, according to Rask and Finn Magnusen, the
date 1135. From this eastern coast of Baffin's Bay, more
than six hundred years before the bold expeditions of Parry
and Ross, the colonists very regularly visited Lancaster Sound
and a part of Barrow's Straits for the purpose of fishing. The
locality of the fishing ground is very definitely described, and
Greenland priests, from the Bishopric of Gardar, conducted
the first voyage of discovery (1266). This northwestern sum-
mer station was called the Kroksfjardar Heath. Mention is
even made of the drift-wood (undoubtedly from Siberia) col-
lected there, and of the abundance of whales, seals, walruses,
and sea bears. $
degree of latitude corresponds to a decrease ia the mean annual tem-
perature of almost 3^.6, while, according to my researches, on the sys-
tem of isothermal lines in Europe, the same decrease of temperature
scarcely amounts to half a degree for the same interval. (Asie Centrale,
t. iii., p. 227.)
* See Carmen FcBroicum in quo Vinlandice mentiojit. (Rafn, Anti-
quit. Amer., p. 320-332.)
t The Runic stone was placed on the highest point of the island of
Kingiktorsoak " on the Saturday before the day of victory," i. e., before
the 21st of April, a great heathen festival of the ancient Scandinavians,
which, at their conversion to Christianity, was changed into a Christian
festival. (Rafn, Antiquit. Amer., p. 347-355.) On the doubts which
Brynjulfsen, Mohnike, and Klaproth express respecting the Runic nurn-
bers, see my Ex amen Crit., t. ii., p. 97-101 ; yet, from other indications,
Brynjulfsen and Graah are led to regard the important monument on
the Woman's Islands (as well as the Runic inscriptions found at Igalik-
ko and Egegeil, lat. 60° 51' and 60° 0', and the ruins of buildings near
Upernavik, lat. 72° 50') as belonging undoubtedly to the eleventh and
twelfth centuries.
% Rafn, Antiquit. Amer., p. 20, 274, and 415-418 (Wilhelmi, Ueher Isl
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 233
Certain accounts of the intercourse maintained between the
extreme north of Europe, or between Greenland and Iceland
with the American Continent, properly so called, do not ex-
tend beyond the fourteenth century. In the year 1347, a
ship was sent from Greenland to Markland (Nova Scotia) to
collect building timber and other necessary articles. On the
return voyage the ship encountered heavy storms, and was
obliged to take refuge at Straumfjord in the west of Iceland.
These are the latest accounts preserved to us by ancient Scan-
dinavian authorities of the visits of Northmen to America.^
We have hitherto kept strictly on historical ground. By
means of the critical and highly praiseworthy efforts of Chris-
tian Rafii, and of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquities
at Copenhagen, the sagas and narratives of the voyages of the
Northmen to Helluland (Newfoundland), to Markland (the
mouth of the St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia), and to Vinland
(Massachusetts), have been separately printed, accompanied
and, Hvitramannaland, Greenland, und Vinland, s. 117-121). Accord-
ing to a very ancieut saga, the most uorthern part of the east coast of
Greenland was also visited in 1194, under the name of Svalbard, at a
part which corresponds to Scoresby's Land, near the point 73° 16',
where ray friend Col., then Capt. Sabine, made his pendulum observ-
ations, and where there is a very dreary cape bearing my name. (Rafn,
Antiquit. Amer., p. 303, and Apercu de V AncienJie Geographie dcs R6
gions Arctiques de VAmerique, 1847, p. 6.)
* Wilhelmi, op. cit., s. 226; Rafn, Antiquit. Amer., p. 264 and 4.53.
The settlements on the west coast of Greenland, which, until the mid-
dle of the fourteenth century, were in a very flourishing condition, fell
gradually to decay, from the ruinous operation of commercial monopo-
lies, from the attacks of Esquimaux (Skralinger), the "black death,"
which, according to Hecker, depopulated the north during the yeai's
1347 to 1351, and from the invasion of a hostile fleet, regarding whose
course nothing is known. At the present day no faith is any longer at-
tached to the meteorological myth of a sudden alteration of climate,
and of the formation of a hairier of ice, which was immediately follow-
ed by the entire separation from their mother country of the colonies
established in Greenland. As these colonies were only on the more
temperate district of the west coast of Gi'eenland, it can not be possible
that a bishop of Skalholt, in 1540, should have seen " shepherds feed-
ing their flocks" on the east coast of Greenland, beyond the icy wall.
The accumulation of masses of ice on the east coast opposite to Iceland
depends on the configuration of the land, the neighborhood of a chain
of mountains having glaciers and running parallel to the coast line, and
on the direction of the oceanic current. This state of things can not be
solely referred to the close of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fif
teeuth century. As Sir John Barrow has very justly shown, it has been
subject to many accidental alterations, particularly in the years 1815-
1817. (See Barrow, Voyages of Discovery within the Arctic Regions,
1846, p. 2-6.) Pope Nicholas V. appointed a bishop for Greenland aa
late as 1448.
234 COSMOS.
by able commentaries.* The length of the voyage, the direc-
tion of its course, and the times of the rising and setting of the
sun, are all minutely detailed.
Less certainty appertains to the traces which have been
supposed to be found of a discovery of America before the year
1000 by the Irish. The Skralinger related to the Northmen
settled in Vinland, that further southward, beyond the Ches-
apeake Bay, there dwelt " vv^hite men, who clothed themselves
in long white garments, carried before them poles to which
cloths were attached, and called with a loud voice." This
account was interpreted by the Christian Northmen to indi-
cate processions, in which banners were borne accompanied
by singing. In the oldest sagas, the historical narrations of
Thorfinn Karlsefne, and the Icelandic Landnama book, these
southern coasts, lying between Virginia and Florida, are des-
ignated under the name of the Land of the White Men.
They are expressly called Great Ireland {Irlatid it mikla),
and it is maintained that they were peopled by the Irish.
According to testimonies which extend to 1064, before Leif
discovered Vinland, and probably about the year 982, Ari
Marsson, of the powerful Icelandic race of Ulf the squint-
eyed, was driven in a voyage from Iceland to the south by
storms on the coasts of the Land of the White Men, and there
baptized in the Christian faith ; and, not being allowed to de-
part, was recognized by men from the Orkney Islands and Ice-
land.!
An opinion has been advanced by some northern antiqua-
rians that, as in the oldest Icelandic documents the first in-
habitants of the island are called " West Men, who had come
across the sea" (emigrants settled in Papyli on the southeast
coast, and on the neighboring small island of Papar), Iceland
was not at first peopled directly from Europe, but from Vir-
ginia and Carolina (Great Ireland, the American White Men's
Land), by Irishmen who had earlier emigrated to America.
* The main sources of iuformation are the historic narrations of Eric
the Red, Thorfinn Karlsefne, and Snorre Thorbrandsson, probably writ-
ten in Greenland itself as early as the twelfth century, and partly by
descendants of settlers born in Vinland (Rafn, Antiquit. Amer., p. vii.,
xiv., and xvi.). The care with which genealogical tables were kept was
80 great, that that of Thorfinn Karlsefne, whose son, Snorre Thor-
brandsson, was bom in America, has been brought down from 1007 to
1811.
t Hvitramannaland, the Land of the White Men. Compare the
original sources of information, in Rafn, Antiquit. Amer., p. 203-206,
211, 446-451; and Wilhelmi, Ueher Island, Hvitramannaland, &c.. 8
75-81.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 235
The important work, De Mensura Orbis Terra, composed
by the Irish monk Dicuil about the year 825, and, therefore,
thirty-eight years before the Northmen acquired their knowl-
edge of Iceland from Naddod, does not, however, confirm this
opinion.
Christian anchorites in the north of Europe, and pious
Buddhist monks in the interior of Asia, explored and opened
to civilization regions that had previously been inaccessible.
The eager striving to diffuse religious opinions has sometimes
paved the way for warlike expeditions, and sometimes for the
introduction of peaceful ideas and the establishment of rela-
tions of commerce. Religious zeal, which so strongly charac-
terizes the doctrines promulgated in the systems of India,
Palestine, and Arabia, and which is so widely opposed to the
mdifference of the ancient polytheistic Greeks and Romans,
was the means of furthering the advance of geographical
knowledge in the earlier portions of the Middle Ages. Le-
tronne, the commentator on Dicuil, has shown much ingenu-
ity in his attempts to prove that after the Irish missionaries
had been driven from the Faroe Islands by the Northmen,
they began, about the year 795, to visit Iceland. The North-
men, when they first reached Iceland, found Irish books, mass
bells, and other objects, which had been left by the earlier
settlers, called Papar. These Pajjce, fathers, are the Clerici
of Dicuil.* If, as his testimony would lead us to conclude,
these objects had belonged to Irish monks, who had come
from the Faroe Islands, the question naturally arises, why
these monks [Papar) should be termed in the native sagas
Westmen (Vestmenn), who had " come from the West across
the sea? [Komniir til vcstan utii haf)y The deepest ob-
scurity still shrouds every thing connected with the voyage
of the Gaelic chief Madoc, son of Owen Guineth, to a great
western land in the year 1170, and the connection of this
event with the Great Ireland of the Icelandic Saga. In like
manner, the race of Celto-Americans, whom credulous trav-
elers have professed to discover in many parts of the United
States, have also disappeared since the establishment of an earn-
est and scientific ethnology, based, not on accidental similari-
ties of sounds, but on grammatical forms and organic structure.!
* Letroune, Recherches Giogr. et Crit. sur le Livre " de Mensura Or-
bis Terrce,^^ compose eu Iilaude, par Dicuil, 1814, p. 129-146. Com-
pare my Examen Crit. de V Hist, de la Geogr., t. ii., p. 87-91.
+ The statements which have been advanced from the time of Raleijih,
of natives of Vii'ginia speaking pure Celtic; of the supposition of tlio
236 COSMOS.
That this first discovery of America in or before the elev-
snth century should not have produced the imporiant and
Gaelic salutation, hao, hui, iach, having been heard there; of Owen
Chapelain, in 1669, saving himself from the hands of the Tuscaroras,
who were about to scalp him, " because he addressed them in his na-
tive Gaelic," have all been appended to the ninth book of my travels
(Relation Historiqtie, t. iii., 1825, p. 159). These Tuscaroras of North
Carolina are now, however, distinctly recognized by linguistic iuyesti
gations as an Iroquois tribe. See Albert Gallatin on Indian Tribes, in
\.h.e ArckcEologia Americana, vol. ii. (1836), p. 23 and 57. An extensive
catalogue of Tuscarora words is given by Catlin, one of the most admi-
rable observers of manners who ever lived among the aborigines of
America. He, however, is inclined to regard the rather fair, and often
blue-eyed nation of the Tuscaroras as a mixed people, descended from
the ancient Welsh, and from the original inhabitants of the American
continent. See his Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Con-
ditions of the North American Indians, 1841, vol. i., p. 207 ; vol. ii., p.
259 and 262-265. Another catalogue of Tuscarora words is to be found
in my brother's manuscript notes respecting languages, in the Royal
Library at Berlin. " As the structure of American idioms appeal's re-
markably strange to nations speaking the modern languages of Western
Europe, and who readily suffer themselves to be led away by some
accidental analogies of sound, theologians have generally believed that
they could trace an affinity with Hebrew, Spanish colonists with the
Basque, and the English or French settlers with Gaelic, Erse, or the
Bas Breton. I one day met on the coast of Peru a Spanish naval officer
and an English whaling captain, the former of whom declared that he
had heard Basque spoken at Tahiti, and the other Gaelic, or Erse, at
the Sandwich Islands." — Humboldt, Voyage anx Regions Equinoctiales,
Relat. Hist., t. iii., 1825, p. 160.
Although no connection of language has yet been proved, I by no
means wish to deny that the Basques and the people of Celtic origin
inhabiting Ireland and Wales, who were early engaged in fisheries on
the most remote coasts, may have been the constant rivals of the Scan-
dinavians in the northern parts of the Atlantic, and even that the Irish
preceded the Scandinavians in the Faro(3 Islands and in Iceland. It is
much to be desired that, in our days, when a sound and severe spirit
of criticism, devoid of a character of contempt, prevails, the old inves-
tigations of Powel and Richard Hakluyt ( Voyages and Navigations, vol.
iii., p. 4) might be resumed in England and in Ireland. Is the state-
ment based on fact, that the wanderings of Madoc were celebrated in
the poems of the Welsh bard Meredith, fifteen years before Columbus's
discovery? I do not participate in the rejecting spirit which has, but
too often, thrown popular traditions into obscurity, but I am, on the
contrary, firmly persuaded that, by greater diligence and perseverance,
many of the historical problems which relate to the maritime expedi-
tions of the early part of the Middle Ages; to the striking identity in
religious traditions, manner of dividing time, and works of art in Amer-
ica and Eastern Asia; to the migrations of the Mexican nations; to the
ancient centers of dawning civilization in Aztlan, Quivira, and Upper
Louisiana, as well as in the elevated plateaux of Cundinaniarca and
Peru, will one day be cleared up by discoveries of facts with whicij
we have hitherto been entirely unacquainted. See my E.zamen Crit
de VHi.tt. de la G6ogr. du Nouveaii Continent, t. ii., p. 142-149
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 237
pern/anent results yielded to the physical contemplation of
the universe by the rediscovery of the same continent by Co-
lumbus at the close of the fifteenth century, was the necessary
consequence of the uncivilized condition of the people, and the
nature of the countries to which the early discoveries were
limited. The Scandinavians were wholly unprepared, by pre-
vious scientific knowledge, for exploring the countries in which
they settled, beyond what was absolutely necessary for the sat-
isfaction of their immediate wants. Greenland and Iceland,
which must be regarded as the actual mother countries of the
new colonies, were regions in which man had to contend with
all the hardships of an inhospitable climate. The wonderful-
ly organized free state of Iceland, nevertheless, maintained its
independence for three centuries and a half, until civil free-
dom was annihilated, and the country became subject to Hako
VI., king of Norway. The flower of Icelandic hterature, its
historical records, and the collection of the Sagas and Eddas,
appertain to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
It is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of the culti-
vation of nations, that when the safety of the national treas-
ures of the most ancient records of Northern Europe was en-
dangered at home by domestic disturbances, they should have
been transported to Iceland, and have been there carefully
preserved, and thus rescued for posterity. This rescue, the
remote consequence of Ingolf 's first colonization in Iceland, in
the year 875, has proved, amid the vague and misty forms of
Scandinavian myths and symbolical cosmogonies, an event of
great importance in its influence on the poetic fancy of man-
kind. It was natural knowledge alone that acquired no en-
largement. Icelandic travelers certainly occasionally visited
the universities of Germany and Italy, but the discoveries of
the Greenlanders in the south, and the inconsiderable inter-
course maintained with Vinland, whose vegetation presented
no remarkable physiognomical character, withdrew colonists
and mariners so little from their European interests, that no
knowledge of these newly-colonized countries seems to have
been diffused among the cultivated nations of Southern Eu-
rope. It would even appear that no tidings of these regions
reached the great Genoese navigator in Iceland. Iceland and
Greenland had then been separated upward of two hundred
years, since 1261, when the latter country had lost its repub-
lican form of government, and when, on its becoming a fief
of the crown of Norway, all intercourse with foreigners and
even with Iceland was interdicted to it, Christopher Colnm-
238 COSMOS.
bus, in a work " On the five habitable zones of the earth,"
"which has now become extremely rare, says that in the month
of February, 1477, he visited Iceland, " where the sea was
not at that time covered with ice, and which had been resort-
ed to by many traders from Bristol."* If he had there heard
tidings of the earlier colonization of an extended and contin-
uous tract of land, situated on the opposite coast, Hellulancl
it niikla, Markland, and the good Vi7iland, and if he connect-
ed this knowledge of a neighboring continent with those proj-
ects which had already engaged his attention since 1470 and
1473, his voyage to Thule (Iceland) would have been made
so much the more a subject of consideration during the cele-
brated lawsuit regarding the merit of an earlier discovery,
which did not end till 1517, since the suspicious fiscal officer
mentions a map of the world {mappa mu7ulo) which had been
seen at Rome by Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and on which the
New Continent was supposed to be marked. If Columbus
had desired to seek a continent of which he had obtained in-
formation in Iceland, he would assuredly not have directed
his course southwest from the Canary Islands. Commercial
relations were maintained between Bergen and Greenland un-
til 1484, and, therefore, until seven years after Columbus's
voyage to Iceland.
Wholly different from the first discovery of the New Con-
tinent in the eleventh century, its rediscovery by Christopher
Columbus and his explorations of the tropical regions of Amer-
ica have been attended by events of cosmical importance, and
by a marked influence on the extension of phy&ical views.
Although the mariners who conducted this great expedition
at the end of the fifteenth century were not actuated by thp
♦ While this circumstance of the absence of ice in Febi'uaiy, 1477,
has been brought forward as a proof that Columbus's Island of Thule
could not be Iceland, Finn Magnusen found in ancient historical sources
that until March, 1477, there was no snow in the northern part of Ice-
land, and that in February of the same year the southern coast was
free from ice. Examen Crit., t. i., p. 105 ; t. v., p. 213. It is very re
markable, that Columbus, in the same *' Tratado de las cinco zonas hah-
itables," mentions a more southern island, Frislanda ; a name which
is not in the maps of Andrea Bianco (1436), or in that of Fra Mauro
(1457-1470), but which plays a great part in the travels, mostly re-
garded as fabulous, of the brothers Zeni (1388-1404). {Com^m-e Exa-
men Crit., t. ii., p. 114-126.) Columbus can not have been acquainted
with the travels of the Fratelli Zeni, as they even remained unknown
to the Venetian family until the year 1558, in which Marcolini tiisl
published them, fifty-two years after the death of the great admiral
When came the admiral's acquaintance with the name Frislanda ?
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 239
design of attempting to discover a new quarter of the world,
and although it would appear to be proved that Columbus
and Amerigo Vespucci died in the firm conviction that they
had merely touched on portions of Eastern Asia,=^ yet the ex-
pedition manifested the perfect character of being the fulfill-
ment of a plan sketched in accordance with scientific com-
binations. The expedition was safely conducted westward,
through the gate opened by the Tyrians and Colseus of Samos,
across the immeasurable dark sea, tiiare tenebrosiim, of the
Arabian geographers. They strove to reach a goal, with the
limits of which they believed themselves acquainted . They
were not driven accidentally thither by storms, as Naddod and
Gardar had been borne to Iceland, and Gunlijorn, the son of
Ulf Kraka, to Greenland. Nor were the discoverers guided
on their course by intermediate stations. The great cosmog-
rapher, Martin Behaim, of Niirnberg, who accompanied the
Portuguese Diego Cam on his expedition to the western coasts
of Africa, lived four years, from 1486 to 1490, in the Azores ;
* See the proofs, which I have collected from trustworthy docu-
ments, for Columbus, in the Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 233, 250, and 261,
and for Vespucci, t. v., p. 182-185. Columbus was so fully convinced
that Cuba was part of the continent of Asia, and even the south part
of Khatai (the province of Mango), that on the 12th of June, 1494, he
caused all the crews of his squadron (about 80 sailors) to swear that
they were convinced he might go from Cuba to Spain by land, " que
esta tierra de Cuba fuese la tierra firme al comienzo de las Indias y fin
k quien en estas partes quisiere venir de Espana por tierra ;" and
that "if any who now swore it should at any future day maintain the
contrary, they would have to expiate their perjuiy by receiving one
hundred stripes, and having the tongue torn out." (See Informacion
del Escribano publico, Fernando Perez de Luna, in Navarrete, Viages y
Descubrimientos de los Espanoles, t. ii., p. 143, 149.) Wlien Columbus
was approaching the island of Cuba on his first expedition, he believed
himself to be opposite the Chinese commercial cities of Zaitun and
Quinsay (y es cierto, dice el Almirante questa es la tierra firme y que
esfoy, dice el, ante Zayto y Guinsay). " He intends to present the let-
ters of the Catholic monarchs to the great Mogul Khan (Gran Can) in
Khatai, and to return immediately to Spain (but by sea) as soon as he
shall have thus discharged the mission intrusted to him. He subse-
quently sends on shore a baptized Jew, Luis de Torres, because he un-
derstands Hebrew, Chaldee, and some Arabic," which are languages
in use in Asiatic trading cities. (See Columbus's Journal of his Voy-
ages, 1492, in Navarrete, Viages y Descubrim., t. i., p. 37, 44, and 46.)
Even in 1533. the astronomer Schoner maintained that the whole of
the so-called New World was a part of Asia (superioris Indiie), and
that the city of Mexico (Temistitan), conquered by Cortes, was no
other than the Chinese commercial city of Quinsay, so excessively ex-
tolled by Marco Polo. (See Joannis Schoneri Carlostadii Opuscuium
Geographiciim, Norimb., 1533, pars ii., cap. 1-20.)
240 COSMOS.
but it was not from these islands, which He between the coasts
of Spain and Maryland, and only at fths the distance from
the latter, that America was discovered. The preconception
of this event is celebrated with rich poetical fancy in those
stanzas of Tasso, in which he sings of the deeds which Her-
cules ventured not to attempt.
Non oso di tentar I'alto oceano:
Segno le mete, en troppo breve chiostri,
L'ardir ristrinse dell'ingegno umano,
Tempo verra che fian d'Ecole i segni
Favola vile ai naviganti industri
Un uom delta Liguria avra ardimento
All' incognito corso esporsi in prima.
Tasso, XV. St., 25, 30, et 31.
And yet it was of this "■uom della Liguria'' that the great
Portuguese historical writer, Johannes Barros,* whose first de-
cade appeared in 1552, simply remarked that he was a vain
and fanciful babbler {Jiomem fallador e giorioso em mostrar
Silas habilidades, e inais fantastico, e de iTnaginacoes com sua
llha Cypango). Thus, through all ages and through all
stages of civilization, national hatred has striven to obscure
the glory of honorable names.
The discovery of the tropical regions of America by Chris-
topher Columbus, Alonso de Hojeda, and Alvarez Cabral, can
not be regarded in the history of the contemplation of the uni-
verse as one isolated event. Its influence on the extension of
physical science, and on the increase of materials yielded to
the ideal world generally, can not be correctly understood
without entering into a brief consideration of the period which
separates the epoch of the great maritime expeditions from
that of the maturity of scientific culture among the Arabs.
That which imparted to the age of Columbus its peculiar
character of uninterrupted and successful efforts toward the
attainment of new discoveries and extended geographical
knowledge, was prepared slowly and in various ways. The
means which contributed most strongly to favor these efforts
were a small number of enterprising men, who early excited
a simultaneous and general freedom of thought, and an inde-
pendence of investigation into the separate phenomena of na-
ture ; the influence exercised on the deepest sources of mental
vigor by the renewed acquaintance formed in Italy with the
works of ancient Greek literature ; the discovery of an art
which lent to thought at once wings of speed and powers of
* Da Asia de Joao de Barros e de Diego de Couto, dec. i.. liv. iii.,
cap. 11 (Parte i., Lisboa, 1778, p. 250).
OCEAMC DISCOVERIES. 241
perpetuity ; and the more extended knowledge of Eastern
Asia acquired by traveling merchants, and by monks who
had been sent on embassies to the Mogul rulers, and which
was diffused by them among those nations of the southwest
of Europe who maintained extensive commercial relations
with other countries, and who were therefore most anxious
to discover a nearer route to the Spice Islands. To these
means, which most powerfully facilitated the accomplishment
of the wishes so generally entertained at the close of the fif-
teenth century, we must add the advance in the art of navi-
gation, the gradual perfection of nautical instruments, both
magnetic and astronomical, and, finally, the application of
certain methods for the determination of the ship's place, and
the more general use of the solar and lunar ephemerides of
Regiomontanus .
Without entering into the details of the history of science,
which would be foreign to the present work, I would enumer-
ate, among those who prepared the way for the epoch of
Columbus and Gama, three great names — Albertus Magnus,
Roger Bacon, and Vincenzius of Beauvais. I have named
them according to time, but the most celebrated, influential,
and intellectual was Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk of
Ilchester, who devoted himself to the study of science at Ox-
ford and Paris. All three were in advance of their age, and
acted influentially upon it. In the long and generally un-
fruitful contests of the dialectic speculations and logical dog-
matism of a philosophy which has been designated by the in-
definite and equivocal name of scholastic, we can not fail to
recognize the beneficial influence exercised by what may be
termed the reflex action of the Arabs. The peculiarity of
their national character, already described in a former section,
and their predilection for communion with nature, procured
for the newly-translated works of Aristotle an extended diffu-
sion which was most instrumental in furthering the establish-
ment of the experimental sciences. Until the close of the
twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, miscon-
ceived dogmas of the Platonic philosophy prevailed in the
schools. Even the fathers of the Church believed that they
could trace in them the prototypes of their own religious
views.* Many of the symbolizing physical fancies of Timse-
* Jourdain, Reclierck. CrlLsurles Traduciionsd^ Aristote,Yt.230-23i,
and 421-423; Letronne, Des Opinions Cosmo graphiques dcs Peres df
V Eglise, rapprochies des Doctrines philosophiques de la Grece. in lliv>
Revue des deux Mondes. 1834. t. i.. p. 632.
Vol. II.—L
242 COSMOS.
lis were oi^erly taken up, and erroneous cosmical views, whose
groundlessness had long been shown by the mathematical
school of Alexandria, were revived under the sanction of Chris-
tian authority. Thus the dominion of Platonism, or, more
correctly speaking, the new adaptations of Platonic views,
were propagated far into the Middle Ages, under varying
forms, from Augustine to Alcuin, Johannes Scotus, and Bern-
hard of Chartres."^
When the Aristotelian philosophy gained the ascendency
by its controlling influence over the direction of the human
mind, its effect was manifested in the two-fold channel of in-
vestigation into speculative philosophy and a philosophical
elaboration of empirical natural science. Although the former
of these directions may appear foreign to the object I have
had in view in the present work, it must not be passed with
out notice, since, in the midst of the age of dialectic scholas-
tics, it incited some few noble and highly-gifted men to the
exercise of free and independent thought in the most various
departments of science. An extended physical contemplation
of the universe not only requires a rich abundance of observ.1-
tion as the substratum for a generalization of ideas, but also a
preparatory and invigorating training of the human mind, by
which it may be enabled, unappalled amid the eternal con-
test between knowledge and faith, to meet the threatening
impediments which, even in modern times, present them-
selves at the entrance of certain departments of the experi-
mental sciences, and would seem to render them inaccessible.
There are tw^o points in the history of the development of man
which must not be separated — the consciousness of man's just
claims to intellectual freedom, and his long unsatisfied de-
sire of prosecuting discoveries in remote regions of the earth.
These free and independent thinkers form a series, which be-
gins in the Middle Ages with Duns Scotus, Wilhelm of Oc-
cam, and Nicolas of Cusa, and leads from Ramus, Campa-
nella, and Giordano Bruno to Descartdfe.t
The seemingly impassable gulf between thought and act-
* Fnedrich von Raumer, Ueber die Philosophic des dreizehnten Jahr-
hunderts, iu his Hist. Taschenbiich, 1840, s. 468. Oa the teudeucy to-
ward Platonism in the Aliddle Ages, and on the contests (>f the schools,
see Heinrich Ritter, Geach. der Christl. Philosophic, th. ii., s 159 ; th. iii.,
s. 131-160, and 381-417.
t Cousin, Cours de VFIist. de la Philosophic, t. i., 1829, p. 360 and 389-
436; Fragmens de Philosophic Cariisienne,p. 8-12 and 403. Compare,
also, the recent ingenious work of Christian Bartholoncs, entitled Jor-
dano Bruno, 1847, t. i., p. 308; t. ii., p. 409-4 IG.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 243
ual being — the relations between the mind that recognizes
and the object that is recognized — separated the dialectics
into the two celebrated schools of Realists and Nomi7ialists.
The almost forgotten contests of these schools of the Middle
Ages deserve a notice here, because they exercised a special
influence on the final establishment of the experimental sci-
ences. The Nominalists, who ascribed to general ideas of
objects only a subjective existence in the human mind, finally
remained the dominant party in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, after having undergone various fluctuations of suc-
cess. From their greater aversion to mere empty abstrac-
tions, they urged before all the necessity of experiment, and
of the increase of the materials for establishing a sensuous
basis of knowledge. This direction was at least influential in
favoring the cultivation of empirical science ; but even among
those with whom the Realistic views were maintained, an ac-
quaintance with the literature of the Arabs had successfully
opposed a taste for natural investigation against the all-ab-
sorbing sway of theology. Thus we see that in the different
periods of the Middle Ages, to which we have perhaps been
accustomed to ascribe too strong a character of unity, the
great work of discoveries in remote parts of the earth, and
their happy adaptation to the extension of the cosmical sphere"
of ideas, were gradually being prepared on wholly different
paths and in purely ideal and empirical directions.
Natural science was intimately associated with medicine
and philosophy among the learned Arabs, and in the Chris-
tian Middle Ages with theological polemics. The latter, from
their tendency to assert an exclusive influence, repressed em-
pirical inquiry in the departments of physics, organic morphol-
ogy, and astronomy, which was for the most part closely allied
to astrology. The study of the comprehensive works of Aris-
totle, which had been introduced by Arabs and Jewish rabbis,
had tended to lead to a: philosophical fusion of all branches
of study ;* and hence Ibn-Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn-Roschd
(Averroes), Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon, passed for
the representatives of all the knowledge of their time. . The
fame which in the Middle Ages surrounded the names of these
great men, was proportionate to the general diffusion of this
opinion of their endowments.
Albertus Magnus, of the family of the Counts of BoUstiidt,
must also be mentioned as an independent observer in the do-
* Jourdaiu, Sur les Trad. d'Anstole, p. 236 ; and Michael Sachs, DU
religiose Poesie der Juden in Spanien 1845, s. 180-200.
244 COSMOS.
main of analytic chemistry. It is true that his hopes were
directed to the transmutation of the metals, but in his at-
tempts to fulfill this object he not only improved the practical
manipulation of ores, but he also enlarged the insight of men
into the general mode of action of the chemical forces of na-
ture. His works contain some extremely acute observations
on the organic structure and physiology of plants. He was
acquainted with the sleep of plants, the periodical opening
and closing of flowers, the diminution of the sap during evap-
oration from the surfaces of leaves, and with the influence
of the distribution of the vascular bundles on the indentations
of the leaves. He wrote commentaries on all the physical
works of the Stagirite, although in that on the history of ani-
mals he followed the Latin translation of Michael Scotus from
the Arabic* The work of Albertus Magnus, entitled Jjiber
Cosmographicus de Natura Locoinwi, is a kind of physical
geography. I have found in it observations, which greatly
excited my surprise, regarding the simultaneous dependence
of climate on latitude and elevation, and the effect of differ-
ent angles of incidence of the sun's rays in heating the earth's
surface. Albertus probably owes the praise conferred on him
by Dante less to himself than to his beloved pupil St. Thomas
Aquinas, who accompanied him from Cologne to Paris in 1245,
and returned with him to Germany in 1248.
Questi, che m'e a destra piu vicino,
Frate e maestro fummi ; ed esso Alberto
E' di Cologna, ed io Thomas d' Aquino.
Jl Paradiso, x., 97-99.
In all that has directly operated on the extension of the
natural sciences, and on their establishment on a mathemat-
* The greater share of merit in regard to the history of animals be-
longs to the Emperor Frederic II. We are indebted to him for import-
ant independent observations on the internal structure of birds. (See
Schneider, in Reliqua Librorum Frederici JL, imperatoris de arte venan-
di cum avibus, t. i., 1788, in the Preface.) Cuvier also calls this prince
of the Hohenstaufen line the " first independent and original zoologist
of the scholastic Middle Ages." On the correct view of Albert Mag-
nus, on the distribution of heat over the earth's surface under different
latitudes and at different seasons, see his Liber Cosmo graphicus de Na-
tura Locorum, Argent., 1515, fol. 14 b. and 23 a. (Examen Crit., t. i.,
p. 54-58.) In his own observations, we, however, unhappily too often
find that Albertus Magnus shared in the uncritical spirit of his age. He
thinks he knows " that rye changes on a good soil into wheat ; that
from a beech wood which has been hewn down, a birch wood will
spring up from the decayed matter; and that from oak branches stuck
into the earth vines arise " (Compare, also, Ernst Meyer, ZZ-fier die Bo
tanik des 13ten Jahrhunderts, in the Linncea, bd. x., 1836, s. 719.)
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 245
ical basis, and by the calling forth of phenomena by the pro- .
cess of experiment, Roger Bacon, the cotemporary of Alber-
tus of Bollstadt, may be regarded as the most important and
influential man of the Middle Ages. These two men occupy
almost the whole of the thirteenth century ; but to Roger Ba-
con belongs the merit that the influence which he exercised
on the form of the mode of treating the study of nature has
been more beneficial and lasting than the various discoveries
which, with more or less justice, have been ascribed to him.
Stimulating the mind to independence of thought, he severe-
ly condemned the blind faith attached to the authority of the
schools, yet, far from neglecting the investigations of the an-
cient Greeks, he directed his attention simultaneously to phil-
ological researches,* and the application of mathematics and
of the Scientia experimentalis, to which last he devoted a
special section of the Opus Majus.] Protected and favored
by one pope (Clement IV.), and accused of magic and impris-
oned by two others (Nicholas III. and IV.), he experienced
the changes of fortune common to great minds in all ages.
He was acquainted with the Optics of Ptolemy,^ and with
* So many passages of the Opus Majus show the respect which Roger
Bacon entertained for Grecian antiquity, that, as Jourdain has already
remarked (p. 429), we can only interpret the wi^ expressed by him in
a letter to Pope Clement IV., " to burn the works of Aristotle, in order
to stop the diflfusion of error among the scholars," as referring to the
bad Latin translations from the Arabic.
t " Scientia experimentalis a vulgo studentium penitus ignorata; duo
tamen sunt modi cognoscendi, scihcet per arguraeutum et experientiam
(the ideal path, and the path of experiment). Sine experientia nihil
suSicienter sciri potest. Argumentum concludit, sed non certificat,
neque reraovet duditationem ; et quiescat animus in intuita veritatis,
nisi earn inveniat via experientise." {Opus Majus, pars vi., cap. 1.) 1
have collected all the passages relating to Roger Bacon's physical
knowledge, and to his proposals for various inventions, in the Examen
CrU. de V Hist, de la Geogr., t. ii., p. 295-299. Compax'e, also, VVhe-
well, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii., p. 323-337.
X See ante, p. 194. I find Ptolemy's Optics cited in the Opus Ma-
jus (ed. Jebb, Lond., 1733), p. 79, 288, and 404. It has been justly
denied (Wilde, Geschichte der Optik, th. i., s. 92-96) that the knowledge
derived from Alhazen, of the magnifying power of segments of spheres,
was actually the means of leading Bacon to consti-uct spectacles. This
invention would appear to have been known as early as 1299, or to
belong to the Florentine Salvino degli Armati, who was buried in 1317
VA the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Florence, If Roger Bacon,
who completed his Opus Majus in 1267, speaks of instraments by means
of which small letters appear large, " utiles senibus habentibus oculos
debiles," his words prove, as do also the practically erroneous consid
emtions which he subjoins, that he can not himself have eK.ecuted that
which obscurely floated before his mind as possible.
246 COSMOS.
the Almagest. As he, like the Arabs, always calls Hippar-
chus Abraxis, we may conclude that he also made use of only
a Latm translation from the Arabic. Next to Bacon's chem-
ical experiments on combustible explosive mixtures, his theo-
retical optical works on perspective, and the position of the
focus in concave mirrors, are the most important. His pro-
found O'pus Majus contains proposals and schemes of practi-
cable execution, but no clear traces of successful optical discov-
eries. Profoundness of mathematical knowledge can not be
ascribed to him. That which characterizes him is rather a
certain liveliness of fancy, which, owing to the impression ex-
cited by so many unexplained great natural phenomena, and
the long and anxious search for the solution of mysterious
problems, was often excited to a degree of morbid excess in
those monks of the Middle Ages who devoted themselves to
the study of natural philosophy.
Before the invention of printing, the expense of copyists
rendered it difficult, in the Middle Ages, to collect any large
number of separate manuscripts, and thus tended to produce
a great predilection for encyclopedic works after the exten-
sion of ideas in the thirteenth century. These merit special
consideration, because they led to a generalization of ideas.
There appeared the twenty books De Rerum Natura of Thom-
as Cantipratensis, f'rofessor at Louvain (1230) ; The Mir-
ror of Nature {Speculum Naturale), written by Vincenzius of
Beauvais (Bellovacensis) for St. Louis and his consort Mar-
garet of Provence (1250) ; The Book of Nature, by Conrad
von Meygenberg, a priest at Ratisbon (1349) ; and the Pic-
ture of the World {Imago Mundi) of Cardinal Petrus de Al-
liaco, bishop of Cambray (1410), each work being in a great
measure based upon the preceding ones. These encyclopedic
compilations were the forerunners of the great work of Father
Reisch, the Ma7'garita Philo&opliica, the first edition of which
appeared in 1486, and which for half a century operated in a
remarkable manner on the diffusion of knowledge. I must
here pause for a moment to consider the " Picture of the
World" of Cardinal Alliacus (Pierre d'Ailly). I have else-
where shown that the work entitled " Imago Mundi" exer-
cised a greater influence on the discovery of America than
did the correspondence with the learned Florentine Toscanel-
li.* All that Columbus knew of Greek and Pwoman writers,
* See my Examen Crit., t. i., p. 61, 64-70, 96-108; t. ii., p. 349.
" There are five meuioirs De Concordantia Astronomia cum Theologia,
by Pierre d'Ailly, whom Don Fernando Colon always calls Pedro de
OCEANIC DrsCOVERIES. 247
all those passages of Aristotle, Strabo, and Seneca, on the prox-
imity of Eastern Asia to the Pillars of Hercules, which, as his
Bon Fernando says, were the means of inciting him to discover
the Indian lands {autoridad de los escritores loara mover al
Almira7ite d descubrir las hidias), were gathered by the ad-
miral from the writings of the cardinal. He must have car-
ried these works with him on his voyages ; for, in a letter
which he addressed to the Spanish monarchs from the island
of Haiti, in the month of October, 1498, he translated word
for word a passage from Alliacus's treatise, De Quantitate
Terra, habit.abilis, which appears to have made a deep im-
pression on his mind. Columbus probably did not know that
Alliacus had also transcribed verbatim, from an earlier work,
the Opus Majus of Roger Bacon.* Singular age, when the
combined testimony of Aristotle and Averroes (Avenryz), of
Esdras and of Seneca, regarding the small extent of the ocean
in comparison with continental masses, could serve to convince
monarchs of the expediency of a costly enterprise !
I have already drawn attention to the marked predilection
manifested at the close of the thirteenth century for the study
of natural forces, and the progressive and philosophical direc-
tion assumed by this study in its scientific establishment on
the basis of experiment. It still remains briefly to consider
the influence exercised by the revival of classical literature, at
the close of the fourteenth century, on the deepest sources of
the mental life of nations, and, therefore, on the general con-
templation of the universe. The individuality of certain
highly-gifted men had contributed to increase the rich mass of
facts possessed by the world of ideas. The susceptibility of a
freer intellectual development already existed when Greek
literature, driven from its ancient seats, acquired a firm footing
in Western lands, under the favoring action of apparently ac-
cidental relations.
The Arats, in their classical studies, had remained strangers
to all that appertains to the inspiration of language, their
studies being limited to a very small number of the writers
of antiquity, and, in accordance with their strong national pred-
ilection for natural investigation, principally to the physical
books of Aristotle, to the Almagest of Ptolemy, the botanical
Helico. These essays remind us of some very I'ecent oues on the Mo
Baic Geology, published four hundred years after the cardinal's."
* Compare Columbus's letter, Navarrete, Viages y Descuhrimientos,
t. i., p. 244, with the Imago Mundi of Cardinal d'Ailly, cap. 8. an'l
Eoger Bacon's Opus Majus, p. 183.
348 COSMOS.
and chemical treatises of Dioscorides, tciid the cosmolooricai
D
fancies of Plato. The dialectics of Aristotle were blended by
the Arabs with the study of Physics, as in earlier times, in the
Christian mediaeval age, they were with that of theology.
Men borrowed from the ancients what they judged susceptible
of special application, but they were far removed from appre-
hending the spirit of Hellenism in its general character, from
penetrating to the depths of the organic structure of the lan-
guage, from deriving enjoyment from the poetic creations of
the Greek imagination, or of seeking to trace the marvelous
luxuriance displayed in the fields of oratory and historical
composition.
Almost two hundred years before Petrarch and Boccacio,
John of Salisbury and the Platonic Abelard had already exer-
cised a favorable influence with reference to an acquaintance
with certain works of classical antiquity. Both possessed the
power of appreciating the charm of writings in which freedom
and order, nature and mind, were constantly associated togeth-
er ; but the influence of the aesthetic feeling awakened by them
vanished without leaving a trace, and the actual merit of
having prepared in Italy a permanent resting-place for the
muses exiled from Greece, and of having contributed most
powerfully to re-establish classical literature, belongs of right
to two poets, linked together by the closest ties of iriendship,
Petrarch and Boccacio. A monk of Calabria, Barlaam, who
had long resided in Greece under the patronage of the Em-
peror Andronicus, was the instructor of both.* They were
the first to begin to make a careful collection of Roman and
Greek manuscripts ; and a taste for a comparison of languages
had even been awakened in Petrarch, t whose philological acu-
men seemed to strive toward the attainment of a more general
contemplation of the universe. Emanuel Chrysoloras, who
was sent as Greek embassador to Italy and England (1391),
Cardinal Bessarion of Trebisonde, Gemistus Pletho, and the
Athenian Demetrius Chalcondylas, to whom we owe the first
printed edition of Homer, were all valuable promoters of the
study of the Greek writers. $ All these came from Greece
before the eventful taking of Constantinople (29th May, 1453) ;
Constantino Lascaris alone, whose forefathers had once sat on
the Byzantine throne, came later to Italy. He brought witb
* Heereu, Gesch. der Classischen Litteratur, bd. i., s. 284-290.
t Klaproth, Memoires relatives a V Asie, t. iii., p. 113.
X The Florentine edition of Homer of 1488; but the first printed
Greek book was the grammar of Constantino Lascax'is, in 1476.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIEa. 249
him a precious collection of Greek manuscripts, now buried in
the rarely-used library of the EscuriaL* The first Greek book
was printed only fourteen years before the discovery of Ameri-
ca, although the invention of printing was probably made
simultaneously and wholly independently by Guttenberg in
Strasburg and Mayence, and by Lorenz Yansson Koster at
Haarlem, between 1436 and 1439, and, therefore, in the for-
tunate period of the first immigration of the learned Greeks
into Italy. t
Two centuries before the sources of Greek literature were
opened to the nations of the "West, and twenty-five years be-
fore the birth of Dante — one of the greatest epochs in the
history of the civilization of Southern Europe — events occur-
red in the interior of Asia, as well as in the east of Africa,
which, by extending commercial intercourse, accelerated the
period of the circumnavigation of Africa and the expedition
of Columbus. The advance of the Moguls in twenty-six years
from Pekin and the Chinese Wall to Cracow and LiegnitZ;
terrified Christendom. A number of able monks were sent
forth as missionaries and embassadors : John de Piano Carpini
and Nicholas Ascelin to Batu Khan, and Ruisbrock (Rubru-
quis) to Mangu Khan at Karakorum. The last-named of
these traveling missionaries has left us many clear and import-
ant observations on the distribution of languages and races of
men in the middle of the thirteenth century. He was the
first who recognized that the Huns, the Baschkirs (inhabitants
of Paskatir, the Baschgird of Ibn-Fozlan), and the Hungarians
were of Finnish (Uralian) race ; and he even found Gothic
tribes who still retained their language in the strong-holds of
the Crimea.t Rubruquis excited the eager cupidity of the
* Villemain, Milanges Historiques et Littiraires, t. ii., p. 135.
t The result of the investigations of the librarian Ludwig VVachler,
at Breslau (see his Geschichte der Litteratur, 1833, th. i., s. 12-23).
Printing without movable types does not go back, even in China, beyond
the beginning of the tenth century of our era. The first four books of
Confucius were printed, according to Klaproth, in the province of Sziit-
schun, between 890 and 925 ; and the description of the technical manip-
ulation of the Chinese printing-press might have been read in Western
countries even as early as 1310, in Raschid-eddin's Persian history of
the rulers of Khatai. According to the most recent results of the im-
portant researches of Stanislas Julien, however, an iron-smith in China
itself, between the years 1041 and 1048 A.D., or almost 400 years before
Guttenberg, would seem to have used movable types, made of burned
clay. This is the invention of Pi-sching, but it was not brought into
application.
X See the proofs in my Examen Crit., t. ii. p. 316-320. Josafat
Barbaro (1436), and Ghislin von Busbech (155f ), still found, betweea
L2
250 COSMOS.
great maritime nations of Italy — the Venetians and Genoese —
by his descriptions of the inexliaustible treasures of Eastern
Asia. He is acquainted with the " silver walls and golden
towers" of Quinsay, the present Hangtscheufu, although he
does not mention the name of this great commercial mart,
which twenty-five years later acquired such celebrity from
Marco Polo, the greatest traveler of any age.* Truth and
naive error are singularly intermixed in the Journal of Rubru-
quis, which has been preserved to us by E-oger Bacon. Near
Khatai, which is bounded by the Eastern Sea, he describes a
happy land, "where, on their arrival from other countries, all
men and women cease to grow old."t *
More credulous than the monk of Brabant, and therefore,
perhaps, far more generally read, was the English knight Sir
Tana (Asof), Caffa, and the Erdil (the Volga), Alani and Gothic tribes
Bpeaking German. (Ramusio, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi,\o\. n., p.
92 b. and 98 a.) Roger Bacon merely terras Rubruquis Irater Willi el-
mus, quem dominus Rex Franciae misit ad Tartaros.
* Tlie great and admirable work of Marco Polo {II Milione di Messer
Marco Polo), as we possess it in the correct edition of Count Baldelli,-
is inappropriately termed the narrative of " TraveUy It is, for the
most part, a descriptive, one might say, a statistical work, in which it is
difficult to distinguish what the traveler had seen himself, and what he
had learned from others, and what he derived from topographical de-
scriptions, in which the Chinese literature is so rich, and which might
be accessible to him through his Persian interpreter. The striking
similarity presented by the narratives of the travels of Hiuan-thsung,
the Buddhistic pilgrim of the seventh century, to that which Marco
Polo found in 1277 (respecting the Pamir-Highland), early attracted my
whole attention. Jacquet, who was unhappily too early removed by
a premature death from the investigation of Asiatic languages, and who,
like Klaproth and myself, was long occupied with the work of the great
Venetian traveler, wrote to me as follows shortly before his decease :
" I am as much struck as yourself by the composition of the Milione.
It is undoubtedly founded on the direct and personal observation of the
traveler, but he probably also made use of documents either officially
or privately communicated to him. Many things appear to have been
borrowed from Chinese and Mongolian works, although it is difficult
to determine their precise influence on the composition of the Milione,
owing to the successive translations from which Polo took his extracts.
While our modern travelers are only too well pleased to occupy their
readers with their personal adventures, Marco Polo takes pains to blend
his own observations with the official data communicated to him, of
which, as governor of the city of Yangui, he was able to have a large
number." (See my Asie Centrale, X. ii., p. 395.) The compiling
method of the celebrated traveler likewise explains the possibility of
his being able to dictate his book at Genoa in 1295 to his fellow-prison-
er and friend, Messer Rustigielo of Pisa, as if the documents had been
lying before him. (Compare Marsden, Travels of Marco Polo, p.
xxxiii.)
i Purchas,P-«7^»'i7»7s, Part iii., ch. 28 and 56 (p. 23 and 34).
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 251
John Mandeville. He describes India and China, Ceylon and
Sumatra. The comprehensive scope and the individuality of
his narratives (like the itineraries of Balducci Pigoletti and
the travels of Roy Gonzalez de Clavijo) have contributed con-
siderably to increase a disposition toward a great and general
intercourse among difierent nations.
It has often, and with singular pertinacity, been maintain
ed, that the admirable work of the truthful Marco Polo, and
more particularly the knowledge which it diffused regarding
the Chinese ports and the Indian Archipelago, exercised great
influence on Columbus, who is even asserted to have had a
copy of Marco Polo's narratives in his possession during his
first voyage of discovery.* I have already shown that Chris-
topher Columbus and his son Fernando make mention of the
. Geography of Asia by ^neas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.), but
never of Marco Polo or Mandeville. What they know of
Quinsay, Zaitun, Mango, and Zipangu, may have been learn-
ed from the celebrated letter of Toscanelli in 1474 on the fa-
cility of reaching Eastern Asia from Spain, and from the re-
lations of Nicolo de Conti, who was engaged during twenty-
five years in traveling over India and the southern parts of
China, and not through any direct acquaintance with the
68th and 77th chapters of the second book of Marco Polo.
The first printed edition of these travels was no doubt the,
German translation of 1477, which must have been alike un-
intelJigible to Columbus and to Toscanelli. The possibility
of a manuscript copy of the narrative of the Venetian trav-
eler being seen by Columbus between the years 1471 and
1492, when he was occupied by his project of " seeking the
east by the west" (buscar el levante por el poniente, pasar
a donde nacen las especerias, navegando al occidente), can
not certainly be denied ;t but wherefore, in a letter written to ■
Ferdinand and Isabella from Jamaica, on the 7th of June,
1503, in which he describes the coast of Veragua as a part
of the Asiatic Ciguare near the Ganges, and expresses his
hope of seeing horses with golden harness, should he not rath-
* Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viages y Desctibrimientos que HiciSron
por mar los Espafioles,t. i., p. 261; Washington Irving, History of the
Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1828, vol. iv., p. 297.
t Examen Crit. de V Hist, de la Geog., t. i., p. 63 and 215; t. ii., p.
350. Marsden, Travels of Marco Polo, p. Ivii., Ixx., and Ixxv. The
first German Nuremberg version of 1477 {Das buch des edeln Ritters vn
landffarers Marcho Polo) appeared in print in the life-time of Columbus,
the first Latin translation in 1490, and the first Italian and PortugueBe
translations in 1496 and 1502.
252 COSMOS.
er refer to tlie*Zipangu of Marco Polo than to that of Pope
Pius?
While the diplomatic missions of Christian monks, and the
mercantile expeditions by land, which were prosecuted at a
period when the universal dominion of the Moguls had made
the interior of Asia accessible from the Dead Sea to the Wolga,
were the means of diffusing a knowledge of Khatai and Zi-
pangu (China and Japan) among the great sea-faring nations
of Europe ; the mission of Pedro de Covilham and Alonzo de
Payva (in 1487), which was sent by King John II. to seek
for the African Prester John, prepared the way, if not for Bar-
tholomew Diaz, at all events for Vasco de Gama.* Trustinsr
to the reports brought by Indian and Arabian pilots to Cali-
cut, Goa, and Aden, as well as to Sofala, on the eastern shores
of Africa, Covilham sent word to King John II., by two Jews
from Cairo, that if the Portuguese would prosecute their voy-
ages of discovery southward, along the west coast, they would
reach the termination of Africa, from whence the navigation
to the Moon Island, the Magastar of Polo, to Zanzibar and
to Sofala, "rich in gold," would be extremely easy. But, be-
fore this news reached Lisbon, it had been already long known
there that Bartholomew Diaz had not only made the discov-
ery of the Cape of Good" Hope (Cabo tormentoso), but that he
had also sailed round it, although only for a short distance.!
* Barros, Dec. i., liv. iii., cap. 4, p. 190, says expressly that Barthol-
omew Diaz, "e os de sua companhia per causa dosperigose tormentas,
que em o dobrar delle pass^ram, Ihe pazeram nome Tormentoso." The
merit of first doubling the Cape does not, therefore, belong, as usually
stated, to Vasco de Gama. Diaz was at the Cape in May, 1487, nearly,
therefore, at the same time that Pedro de Co\alham and Alonzo de Pay-
va set forth fi'om Barcelona on their expedition. In December of the
same year (1487), Diaz brought the news of this important discovery
to Portugal.
t The planispherium of Sanuto, who speaks of himself as " Marinus
Sanuto, dictus Torxellus de Veneicis," appertain to the work entitled
Secretafidelmm Crucis. "Marinus ingeniously preached a crusade in
the interest of commerce, with a desire of destroying the prosperity of
Egypt, and directing the course of trade in such a manner as to carry
the products of India through Bagdad, Bassora, and Tauris (Tebriz), to
Kafifa, Tana (Azow), and the Asiatic coasts of the Mediterranean. Sa-
nuto, who was the cotemporary and compatriot of Polo, with whose MU-
ione he was, however, unacquainted, was charactei-ized by grand views
regarding commercial policy. He may be regarded as the Raynal of
the Middle Ages, without the incredulity of the philosophical abbe of
the eighteenth centuxy." {Examen Critique, t. i., p. 231, 333-348.)
The Cape of Good Hope is set down as Capo di Diab on the map of
Fra Mauro, compiled between the years 1457 and 1459. Consult the
learned treatise of Cardinal Zurla, entitled II Mafpamundo di Fra
Ma7iro Camaldole.se, 1806, § 54.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 253
Accounts of the Indian and Arabian trading places on the
eastern shores of Africa, and of the configuration of the south-
ern extremity of the continent, may, indeed, early in the Mid-
dle Ages, have been transmitted to Venice through Egypt,
Abyssinia, and Arabia. The triangular form of Africa is in-
deed distinctly delineated as early as 1306, on the planisphe-
rium of Sanuto, in the Genoese Fortulatio della Mediceo-Lau-
renziana of 1351, discovered by Count Baldelli, and on the
map of the world by Fra Mauro. I have briefly alluded to
these facts, since the history of the contemplation of the uni-
verse should indicate the epochs at which the principal details
of the configuration of great continental masses were first
recognized.
While the gradually developed knowledge of relations in
space incited men to think of shorter sea routes, the means for
perfecting practical navigation were likewise gradually in-
creased by the application of mathematics and astronomy, the
invention of new instruments of measurement, and by a more
skillful employment of magnetic forces. It is extremely prob-
able that Europe owes the knowledge of the northern and
southern directing powers of the magnetic needle — the use of
the mariner's compass — to the Arabs, and that these people
were in turn indebted for it to the Chinese. In a Chinese work
(the historical Szuki of Szumathsian, a writer who lived in
the earlier half of the second century before our era) we meet
with an allusion to the "magnetic cars," which the Emperor
Tsing-wang, of the ancient dynasty of the Tscheu, had given
more than nine hundred years earlier to the embassadors from
Tunkin and Cochin China, that they m.ight not miss their way
on their return home. In the third century of our era, under
the dynasty of Han, there is a description given in Hiutschin's
dictionary Schuewen of the manner in which the property of
pointing with one end toward the south may be imparted to
an iron rod by a series of methodical blows. Owing to the
ordinary southern direction of navigation at that period, the
south pointing of the magnet is always the one especially men-
tioned. A century later, under the dynasty of Tsin, Chinese
ships employed the magnet to guide their course safely across
the open sea ; and it was by means of these vessels that the
knowledge of the compass was carried to India, and from
thence to the eastern coasts of Africa. The Arabic designa-
tions Zohron and Ajjhron (south and north),* which Vincen-
* Avron, or avr (aur), is a more rarely employed terra for north, used
instead of the ordinary " schemdl;^^ the Arabic Zohron, oi Zohr, from
254 COSMOS.
zius of Beauvais gives in his " Mirror of Nature" to the two
ends of the magnetic needle, indicate, hke many Arabic names
of stars which we still employ, the channel, and the people
from whom Western countries received the elements of their
knowledge. In Christian Europe the first mention of the use
of the magnetic needle occurs in the politico-satirical poem
called LiCi Bible, by Guyot of Provence, in 1190, and in the
description of Palestine by Jacobus of Vitry, bishop of Ptole
mais, between 1204 and 1215. Dante (in his Parad., xii.,
29) refers, in a simile, to the needle {ago), " which points to
the star."
The discovery of the mariner's compass was long ascribed
to Flavio Gioja of Positano, not far from the lovely town of
Amalfi, which was rendered so celebrated by its widely-ex-
tended maritime laws ; and he may, perhaps, have made some
improvement in its construction (1302), Evidence of the ear-
lier use of the compass in European seas than at the beginning
of the fourteenth century, is furnished by a nautical treatise of
Raymond Lully of Majorca, the singularly ingenious and ec-
centric man whose doctrines excited the enthusiasm of Gior-
dano Bruno when a boy,* and who was at once a philosoph-
ical systematizer and an analytic chemist, a skillful mariner and
a successful propagator of Christianity. In his book entitled
Fenix de las Maravillas del Orbe, and published in 1286,
Lully remarks, that the seamen of his time employed " instru-
ments of measurement, sea charts, and the magnetic needle."!
which Klaproth erroneously endeavors to derive the Spanish sur and
the Portuguese sul, which, without doubt, like the German sud, are true
German words, does not properly refer to the particular designation of
the quarter indicated; it signifies only the time of high noon; south is
dschenub. On the early knowledge possessed by the Chinese of the
south pointing of the magnetic needle, see Klaproth's important inves-
tigations in his Lettre a M. A. de Humboldt, sur V Inveyition de la Bous-
sole, 1834, p. 41, 45, 50, 66, 79, and 90; and the treatise of Azuni of
Nice, which appeared in 1805, under the name of Dissertation sur VOr-
igine de la Boussole, p. 35, and 65-68. Navarrete, in his Discnrso
Historico sobre las Progresos del Arte de Navegar en Espana, 1802, j).
28, recalls a remarkable passage in the Spanish Leyes de las Partidas
(II., tit. ix., ley 28), of the middle of the thirteenth century: "The
needle, which guides the seaman in the dark night, and shows him.
both in good and in bad weather, how to direct his course, is the inter-
mediary agent (medianera) between the loadstone (Za piedra) and the
north star " See the passage in Las siete Partidas del sabio
Rey Don Alonso el IX. (according to the usually adopted chronolog-
ical order Alonso the Xth), Madrid, 1829, t. i., p. 473.
* Jordano Bruno, par Christian Bai'tholomes, s. 1347, t. ii., p. 181-
187.
t " Teniau los mareantes instrumento, carta, compas y aguju." — Sal
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 255
The early voyages of the Catalans to the north coast of Scot
land and the western shores of tropical Africa (Don Jayme
Ferrer reaching the mouth of the Pwio de Ouro, in the month
of August, 1367), and the discovery of the Azores (the Bracir
Islands, on the Atlas of Picigano, 1367) by the Northmen,
remind us that the open "Western Ocean was navigated long
before the time of Columbus. • The voyages prosecuted under
the Roman dominion in the Indian Ocean, between Ocelis and
the coasts of Malabar, in reliance on the regularity of the di-
rection of the winds,* were now conducted by the guidance of
the magnetic needle.
The ajDplication of astronomy to navigation was prepared
by the influence exercised in Italy, from the thirteenth to the
fifteenth centuries, by Andalone del Nero and John Bianchini,
the corrector of the Alphonsine tables, and in Germany by
Nicolaus de Cusa,t George von Peuerbach, and Regiomon-
tanus. Astrolabes designed for the determination of time and
of geographical latitudes by meridian altitudes, and capable of
being employed at sea, underwent gradual improvement from
the time that the astrolabium of the Majorcan pilots was in
use, which is described by Raymond Lully,| in 1295, in his
Arte de Navegar, till the invention of the instrument made
by Martin Behaim in 1484 at Lisbon, and which was, per-
haps, only a simplification of the meteoroscope of his friend
Regiomontanus. When the Infante Henry, duke of Viseo,
who was himself a navigator, established an academy for pi-
lots at Sagres, Maestro Jayme, of Majorca, was named its di-
rector. Martin Behaim received a charge from King John
II. of Portugal^o compute tables for the sun's declination,
and to teach pilots to " navigate by the altitudes of the sun
azar, Discurso sobre los Progresos de la Hydrografia en Espana, 1809,
p. 7. * See ante, p. 172.
t Regarding Cusa (Nicolaus of Cuss, properly of Cues, on the Moselle),
see ante, p. 109, and also Clemens's treatise, Ueber Giordano Bruno und
Nicolaus de Cusa, s. 97, where there is given an important fragment,
written by Cusa's own hand, and discovered only three years since, re-
specting a three-fold movement of the earth. (Compare, also, Chasles,
Aper^u sur V Origine des MSthodes en G^omitrie, 1807, p. 529.)
X Navarrete, Dissertacion Historica sobre la parte que tuvieron los Es-
panoles en las Guerras de Ultramar 6 de las Cruzadas, 1816, p. 100 ; and
Examen Crit., t. i., p. 274-277. An important improvement in observ-
ation, by the use of the plummet, has been ascribed to George von
Peuerbach, the instructor of Regiomontanus. T^e plummet had, how-
ever, long been employed by the Arabs, as we learn from Abul-Hassan-
Ali's description of astronomical instraments written in the thirteenth
century. Sedillot, Traite des Tnstrumens Astronomiques des Arabes, 1835.
p. 379; 1841, p. 205.
25b COSMOS.
and stars." It can not at present be decided whether, at tiiu
close of the fifteenth century, the use of the log was known as
a means of estimating the distance traversed while the direc-
tion is indicated by the compass ; but it is certain that Piga-
fetta, the companion of Magellan, speaks of the log {la catena.
a 2>oppa) as of a well-known means of measuring the course
passed over.*
* In all the writings on the art of navigation which I have examined,
I have found the erroneous opinion that the log for the measurement ot
the distance traversed was not used before the end of" the sixteenth or
the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the EncyclopcBdia Bri-
tannica (seventh edition, 1842), vol. xiii., p. 416, it is further stated,
" The author of the device for measuring the ship's way is not known,
and no mention of it occurs till the year 1607, in an East Indian voyage
published by Purchas." This year is also named in all earlier and later
dictionaries as the extreme limit (Gehler, bd. vi., 1831, s. 450). Nav-
arrete alone, in the Dissertacion sobre los Progresos del Arte de Navegar,
1802, places the use of the log-line in English ships in the year 1577.
(Duflot de Mofras, Notice Bio graphique sur Mendoza et Navarrete, 1845,
p. 64.) Subsequently, in another place {Coleccion de los Viages de los
Espanoles, t. iv., 1837, p. 97), he asserts that, "in Magellan's time, the
speed of the ship was only estimated by the eye (a ojo), until, in the
sixteenth century, the corredera (the log) was devised." The meas-
urement of the distance sailed over by means of throwing the log, al-
though this means must, in itself, be termed imperfect, has become of
such great importance toward a knowledge of the velocity and direc-
tion of oceanic currents, that I have been led to make it an object of
careful investigation. I here give the principal results which are con-
tained in the sixth (still unpublished) volume of my Examen Critique
de V Histoirc de la Giographie et des Progres de V Astronomie Nautique.
The Romans, in the time of the republic, had in their ships way-meas-
urers, which consisted of wheels four feet high, provided with paddles
attached to the outside of the ship, exactly as in our ateam-boats, and as
in the apparatus for propelling vessels, which Blasco de Garay had pro-
posed, in 1543, at Barcelona to the Emperor Charles V. (Arago, An-
nuaire du Bur. des Long., 1829, p. 152.) The ancient Roman way-
measurer (ratio a majoribus tradita, qua in via rheda sedentes vel mari
navigantes scire possumus quot millia numero itineris fecerimus) is de-
scribed in detail by Vitruvius (lib. x., cap. 14), the credit of whose Au-
gustan antiquity has indeed been recently much shaken by C. Schultz
and Osann. By means of three-toothed wheels acting on each other,
and by the falling of small round stones fi'om a wheel-case (loculamen-
tum) having only a single opening, the number of revolutions of the
outside wheels which dipped in the sea, and the number of miles pass-
ed over in the day's voyage, were given. Vitruvius does not say
whether these hodometers, whicn might afRjrd " both use and pleas-
ure," were much used in the Mediterranean. In the biography of the
Emperor Pertinax by Julius Capitolinus, mention is made of the sale of
the effects left by the Emperor Commodus, among which was a trav-
eling carriage provided with a similar hodometric apparatus (cap. 8 in
Hist. Augustce Script., ed. Lugd. Bat., 1671, t. i., p. 554). The wheels
indicated both " the measure of the distance passed over, and the dura
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. ;451
The influence exercised by Arabian civilization through the
astronomical schools of Cordova, Seville, and Granada, on the
tion of the journey" in hours. A much more perfect way-measurer,
used both on the water and on land, has been desci'ibed by Hero of
Alexandria, the pupil of Ctesibius, in his still inedited Greek manuscript
on the Dioptra. (See Venturi, Comment supra la Storia delV Qltica,
Bologna, 1814, t. i., p. 134-139.) There is nothing to be found on the
subject we are considering in the literature of the Middle Ages until
we come to the period of several " books of Nautical Instruction," writ-
ten or pi-inted in quick succession by Antonio Pigafetta ( Trattato di
Navigazione, probably before 1530); Francisco Falero (1535, a brother
of the astronomer Ruy Falero, who was to have accompanied Magellan
on his voyage round the world, and left behind him a " Regimiento
para observar la longitud en la mar") ; Pedro de Medina of Seville
{Arte de Navegar, 1545) ; Martin Cortes of Bujalaroz {Breve Compendia
de la esfera, y de la arte de Navegar, 1551) ; and Andres Garcia de Ces-
pedes {Regimiento de Navigacion y Hidrografia, 1606). From almost
all these works, some of which have become extremely rare, as well as
from the Suma de Geograjia, which Martin Fernandez de Enciso had
published in 1519, we learn, most distinctly, that the " distance sailed
over" is learned, in Spanish and Portuguese ships,- not by any distinct
measurement, but only by estimation by the eye, according to certain
established principles. Medina says (libro iii., cap. 11 and 12), "in
order to know the course of the ship, as to the length of distance passed
over, the pilot must set down in his register how much distance the
vessel has made according to hours {i. e., guided by the hour-glass, am-
polleta); and for this he must know that the most a ship advances in
an hour is four miles, and with feebler breezes, three, or only two."
Cespedes (Regimiento, p. 99 and 156) calls this mode of proceeding
" echar punto por fantasia." This fantasia, as Enciso justly i-emarks,
depends, if great errors are to be avoided, on the pilot's knowledge of
the qualities of his ship : on the whole, however, every one who has
been long at sea w^ill have remarked, with surprise, when the waves
are not very high, how nearly the mere estimation of the ship's velocity
accords with the subsequent result obtained by the log. Some Spanish
pilots call the old, and, it must be admitted, hazardous method of mere
estimation (cuenta de estima) sarcastically, and certainly very incor-
rectly, "la corredera de los Holandeses, corredera de los perezosos."
In Columbus's ship's journal, reference is frequently made to the dis-
pute with Alonso Pinzon as to the distance passed over since their de-
parture from Palos. The hour or sand glasses, ampolletas, which they
made use of, ran out in half an hour, so that the interval of a day and
night was reckoned at 48 ampolletas. We find in this important jour-
nal of Columbus (as, for example, on the 22d of January, 1493) : " an-
daba 8 millas por hora hasta pasadas 5 ampolletas, y 3 antes que co-
menzase la guardia, que eran 8 ampolletas." (Navarrete, t. i., p. 143.)
No mention is ever made of the log (la corredera). Are we to assume
that Columbus was acquainted with and employed it, and that he did
not think it necessary to name it, owing to its being already in very
general use, in the same way that Marco Polo has not mentioned tea,
or the great wall of China? Such an assumptioa appears to me very
improbable, because I find in the proposals made by the pilot, Don
Jayme Ferrer, 1495, for the exact determination of the position of the
papal line of demarkation, that when there is a question regarding the
258 COSMOS.
navigation of the Spaniards and Portuguese, can not be over-
looked. The great instruments of the schools of Bagdad and
Cairo were imitated, on a small scale, for nautical purposes. .
Their names even were transferred ; thus, for instance, that
of " astrolabon," given by Martin Behaim to the main-mast,
belongs originally to Hipparchus. When Vasco de Gama
landed on the eastern coast of Africa, he found that the Indian
pilots at Melinde were acquainted with the use of astrolabes
and ballestilles.* Thus, by the more general intercourse con-
sequent on increasing cosmical relations, by original inventions,
and by the mutual fructification afibrded by the mathematical
and astronomical sciences, were all things gradually prepared
for the discovery of tropical America ; the rapid determination
of its configuration ; the passage round the southern point of
Africa to India ; and, finally, the first circumnavigation of
the globe — great and glorious events, which, in the space of
thirty years (from 1492 to 1522), contributed so largely in ex-
tending the general knowledge of the regions of the earth.
The minds of men were rendered more acute and more capa-
ble of comprehending the vast abundance of new phenomena
presented to their consideration, of analyzing them, and, by
comparing one with another, of employing them for the foun-
dation of higher and more general views regarding the uni-
verse.
It will be sufficient here to touch upon the more prominent
elements of these higher views, which were capable of lead-
distance sailed over, the appeal is made only to the accordant judgment
(juicio) of twenty veiy experienced seamen (" que apunten en su car-
ta de 6 en 6 horas el camiuo que la nao fard segun su juicio"). If the
log had been in use, no doubt Ferrer would have indicated how often
it should be thrown. I find the first mention of the application of the
log in a passage of Pigafetta's Journal of Magellan's voyage of circum
navigation, which long lay buried among the manuscripts in the Am-
brosian Library at Milan. It is there said that, in the month of Janu-
ary, 1521, when Magellan had already arrived in the Pacific, " Secondo
la misura che facevamo del viaggio colla catena a poppa, noi percorre-
vamo da 60 in 70 leghe al giorno" (Amorelli, Primo Viaggio intorno
al Globo Terracqueo, ossia Navigazione fatta dal Cavaliere Antonio
Pigafetta sulla squadra del Cap. Magaglianes, 1800, p. 46). What
can this arrangement of a chain at the hinder part of a ship (catena a
poppa), " which we used tlnroughout the entire voyage to measure the
way," have been, except an apparatus similar to our log ? No special
mention is made of the log-line divided into knots, the ship's log, and
the half-minute or log-glass, but this silence need not surprise us when
reference is made to.a long-known matter. In the part of the Trattato
di Navigazione of the Cavalier Pigafetta, given by Amoretti in extracts,
amounting, indeed, only to ten pages, the " catena della poppa" is not
again mentioned- * Barros, Dec. i., liv. iv., p. 320
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 259
ing men to a clearer insight into the connection of phenomena.
On entering into a serious consideration of the original works
of the earliest writers of the history of the Conquista, we are
surprised so frequently to discover the germ of important phys-
ical truths in the Spanish writers of the sixteenth century
At the sight of a continent in the vast waste of waters which
appeared separated from all other regions in creation, there
presented themselves to the excited curiosity, both of the ear-
liest travelers themselves and of those who collected their nar-
ratives, many of the most important questions which occupy
us in the present day. Among these were questions regarding
the unity of the human race, and its varieties from one com-
mon original type ; the migrations of nations, and the affinity
of languages, which frequently manifest greater differences in
their radical words than in their inflections or grammatical
forms ; the possibility of the migration of certain species of
plants and animals ; the cause of the trade winds, and of the
constant oceanic currents ; the regular decrease of tempera-
ture on the declivities of the Cordilleras, and in the superim-
posed strata of water in the depths of the ocean ; and the re-
ciprocal action of the volcanoes occurring in chains, and their
influence on the frequency of earthquakes, and on the extent
of circles of commotion. The ground-work of what we at
present term physical geography, independently of mathemat-
ical considerations, is contained in the Jesuit .Joseph Acosta's
work, entitled Historm natural y moral de las Indias, and
in the work by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo, which appear-
ed hardly twenty years after the death of Columbus. At no
other period since the origin of society had the sphere of ideas
been so suddenly and so wonderfully enlarged in reference to
the external world and geographical relations ; never had the
desire of observing nature at different latitudes and at diflerent
elevations above the sea's level, and of multiplying the means
by which its phenomena might be investigated, been more
powerfully felt.
We might, perhaps, as I have already elsewhere remark-
ed,* be led to adopt the erroneous idea that the value of these
great discoveries, each one of which reciprocally led to others,
and the importance of these two-fold conquests in the physical
and the intellectual world, would not have been duly appre-
ciated before our own age, in which the history of civilization
has happily been subjected to a philosophical mode of treat-
ment. Such an assumption is, however, refuted by the cotem-
* Examen Crit., t. i., p. 3-6 and 290.
260 COSMOS.
poraries of Columbus. The most talented among them fore-
saw the influence which the events of the latter years of the
fifteenth century would exercise on humanity. " Every day,"
writes Peter Martyr de Anghiera,* in his letters written in
the years 1493 and 1494, " brings us new wonders from a new
world — from those antipodes of the West — which a certain
Geiioese {Christophorus quidam, vir Ligur) has discovered.
Although sent forth by our monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella,
he could with difficulty obtain three ships, since what he said
was regarded as fabulous. Our friend Pomponius Laetus (one
of the most distinguished promoters of classical learning, and
persecuted at Rome for his religious opinions) could scarcely
refrain Irom tears of joy when I communicated to him the first
tidings of so unhoped-for an event." Anghiera, from whom
we talie these words, was an intelligent statesman at the
court of Ferdinand the Catholic and of Charles V., once em-
bassador at Egypt, and the personal friend of Columbus, Amer-
igo Vespucci, Sebastian Cabot, and Cortez. His long life
embraced the discovery of Corvo, the westernmost island of
the Azores, the expeditions of Diaz, Columbus, Gama, and
Magellan. Pope Leo X. read to his sister and to the car-
dinals, " until late in the night," Anghiera' s Oceanica. " I
would wish never more to quit Spain," writes Anghiera,
" since I am here at the fountain head of tidings of the new-
ly-discovered lands, and where I may hope, as the historian of
such great events, to acquire for my name some renown with
posterity."! Thus clearly did cotemporaries appreciate the
* Compare Opus Epistolarum Petri Martyris Anglerii Mediolanensts,
1G70, ep. cxxx. and clii. " Free laetitia piosiliisse te vixque a lachry-
mis prie gaudio temperasse quando literas adspexisti meas, quibus de
Autipodium Orbe, lateiiti bactenus, te certiorem feci, mi suavissime
Pompoui, iiisinuasti. Ex tuis ipse literis colligo, quid senseris. Sen-
sisti autem, tantique rem fecisti, quanti virum summa doctrina insigni-
tum decuit. Quis namque cibus sublimibus praestari potest ingeuiis isto
suavior ? quod coudimentum gratius ? a me facio conjecturam. Beari
sentio spiritus mieos, quaudo accitos alloquor prudentes aliquos ex his
qui ab ea redeunt provincia (Hispauiola insula)." The expression,
" Christophonis quidam Colonus," reminds us, I will not say of the too
often and unjustly cited " nescio quis Plutarchus" of Aulus Gellius
{Nod. AtticcB, xi., 16), but certainly of the " quodam Cornelio scri-
bente," in the answer written by the King Theodoric to the Frince of
the yEstyans, who was to be informed of the true origin of amber, as
recorded in Tacitus, Germ., cap. 45.
t Opvs EpistoL, No. ccccxxxvii. and dlxii. The renjarkable and in-
telligent Hieronymus Cardaniis, a magician, a fantastic enthusiast, and,
at the same time, an acute mathematician, also draws attention, in his
** physical problem-^," to how much of our knowledge of the earth was
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 261
glory of events which will survive in the memory of the latest
ages.
Columhus, in sailing westward from the meridian of the
Azores, through a wholly unexplored ocean, and applying the
newly-improved astrolabe for the determination of the ship's
place, sought Eastern Asia by a western course, not as a mere
adventurer, but under the guidance of a systematic plan. He
certainly had with him the sea chart which the Florentine
physician and astronomer, Paolo ToscaneUi, had sent him in
1477, and which, fifty-three years after his death, was still in
the possession of Bartholomew de las Casas.* It would ap-
derived from facts, to the observation of which one man has led. —
Cardani Opera, ed. Lugdun., 1663, t. ii., probl. p. 630 and 659, at nunc
quibus te laudibus afferam Christophire Columbi, non familiae tan turn,
non Genuensis urbis, non Italiee Provinciae, non Europae, partis orbis
solum, sed humani generis decus. I have been led to compare the
" problems" of Cardanus with those of the latter Aristotelian school,
because it appears to me remarkable, and characteristic of the sudden
enlargement of geography at that epoch, that, amid the confusion and
the feebleness of the physical explanations which prevail almost equal-
ly in both collections, the greater pax-t of these problems relate to com
parative meteorology. I allude to the considerations on the warm in-
sular climate of England contrasted with the winter at Milan ; on the
dependence of hail on electric explosions ; on the cause and direction
of oceanic currents ; on the maxima of atmospheric heat and cold oc-
curring after the summer and winter solstices ; on the elevation of the
region of snow under the tropics ; on the temperature dependent on
the radiation of heat from the sun and from all the heavenly bodies ;
on the greater intensity of light in the southern hemisphere, &c. " Cold
is merely absence of heat. Light and heat are only difterent in name,
and are in themselves inseparable." Cardani Opp., t. i., De Vita Pro-
pria, p. 40; t. ii., Probl. 621, 630-632, 653, and 713; t. iii.,X>e Suhtili-
tate, p. 417.
* See my Examen Cril., t. ii., p. 210-249. Accoi-ding to the manu-
script, Historia General de las Indias, lib. i., cap. 12, " la carta de ma-
rear que Maestro Paulo Fisico (ToscaneUi) envio ^ Colon" was in the
hands of Bartholome de las Casas when he wrote his work. Colum-
bus's ship's journal, of which we possess an extract (Navarrete, t. i., p.
13), does not entirely agree with the relation which I find in a manu-
script of Las Casas, for a communication of which I am indebted to M.
Ternaux Compans. The ship's journal says, " Iba hablando el Almi-
rante (martes 25 de Setiembre, 1492), con Martin Alonso Pinzon, capi-
tau de la otra carabela Pinta, sobra una carta que le habia enviado tres
dias hacia 6 la carabela, donde segun parece tenia pintados el Almirante
ciertas islas por aquella mar " In the manuscript of Las Casas
(lib. i., cap. 12), we find, on the other hand, as follows: " La carta de
marear que embio (ToscaneUi al Almirante), yo que esta historia es-
crivo la tengo en mi poder. Creo que todo su viage sobre esta carta
fundo" (lib. i., cap. 38) ; " asi fue que el martes 25 de Setiembre, llegase
Martin Alonso Pinzon con su caravela Pinta 6 hablar con Christobal Co-
lon, sobre una carta de marear que Christobal Colon leviaembiado ...
262 COSMOS.
pear from Las Casas's manuscript history, which I have ex-
amined, that this was the same " carta de marear" which the
admiral showed to Martin Alonso Pinzon on the 25th of Sep-
tember, 1492, and on which many prominent islands were de-
lineated. Had Columbus, however, alone followed the chart
of his counselor and adviser, Toscanelli, he would have kept
a more northern course in the parallel of Lisbon ; but instead
bf this, he steered half the way in the latitude of Gomera,
one of the Canaries, in the hope of more speedily reaching
Zipangu (Japan) ; and subsequently keeping a less high lati-
tude, he i'ound himself, on the 7th of October, 1492, in the
parallel of 25° 30'. Uneasy at not discovering the coast of
Zipangu, which, according to his reckoning, ought to lie 216
nautical miles further to the»east, he yielded, after long con-
tention, to the commander of the caravel Pinta, Martin Alon-
so Pinzon, of whom we have already spoken (one of three
wealthy and influential brothers, hostile to him), and steered
toward the southwest. This change of direction led, on the
12th of October, to the discovery of Guanahani.
We must here pause to consider the wonderful concatena-
tion of trivial circumstances which undeniably exercised an
influence on the course of the world's destinv. The talented
and ingenious Washington Irving has justly observed, that if
Columbus had resisted the counsel of Martin Alonso Pinzon,
and continued to steer westward, he would have entered the
Gulf Stream, and been borne to Florida, and from thence
probably to Cape Hatteras and Virginia — a circumstance of
incalculable importance, since it might have been the means
of giving to the United States of North America a Catholic
Spanish population in the place of the Protestant English one
by which those regions were subsequently colonized. " It
seems to me like an inspiration," said Pinzon to the admiral,
" that ray heart dictates to me {el corazon me da) that we
ought to steer in a difierent direction." It was on the strength
of this circumstance that in the celebrated lawsuit which Pin-
zon carried on against the heirs of Columbus between 1513
and 1515, he maintained that the discovery of America was
alone due to him. This inspiration, emanating from the heart,
Esta carta es la que le embio Paulo Fisico el Florentin la qual yo tengo
en mi poder con otras cosas del Almirante y escrituras de su misma mano
que traxeron d mi poder. En ella le pinto muchas islas " Ave
we to assume that the admiral had drawn upon the map of Toscanelli
the islands which he expected to reach, or would " tenia pintadas"
merely mean that " the admiral had a map on which these were paint-
ed .... ?"
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 263
Pinzon owed, as was related by an old sailor of Moguez, at
the same trial, to the flight of a flock of parrots which he had
observed in the evening flying toward the southwest, in order,
as he might well have conjectured, to roost on trees on the
land. Never has a flight of birds been attended by more im-
portant results. It may even be said that it has decided the
first colonization in the New Continent, and the original dis-
tribution of the Roman and Germanic races of man,*"
The course of great events, like the results of natural phe-
nomena, is ruled by eternal laws, with few of which we have
any perfect knowledge. The fleet which Emanuel, king of
Portugal, sent to India, under the command of Pedro Alvarez
Cabral, on the course discovered by Gama, was unexpectedly
driven on the coast of Brazil on the 22d of April, 1500. From
the zeal which the Portuguese had manifested, since the ex-
pedition of Diaz in 1487, to circumnavigate the Cape of Good
Hope, a recurrence of fortuitous circumstances similar to those
exercised by oceanic currents on Cabral's ships could hardly
fail to manifest itself. The African discoveries would thus
probably have brought about that of America south of the
equator : and thus Robertson was justified in saying that it
was decreed in the destinies of mankind that the New Con-
tinent should be made known to European navigators before
the close of the fifteenth century.
Among the characteristics of Christopher Columbus we
must especially notice the penetration and acuteness with
which, without intellectual culture, and without any knowl-
edge of physical and natural science, he could seize and com-
bine the phenomena of the external world. On his arrival in
a new world and under a new heaven.t he examined with care
the form of continental masses, the physiognomy of vegetation,
the habits of animals, and the distribution of heat and the
variations in terrestrial magnetism. While the old admiral
strove to discover the spices of India, and the rhubarb {rui-
barba), which had already acquired a great celebrity through
* Navarrete, Doaimentos,'^o. 69, in t. iii. of the Viages y Discuhr., p.
565-571 ; Examen CriL, t. i., p. 234-249 and 252; t. iii., p. 158-165
and 224. On the contested spot of the first landing in the West Indies,
see t. iii., p. 186-222. The map of the world of Juan de la Cosa, made
six years before the death of Columbus, which was discovered by Valck-
enaer and myself in the year 1832, during the cholera epidemic, and has
since acquired so much celebrity, has thrown new light on these moot
ed questions.
+ On the graphical and often poetical descriptions of nature found in
Columbus, see ante, p. 66, 67.
264 COSMOS.
the Arabian and Jewish physicians, and through the account
of Rubruquis and the Italian travelers, he also examined with
the greatest attention the roots, fruits, and leaves of the differ-
ent plants. In drawing attention to the influence exercised
by this great age of nautical discoverers on the extension of
natural views, we impart more animation to our descriptions,
by associating them with the individuality of one great man.
In the journal of his voyage, and in his reports, which were
first published from 1825 to 1829, we find almost all those
circumstances touched upon to which scientific enterprise was
directed in the latter half of the fifteenth and throughout the
whole of the sixteenth centuries.
We need only revert generally and cursorily to the exten-
sion imparted to the geography of Western nations from the
period when the Infante Dom Henrique the navigator, at his
country seat of Ter9a Naval, on the lovely bay of Sagres,
sketched his first plan of discovery, to the expeditions of Gae-
tano and Cabrillo to the South Sea. The daring expeditions
of the Portuguese, Spaniards, and English evince the sudden-
ness with which a new sense, as it were, was opened for the
appreciation of the grand and the boundless. The advance
of nautical science and the application of astronomical methods
to the correction of the ship's reckoning favored the efibrts
which gave to this age its peculiar character, and revealed to
men the image of the earth in all its completeness of form.
The discovery of the main-land of tropical America (on the
1st of August, 1498) occurred seventeen months after Cabot
reached the Labrador coast of North America. Columbus
did not see the terra firma of South America on the mount-
ainous shores of Paria, as has generally been supposed, but at
the Delta of the Orinoco, to the east of Cario Macareo.* Se-
bastian Cabott landed on the 24th of June, 1497, on the coast
of Labrador, between 56° and 58° north latitude. It has al-
ready been noticed that this inhospitable region had been visit-
ed by the Icelander Leif Ericksson, five hundred years earlier.
Columbus attached more importance on his third voyage to
the circumstance of finding pearls in the islands of Margarita
and Cabagua than to the discovery of the tierra jirme, for he
continued firmly persuaded to the day of his death that he had
* See the results of my investigations, in the Relation Hist, du Vox/'
age atix Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, t. ii., p. 702 ; and
in the Examen Crit. de V Hist, de la Geographie, t. i., p. 309.
t Biddle, Memoir of Sebastian Cahot, 1831, p. .52-61 ; Examen Crit.,
t. iv., p. 231.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 265
already touched a portion of the continent of Asia when on
his first voyage he reached Cuba, in November, 1492* From
this point, as his son Don Fernando, and his friend the Cura
de los Palacios, relate, he proposed, if he had provisions enough,
" to continue his course westward, and to return to Spain
either by water, by way of Ceylon (Taprobane) rodeando todo
la tierra de los JVegros, or by land, through Jerusalem and
Jaffa. "t Such were the projects by which the admiral, in
1494, proposed to circumnavigate the globe, four years before
Vasco de Gama, and twenty-seven years before Magellan and
Sebastian de Elcano. The preparations for Cabot's second
voyage, in which he penetrated through blocks of ice to 67°
30' north latitude, and endeavored to find a northwest passage
to Cathai (China), led him to think at " some future time of
an expedition to the north pole" (d lo del j^olo arctico).X The
more it became gradually recognized that the newly-discover-
ed land constituted one connected tract, extending from Lab-
rador to the promontory of Paria, and as the recently-found
map of Juan de la Cosa (1500) testified, beyond the equator,
far into the southern hemisphere, the more intense became the
desire of finding some passage either in the south or in the
north. Next to the rediscovery of the continent of America
and the knowledge of the extension of the new hemisphere
southward from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, discovered by
Garcia Jofre de Loaysa,^ the knowledge of the South Pacific,
* In a j)ortion of Columbus's Journal, Nov. I, 1492, to which but little
attention has been directed, it is stated, *' I have (in Cuba) opposite,
and near to me, Zayto y Guinsay (Zaitun and Quinsay, Marco Polo, ii.,
77) of the Gran Can." — Navarre te, Viages y Descuhrim. de los Espa-
Holes, t. i., p. 46. The curvature toward the south, w^hich Columbus,
on his second vo3^age, remarked in the most western part of the coast
of Cuba, had an important influence, as I have elsewhere observed, on
the discovery of South America, and on that of the Delta of the Orinoco
and Cape Paria. See Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 246-250. Anghiera
(Epist., clxviii., ed. Amst., 1670, p. 96) writes as follows : " Putat
(Colonus) regiones has (Parisc) esse Cubse contiguas et adhgerentes :
ita quod utrasque sint Indias Gangetidis continens ipsum "
t See the important manuscript of Andres Bernaldez, Cura de la villa
de los Palacios (Hisioria de los Reyes Catolicos, cb,^. 123). This history
comprises the years from 1488 to 1513. Bernaldez had received Colum-
bus into his house, in 1496, on his return from his second voyage.
Through the special kindness of M. Ternaux Compans, to whom the
History of the Conquista owes much important elucidation, I was ena-
bled at Paris, in Dec, 1838, to make a free use of this manuscript, which
was in the possession of my distinguished friend the historiographer
Don Juan Bautista Munoz. (Compare Fern. Colon, Vida del Almirante,
cap. 56.) t Examen Crit., t. iii.. p. 244-248.
$ Cape Horn was discovered bv Francisco de Hocesin S^bruary, 1526
Vol. II.— M
266 coriMos.
which bathes the western shores of America, was the most
important cosmical event of the great epoch which we are
here describing.
Ten years before Balboa, on the 25th of September, ]513,
first caught sight of the Pacific from the heights of the Sierra
de Quarequa at the Isthmus of Panama, Cohimbus distinctly
learned, when he was coasting along the eastern shores of Ve-
rao-ua, that to the west of this land there was a sea " which
in less than nine days' sail would bear ships to the Chersone-
sus aurea of Ptolemy and to the mouth of the Ganges." In
the same Carta rarissima, which contains the beautiful and
poetic narration of a dream, the admiral says, that " the op-
posite coasts of Veragua, near the Fvio de Belen, are situated
relatively to one another as Tortosa on the Mediterranean,
and Fuenterrabia in Biscay, or as Venice and Pisa."' The
great ocean, the South Pacific, was even at that time regard-
ed as merely a continuation of the Sinus magnus {fJisyag
KoXiTog) of Ptolemy, situated before the golden Chersonesus,
while Cattigara and the land of the Sines (Thinse) were sup-
posed to constitute its eastern boundary. The fanciful hypoth-
esis of Hipparchus, according to which this eastern shore of
the great gulf was connected with the portion of the African
continent which extended far toward the east,* and thus sup-
posed to make a closed inland sea of the Indian Ocean, was
but httle regarded in the Middle Ages, notwithstanding the
partiality to the views of Ptolemy — a fortunate circumstance,
in the expedition of the Commendador Garcia de Loaysa, which, follow
iiig that of Magellan, was destined to proceed to the Moluccas. While
Loaysa was passing through the Straits of Magellan, Hoces, with his
caravel, the San Lesrnes, was separated, from the flotilla, and driven as
far as 55^ south latitude. " Dijeron los del buque, que les parecia que
era alii acabaraiento de tierra." (Navarrete, Viages de los Espanoles,
t. v., p. 28 and 404-488.) Fleui-ieu maintains that Hoces only saw the
Cabo del Buen Succeso, west of Staten Island. Toward the end of the
sixteenth century, such a strange uncertainty again prevailed respect-
ing the form of the land, that the author of the Araucana (canto i., oct.
9) believed that the Magellanic Straits had closed by an earthquake,
and by the upheaval of the bottom of the sea, while, on the other hand,
Acosta {Historia Natural y Moral delas India8,\\h. iii.,cap. 10) regard-
ed the TeiTa del Fuego as the beginning of a great south polar laud.
(Compare, also, ante,'^. 72.)
* Whether the isthmus hypothesis, according to which Cape Prasum,
on the eastern shore of Africa, was connected with the eastern Asiatic
isthmus of Thinse, is to be traced to Marinusof Tyre, or to Hipparchus
or to the Babylonian Seleucus, or rather to Aristotle, De Ca-Jo (ii., 14),
J9 a question treated in detail in another work, Exauien Ciit., t. i.> p
\4i, IHl.and 329; t. ii.. (.. •.J7(J-372.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 267
when we consider the unfavorable influence which it would
doubtlessly have exercised on the direction of great maritime
enterprises.
The discovery and navigation of the Pacific indicate an
epoch which was so much the more important with respect
to the recognition of great cosmical relations, since it was ow-
ing to these events, and therefore scarcely three centuries and
a half ago, that not only the configuration of the western coast
of the New, and the eastern coast of the Old Continent were
determined ; but also, what is far more important to meteor-
ology, that the numerical relations of the area of land and
water upon the surface of our planet first began to be freed
from the highly erroneous views with which they had liitherto
been regarded. The magnitude of these areas, and their rela-
tive distribution, exercise a powerful influence on the quantity
of humidity contained in the atmosphere, the alternations in
the pressure of the air, the force and vigor of vegetation, the
greater or lesser distribution of certain species of animals, and
on the action of many other general phenomena and physicai
processes. The larger area apportioned to the fluid over tht»
solid parts of the earth's crust (in the ratio of 2|ths to 1), doa*
certainly diminish the habitable surface for the settlements oJ
the human race, and for the nourishment of the greater por
tion of mammalia, birds, and reptiles ; but it is nevertheless,
in accordance with the existing laws of organic life, a benefi-
cent arrangement, and a necessary condition for the preserva-
tion of all living beings inhabiting continents.
When, at the close of the fifteenth century, a keen desire
was awakened for discovering the shortest route to the Asiatic
spice lands, and when the idea of reaching the ea-st by sailing
to the west simultaneously awoke in the minds of two intel-
lectual men of Italy — the navigator Christopher Columbus,
and the physician and astronomer Paul Toscanelli* — the
opinion established in Ptolemy's Almagest still prevailed, that
the Old Continent occupied a space extending over 180 equa-
torial degrees from the western shore of the Iberian peninsula
to the meridian of Eastern Sinae, or that it extended from east
* Paolo Toscanelli was so greatly distinguished as an asti'onomer,
that Behaim's teacher, Regiomontanus, dedicated to him, in 1463, his
work De Quadratura Circuli, directed against the Cardinal Nicolaus de
Cusa. He constructed the great gnomon in the church of Santa Maria
Novella at Florence, and died in 1482, at the age of 85, without having
lived long enough to enjoy the pleasure of learning the discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope by Diaz, and that of the tropical part of the New
Continent by Columbus.
268 * . COSMOS.
to west over half of the globe. Columbus, misled by a long
series of false inferences, extended this space to 240 degrees,
and in his eyes the desired eastern shores of Asia appeared to
advance as far as the meridian of San Diego in Nevi^ Califor-
nia. He therefore hoped that he should only have to sail 120
degrees instead of the 231 degrees at which the wealthy Chi-
nese commercial city of Quinsay is actually situated to the
west of the extremity of the Spanish peninsula. Toscanelii,
in his correspondence with the admiral, diminished the ex-
panse of the fluid element in a manner still more remarkable
and more favorable to his designs. According to his calcula-
tions, the extent of the sea between Portugal and China was
limited to 52 degrees, so that, in conformity with the expres-
sion of the Prophet Esdras, six sevenths of the earth were dry.
Columbus, at a subsequent period, in a letter which he ad-
dressed to Queen Isabella from Haiti, immediately after the
completion of his third voyage, showed himself the more in-
clined to these views, because they had been defended in the
Imago Mundi by Cardinal d'Ailly, whom he regarded as the
highest authority.*
* As the Old Continent, from the western extremity of the Iberian
peninsula to the coast of China, comprehends almost 130° of longitude,
there remain about 230° for the distance which Columbus would have
had to traverse if he wished to reach Cathai (China), but less if he only
desired to reach Zipangu (Japan). This diiference of 230°, which I
have here indicated, depends on' the position of the Portuguese Cape
St. Vincent (11° 20' W. of Paris), and the ftfr projecting part of the
Chinese coast, near the then so celebrated port of Quinsay, so often
named by Columbus and Toscanelii (lat. 30° 28', long. 117° 47' E. of
Paris). The synonyms for Quinsay, in the province of Tschekiang, are
Kanfu, Haugtscheufu, Kingszu. The East Asiatic general commerce
was shared in the thirteenth century between . Quinsay and Zaitun
(Pinghai or Sseuthung), opposite to the island of Formosa (then Tung-
fan), in 25° 5' N. lat. (see Klaproth, Tableaux Hist, de VAsie, p. 227).
The distance of Cape St. Viucentfrom Zipangu (Niphon)is 22° of longi-
tude less than from Quinsay, therefore about 209° instead of 230° 53'.
It is strikmg that the oldest statements, those of Eratosthenes and Strabo
(lib. i., p. 64), come, through accidental compensations, within 10° of
the above-mentioned result of 129° for the diflference of longitude of
the o'lKovfiivrj. Strabo, in the same passage in which he alludes to the
possible existence of two great habitable continents in the northern
hemisphere, says that our o'tKOVfievij, in the parallel of Thinoe, Athens
(see p. 189), constitutes more than one third of the earth's circumference.
Marinus the Tyrian, misled by the length of the time occupied in tno
navigation from Myos Hormos to India, by the erroneously assumed di
rectiou of the major axis of the Caspian from west to east, and by the
over-estimation of the length of the land route to the country of the
Seres, gave to the Old Continent a breadth of 225° instead of 129°
The Chinese coast was thus advanced to the Sandwich Islands. Colura-
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 269
Six years after Balboa, sword in hand, and wading" to his
knees through the waves, claimed the possession of the Pacific
for Castile, and two years after his head had fallen by the
hand of the executioner in the revolt against the tyrannical
Pedrarias Davila,^ Magellan appeared in the Pacific (27th
of November, 1520), and, traversing the vast ocean from south-
bus naturally preferred this result to that of Ptolemy, according to which
Quiusay should have been found in the meridian of the eastern part of
the archipelago of the Carolinas. Ptolemy, in the Almagest (II., 1),
places the coast of Sinae at 180'-', and in his Geography (lib. i., cap. 12)
at 177^°. As Columbus estimated the navigation from Iberia to Sinae
at 120^, and Toscanelli at only 52^^, they might certainly, estimating
the length of the Mediterranean at about 40°, have called this appar-
ently hazardous enterprise a " brevissimo camino." Martin Behaim,
also, on his " World Apple,^^ the celebrated globe which he completed
in 1492, and which is still preserved in the Behaim house at Nurem-
berg, places the coast of China (or the throne of the King of Mango,
Cambalu, and Cathai) at only 100*^ west of the Azores — i. e., as Behaim
lived four years at Fayal, and probably calculated the distance from
that point — 119° 40' west of Cape St. Vincent. Columbus was prob-
ably acquainted with Behaim at Lisbon, where both lived from 1480
to 1484. (See my Examen Crit. de VHist. d.e la Geographie, t. ii., p.
357-369.) The many wholly erroneous numbers which we find in all
the writings on the discovery of America, and the then supposed extent
of Eastern Asia, have induced me more carefully to compare the opin-
ions of the Middle Ages with those of classical antiquity.
* The eastern portion of the Pacific was first navigated by white men in
a boat, when Alonso Martin de Don Benito (who had seen the sea horizon
with Vasco Nunez de Balboa on the 25th of September, 1513, from the
little Sierra de Quarequa) descended a few days afterward to the Gulf
de San Miguel, before Balboa enacted the strange ceremony of taking
possession of the ocean. Seven months before, in the month of January,
1513, Balboa had announced to his court that the South Sea, of which
he had heard from the natives, was very easy to navigate : " mar muy
mansa y que nunca anda brava como la mar de nuestra banda" (de las
Antillas). The name Oceana Pacijico was, however, as Pigafetta tells
us, first given by Magellan to the Mar del Sur (Balboa). Befox-e Ma-
gellan's expedition (in August, 1519), the Spanish government, which
was not wanting in watchful activity, had given secret orders, in Novem-
ber, 1514, to Pedrarias Davila, governor of the, province of Castilla del
Oro (the most northwestern part of South America), and to the great
navigator Juan Diaz de Solis, for the former to have four caravels built
in the Golfo de San Miguel, " to make discoveries in the newly-discov-
ered South Sea;" and to the latter, to seek for an opening ("abertura
de la tierra") from the eastern coast of America, with the view of ai'-
I'iving at the back (" d espel das") of the new country, i. e., of the
w^estern portion of Castilla del Oro, which was surrounded by the sea.
The expedition of Solis (October, 1515, to August, 151G) led him far to
the south, and to the discovery of the Rio de la Plata, long called the
Rio de Solis. (Compare, on the little known first discovery of the
Pacific, Petrus Mart\T, Epist., dxl., p. 296, with the documents of
1513-1515, in Navarrete, t. iii., p. 134 and 357 ; also ray Examen Crit.,
t. i., p. 320 and 350.)
270 COSMOS.
east to northwest, in a course of more than ten thousand geo-
graphical miles, by a singular chance, before he discovered the
Marianas (his Mas de los Lachones, or de las Velas Latinas)
and the Philippines, saw no other land but two small unin-
habited islands (the T>esventuradas, or unfortunate islands),
one of which, if we may believe his journal and his ship's reck-
oning, lies east of the Low Islands, and the other somewhat
to the southwest of the Archipelago of Mendana.* Sebastian
de Elcano completed the first circumnavigation of the earth
in the Victoria after Magellan's murder on the island of Zebu,
and obtained as his armorial bearings a globe, with the glo-
rious inscription. Primus circumdedisti me. He entered the
harbor of San Lucar in the month of September, 1522, and
scarcely had a year elapsed before the Emperor Charles, stim-
ulated by the suggestions of cosmographers, urged, in a letter
to Hernan Cortez, the discovery of a passage " by which the
distance to the spice lands would be shortened by two thirds."
The expedition of Alvaro de Saavedra was dispatched to the
Moluccas from a port of the province Zacatula, on the west-
ern coast of Mexico. Hernan Cortez writes in 1527 from the
recently-conquered Mexican capital, Tenochtitlan, " to the
Kincrs of Zebu and Tidor in the Asiatic island world." So
rapidly did the sphere of cosmical views enlarge, and with it
the animation of general intercourse !
Subsequently, the conqueror of New Spain himself entering
upon a course of discoveries in the Pacific, proceeded from
thence in search of a northeast passage. Men could not ha-
bituate themselves to the idea that the continent extended
uninterruptedly from such high southern to such high north-
* On the geographical position of the Desventuradas (San Pablo, S.
lat. 16i°, long. 135|° west of Paris; Isla de Tiburones, S. lat. 10i°,
W. long. 145°), see my Examen Crit., t. i., p. 286, and Navarrete, t.
iv., p. lix., 52, 218, and 267. The great period of geographical discov-
eries gave occasion to many illustrious heraldic bearings, similar to the
one mentioned in the text as bestowed on Sebastian de Elcano and his
descendants (the terrestrial globe, with the inscription " Primus cir-
cumdedisti me"). The arms which were given to Columbus as early
as May, 1493, to honor his person, "para sublimarlo," with posterity,
contain the first map of America — a range of islands in front of a gulf
(Oviedo, Hist. General de las Indias, ed. de 1547, lib. ii., cap. 7, fol.
10 a.; Navarrete, t. ii., p. 37 ; Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 236). The Em-
peror Charles V. gave to Diego de Ordaz, who boasted of having ascend-
ed the volcano of Orizaba, the drawing of that conical mountain ; and
to the historian Oviedo (who lived in tropical America uninterruptedly
for thirty-four years, from 1513 to 1547), the four beautiful stars of the
Southern Cross, as armorial bearings. (Oviedo, lib. ii., cap. 11, fol.
16,b.>
OC^EAMC OISroVEUIKS. 271
ern latitudes. When tidings arrived from the coast of Cali-
fornia that the expedition of Cortez had perished, the wife of
the hero, Juana de Zuiiiga, the beautiful daughter of the
Count d'Aguilar, caused two ships to be fitted out and sent
forth to ascertain its fate.* Calitbrnia was already, in 1541,
recognized to be an arid, woodless peninsula — a fact that was
forgotten in the seventeenth century. We moreover gather
from the narratives of Balboa, Pedrarias Davila, and Hern an
Cortez, that hopes were entertained at that period of finding
in the Pacific, then considered to be a portion of the Indian
Ocean, groups of islands, rich in spices, gold, precious stones,
and pearls. Excited fancy urged men to undertake great en-
terprises, and the daring of these undertakings, whether suc-
cessful or not, reacted on the imagination, and excited it still
more powerfully. Thus, notwithstanding the thorough ab-
sence of political freedom, many circumstances concurred at
this remarkable age of the Conquista — a period of overwrought
excitement, violence, and of a mania for discoveries by sea and
land — to favor individuality of character, and to enable some
highly-gifted minds to develop many noble germs drawn from
the depths of feeling. They err who believe that the Con-
quistadores were incited by love of gold and religious fanati-
cism alone. Perils always exalt the poetry of life ; and, more-
over, the remarkable age, whose influence on the development
of cosmical ideas w"e are now depicting, gave to all enterprises,
and to the natural impressions awakened by distant travels,
the charm of novelty and surprise, which is beginning to fail
us in the present w^ell-instructed age, when so many portions
of the earth are opened to us. Not only one hemisphere, but
almost two thirds of the earth, were then a new and. unex-
plored world, as unseen as that portion of the moon's surface
which the law of gravitation constantly averts from the glance
of the inhabitants of the earth. Our deeply-inquiring age
finds in the increasing abundance of ideas presented to the
human mind a compensation for the surprise formerly induced
by the novelty of grand, massive, and imposing natural phe-
nomena— a compensation which will, it is true, long be de-
nied to the many, but is vouchsafed to the few familiar with
the condition of science. To them the increasing insight into
the silent operation of natural forces, w^hether in electro-mag-
netism or in the polarization of light, in the influence of dia-
* See my Esaai Politique sur Ic Royaume dc la Nonvelle Espagne, t.
ii., 1827, p. 2.59; and Prescott, History of ike Conquest of Mexico (New
Vork. 1843), vol. iii., p- 271 and 336.
272 COSMOS.
thermal substances or in the physiological phenomena of vital
organisms, gradually unvails a world of wonders, of which we
have scarcely reached the threshold.
The Sandwich Islands, Papua or New Guinea, and some
portions of New Holland, were all discovered in the early half
of the sixteenth century.* These discoveries prepared the way
for those of Cabrillo, Sebastian Vizcaino, Mendaiia, and Quiros,
whose Sagittariais Tahiti, and whose Archipelago del Espiritu
Santo is the same as the New Hebrides of Cook.f Quiros was
accompanied by the bold navigator who subsequently gave his
name to the Torres Straits. The Pacific no longer appeared
as it had done to Magellan, a desert waste ; it was now ani-
mated by islands, which, however, for want of exact astro-
nomical observations, appeared to have no fixed position, but
floated from place to place over the charts. The Pacific re-
mained for a long time the exclusive theater of the enterprises
of the Spaniards and Portuguese. The important South In-
dian Malayan Archipelago, dimly described by Ptolemy, Cos
mas, and Polo, unfolded itself in more distinct outlines after
Albuquerque had established himself in 1511 in Malacca, and
after the expedition of Anton Abreu. It is the special merit
of the classical Portuguese historian, Barros, the cotemporary
of Magellan and Camoens, to have so truly recognized the phys-
ical and ethnological character of this archipelago, as to be
the first to propose that the Australian Polynesia should be
distinguished as a fifth portion of the earth. It was not un-
til the Dutch power acquired the ascendency in the Moluccas
* Gaetano discovered one of the Saudvvich Islands in 1542. Re-
specting the voyage of Don Jorge de Menezes (1526), and that of Al-
varo de Saavedra (1528), to the Ilhas de Papuas, see Barros, Da Asia,
Dec. iv., liv. i., cap. 16; and Navarrete, t. v., p. 125. The ^'^ Hydrog-
raphy^^ of Joh. Rotz (1542), which is preserved in the British Mu-
seum, and has been examined by the learned Dalrymple, contains outr
lines of Nevv^ Holland, as does also the collection of maps of Jean Valard
of Dieppe (1552), for the fii*st knowledge of which we are indebted to
M. Coquebert Monbret.
t After the death of Mendana, his wife, Dona Isabela Baijetos, a
woman distinguished for personal courage and great mental endow-
ments, undertook in the Pacific the command of the expedition, which
did not terminate until 1596 {Essai Polit. sur la Nouv. Esp., t. iv., p.
HI).
Quiros practiced in his ships the distillation of fresh from salt water
on a considerable scale, and his example was followed in several in-
stances (Navarrete, t. i., p. liii.). The entire opei-ation, as I have else-
where shown on the testimony of Alexander of Aphrodisias, was
known as early as the third century of our era, although it was noJ
then practiced in ships.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 273
that Australia began to emerge from its former obscurity, and
to assume a definite form in the eyes of geographers. * Now
began the great epoch of Abel Tasman. We do not purpose
here to give the history of individual geographical discoveries,
but simply to refer to the principal events by which, in a short
space of time and in continuous connection, two thirds of the
earth's surface were opened to the apprehension of men, in
consequence of the suddenly awakened desire to reach the
wide, the unknown, and the remote regions of our globe.
An enlarged insight into the nature and the laws of phys-
ical forces, into the distribution of heat over the earth's sur-
face, the abundance of vital organisms and the limits of their
distribution, was developed simultaneously with this extended
knowledofe of land and sea. The advance which the different
branches of science had made toward the close of the Middle
Ages (a period which, in a scientific point of view, has not
been sufficiently estimated), facilitated and furthered the sens-
uous apprehension and the comparison of an unbounded mass
of physical phenomena now simultaneously presented to the
observation of men. The impressions were so much the
deeper and so much the more capable of leading to the estab-
lishment of cosmical laws, because the nations of Western
Europe, even before the middle of the sixteenth century, had
explored the New Continent, at least along its coasts, in the
most different degrees of latitude in both hemispheres ; and be-
cause it was here that they first became firmly settled in the
region of the equator, and that, owing to the singular configu-
ration of the earth's surface, the most striking contrasts of veg-
etable organizations and of cUmate were presented to them at
different elevations within very circumscribed limits of space.
If I again take occasion to allude to the advantages presented
by the mountainous districts of the equinoctial zone, I would
observe, in justification of my reiteration of the same senti-
ment, that to the inhabitants of these regions alone it is grant-
ed to behold all the stars of the heaven, and almost all fami-
lies and forms of vegetation ; but to behold is not to observe
by a mental process of comparison and combination.
Although in Columbus, as I hope I have succeeded in show-
ing in another work, a capacity for exact observation was de-
veloped in manifold directions, notwithstanding his entire de
ficiency of all previous knowledge of natural history, and sole-
ly by contact with great natural phenomena, we must by no
* See the excellent work of Professor Meinecke of Prenzlau, entitled
Das Festland Australien, eine Geogr. Monographic, 1837, th. i., s. 2-10
M 2
274 COSMOS.
means assume a similar development in the rough and war-
like body of the Conquistadores. Europe owes to another and
more peaceful class of travelers, and to a small number of dis-
tinguished men among municipal functionaries, ecclesiastics,
and physicians, that which it has unquestionably acquired by
the discovery of America, in the gradual enrichment of its
knowledge regarding the character and composition of the at-
mosphere, and its action on the human organization ; the dis-
tribution of climates on the declivities of the Cordilleras ; the
elevation of the line of perpetual snow in accordance with the
different degrees of latitude in both hemispheres; the succes-
sion of volcanoes ; the limitation of the circles of commotion
in earthquakes ; the laws of magnetism ; the direction of
oceanic currents ; and the gradations of new animal and veg-
etable forms. The class of travelers to whom we have allud-
ed, by residing in native Indian cities, some of which were
situated twelve or thirteen thousand feet above the level of
the sea, were enabled to observe with their own eyes, and, by
a continued residence in those regions, to test and to combine
the observations of others, to collect natural products, and to
describe and transmit them to their European friends. It
will suffice here to mention Gomara, Oviedo, Acosta, and
Hernandez. Columbus brought home from his first voyage
of discovery some natural products, as, for instance, fruits, and
the skins of animals. In a letter written from Segovia (Au-
gust, 1494), Queen Isabella enjoins on the admiral to perse-
vere in his collections ; and she especially requires of him that
he should bring with him specimens of " all the coast and
forest birds peculiar to countries which have a difierent cli-
mate and different seasons." Little attention has hitherto
been given to the fact that Martin Behaim's friend Cada-
mosto procured for the Infante Henry the Navigator black ele-
phants' hair a palm and a half in length, from the same west-
ern coast of Africa whence Hanno, almost two thousand years
earlier, had brought the " tanned skins of wild women " (of
the large Gorilla apes), in order to suspend them in a temple.
Hernandez, the private physician of Philip II., and sent by
that monarch to Mexico, in order to have all tjbe vegetable
and zoological curiosities of the country depicted" in accurate
and finished drawings, was able to enlarge his collection by
copies of many very carefully executed historical pictures,
which had been painted at the command of Nezahualcoyotl,
a king of Tezcuco,* half a century before the arrival of the
* This king died in the time of the Mexican king Axayacatl, who
OCEA^.C DISCOVERIES., 275
Spaniards. Hernandez also availed himself of a collection of
medicinal plants which he found still growing in the cele-
brated old Mexican garden of Huaxtepec, which, owing to
its vicinity to a newly-established Spanish hospital,* the Coii-
quistadores had not laid waste. Almost at this time the fos-
sil mastodon bones on the elevated plateaux of Mexico, New
Granada, and Peru, which have since become so important
with respect to the theory of the successive elevation of mount-
ain chains, were collected and described. The designations
of giant bones and fields of giants ( Campos de Gigantes) suf-
ficiently testified the fantastic character of the early interpre-
tation applied to these fossils.
One circumstance which specially contributed to the exten-
sion of cosmical views at this enterprising period was the im-
mediate contact of a numerous mass of Europeans with the
free and grand exotic forms of nature, on the plains and
mountainous regions of America, and (in consequence of the
voyage of Vasco de Gama) on the eastern shores of Africa
and Southern India. Even in the beginning of the sixteenth
century, a Portuguese physician, Garcia de Orta, under the
protection of the noble Martin Alfonso de Sousa, established,
on the present site of Bombay, a botanical garden, in which
he cultivated the medicinal plants of the neighborhood. The
muse of Caraoens has paid Garcia de Orta the tribute of pa-
triotic praise. The impulse to direct observation was now
every where awakened, while the cosmographical WTitings of
reigned from 1464 to 1477. The learned native historian, Fernando
de Alva Jxtlilxochitl, whose manuscript chronicle of the Chichimeque
I saw in 1803, in the place of the Viceroy of Mexico, and of which Mr.
Prescott has so ably availed himself in his work {Conquest of Mexico,
vol. i., p. 61, 173, and 206; vol. iii., p. 112), was a descendant of the
poet king Nezahualcoyotl. The Aztec name of the historian, Fernando
de Alva, means Vanilla face. M. Ternaux Compans, in 1840, caused a
French translation of this manuscript to be printed in Paris. The notice
of the long elephants' hair collected by Cadainosto occurs in Ramusio,
vol. i., p. 109, and in Grynaeus, cap. 43, p. 33.
* Clavigero, Storia antica del Messico (Cesena, 1780), t. ii.,p. 1.53.
There is no doubt, from the accordant testimonies of Hernau Cortez in
his reports to the Emperor Charles V., of Bernal Diaz, Gomam, Oviedo,
and Hernandez, that, at the time of the conquest of Montezuma's em-
pire, there were no menageries and botanic gardens in any part of
Europe which could be compared with those of Huaxtepec, Chapolta-
pec, Iztapalapan, and Tezcuco. (Prescott, op. cit., vol. i., p. 178; vol,
ii., p. QQ and 117-121 ; vol. iii., p. 42.) On the early attention which
is mentioned in the text as having been paid to the fossil bones in the
"fields of giants." see Garcilasn, lib. ix., cap. 9; Acosta. lib. iv., cap
30; and Hernandez Cod. of 1.5-56), t. i.. cap. 32. p. 105.
276 -^ COSMOS.
the Middle Ages were to be regarded less as the result of act-
ual observation than as mere compilations, reflecting the opin-
ions of classical antiquity. Two of the greatest men of the
sixteenth century, Conrad Gesner and Andreas Csesalpinus,
have the high merit of having opened a new path to zoology
and botany.
In order to give a more vivid idea of the early influence
exercised by oceanic discoveries on the enlarged sphere of the
physical and astronomical sciences connected with navigation,
I will call attention, at the close of this description, to some lu-
minous points, which we may already see glimmering through
the writings of Columbus. Their first faint light deserves to
be traced with so much the more care, because they contain
the germs of general cosmical views. I will not pause here
to consider the proofs of the results which I have enumerated,
since I have given them in detail in another work, entitled
Examen Critique de V Histoi^x de la Geographie du Nou~
veau Co7itine7it et des Progres de V Astro7iomie Nautique
aux XV® et xvi® Siecles. But, in order to avoid the imputa-
tion of undervaluing the views of modern physical kno vvledge,
in comparison with the observations of Columbus, I will give
the literal translation of a few lines contained in a letter which
the admiral wrote from Haiti in the month of October, 1498
He writes as follows : '* Each time that I sail from Spain to
India, as soon as I have proceeded about a hundred nautical
miles to the west of the Azores, I perceive an extraordinary
alteration in the movement of the heavenly bodies, in the tem-
perature of the air, and in the character of the sea. I have
observed these alterations with especial care, and I notice that
the mariner's compass [agujas de 7narear), whose declination
had hitherto been northeast, was now changed to northwest ;
and when I had crossed this line {raya), as if in passing the
brow of a hill [como quien tra?>])07ie una cuesta), I found the
ocean covered by such a mass of sea weed, similar to small
branches of pine covered with pistachio nuts, that we were
apprehensive that, for want of a sufficiency of water, our ships
would run upon a shoal. Before we reached the line of which
I speak, there was no trace of any such sea weed. On the
boundary line, one hundred miles west of the Azores, the ocean
becomes at once still and calm, being scare* V ever moved by
a breeze. On my passage from the Canary Islands to the
parallel of Sierra Leone, we had to endure a frightful degree
of heat, but, as soon as we had crossed the above-mentioned
line (to the west of the nieridian of the Azores), the climate
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 277
changed, the air became temperate, and the freshness increas-
ed the further we advanced."
This passage, which is elucidated by many others in the
writings of Columbus, contains views of physical geography,
observations on the influence of geographical longitude on the
declination of the magnetic needle, on the inflection of the iso-
thermal lines between the western shores of the Old and the
eastern shores of the New Continent, on the position of the
Great Saragossa bank in the basin of the Atlantic Ocean, and
on the relations existing between this part of the ocean and
the superimposed atmosphere. Erroneous observations made
in the vicinity of the Azores, on the movement of the polar
star,* had misled Columbus during his first voyage, from the
inaccuracy of his mathematical knowledge, to entertain a be-
lief in the irregularity of the spheroidal form of the earth. In
the western hemisphere, the earth, according to his views, " is
more swollen, so that ships gradually arrive nearer the heav-
ens on reaching the line {raya), where the magnetic needle
points due north, and this elevation [cuesta) is the cause of
the cooler temperature." The solemn reception of the admi-
ral in Barcelona took place in April, 1493, and as early as the
4th of May of the same year, the celebrated bull was signed
by Pope Alexander VI., which " establishes to all eternity"
the line of demarkationt between the Spanish and Portuguese
* Obsei-vations de Ckristophe Colomb sur le Passage de la Polaire par
le Miridien, in my Relation Hist., t. i., p. 506, and in the Examen Crit.,
t. iii., p. 17-20, 44-51, and 56-61. (Compare, also, Navarrete, in Co-
lumbus's Journal of 16th to 30th of September, 1492, p. 9, 15, and 254.)
t On the singular diffei-ences of the " Bula de concesion k los Reyes
CatoHcos de las Indias descubiertas y que se descubieren" of May 3,
1493, and the " Bula de Alexandre VI., sobre la particion del oceano"
of May 4, 1493 (elucidated in the Bula de estension of the 25th of Sep-
tember, 1493), see Examen Crit., t. iii., p. 52-54. Very different from
this line of demarkatiou is that settled in the " Capitulacion de la par-
ticion del Mar Oceano entre los Reyes Catolicos y Don Juan, Rey de
Portugal," of the 7th of June, 1494, 370 leagues {\7\ to an equatorial de-
gree) west of the Cape Verd Islands. (Compare Navarrete, Coleccion
de los Viages y Descub. de los Esp., t. ii., p. 28-35, 116-143, and 404 ; t.
iv., p. 55 and 252.) This last-named line, which led to the sale of the
Moluccas (de el Moluca) to Portugal, 1529, for the sum of 350,000 gold
ducats, did not stand in any connection with magnetical or meteorolog
ical fancies. The papal lines of demarkatiou deserve, however, more
careful consideration in the present work, because, as I have mention-
ed in the text, they exercised great influence on the endeavors to im-
prove nautical astronomy, and especially on the methods attempted for
the determination of the longitude. It is also very desei-ving of notice,
that the capitulacion of June 7, 1494, affords the first example of a pro-
posal for the establishment of a meridian in a permanent manner bv
278 COSMOS.
possessions, at a distance of one hundred miles to the west of
the Azores. If we consider further that Columbus, imme-
diately after his return from his first voyage of discovery, pro-
posed to go to Rome, in order, as he said, to " give the pope
notice of all that he had discovered," and if the importance
attached by the cotemporaries of Columbus to the discovery
of the line of no variation be further borne in mind, it will be
admitted that I was justified in advancing the historical prop-
osition that the admiral, at the moment of his highest court
favor, strove to have a ''physical line of clemarkation con-
verted into a 2^olitical one.''
The influence which the discovery of America and the
oceanic enterprises connected with that event so rapidly ex-
ercised on the combined mass of physical and astronomical
science, is rendered most strikingly manifest when we recall
the earliest impressions of those who lived at this period, and
the extended range of those scientific efibrts, of which the
more important are comprehended in the first half of the six-
teenth century. Christopher Columbus has not only the mer-
it of being the first to discover a line without magnetic va-
riation, but also of having excited a taste for the study of
terrestrial magnetism in Europe, by means of his observations
on the progressive increase of western declination in receding
from that line. The fact that almost every where the ends
of a freely-moving magnetic needle do not point exactly to
the geographical north and south poles, must have repeatedly
been recognized, even with very imperfect instruments, in the
Mediterranean, and at all places where, in the twelfth centu-
ry, the declination amounted to more than eight or te-n de-
grees. But it is not improbable that the Arabs or the Cru-
saders, who were brought in contact with the East between
the years 1096 and 1270, might, while they spread the use
of the Chinese and Indian mariner's compass, also have drawn
attention to the northeast and northwest pointing of the mag-
netic needle in diflerent regions of the earth as to a long-
known phenomenon. We learn positively from the Chinese
Penthsaoyan, which was written under the dynasty of" Song,*
marks graven va. rocks, or by the erection of towers. It is commanded,
" que se haga alguna senal 6 torre," that some signal or tower be erect-
ed wherever the dividing meridian, whether in the eastern or the west-
ern hemisphere, intersects an island or a continent in its course from
pole to pole. In the continents, the rayas were to be marked at prop-
er intervals by a series of such marks or towers, which would indeed
have been no slight undertaking.
** It appears to be a remarkable fact, that the earliest cl.-issical writer
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 279
between 1111 and 1117, that the mode of measuring the
amount of western dechnation had long been understood. The
merit due to Columbus is not to have made the first observa-
tion of the existence of magnetic variation, since we find, for
example, that this is set down on the chart of Andrea Bianco
m 1436, but that he was the first who remarked, on the 13th
of September, 1492, that " 2^° east of the island of Corvo the
magnetic variation changed and passed from N.E. to N.W."
Tkis discovery of a magnetic line ivitlwiit variation marks
a memorable epoch in nautical astronomy. It was celebrated
with just praise by Oviedo, Las Casas, and Herrera. We
can not assume, with Livio Sanuto, that this discovery is due
to the celebrated navigator, Sebastian Cabot, without entirely
losing sight of the fact that Cabot's first voyage, made at the
expense of some merchants of Bristol, and distinguished for its
success in reaching the continent of America, was not accom-
plished until five years after the first expedition of Columbus.
The great Spanish navigator has not only the merit of having
discovered a region in the Atlantic Ocean where at that period
the magnetic meridian coincided with the geographical, but
also that of having made the ingenious observation that mag-
netic variation might likewise serve to determine the ship's
place with respect to longitude. In the journal of the second
voyage (April, 1496) we find that the admiral actually de-
termined his position by the observed declination. The diffi-
culties were, it is true, at that period still unknown, which
oppose this method of determining longitude, especially where
the magnetic lines of declination are so much curved as to
follow the parallels of latitude for considerable distances, in
stead of coinciding with the direction of the meridian. Mag-
on terrestrial magnetism, William Gilbert, who can not be supposed to
have had the slightest knowledge of Chinese literature, should regard
the mariner's compass as a Chinese invention, which had been brought
to Europe by Marco Polo. " Ilia quidem pyxide nihil unquam humanis
excogitatum artibus humano generi profuisse magis, constat. Scientia
nauticifi pyxidulse traducta videtur in Italiam per Paulum Venetum, qui
circa annum mcclx. apud Chinas artem pyxidis didicit." {Gulielmi
Gilberti Colcestrensis, Medici Londinensis de Magnete Physiologia nova,
Lond., 1600, p. 4.) The idea of the introduction of the compass by
Marco Polo, whose travels occurred in the interval between 127 1 and
1295, and who therefore returned to Italy after the mariner's compass
had been mentioned as a long-known instrument by Guyot de Provins
in his poem, as well as by Jacques de Vitry and Dante, is not sup-
ported by any evidence. Before Marco Polo set out on his travels in
the middle of the thirteenth century, Catalans and Basques already
made use of the compass. (See Raymond Lully, in the Treatise Ds
Conlemplatione, written in 1272.)
280 COSMOS.
netic and astronomical methods were anxiously sought, in ordei
to determine, on land and at sea, those points which are inter-
sected by the ideal line of demarkation. The imperfect con-
dition of science, and of all the instruments used at sea in 1493
to measure space and time, were unequal to aflbrd a practical
solution to so difficult a problem. Under these circumstances,
Pope Alexander VI. actually rendered, without knowing it,
an essential service to nautical astronomy and the physical
science of terrestrial magnetism by his presumption in dividing
half the globe between two powerful states. From that time
forth the maritime powers were continually beset by a host
of impracticable proposals. Sebastian Cabot, as we learn Irom
his friend, Richard Eden, boasted on his death-bed of having
had a " divine revelation made to him of an infalHble meth-
od of finding geographical longitude." This revelation con-
sisted in a firm conviction that magnetic declination changed
regularly and rapidly with the meridian. The cosmographer
Alonso de Santa Cruz, one of the instructors of Charles V., uut
dertook, although certainly from very imperfect observations,
to draw up the first general variation chart^ in the year 1530,
and, therefore, cJne hundred and fifty years before Halley.
The advance or movement of the magnetic lines, the knowl-
edge of which has generally been ascribed to Gassendi, was
not even conjectured by William Gilbert, although Acosta,
"from the instruction of Portuguese navigators," had at a
much earlier period assumed that there were four lines with-
out declination over the earth's surface. t No sooner was the
* In corroboration of this statement regarding Sebastian Cabot on his
death-bed, see the well-written and critically -historical work by Biddle,
entitled A Memoir of Sebastian Cabo (p. 222). " We do not know
with certainty," says Biddle, " either the year of the death or the
Durying-place of the great navigator who gave to Great Britain almost
an entire continent, and without whom (as without Sir Walter Raleigh)
the Enghsh language would perhaps not have been spoken by many
millions who now inhabit America." On the materials according to
which the variation chart of Alonso de Santa Cruz was compiled, as
well as on the variation compass, whose construction allowed altitudes
of the sun to be taken at the same time, see Navairete, Noticia biogra-
Jica del cosmografo Alonso de Santa Cruz, p. 3-8. The first variation
compass was constructed before 1525, by an ingenious apothecary of
Seville, Felipe Guillen. The endeavors to leani more exactly the di-
rection of the curves of magnetic declination were so earnest, that in
1585 Juan Jayme sailed with Francisco Gali from Manilla to Acapulco
merely for the purpose of trying in the Pacific a declination instrument
which he had invented. See my Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Es-
pagne, t. iv., p. 110.
+ Acosta, Hist. Natural de las Indias, lib. i., cap. 17. These four
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 281
dipping-needle invented in England, in 1576, by Robert Nor
man, than Gilbert boasted that, by means of this instrument,
he could determine a ship's place in dark, starless nights {aere
calignoso).* Immediately after my return to Europe, I show-
ed from my own observations in the Pacific that, under cer-
tain local relations, as, for instance, during the season of the
constant mist (garua) on the coasts of Peru, the latitude mighr
be determined from the magnetic inclination with sufficient
accuracy for the purposes of navigation. I have purposely
dwelt at length on these individual points, in order to show,
in our consideration of an important cosmical event, that, with
the exception of measuring the intensity of magnetic force, and
the horary variations of the declination, all those questions
were broached in the sixteenth century, with which the phys-
icists of the present day are still occupied. On the remarka-
ble chart of America appended to the edition of the geography
of Ptolemy, published at Rome in 1508, we find the magnet-
ic pole marked as an insular mountain north of Gruentlant
(Greenland), which is represented as a part of Asia. Martin
Cortez in the Breve Compe7idio cle la Sj)hera (1545), and
Livio Sanuto in the Geograiphia cli Tolomeo (1588), place it
further to the soufh. The latter writer entertained a preju-
dice, which has unfortunately survived to the present time,
that " if we were so fortunate as to reach the magnetic pole
(iZ calamitico), we should there experience some miraculous
efiects {alciin niiraculoso stupendo effettd').
Attention was directed at the close of the fifteenth and the
beginning of the sixteenth century, in reference to the distribu
tion of heat and meteorology, to the decrease of heat with the
increase of western longitudet (the curvature of the isothermal
lines) ; to the law of rotation of the winds, generalized by Lord
magnetic lines without variation led Halley, by the contests between
Henry Bond and Beckborrow, to the theory of four magnetic poles.
* Gilbert, De Magnete Physiologia nova, lib. v., cap. 8, p. 200.
+ In the temperate and cold zones, this inflection of the isothermal
lines is general between the west coast of Europe and the east coast of
North America, but within the tropical zone the isothermal lines run
almost parallel to the equator ; and in the hasty conclusions into which
Columbus was led, no account was taken of the difierence between sea
and land climates, or between east and west coasts, or of the influence
of latitudes and winds, as, for instance, those blowing over Africa.
(Compare the remarkable considerations on climates which are brought
together in the Vida del Almirante, cap. 66.) The early conjecture of
Columbus regarding the curvature of the isothermal lines in the Atlan-
tic Ocean was well founded, if limited to the extra-tropical (temperate
and cold) zones.
ySJi COSMOS.
Bacon ;* to the decrease of humidity in the atmosphere, and
of the quantity of rain owing to the destruction of forests ;t
to the decrease of heat with the increase of elevation above
the level of the sea ; and to the lower limit of the line of per-
petual snow. The fact of this limit being a function of
geographical latitude was first recognized by Peter Martyr
Anghiera in 1510. Alonso de Hojeda and Amerigo Vespucci
had seen the snowy mountains of Santa Marta ( Tierras
nevadas de Citarjna) as early as the year 1500 ; Rodrigo
Bastidas and Juan de la Cosa examined them more closely in
1501 ; but it was not until the pilot Juan Vespucci, nephew
of Amerigo, had communicated to his friend and patron An-
ghiera an account of the expedition of Colmenares, that the
tropical snow region visible on the mountainous shore of the
Caribbean Sea acquired a great, and, we might say, a cosmical
importance. A connection was now established between the
lower limit of perpetual snow and the general relations of the
decrease of heat and the differences of climate. Herodotus
(ii., 22), in his investigations on the rising of the Nile, wholly
denied the existence of snowy mountains south of the tropic
of Cancer. Alexander's campaigns indeed led the Greeks to
the Nevados of the Hindoo-Coosh range {opt] aydvvK^a), but
this is situated between 34° and 36° north latitude. The
only notice of snow in the equatorial region with which I am
acquainted, before the discovery of America, and prior to the
year 1500, and which has been but little regarded by physi-
cists, is contained in the celebrated inscription of Adulis, which
is considered by Niebuhr to be later than Juba and Augustus.
The knowledge of the dependence of the lower limit of snow
on the latitude of the place,$ the first insight into the law of
the vertical decrease of temperature, and the sinking of an
* An observation of Columbus. ( Yida del Almirante, cap. 55 ; Ex-
amen Crit., t. iv., p. 253 ; and see, also, vol. i., p. 316.)
t The admiral, says Fernando Colon ( Vida del Aim., cap. 58), ascrib-
ed the extent and denseness of the forests which clothed the ridges of
the mountains to the many refreshing falls of rain, which cooled the air
while he continued to sail along the coast of Jamaica. He remarks in
his ship's journal on this occasion, that " formerly the quantity of rain
was equally great in Madeira, the Canaries, and the Azores; but since
the trees which shaded the ground have been cut down, rain has be-
come much more rare." This warning has remained almost unheeded
for three centuries and a half.
X See vol. i,, p. 329 ; Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 294 ; Asie Centrale, t
iii., p. 235. The inscription of Adulis, which is almost fifteen hundred
years older than Anghiera, speaks of " Abyssinian snow, in which the
traveler sinks up to the knees."
OCEANIC DISCO VERIKS. 283
almost equally cold upper stratum of air from the equatoi
toward the poles, designate an important epoch in the history
of our physical knowledge.
If, on the one hand, accidental observations, having a
wholly unscientific origin, favored this knowledge in the sud-
denly enlarged spheres of natural investigation, the age we
are describing was, on the other hand, from an unfortunate
combination of circumstances, singularly deficient in the ad-
vantages arising from a purely scientific impulse. Leonardo
da Vinci, the greatest physicist of the fifteenth century, who
combined an enviable insight into nature with distinguished
mathematical knov.'ledge, was the cotemporary of Columbus,
and died three years after him. Meteorolog}^ as well as hy-
draulics and optics, had occupied the attention of this cele-
brated artist. The influence which he exercised during his
life was made manifest by his great works in painting, and
by the eloquence of his discourse, and not by his writings.
Had the physical view^s of Leonardo da Vinci not remained
buried in his manuscripts, the field of observation opened by
the new world would in a great degree have been worked out
in many departments of science before the great epoch of Gal-
ileo, Pascal, and Huygens. Like Francis Bacon, and a whole
century before him, he regarded induction as the only sure
method of treating natural science ["■ dobbiamo coniinciare
dalV esjoerienza, eper mezzo di questa scoj^rir^ie la regione").*
As we find, notwithstanding the want of instruments of
iiieasurement, that the questions of climatic relations in the
tropical mountainous regions — the distribution of heat, the
extremes of atmospheric dryness, and the frequency of electric
explosions — were frequently discussed in the accounts of the
first land journeys, so also it appears that mariners very early
acquired correct views of the direction and rapidity of the cur-
rents which traverse the Atlantic Ocean, like rivers of very
variable breadth. The actual equatorial current, the move-
ment of the waters between the tropics, was first described by
Columbus. He expresses himself most positively and gener-
* Leonardo da Vinci correctly observes of this pi'oceediiig, " questo
e il methodo daosservarsi nella ricerca de' fenomeni della uatura."
See^Yenturi, Essai surles Ouvrages Phy sico-mathematiques de Leonardo
da Vinci, 1797, p. 31 ; Amoretti, Memorie Storiche sit la Vita di Lionar-
do da Virici, Milano. 1804, p. 143 (in his edition of Trattalo della Pittn-
ra, t. xxxiii. of the Classic! Italiani) ; Whewell, Philos. of the Inductive
Sciences, 1840, vol. ii., p. 368-370; Brewster, Life of Newton, p. 332.
Most of Leonardo da Vinci's physical works bear the date of the year
1498.
284 COSMOS.
ally on the subject on his third voyage, saying, " the waters
move with the heavens (con los cielos) from east to west."
Even the direction of separate floating masses of sea weed
confirmed this view.* A small pan of tinned iron, which he
found in the hands of the natives of the island of Guadaloupe,
confirmed Columbus in the idea that it might be of European
origin and obtained from the remains of a shipwrecked vessel,
borne by the equatorial current from Spain to the coasts of
America. In his geognostic fancies, he regarded the exist-
ence of the series of the smaller Antilles and the peculiar con-
figuration of the larger islands, or, in other words, the corre-
spondence in the direction of their coasts with that of their
parallels of latitude, as the long-continued action of the move-
ment of the sea between the tropics from east to west.
When the admiral, on his fourth and last voyage, discov-
ered the inclination from north to south of the coasts of the
continent from Cape Gracias a Dios to the Laguna de Chiri-
qui, he felt the action of the violent current which runs N.
and N.N.W., and is induced by the contact of the equatorial
current with the opposite dike-like projecting coast-line. An-
* The great attention paid by the early navigators to natural phe
nomena may be seen in the oldest Spanish accounts. Diego de Lepe,
tor instance, found, in 1499 (as we learn from a witness in the lawsuit
against the heirs of Columbus), by means of a vessel having valves,
which did not open until it had reached the bottom, that at a distance
from the mouth of the Orinoco, a stratum of fresh water of six fathoms
depth flowed above the salt water (Navarrete, Viages y Descubrim., t.-
iii., p. 549). Columbus drew milk-white sea water (" white as if meal
had been mixed with it") on the south coast of Cuba, and carried it
to Spain in bottles ( Vida del Almirante, p. 56). I have myself been at
the same spots for the purpose of determining longitudes, and it surpris-
ed me to think that the milk-white color of sea water, so common on
shoals, should have been regarded by the expei'ienced admiral as a new
and unexpected phenomenon. With reference to the Gulf Stream it-
self, which must be regarded as an important cosmical phenomenon,
many effects had been observed long before the discovery of America,
produced by the sea washing on shore at the Canaries and the Azores
stems of bamboos, trunks of pines, corpses of strange aspect from the
Antilles, and even living men in canoes "which could never sink."
These effects were, however, then attributed solely to the strength of
the westerly gales ( Vida del Almirante, cap. 8 ; Herrera, Dec. i., lib.
i., cap. 2; lib. ix., cap. 12), while the movement of the waters, which
is wholly independent of the direction of the winds — the returning
stream of the oceanic current, which brings eveiy year tropical fruits
from the West Indian Islands to the coasts of Ireland and Norway, was
not accurately recognized. Compare the memoir of Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, On the Possibility of a Northwest Passage to Cathay, in Hak-
luyt, Navigations and Voyages, vol. iii., p. 14 ; Hei'rera, Dec. i., lib. ix.,
cap. 12 ; and Examen Crit., t. ii., p. 247-257 ; t. iii., p. 99-108
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 285
ghiera survived Columbus sufficiently long to become acquaint-
ed vi^ith the deflection of the waters of the Atlantic through-
out their whole course, and to recognize the existence of the
rotatory movement in the Mexican Gulf, and the propagation
of this movement to the Tierra de los Bacallaos (Newlbund-
land) and the mouth of the St. Lawrence. I have elsewhere
circumstantially considered how much the expedition of Ponce
de Leon, in the year 1512, contributed to the establishment
of more exact ideas, and have shown that in a treatise writ-
ten by Sir Humphrey Gilbert between the years 1567 and
1576, the movement of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean from
the Cape of Good Hope to the Banks of Newfoundland is
treated according to views which coincide almost entirely with
those of my excellent deceased friend, Major Rennell.
At the same time that the knowledge of oceanic currents
was generally difiused, men also became acquainted with those
gr^t banks of sea weed {Fiicus natans) — the oceanic mead-
ows which presented the singular spectacle of the accumula-
tion of a social plant over an extent of space almost seven times
greater than the area of France. The great Fitcus Bank, the
March Sargasso, extends between 19° and 34° north latitude.
The major axis is situated about 7° west of the island of Cor-
vo. The lesser Fucus Bank lies in the space between the
Bermudas and the Bahamas. Winds and partial currents
variously affect, according to the character of the season, the
length and circumference of these Atlantic fucoid meadows,
for the first description of which we are indebted to Columbus.
No other sea in either hemisphere presents an accumulation
of social plants on so large a scale."*
The important era of geographical discoveries and of the
sudden opening of an unknown hemisphere not only extended
our knowledge of the earth, but it also expanded our views of
the whole universe, or, in other words, of the visible vault of
heaven. Since man, to borrow a fine expression of Garcilaso
de la Vega, in his wanderings to distant regions sees " lands
and stars simultaneously change,"! the advance to the equa-
tor on both coasts of Africa, and even beyond the southern
extremity of the New Continent, must have presented to trav-
elers, by sea and land, the glorious aspect of the southern con-
stellations longer and more frequently than could have been
* Examen Crit., t. iii., p. 26 and 66-99 ; and see, also, Cosmos, vol.
i., p. 308.
t Alonso de Ercilla has imitated the passage of Garcilaso in the Aran
cana : " Climas passe, mude coustelaciones." — See Cosmos ante, j). 72.
286 COSMOS.
the case at the time of Hiram and the Ptolemies, or during
the Roman dominion, and the period in which the Arabs
maintained commercial intercourse with the nations dwellinof
on the shores of the Red Sea or of the Indian Ocean, between
the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb and the western peninsula of
India. Amerigo Vespucci, in his letters, Vicente Yaiiez Piii-
zon, Pigafetta, the companion of Magellan and Elcano, and
Andrea Corsali, in his voyage to Cochin in the East Indies,
in the beginning of the sixteenth century, gave the first and
most animated accounts of the southern sky (beyond the feet
of the Centaur and the glorious constellation Argo). Amer-
igo, who had higher literary acquirements, and whose style
was also more redundant than that of the others, extols, not
ungracefully, the glowing richness of the light, and the pic-
turesque grouping and strange aspect of the constellations that
circle round the southern pole, which is surrounded by so few
stars. He maintains, in his letters to Pierfrancesco de' M^-
ici, that he had carefully devoted his attention, on his third
voyage, to the southern constellations, having made drawings
of them and measured their polar distances. His communi-
cations regarding these observations do not, indeed, leave
much cause to regret that any portion of them should have
been lost.
I find that the first mention of the mysterious black specks
(coal-bags) was made by Anghiera in the year 1510. They
had already been observed in 1499 by the companions of Vi-
cente Yaiiez Pinzon, on the expedition dispatched from Palos,
and which took possession of the Brazilian Cape San Augus-
tin.* The Canopo fosco {Canopus 7iiger) of Amerigo is prob-
ably also one of these coal-bags. The intelligent Acosta com-
pares them to the darkened portion of the moon's disk (in par-
tial eclipses), and appears to ascribe them to a void in the
heavens, or to an absence of stars. Rigaud has shown how
the reference to the coal-bags, of which Acosta says positively
that they are visible in Peru (and not in Europe), and move
round the south pole, has been regarded by a celebrated as-
tronomer as the first notice of spots on the sun.f The knowl-
edge of the two Magellanic clouds has been unjustly ascribed
to Pigafetta, for I find that Anghiera, on the observations of
Portuguese seamen, mentions these clouds fully eight years
* Petr. Mart., Ocean., Dec. i., lib. ix., p. 96 ; Examen Crit., t. iv., p.
221 and 317.
t Acosta, Hist. Natural de las Indias, lib. i., cap. 2; Rigaud, Account
of Harriotts Astron. Papers, 1833, p. 37.
OCEAN C DISCOVERIES. 287
before the termination of Magellan's voyage of circumnaviga-
tion. He compares their mild effulgence to that of the Milky
Way. The larger cloud did not, however, escape the vigilance
of the Arahs, and it is probably the white ox {El Bakar) of
their southern sky, the ivhite spot of which the astronomer
Abdurrahman Sofi says that it could not be seen at Bagdad
or in northern Arabia, but at Tehama, and in the parallel of
the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. The Greeks and Romans,
who followed the same path under the Lagides and later, did
not observe, or, at least, make no mention, in their extant
writings, of a cloud of light, which, nevertheless, between 11^
and 12*^ north latitude, rose three degrees above the horizon
at the time of Ptolemy, and more than four degrees in that of
Abdurrahman, in the year 1000.* At the present day, the
altitude of the central part of the Nubecula inajor may be
about kP at Aden. The reason that seamen usually first see
the Magellanic clouds in much more southern latitudes, as,
for instance, near the equator, or even far to the south of it,
is probably to be ascribed to the character of the atmosphere,
and to the vapors near the horizon, which reflect white light.
In Southern Arabia, especially in the interior of the country,
the deep azure of the sky and the great dryness of the atmos-
phere must favor the recognition of the Magellanic clouds, as
we see exemplified by the visibility of comets' tails at daylight
between the tropics and in very southern latitudes.
The arrangement of the stars near the antarctic pole into
new constellations was made in the seventeenth century. The
observations made with imperfect instruments by the Dutch
navigators Petrus Theodori of Embden, and Friedrich Hout-
mann, who was a prisoner in Java and Sumatra to the King
of Bantam and Atschin (1596-1599), were incorporated in
the celestial charts of Hondius Bleaw ( Jansonius Csesius) and
Bayer.
* Pigafetta, Primo Viaggio intorno al Globo Terracqneo, piibl. da C-
Amoretti, 1800, p. 46 ; Ramusio, vol. i., p. 355, c. ; Petr. Mart, Ocean.,
Dec. iii, lib. i., p. 217. (According to the events referred to by An-
ghiera, Dec. ii., lib. x, p. 204, and Dec. iii., lib. x., p. 232, the passage
in the Oceanica which speaks of the Magellanic clouds must have been
written between 1514 and 1516.) Andrea Corsali {Ramusio, vol. i..
p. 177) also describes, in a letter to Giuliano de' Medici, the rotatoj-y
and translatory movement of " due nugoleite di ragionevol grandezza.^'
The star which he represents between Nubecula major and 7ninor ap-
pears to me to he (3 Hydras {Examen Crit., t, v., p. 234-238). Regard-
ing Petrus Theodori of Embden, and Houtmann, the pupil of the math-
ematician Plancius, see an historical article by Olbers, in Schumacher's
Jahrhuch fUr 1840. s. 249.
288 COSMOS.
The less regular distribution of masses of light gives to the -
zone of the southern sky situated between the parallels of 50°
and 80"^, which is so rich in crowded nebulous spots and starry
masses, a peculiar, and, one might almost say, picturesque
character, depending on the grouping of the stars of the first
and second magnitudes, and their separation by intervals,
which appear to the naked eye desert and devoid of radiance.
These singular contrasts — the Milky Way, which presents nu-
merous portions more brilliantly illumined than the rest, and
the insulated, revolving, rounded Magellanic clouds, and the
coal-bags, the larger of which lies close upon a beautiful con-
stellation— all contribute to augment the diversity of the pic-
ture of nature, and rivet the attention of the susceptible mind
to separate regions on the confines of the southern sky. One
of these, the constellation of the Southern Cross, has acquired
a peculiar character of importance from the beginning of the
sixteenth century, owing to the religious feelings of Christian
navigators and missionaries who have visited the tropical and
southern seas and both the Indies. The four principal stars
of which it is composed are mentioned in the Almagest, and,
therefore, were regarded in the time of Adrian and Antoninus
Pius as parts of the constellation of the Centaur.* It seems
singular that, since the figure of this constellation is so strik-
ing, and is so remarkably well defined and individualized, in
the same way as those of the Greater and Lesser Bear, the
Scorpion, Cassiopeia, the Eagle, and the Dolphin, these four
stars of the Southern Cross should not have been earlier sepa-
rated from the large ancient constellation of the Centaur ; and
this is so much the more remarkable, since the Persian Kaz-
wini, and other Mohammedan astronomers, took pains to dis-
cover crosses in the Dolphin and the Dragon. Whether the
courtly flattery of the Alexandrian literati, who converted
Canopus into a PtolemcBon, likewise included the stars of our
Southern Cross, for the glorification of Augustus, in a CcBsaris
thronon, never visible in Italy, is a question that can not now
be very readily answered.f At the time of Claudius Ptole-
mseus, the beautiful star at the base of the Southern Cross
had still an altitude of 6° 10' at its meridian passage at Alex-
andria, while in the present day it culminates there several
degrees below the horizon. In order at this time (1847) to
* Compare the researches of Delambre and Eucke with Ideler, Uv
sprung der Sternnamen, s. xlix., 263 und 277 ; also my Examen Crit., t
iv., p. 319-324; t. v., p. 17-19, 30, and 230-234.
\ PHn., ii., 70; Ideler, Sternnamen, s. 260 mid 295.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 289
Bee a Crucis at an. altitude of 6° 10', it is necessary, taking
the refraction into account, to be ten degrees south of Alex-
andria, in the parallel of 21° 43' north latitude. In the fourth
century the Christian anchorites in the Thebaid desert might
have seen the Cross at an altitude of ten degrees. I doubt,
however, whether its designation is due to them, for Dante,
in the celebrated passage of the Ptirgatorio,
lo mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente
AU'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
Nou viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente ;
and Amerigo Vespucci, who, at the aspect of the starry skies
of the south, first called to mind this passage on his third
voyage, and even boasted that he now " looked on the four
stars never seen till then by* any save the first human pair,"
were both unacquainted "with the denomination of the South-
ern Cross. Amerigo simply observes that the four stars form
a rhomboidal figure [una mandorld), and this remark was
made in the year 1501. The more frequently the maritime
expeditions on the routes opened by Gama and Magellan round
the Cape of Good Hope and through the Pacific were mul-
tiplied, and as Christian missionaries penetrated into the new-
ly-discovered tropical lands of America, the fame of this con-
stellation continually increased. I find it mentioned first by
the Florentine, Andrea Corsali, in 1517, and subsequently, in
1520, by Pigafetta, as a wonderful cross (croce 9naravigliosa),
more glorious than all the constellations in the heavens. The
learned Florentine extols Dante's "prophetic spirit," as if the
great poet had not as much erudition as creative imagination,
and as if he had not seen Arabian celestial globes, and con-
versed with many learned Oriental travelers of Pisa.* Acos-
* I have elsewhere attempted to dispel the doubts which several dis-
tinguished commentators of Dante have advanced in modem times re-
specting the " quattro stelle.^'' To take this problem in all its corhplete-
ness, we must compare the passage, " lo mi volsi," &c. {Purgat., 1.,
V. 22-24), with the.other passages: Purg., 1., v. 37; viii., v. 85-93;
xxix., V. 121 ; XXX., v. 97 ; xxxi., v. 106; and Inf., xxvi., v. 117 and
127. The Milanese astronomer, De Cesaris, considers the three "/a-
ce^te" (" Di che il polo di qu^ tutto quanto arde," and which set when
the four stars of the Cross rise) to be Canopus, Achernar, and Fomalhaut.
I have endeavored to solve these difficulties by the following considera-
tions. " The philosophical and religious mysticism which penetrates
and vivities the gi-and composition of Dante, assigns to all objects, be-
sides their real or material existence, an ideal one. It seems almost
as if we beheld two worlds reflected in one another. The four stars
represent, in their moral order, the cardinal virtues, prudence, justice,
strength, and temperance ; and they, therefore, merit the name of the
Vol. IL— N
290 COSMOS.
ta, ill his Histoi'ia Natural y Moral de las Indias,^ remarks,
that in the Spanish settlements of tropical America, the first
settlers were accustomed, even as is now done, to use, as a
celestial clock, the Southern Cross, calculating the hours from
its inclined or vertical position.
In consequence of the precession of the equinoxes, the star-
ry heavens are continually changing their aspect from every
portion of the earth's surface. The early races of mankind
beheld in the far north the glorious constellation of our south-
ern hemisphere rise before them, which, after remaining long
invisible, will again appear in those latitudes after the lapse
of thousands of years. Canopus was fully 1° 20' below the
horizon at Toledo (39° 54' north latitude) in the time of Co-
lumbus, and now the same star is almost as much above the
horizon at Cadiz. While at Berlin and in the northern lati-
tudes the stars of the Southern Cross, as well as a and j3 Cen-
tauri, are receding more and more from view, the Magellanic
clouds are slowly approaching our latitudes. Canopus was
at its greatest northern approximation during the last century,
and is now moving nearer and nearer to the south, although
holy lights, ' hici sante.' The three stars which light the pole repre-
sent the theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity. The first of these
beings themselves reveals their double nature, chanting, ' Here we are
nymphs, in lieaven we are stars ;' Noi sem qui ninfe, e net cielo semo
stelle. In the land of truth, in the terrestrial paradise there are seven
nymphs. In cerckio faceran di se claustro le sette ninfe. This is the
union of all the cardinal and theological virtues. ' Under these mystic
forms we can scarcely recognize the real objects of the firmament sepa
rated from each other, according to the eternal laws of the celestial mech
anism. The ideal world is a free creation of the soul, the product of
poetic inspiration." (Exameti Crit., t. iv., p. 324-332.)
* Acosta, lib. i., cap. 5. Compare my Relation Historique, t. i., p. 209.
As the stars a and y of the Southern Cross have almost the same rigiit
ascension, the Cross appears perpendicular when passing the meridian ;
but the natives too often forget that this celestial clock marks the hour
each day 3' 56" earlier. I am indebted to the communications of my
friend, Dr. Galle, by whom Le Verrier's planet was first discovered in
the heavens, for all the calculations respecting the visibility of southern
stars in northeni latitudes. " The inaccuracy of the calculation, accord-
ing to which the star a of the Southern Cross, taking refraction into ac-
count, would appear to have begun to be invisible in 52° 25' north
latitude, about the year 2900 before the Christian era, may perhaps
amount to more than 100 years, and could not be altogether set aside,
even by the strictest mode of calculation, as the proper motion of the
fixed stars is probably not uniform for such long intervals of time
The proper motion of a Crucis is about one third of a second annmiUy,
chiefly in right ascension. It may be pi-esunied that the uncertninty
fu'oduced by neglecting this does not exceed the above-niontioued
imit."
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 291
very slowly, owing to its vicinity to the south pole of the
ecliptic. The Southern Cross began to become invisible in
62^ 30' north latitude 2900 years before our era, since, accord-
ing to Galle, this constellation might previously have reached
an altitude of more than 10°. When it disappeared from the
horizon of the countries on the Baltic, the great pyramid of
Cheops had already been erected more than five hundred years.
The pastoral tribe of the Hyksos made their incursion seven
hundred years earlier. The past seems to be visibly nearer
to us when we connect its measurement with great and mem-
orable events.
The progress made in nautical astronomy, that is to say, in
the improvement of methods of determining the ship's place
(its geographical latitude and longitude), was simultaneous
with the extension of a knowledge of the regions of space, al-
though this knowledge was more the result of sensuous observ-
ation than of scientific induction. All that was able in the
course of ages to favor advance in the art of navigation — the
compass and the more correct acquaintance with magnetic
declination ; . the measurement of a ship's speed by a more
careful construction of the log, and by the use of chronometers
and lunar observations ; the improved construction of ships ;
the substitution of another force for that of the wind ; and
lastly and most especially, the skillful application of astrono-
my to the ship's reckoning — must all be regarded as power-
ful means toward the opening of the different portions of the
earth, the more rapid and animated furtherance of general in-
tercourse, and the acquirement of a knowledge of cosmical re-
lations. Assuming this as one point of view, we would again
observe, that even in the middle of the thirteenth century,
nautical instruments capable of determining the time by the
altitude of the stars were in use among the seamen of Cata-
lonia and the island of Majorca, and that the astrolabe de-
scribed by Raymond Lully in his Arte de Navegar was almost
two hundred years older than that of Martin Behaim. The
importance of astronomical methods was so thoroughly appre-
ciated in Portugal, that toward the year 1484 Behaim was
nominated president of a Junta de Mathematicos , who were
to form tables of the sun's declination, and, as Barros observes,
to teach pilots the method of navigating by the sun's altitude,
maniera de navegar por altura del Sol* This mode of nav-
igating by the meridian altitude of the sun was even at that
* Barros, Da Asia, Dec. i., liv. iv., cap. 2 (1788), p. 282
292 COSMOS.
time clearly distinguished from that by the determination ol
the longitude, 'pcrr la altura del Este-Oeste*
The importance of determining the position of the papal
line of demarkation, and of thus fixing the limits between the
possessions of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in the new-
ly-discovered land of Brazil, and in the group of islands in the
South Indian Ocean, increased, as we have already observed,
the desire for ascertaining a practical method for determining
the longitude. Men perceived how rarely the ancient and im-
perfect method of lunar eclipses employed by Hipparchus could
be applied, and the use of lunar distances was recommended
as early as 1514 by the Nuremberg astronomer, Johann Wer-
ner, and soon afterward by Orontius FinaBus and Gemma
Frisius. Unfortunately, however, these methods also remain-
ed impracticable until, after many fruitless attempts with the
instruments of Peter Apianus (Bienewitz) and Alonso de San-
ta Cruz, the mirror sextant was invented by the ingenuity of
Newton in 1700, and was brought into use among seamen by
Hadley in 1731.
The influence of the Arabian astronomers acted, through
the Spaniards, on the general progress of nautical astronomy.
Many methods were certainly attempted for determining the
longitude, which did not succeed ; and the fault of the want
of success was less rarely ascribed to the incorrectness of the
observation, than to errors of printing in the astronomical
ephemerides of Regiomontanus which were then in use. Xhe
Portuguese even suspected the correctness of the astronomical
data as given by the Spaniards, whose tables they accused of
being falsified from political grounds.! The suddenly- awak-
ened desire for the auxiliaries which nautical astronomy prom-
ised, at any rate theoretically, is most vividly expressed in the
narrations of the travels of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Piga-
fetta, and of Andreas de San Martin, the celebrated pilot of
the Magellanic expedition, who was in possession of the meth-
ods of Ruy Falero for determining the longitude. Oppositions
of planets, occultations of the stars, differences of altitude be-
tween the moon and Jupiter, and changes in the moon's dec-
lination, were all tried with more or less success. We pos-
sess observations of conjunction by Columbus on the night of
the 13th of January, 1493, at Haiti. The necessity for at-
* Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viages y Descnbrimientos que Htci^ron
por mar los Espanoles, t. iv., p. xxxii. (in the Noticia Biographica de
Fernando de Magellanes).
\ Barroa, Dec, iii., parte ii., p. 650 and 658-662.
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 293
taching a special and well-informed astronomer to every great
expedition was so generally felt, that Queen Isabella wrote to
Columbus on the 5th of September, 1493, " that although he
had shown in his undertakings that he knew more than any
other living being {que ninguno de los nacidos), she counseled
him. nevertheless, to take with him Fray Antonio de Marche-
na, as being a learned and skillful astronomer." Columbus
writes, in the narrative of his fourth voyage, that " there was
only one infallible method of taking a ship's reckoning, viz.,
that employed by astronomers. He who understands it may
rest satisfied, for that which it yields is like unto a prophetic
vision (vision profetica.)* Our ignorant pilots, when they
* The queen writes to Columbus : " Nosotros mismos y no otro algn
no, habemos visto algo del libra que nos dejustes," "we ourselves, and
no one else, have seen the book you have sent us" (a journal of his
voyajge, in which the distrustful navigator had omitted all numei-ical
data of degrees of latitude and of distances) : " quanto mas en esto plati-
camos y vemos, conoceraos cuan gran cosa ha seido este negocio vues-
tro, y que habeis sabido en ello mas que nunca se penso que pudiera
saber ninguno de los nacidos. Nos parece que seria bien que llevdsedes
con vos uu buen Estrologo, y nos parescia que seria bueno para esto
Fray Antonio de Marchena, porque es buen Estrologo, y siempre, nos
parecio que se conformaba con vuestro parecer." " The more we have
examined it, the more we have appreciated your undertaking, and the
more we have felt that you have shown by it that you know more than
any human being could be supposed to know. It appears to us that it
would be well for you to take with you some astrologer, and that Fray
Antonio de Marchena would be a very suitable person for such a pur-
pose." Respecting this Marchena, who is identical with Fray Juan
Perez, the guardian of the Convent de la Rabida, where Columbus, in
his poverty, in 1484, " asked the monks for bread and water for his
child," see Navarrete, t. ii., p. 110 ; t. iii., p. 597 and 603 (Munoz, Hist,
del Nnevo Mundo, lib. iv., $ 24.) Columbus, in a letter from Jamaica
to the Christianisimos Monarcas, July 7, 1503, calls the astronomical
ephemerides " una vision profetica." (Navarrete, t. i., p. 306.) The
Portuguese astronomer, Ruy Falero, a native of Cubilla, nominated by
Charles V., in 1519, Caballero de la Orden de Santiago, at the same
time as Magellan, played an important part in the preparations for Ma-
gellan's voyage of circumnavigation. He had prepared expressly for
him a treatise on determinations of longitude, of which the great his-
torian Barros possessed some chapters in manuscript (Examen Crit., t.
i., p. 276 and 302 ; t. iv., p. 315), probably the same which were print-
ed at Seville by John Escomberger in 1535. Navarrete {Obra posUima
sobre la Hist, de la Nautica y de las ciencias Matematicas, 1846, p. 147)
had not been able to find the book even in Spain. Respecting the four
methods of determining the longitude which Falero had received from
the suggestions of his " Demonio familiar,^^ see Herrera, Dec. ii., lib.
ii., cap. 19, and Navarrete, t. v., p. Ixxvii. Subseiquently the cosmog-
rapher Alouso de Santa Cruz, the same who (like the apothecary of
Seville, Felipe Guillen, 1525) attempted to determine the longitude by
means of the vax'iation of the magnetic needle, made impracticable pro-
294 COSMOS.
have lost sight of land for several days, know not where they
are. They would not be able to find the countries again
which I have discovered. To navigate a ship requires the
compass [compas y arte), arid the knowledge or art of the as-
tronomer."
I have given these characteristic details in order more
clearly to show the manner in which nautical astronomy — the
powerful instrument for rendering navigation more secure, and
thereby of facilitating access to all portions of the earth — was
first developed in the period of time under consideration, and
how, in the general intellectual activity of the age, men per-
ceived the possibility of establishing methods which could not
be made practically applicable until improvements were ef-
fected in solar and lunar tables, and in the construction of
time-pieces and instruments for measuring angles. If the
character of an age be " the manifestation of the human mind
in any definite epoch," the age of Columbus and of the great
nautical discoveries must be regarded as having given a new
and higher impetus to the acquirements of succeeding centu-
ries, while it increased in an unexpected manner the objects of
science and contemplation. It is the peculiar attribute of
important discoveries at once to extend the domain of our pos-
sessions, and the prospect into the new territories which yet
remain open to conquest. Weak minds complacently believe
that in their own age humanity has reached the culminating
point of intellectual progress, forgetting that by the internal
connection existing among all natural phenomena, in propor-
tion as we advance, the field to be traversed acquires addition-
al extension, and that it is bounded by a horizon which inces-
santly recedes before the eyes of the inquirer.
Where, in the history of nations, can we find an epoch sim-
ilar to that in which events so fraught with important results
as the discovery and first colonization of America, the passage
to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and Magel-
lan's first circumnavigation, occurred simultaneously with the
highest perfection of art, with the attainment of intellectual
posals for accomplishing the same object by the conveyance of time;
but his chronometers were sand-and-water clocks, wheel-works moved
by weights, and even by wicks " dipped in oil," which were consum-
ed in very equal intervals of time ! Pigafetta ( Transunto del Trattato
di Navigazione, p. 219) recommends altitudes of the moon at the me-
ridian. Amerigo Vespucci, speaking of the method of determining lon-
gitude by lunar distances, says, with great naivete and truth, that its
advantages arise from the " corso piii leggier de la luna.^' (Canovai,
Viaggi, p. 57.)
OCEANIC DISCOVERIEJ?. 296
and religious freedom, and with the sudden enlargement of
the knowledge of the earth and the heavens ? Such an age
owes a very inconsiderable portion of its greatness to the dis-
tance at which we contemplate it, or to the circumstance of
its appearing before us amid the records of history, and free
from the disturbing reality of the present. But here too, as
in all earthly things, the brilliancy of greatness is dimmed by
the association of emotions of profound sorrow. The advance
of cosmical knowledge was bought at the price of the violence
and revolting horrors which conquerors — the so-called civil-
izers of the earth — spread around them. But it were irra-
tional and rashly bold to decide dogmatically on the balance
of blessings and evils in the interrupted history of the develop-
ment of mankind. It becomes not man to pronounce judg-
ment on the great events of the world's history, which, slowly
developed in the womb of time, belong but partially to the
age in which we place them.
The first discovery of the central and southern portions of
the United States of America by the Northmen coincides very
nearly with the mysterious appearance of Manco Capac in
the elevated plateaux of Peru, and is almost two hundred years
prior to the arrival of the Azteks in the Valley of Mexico.
The foundation of the principal city (Tenochtitlan) occurred
fully three hundred and twenty-five years later. If these
Scandinavian colonizations had been attended by permanent
results, if they had been maintained and protected by a pow-
erful mother country, the advancing Germanic races would
still have found many unsettled hordes of hunters in those re-
gions where the Spanish conquerors met with only peacefully-
settled agriculturists.*
* The Americau race, which was the same from 65° north latitude
to 55° south latitude, passed directly from the life of hunters to that of
cultivators of the soil, without undergoing the intermediate gradation
of a pastoral life. This circumstance is so much the more remarkable,
because the bison, which is met with in enormous herds, is susceptible
of domestication, and yields an abundant supply of milk. Little atten-
tion has been paid to an account given in Gomara {Hist. Gen. de la»
Indias, cap. 214), according to which it would appear that in the six-
teenth century there v^^as a race of men living in the northwest of Mex-
ico, in about 40° north latitude, whose greatest riches consisted in herds
of tamed bisons {bueyes con una giba). From these animals the natives
obtained materials for clothing, food, and drink, which was probably
the blood (Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii., p. 416), for the dis-
like to milk, or, at least, its nou-employment, appears, before the anival
of Europeans, to have been common to all the natives of the New Con-
tinent, as well as to the inhabitants of China and Cochin Cbiua. There
were certainly, from the earliest times, herds of domesticated llamas in
2B6 COSMOS.
The age of the Co7iquista, which comprises the end of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, indicates
a remarkable concurrence of great events in the pohtical and
social life of the nations of Europe. In the same month in
which Hernan Cortez, after the battle of Otumba, advanced
upon Mexico, with the view of besieging it, Martin Luther
burned the pope's bull at Wittenberg, and laid the foundation
of the Reformation, which promised to the human mind both
ireedom and progress on paths which had hitherto been almost
wholly untrodden.* Still earlier, the noblest forms of ancient
Hellenic art, the Laocoon, the Torso, the Apollo de Belvidere,
and the Medicean Venus, had been resuscitated, as it were,
from the tombs in which they had so long been buried.
There flourished in Italy, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci,
Titian, and Raphael ; and in Germany, Holbein and Albert
Durer. The Copernican system of the universe was discov-
ered, if not made generally known, in the year in which Co-
lumbus died, and fourteen years after the discovery of the
New Continent.
The importance of this discovery, and of the first coloniza
tion of Europeans, involves a consideration of other fields of
inquiry besides those to which these pages are devoted, and
closely bears upon the intellectual and moral influences exer-
cised on the improvement of the social condition of mankind
by the sudden enlargement of the accumulated mass of new
ideas. We would simply draw attention to the fact that,
ihe mountainous parts of Quito, Peru, and Chili. These herds consti
tnted the riches oi the nations who were settled there, and were engag-
ed in the cultivation of the soil ; in the Cordilleras of South America
there were no '■^ pastoral nations," and " pastoral life" was not known.
What are the " tame deer," near the Punta de St. Helena, which are
mentioned in Herrera, Dec. ii., lib. x., cap. 6 (t. i., p. 471, ed. Amberes,
1728) ? These deer are said to have given milk and cheese, " ciervos
que dan lecke y queso y se crian en casa!" From what source is this
notice taken ? It can not have arisen from a confusion with the llamas
(having neither horns nor antlers) of the cold mountainous region, of
which Gai'cilaso affirms that in Peru, and especially on the plateau of
Callao, they were used for plowing. (Comment reales, Part i., lib. v.,
cap. 2, p. 133. Compai'e, also, Pedro de Cie^a de Leon, Chronica del
Peru, Sevilla, 1553, cap. 110, p. 264.) This employment of llamas ap-
pears, however, to have been a rare exception, and a merely local
custom. In general, the American races were remarkable for their
deficiency of domesticated animals, and this had a profound influence
on family life.
* On the hope which Luther, in the execution of his great and free-
minded work, placed especially on the younger generation, the youth
of Germany, see the remarkable expressions in a etter written in June,
1518. (Neander, Pc FjceZio, p. 7.)
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 297
since this period, a new and more vigorous activity of the mind
and feelings, animated by bold aspirations and hopes which
can scarcely be frustrated, has gradually penetrated through
all grades of civil society ; that the scanty population of one
half of the globe, especially in the portions opposite to Europe,
has favored the settlements of colonies, which have been con-
verted by their extent and position, into independent states,
enjoying unlimited power in the choice of their mode of free
government ; and, finally, that religious reform — the precursor
of great political revolutions — could not fail to pass through
the different phases of its development in a portion of the earth
which had become the asylum of all forms of faith, and of the
most different views regarding divine things. The daring
enterprise of the Genoese seaman is the first link in the im-
measurable chain of these momentous events. Accident, and
not fraud and dissensions, deprived the continent of America
of the name of Columbus.* The New World continuously
* I have shown elsewhere how a knowledge of the period at which
Vespucci was named royal chief pilot alone refutes the accusation first
brought against him by the asti'onomer Schoner, of Nuremberg, in
1533, of having artfully inserted the words " Terra di Amerigo^^ in
charts which he altered. The high esteem which the Spanish court
paid to the hydrographical and astronomical knowledge of Amerigo
Vespucci is clearly manifested in the instructions (Real titulo con exten-
sas facultades) which were given to him when he was appointed pilolo
mayor on the 22d of March, 1508. (Navarrete, t. iii., p. 297-302.) He
was placed at the head of a true Deposito hydrografico, and was to pre-
pare for the Casade Contratacion in Seville (tiie central point of all
oceanic expedition) a general description of coasts and account of posi-
tions (Padron general), in which all new discoveries were to be an-
nually entered. But even as early as 1507 the name of " Ameiici ter-
ra" had been pi'oposed for the New Continent by a person whose ex-
istence even was undoubtedly unknown to Vespucci, the geographer
Waldseemiiller (Martinus Hylacomylus) of Freiburg, in the Breisgau
(the director of a printing establishment at St. Die in Lorraine), in a
small work entitled Cosmographies Introdiictio, insuj^er quatuor Americi
Vespucii Navigationes (irapr. in oppido S. Deodati, 1507). Ringmann,
professor of cosmography at Basle (better known under the name of
Philesius), Hylacomylus, and Father Gregorius Reisch, who edited the
Margarita Philosophica, were intimate friends. In the last-named
work we find a treatise written in 1509 by Hylacomylus on architect-
ure and perspective. {Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 112.) Laurentius Fhri-
sius of Metz, a friend of Hylacomylus, and, like him, patronized by
Duke Rene of Lorraine, who maintained a correspondence with Ves-
pucci, in the Strasburg edition of Ptolemy, 1522, speaks of Hylacomylus
as deceased. In the map of the New Continent contained in this edi-
tion, and drawn by Hylacomylus, the name of America occurs for the
first time in the editions of Ptolemy^ s Geography. According to my in-
vestigations, a map of the world by Petrus Apianus, which was once
included in Cramer's edition of Solinus, and a second time in the Va^
N 2 .
298 COSMOS.
brought nearer to Europe during the last half century, Dy
means of commercial intercourse and the improvement of nav-
dian edition of Mela, and represented, like more modern Chinese maps,
the Isthmus of Panama broken through, had appeared two years ear-
lier. (Examen Crit., t. iv., p. 99-124; t. v., p. 168-176.) It is a great
error to regard the map of 1527, obtained from the Ebner library at
Nuremberg, now in Weimar, and the map of 1529 of Diego Ribero,
which difters from the former, and is engraved by Gussefeld, as the
oldest maps of the New Continent (op. cit., t. ii., p. 184 ; t. iii., p. 191).
Vespucci had visited the coasts of South America in the expedition of
Alonso de Hojeda, a year after the third voyage of Columbus, in 1499,
in company with Juan de la Cosa, whose map, drawn at Puerto de
Santa Maria in 1500, fully six years before Columbus's death, was first
made known by myself. Vespucci could not have had any motive for
feigning a voyage in the year 1497, for he, as well as Columbus, was
firmly persuaded, until his death, that only parts of Eastern Asia had
been reached. (Compare the letter of Columbus, February, 1502, to
Pope Alexander VII., and another, July, 1506, to Queen Isabella, in
Navarrete, t. i., p. 304 ; t. ii., p. 280 ; and Vespucci's letter to Pierfran-
cesco de' Medici, in Bandini's Vita e Leitere di Amerigo Vespucci, p. 66
and 83.) Pedro de Ledesma, the pilot of Columbus on his third voy-
age, says, even in 1513, in the lawsuit against the heirs, '•' that Paria is
regarded as a part of Asia, la tierra firme que dicese que es de AsiaJ^ —
Navarrete, t. iii., p. 539. The frequent periphrases, Mondo nouvo, alter
Orbis, Colonus novit Orbis repertor, are not at variance with this, as
they only denote regions not before seen, and are so used by Strabo,
Mela, TertuUian, Isidore of Seville, and Cadamosto. (Examen Crit.,
t. i., p. 118 ; t. v., p. 182-184.) For more than twenty years after the
death of Vespucci, which occurred in 1512, and until the calumnious
charges of Schoner, in the Opusculum Geographicum, 1533, and of
Servet, in the Lyons edition of Ptolemy's Geography of 1535, we find
no complaint against the Florentine navigator. Christopher Colum-
ous, a year before his death, calls him mucJio hombre de bieyi, a man of
worth, " worthy of all confidence," and " always inclined to render
him service." {Carta a mi muy caro fijo D. Diego, in Navarrete, t. i.,
p. 351.) Fernando Colon expresses the same good will toward Ves-
pucci. He wrote the life of his father in 1535, in Seville, four years
before his death, and with Juan Vespucci, a nephew of Amerigo's, at-
tended the astronomical junta of Badajoz, and the proceedings respect-
ing the possession of the Moluccas. Similar feelings were entertained
by Petrus Martyr de Anghiera, the pei'sonal friend of the admiral,
whose con-espondence goes down to 1525 ; by Oviedo, who seeks for
every thing which can lessen the fame of Columbus ; by Ramusio ; and
by the great historian Guicciardini. If Amerigo had intentionally falsi-
fied the dates of his voyage, he would have brought them into agree-
ment with each other, and not have made the first voyage terminate
five months after the second began. The confusion of dates in the
many different translations of his voyages is not to be attributed to him,
as he did not himself publish any of these accounts. Such confusions
of figures were, besides, very frequently to be met with in writings
printed in the sixteenth century. Oviedo had been present, as one of
the queen's pages, at the audience at which Ferdinand and Isabella, in
1493, received Columbus with much pomp on his return from his first
voyage of discovery. Oviedo has three times stated in print that this
OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 299
igatlon, has exercised an important influence on the political
institutions, the ideas and feelings of those nations who occu-
iiudience took place in the year 1496, and even that America was dis
covered in 1491. Gomara had the same printed, not in numerals, but
in words, and placed the discovery of the tierra jirme of America in
1497, in the very year, therefore, which proved so fatal to Amerigo
Vespucci's reputation. {Examen Crit., t. v., p. 196-202.) The wholly
irreproachable conduct of the Florentine (who never attempted to at-
tach his name to the New Continent, but who, in the grandiloquent
accounts which he addressed to the Gonfalionere Piero Goderini, to
Pierfrancesco de' Medici, and to Duke Ren6 II. of Lorraine, had the
misfortune of drawing upon himself the attention of posterity more
than he deserved) is most positively proved by the lawsuit which the
fiscal authorities carried on from 1508 to 1527 against the heirs of Chris-
topher Columbus, for the purpose of withdrawing from them the rights
and privileges which had been granted by the crown to the admiral in
1492. Amerigo entered the service of the state as Piloto mayor in the
same year that the lawsuit began. He lived at Seville during four
years of this suit, in which it was to be decided what parts of the New
Continent had been first reached by Columbus. The most miserable
reports found a hearing, and were converted into subjects of accusation
by the fiscal ; witnesses were sought for at St. Domingo, and all the
Spanish ports, at Moguer, Palos, and Seville, and even under the eyes
of Amerigo Vespucci and his nephew Juan. The Mundus Novus, print-
ed by Johann Otmer, at Augsburg, in 1504 ; the Raccolta di Vicenza
(^Mondo Novo e paesi novamente retrovati da Alberico Vespuzio Fioren-
tino), by Alessandro Zorzi/'in 1507, and generally ascribed to Fracan-
zio di Montalboddo ; and the Quatuor Navigationes of Martin Waldsee-
miiller (Hylacomylus), had already appeared. Since 1520, maps had
been constructed, on which w^as marked the name of America, which
had been proposed by Hylacomylus in 1507, and praised by Joachim
Vadius in a letter addressed to Rudolphus Agricola from Vienna in 1512 ;
and yet the person to whom widely-circulated writings in Germany,
France, and Italy attributed a voyage of discoveiy in 1497, to the tier-
ra Jirme of Paria, was neither cited by the fiscal as a witness in the
lawsuit which had been begun in 1508, and was continued during
nineteen years, nor was he even spoken of as the predecessor or the
opponent of Columbus. Why, after the death of Amerigo Vespucci
(22d February, 1512, in Seville), was not his nephew, Juan Vespucci»
called upon to show (as Martin Alonso, Vicente Yanez Pinzon, Juan de
la Cosa, and Alonso de Hqjeda had done) that the coast of Paria, which
did not derive its importance from its being " part of the main land of
Asia," but on account of the productive pearl fishery in its vicinity,
had been already reached by Amerigo, before Columbus landed there
on the 1st of August, 1498 ? The disregard of this most important test-
imony is inexplicable if Amerigo Vespucci had ever boasted of having
made a voyage of discovery in 1497, or if any serious import hnd been
attached at that time to the confused dates and mistakes in the printing
of the " Quatuor Navigationes.^^ The great and still unprinted work
of a friend of Columbus, Fra Bartholome de las Casas (the Historia
general de las Indias), was written, as we know with certainty, at
very different periods. It was not begun until fifteen years after the
death of Amerigo in 1527, and was finished in 1559, seven years be-
fore the death of the aged author, in his 92d year. Praise and bitter
300 coSiMos.
py the eastern shores of the Atlantic, the boundaries of which
appear to be constantly brought nearer and nearer to one an-
blame are strangely mingled in it. We see that dislike and suspicion of
fraud augmented in proportion as the fame of the Florentine navigator
spread. In tiie preface {Prolongo) which was written first, Las Casas
says, '• Amerigo relates what he did in two voyages to our Indies, but
he appears to have passed over many circumstances, whether design-
edly (a saviendas), or because he did not attend to them. This circum-
stance has led some to attribute to him that which is due to others, and
which ought not to be taken from them." The judgment pronounced
in the 1st book (chap. 140) is equally moderate : " Here I must speak
of the injustice which Amerigo, or perhaps those who printed (d los
que imprimiiroii) the Qualuor Navigationes, appear to have committed
toward the admiral. To Amerigo alone, without naming any other, the
discovery of the continent is ascribed. He is also said to have placed
the name of America in maps, thus sinfully failing toward the admiral.
As Amerigo was learned, and had the power of writing eloquently (era
latino y eloqriente), he represented himself in the letter to King Rene
as the leader of Hojeda's expedition ; yet he was only one of the sea-
men, although experienced in seamanship and learned in cosmography
(Jiombre eiitendido en las cosas de la mar y dodo en Cosmograiphia). . . .
In the world the belief prevails that he was the first to set foot on the
main land. If he purposely gave currency to this belief, it was great
wickedness; and if it was not done intentionally, it looks like it (c/ara
fareze la falsedad : y si fue de industria hecha maldad grande fu4 ; y
ya que no la fuese, al menos parezelo'). . . . Amei'igo is i-epresented as
having sailed in the year 7 (1497): a statement that seems, indeed, to
have been only an oversight in writing, and not an intentional false
statement {pareze aver avido yerro de pendola y no malicia), because he
is stated to have returned at the end of eighteen months. The foreign
writers call the country America; it ought to be called Columba^"
This passage shows clearly that up to that time Las Casas had not ac-
cused Amerigo of having himself brought the name America into usage.
He says, an tornado los escriptores estrangeros de nomhrar la nuestra
Tierra firme America, como si America solo y no otro con il y antes que
todos la oviera desciibierto. In lib. i., cap. 164-169, and in lib. ii., cap.
2, of the work, his hatred is fully expressed ; nothing is now attributed
to erroneous dates, or to the partiality of foreigners for Amerigo; all is
intentional deceit, of which Amerigo himself is guilty {de industria lo
hlzo . . . persisito en el engano . . . . de falsedad esta claramente con-
vencido). Bartholome de las Casas takes pains, moreover, in two pas-
sages, to show especially that Amerigo, in his accounts, falsified the
succession of the occurrences of his first two voyages, placing many
things which belonged to the second voyage in the first, and vice versa.
It seems very strange to me that the accuser does not appear to have
felt how much the weight of his accusations is diminished by the cir-
cumstance that he himself speaks of the opposite opinion, and of the
indifference of the person who would have been most interested in at-
tacking Vespucci, if he had believed him guilty and hostilely disposed
against his father and himself. " I can not but wonder," says Las Casas
(cap. 164), "that Hei-nando Colon, a clear-sighted man, who, as I cer-
tainly know, had in his hands Amerigo's accomits of his travels, should
not have remarked in them any deceit or injustice toward the adfni-
ral." As I bad a fresh opportunity, a few months ago. of examining the
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 30]
Other. (See my Examen Crit. cle VHist. de la Geographie,
t. iii., p. 154-158 and 225-227.)
GREAT DISCOVERIES IN THE HEAVENS BY THE APPLICATION OF THE
TELESCOPE.— PRINCIPAL EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY
AND MATHEMATICS, FROM GALILEO AND KEPLER TO NEWTON AND
LEIBNITZ. — LAWS OF THE PLANETARY MOTIONS AND GENERAL
THEORY OF GRAVITATION.
After having endeavored to enumerate the most distinctly
defined periods and stages of development in the history of the
contemplation of the universe, we have proceeded to delineate
the epoch in which the civilized nations of one hemisphere be-
came acquainted with the inhabitants of the other. The pe
riods of the greatest discoveries in space over the surface of
our planet was immediately succeeded by the revelations of
rare manuscript of Bartholome de las Casas, I would wish to embody in
this long note what I did not employ in 1839 in my Examen Critique,
t. v., p. 178-217. The conviction which I then expressed, in the same
volume, p. 217 and 224, has remained unshaken. " Where the desig-
nation of a large continent, generally adopted as such, and consecrated
by the usage of many ages, presents itself to us as a moiuiment of hu-
man injustice, it is natural that we should at first sight attribute the
cause to the person who would appear most interested in the matter.
A careful study of the documentary evidence has, however, shown
that this supposition in the present instance is devoid of foundation, and
that the name of America has originated in a distant region (as, for in-
stance, in France and Germany), owing to many concurrent circum
stances which appear to remove all suspicion from Vespucci. Here
historical criticism stops, for the field of unknown causes and possible
moral contingencies does not come within the domain of positive his-
tory. We here find a man who, during a long life, enjoyed the esteem
of his cotemporaries, raised by his attainments in nautical astronomy
to an honorable employment. The concurrence of many fortuitous
circumstances gave him a celebrity which has weighed upon his memo-
ry, and helped to throw discredit on his character. Such a position is
indeed rare in the histoiy of human misfortunes, and affords an instance
of a moral stain deepened by the glory of an illustrious name. It seems
most desirable to examine, amid this mixture of success and adversity,
w^hat is owing to the navigator himself, to the accidental errors arising
from a hasty supervision of his writings, or to the indiscretion of dan-
gerous friends." Copernicus himself contributed to this dangerous
celebrity, for he also ascribes the discovery of the new part of the globe
to Vespucci. In discussing the " centrum gravitatis^' and " centrvm
magnitudinis'^ of the continent, he adds, " magis id erit clarum, si ad
dentur insulai setate nostra sub Hispaniarum Lusitaniaeque principibus
repertae et prajsertim America ab inventore denominata navium prai-
fecto, quem, ob incompertam ejus adhuc magnitndinem, alterum ovbem
terrarum putent." (Nicolai Copernici de Revohitionibus Orbium Coeles-
Hum, libri sex, 154.3, p. 2, a.)
302 COSMOS.
the telescope, through which man may he said to have taken"
possession of a considerable portion of the heavens. The ap-
plication of a newly-created organ — an instrument possessed
of the power of piercing the depths of space — calls forth a new
world of ideas. Now began a brilliant age of astronomy and
mathematics ; and in the latter, the long series of profound
inquirers, leading us on to the " all transforming" Leonhard
Euler, the year of whose birth (1707) is so near that of the
death of Jacques Bernouilli.
A few names will suffice to give an idea of the gigantic
strides with which the human mind advanced in the seven-
teenth century, especially in the development of mathematical
induction, under the influence of its own subjective force rath-
er than from the incitement of outward circumstances. The
laws which control the fall of bodies and the motions of the
planets were now recognized. The pressure of the atmosphere ;
the propagation of light, and its refraction and polarization,
were investigated. Mathematical physics were created, and
based on a firm foundation. The invention of the infinitesi-
mal calculus characterizes the close of the century ; and,
strengthened by its aid, human understanding has been ena-
bled, during the succeeding century and a half, successfully to
venture on the solution of the problems presented by the per-
turbations of the heavenly bodies ; by the polarization and in-
terference of the waves of light ; by the radiation of heat ; by
electro-magnetic re-entering currents ; by vibrating chords
and surfaces ; by the capillary attraction of narrow tubes ; and
by many other natural phenomena.
Henceforward the work in the world of thought progresses
uninterruptedly, each portion continually contributing its aid
to the remainder. None of the earlier germs are stifled.
With the abundance of the materials to be%laborated, strict-
ness in the methods and improvements in the instruments of
observation are simultaneously increased. We will here limit
ourselves more especially to the seventeenth century, the age
of Kepler, Galileo, and Bacon, of Tycho Brahe, Descartes,
and Huygens, of Fermat, Newton, and Leibnitz. The labors
of these distinguished inquirers are so generally knov/n, that
slight references will be sufficient to point out those portions
by which they have most brilliantly contributed to the en-
largement of cosmical views.
We have already shown* how the discovery of telescopic
vision gave to the eye — the organ of the sensuous contempla*
* See Cosmos, vol. i., p. 83,
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 303
tioii of the universe — a power from whose limits we are still
far removed, and which, in its first feeble beginning, when
scarcely magnifying thirty-two linear diameters,* was yet en-
abled to penetrate into depths of space which until then had
remained closed to the eyes of man. The exact knowledge of
many of the heavenly bodies which belong to our solar system,
the eternal laws which regulate their revolution in their orbits,
and the more perfect insight into the true structure of the uni-
verse, are the characteristics of the age which I am here de-
lineating. The results produced by this epoch determine the
principal outlines of the great natural picture of the Cosmos,
and add to the earlier investigated contents of terrestrial space
the newly-acquired knowledge of the contents of the celestial
regions, at least with reference to the well-organized arrange-
ment of one planetary group. In my desire of assmning only
general views, I will confine myself to the consideration of
the most important objects of the astronomical labors of tlu
seventeenth century. I would here refer to their influence
in powerfully inciting to great and unexpected mathematical
discoveries, and to more comprehensive and grander views of
the universe.
I have already remarked that the age of Columbus, Gama,
and Magellan — the age of great maritime enterprises — coin-
cided in a most wonderful manner with many great events,
with the awakening of a feeling of religious freedom, with the
development of nobler sentiments for art, and with the diffu-
sion of the Copernican views regarding the system of the uni-
verse. Nicolaus Copernicus (who, in two letters still extant,
calls himself Koppernik) had already attained his twenty-
first year, anA was engaged in making observations with the
astronomer Albert Brudzewski, at Cracow, when Columbus
discovered America. Hardly a year after the death of the
great discoverer, and after a six years' residence at Padua,
Bologna, and Rome, we find him returned to Cracow, and
busily engaged in bringing about a thorough revolution in the
astronomical views of the universe. By the favor of his un-
cle, Lucas Waisselrode of Allen, bishop of Ermland, he was
nominated, in 1510, canon of Frauenburg, where he labored
* " The telescopes whicli Galileo constructed, and others of which
he made use for observing Jupiter's satellites, the phases of Venus, and
the solar spots, possessed the gradually increasing powers of magnify-
ing four, seven, and thirty-two linear diameters, but they never had a
higher power." (Arago, in the Anmiaire du Bureau des Longitudes pout
Van. 1842. p. 268.)
304 COSMOS.
for thirty-three years on the completion of his work, entitled
De Revolutionibus Orbiuni Coclestium* The first printed
copy was brought to him when, shattered in mind and body,
he was preparing himself for death. He saw it and touched
it, but his thoughts were no longer fixed on earthly things,
and he died — not, as Gassendi says, a few hours, but several
days afterward (on the 24th of May, 1543t). Two years
* Westphal, in his Biographic des Copernicus (1822, s. 33), dedicated
to the great astronomer of Konigsberg, Bessel, calls the Bisliop of Erm-
land Lucas Watzelrodt von Allen, as does also Gassendi. Accoi-ding
to explanations which I have very recently obtained, thi'ough the kind
uess of the learned historian of Pi-ussia, Voigt, director of the Archives,
" the family of the mother of Copernicus is called in original documents
Weiselrodt, Weisselrot, Weisselrodt, and most commonly Waisselrode.
His mother w^as undoubtedly of German descent, and the family of
Waisselrode, who were originally distinct from that of Von Allen, which
had flourished at Thorn from the beginning of the 15th century, prob-
ably took the latter name in addition to their own, through adoption, or
from family connections." Sniadecki and Czynski {Kopernik et ses
Travaux, 1847, p. 26) call the mother of the great Copernicus Barba-
ra Wasselrode, and state that she was married at Thorn, in 1464, to his
father, whose family they believe to be of Bohemian origin. The name
of the astronomer, which Gassendi writes Tornseus Borussus, Westphal
and Czynksi write Kopernik, and Krzyzianowski, Kopirnig. In a let
terof the Bishop of Ermland, Martin Cromer of Heilsberg, dated Nov.
21, 1.580, it is said, " Cum Jo. (Nicolaus) Copernicus vivens ornamento
fuerit, atque etiam nunc post fata sit, non solum huic ecclesia?, verum
etiam toti Prussiae patriae sme, iniquam esse puto, eum post obitum ca-
rere honor esepulchri sive monumenti."
t Thus Gassendi, in Nicolai Copernici Vita, appended to his biography
of Tycho {Tyclionis Brahei Vita, 1655, Hagfe Comitum, p. 320): " eo-
dem die et horis non multis priusquam animam efflaret." It is only
Schubert, in his Astronomy, th. i., s. 115, and Robert Small, in the very
learned Account of the Astronomical Discoveries of Kepler, 1804, p. 92,
who maintain that Copernicus died "a few days after the appearance
of his work." This is also the opinion of Voigt, the director of the Ar-
chives at Konigsberg ; because, in a letter which George Donner, canon
of Ermland, wrote to the Duke of Prussia shortly after the death of
Copernicus, it is said that " the estimable and worthy Doctor Nicolaus
Koppernick sent forth his work, like the sweet song of the swan, a short
time before his departure froni this life of sorrows." According to the
ordinarily received opinion (Westphal, Nikolaus Kopernikus, 1822, s.
73 und 8. 82), the work was begun in 1507, and was so far completed
in 1530 that only a few corrections were subsequently added. The
publication was hastened by a letter from Cardinal Schonberg, written
from Rome in 1536. The cardinal wishes to have the manuscript cop-
ied and sent to him by Theodor von Reden. We learn from Coperni-
cus himself, in his dedication to Pope Paul III., that the performance
of the work has lingered on into the quartum novenninm. If we remem-
ber how much time was required for printing a work of 400 ptiges, and
that the great man died in May, 1543, it may be conjectured that the
dedication was not wrritten in the last-named year; which, reckoning
backward thirty-six years, would not give ua a later, but an eiulier year
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 305
earlier an important part of his theory had been made known
by the pubHcation of a letter of one of his most zealous pupils
and adherents, Joachim Rhseticus to Johann Schoner, profess-
or at Nuremberg. It was not, however, the propagation of
the Copernican doctrines, the renewed opinion of the existence
of one central sun, and of the diurnal and annual movement
of the earth, which somewhat more than half a century aftei
its first promulgation led to the brilliant astronomical discov-
eries that characterize the commencement of the seventeenth
century ; for these discoveries were the result of the accident-
al invention of the telescope, and were the means of at once
perfecting and extending the doctrine of Copernicus. Con-
firmed and extended by the results of physical astronomy (by
the discovery of the satellite-system of Jupiter and the phases
of Venus), the fundamental views of Copernicus have indica-
ted to theoretical astronomy paths which could not fail to lead
to sure results, and to the solution of problems which of ne-
cessity demanded, and led to a greater degree of perfection in
the analytic calculus. While George Peuerbach and Regio-
montanus (Johann Miiller, of Konigsberg, in Franconia) ex-
ercised a beneficial influence on Copernicus and his pupils
Rhaeticus, Reinhold, and Mostlin, these, in their turn, influ-
enced in a like manner, although at longer intervals of time,
the works of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. These are the
ideal links which connect the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies ; and we can not delineate the extended astronomical
views of the latter of these epochs without taking into consid-
eration the incitements yielded to it by the former.
An erroneous opinion unfortunately prevails, even in the
present day,* that Copernicus, from timidity and from appre-
hension of priestly persecution, advanced his views regarding
the planetary movement of the earth, and the position of the
sun in the center of the planetary system, as mere hypotheses,
which fulfilled the object of submitting the orbits of the heav-
enly bodies more conveniently to calculation, "but which need
than 1507. Herr Voi^t doubts whether the aqueduct aud hydraulic
works at Frauenburg, generally ascribed to Copernicus, were really ex-
ecuted in accordance with his designs. He finds that, so late as 1571,
a contract was concluded between the Chapter and the " skillful mas-
ter Valentine Lendel, manager of the water-works at Breslau," to bi-ing
the water to Frauenburg, from the mill-ponds to the houses of the can-
ons. Nothing is said of any previous water-works, and those which ex-
ist at present can not have been commenced until twenty-eight years
after the death of Copernicus.
* Delambre, Histoire De V Astronomic Modeme, t. i., p. 14C.'
. 308 COSMOS. *
not necessarily either be true or even probable." These sin*
gular words certainly do occur in the anonymous preface* at-
tached to the work of Copernicus, and inscribed De Hypothe-
sibus hujus Ope?'is, but they are quite contrary to the opinions
expressed by Copernicus, and in direct contradiction with his
dedication to Pope Paul III. The author of these prefatory
remarks was, as Gassendi most expressly says, in his Life of
the great astronomer, a mathematician then living at Nurem-
berg, and named Andreas Osiander, who, together with Scho-
* " Neque enim necesse est, eas hypotheses esse veras, imo ne veri-
similes quidem, sed sufficit hoc unum, si calculum observationibus con-
gruentem exhilDeant," says the preface of Osiander. " The Bishop of
Culm, Tidemann Gise, a native of Dantzic, who had for years urged
Copernicus to publish his work, at last received the manuscript, with
the permission of having it printed fully in accordance with his own free
pleasure. He sent it first to Rhaeticus, professor at Wittenberg, w^ho
had, until recently, been living for a long time with his teacher at
Frauenburg. Rhaeticus considered Nuremberg as the most suitable
place for its publication, and intrusted the superintendence of the print-
ing to Professor Schoner and to Andreas Osiander." (Gassendi, Vita
Copernici, p. 319.) The expressions of praise pronounced on the work
at the close of the preface might be sufficient to show, without the ex-
press testimony of Gassendi, that the preface was by another hand.
Osiander has used an expression on the title of the first edition (thai of
Nuremberg, 1543) which is always carefully avoided in all the writings
of Copernicus, " motus stellarum novis insuper ac admirabilibus hypo-
thesibus ornati," together with the very ungentle addition, " Igitur
studiose lector, eme, lege, fruere." In the second Basle edition of 1566,
which I have very carefully compared with the first Nuremberg edition,
there is no longer any reference in the title of the book to the "admi-
rable hypothesis ;" but Osiander's Prcefatiuncula de Hypothedbus hujus
Ope7-is," as Gassendi calls the intercalated preface, is preserved. That
Osiander, without naming himself, meant to show that the Prcefatiun-
cula was by a different hand from the work itself, appears very evident,
from the circumstance of his designating the dedication to Paul III. as
the Prcefatio Authorise The first edition has only 196 leaves; the sec-
ond 213, on account of the Narratio Prima of the astronomer George
Joachim Rhaeticus, and a letter addressed to Schoner, which, as I have
remarked in the text, was printed in 1541 by the intervention of the
mathematician Gassarus of Basle, and gave to the learned world the
first accurate knowledge of the Copernican system. Rhabticus had re-
signed his professional chair at Wittenberg, in order that he might
enjoy the instructions of Copernicus at Frauenburg itself. (Compare,
on these subjects, Gassendi, p. 310-319.) The explanation of what
Osiander was induced to add from timidity is given by Gassendi: "An-
dreas porro Osiander fuit, qui non modo operarum inspector (the su-
perintendent of the printing) fuit, sed Praefatiunculam quoque ad lec-
torem (tacito licet nomine) cle Hypothesibus operis adhibuit. Ejus in
ea consilium fuit, ut, tametsi Copernicus Motum Terrae habuisset, non
solum pro Hypothesi, sed pro vero etiam placito, ipse tamen ad rem, ob
iUos, qui hinc offenderentur, leniendam, excusatum eum faceret, quasi
talem motum non pro dogmate, sed pro Hypothesi mera assumpsisset.'
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 307
ner, superintended the printing of the work De Revolutionihus,
and who, although he makes no express declaration of any re-
ligious scruples, appears nevertheless to have thought it expe-
dient to speak of the new views as of an hypothesis, and not,
like Copernicus, as of demonstrated truth.
The founder of our present system of the universe (for to
him incontestably belong the most important parts of it, and
the grandest features of the design) was almost more distin-
guished, if possible, by the intrepidity and confidence with
which he expressed his opinions, than for the knowledge to
which they owed their origin. He deserves to a high degree
the fine eulogium passed upon him by Kepler, who, in the in-
troduction to the Rudolphine Tables, says of him, " Vir fuit
maximo ingenio et quod in hoc exercitio (combating preju-
dices) 7nagni momenti est, animo liber!'' When Copernicus
is describing, in his dedication to the pope, the origin of his
work, he does not scruple to term the opinion generally ex-
pressed among theologians of the immobility and central posi-
tion of the earth " an absurd acroama," and to attack the
stupidity of those who adhere to so erroneous a doctrine. "If
even," he writes, " any empty-headed babblers (jUaratoAoyoi),
ignorant of all mathematical science, should take upon them-
selves to pronounce judgment on his work through an inten-
tional distortion of any passage in the Holy Scriptures {^proi^
ter aliquem locum scripturce male ad suum propositimi detor-
Uwi), he should despise so presumptuous an attack. It was,
indeed, universally known that the celebrated Lactantius,
who, however, could not be reckoned among mathematicians,
had spoken childiy:ily ( j9^^e7•^7^7e?•) of the form of the earth, de-
riding those who held it to be spherical. On mathematical
subjects one should write only to mathematicians. In order
to show that, deeply penetrated with the truth of his own de-
ductions, he had no cause to fear the judgment that might be
passed upon him, he turned his prayers from a remote corner
of the earth to the head of the Church, begging that he would
protect him from the assaults of calumny, since the Church
itself would derive advantage from his investigations on the
length of the year ana the movements of the moon." Astrol-
ogy and improvements in the calendar long procured protec-
tion for astronomy from the secular and ecclesiastical powers,
as chemistry and botany were long esteemed as purely subserv-
ient auxiliaries to the science of medicine.
The strong and free expressions employed by Copernicua
Bufficiently refute the old opinion that he advanced the sys-
308 COSMOS.
tern which bears his immortal name as an hypothesis con-
venient for making astronomical calculations, and one which
might be devoid of foundation. " By no other arrangement,"
he exclaims with enthusiasm, " have I been able to find so ad-
mirable a symmetry of the universe, and so harmonious a con-
nection of orbits, as by placing the lamp of the world {liicer-
Tiam tiiundi), the Sun, in the midst of the beautiful temple of
nature as on a kingly throne, ruling the whole family of cir-
cling stars that revolve around him {circumagentem giibermms
astrorum familia')n).'''* Even the idea of universal gravita-
tion or attraction (appetentia qucedam naturalis partibus in-
dita) toward the sun as the center of the world {centrum
mundi), and which is inferred from the force of gravity in
spherical bodies, seems to have hovered before the mind of
this great man, as is proved by a remarkable passage in the
9th chapter of the 1st book De Revolutionibus.\
* Quis enim in hoc pulcherrirao templo lampadem hanc in alio vel
meliori loco poneret, quam unde totum simul possit illuminare ? Siqui-
dem non inepte quidam lucernam mundi, alii mentem, alii rectorem
vocant. Trismegistus visibilem Deum, Sophoclis Electra intuentem
omnia. Ita profecto tanquam in solio regali Sol I'esidens circumagen-
tem gubernat Astrorum familiam : Tellus quoque minirne fraudatur lu-
nari ministerio, sed ut Aristoteles de animalibus ait, maximam Luna
cum terra cognationem habet. Concepit interea a Sole terra, et im-
pregnatur annuo partu. Invenimus igitur sub hac ordinatione admi-
randam mundi symmetriam ac certum harmonise nexum motus et mag-
nitudinis orbium; qualis alio modo reperiri non potest. (Nicol. Copern.,
De Revol. Orbium Coslestium, lib. i., cap. 10, p. 9, b.) In this passage,
which is not devoid of poetic grace and elevation of expression, we rec
ognize, as in all the wrorks of the astronomers of the seventeenth ceu
tury, traces of long acquaintance with the beauties of classical antiquity.
Copernicus had in his mind Cic, Somn. Scip., c#4 ; Plin., ii., 4; and
Mercur. Trismeg., lib. v. (ed. Cracov., 1586), p. 195 and 201. The al-
lusion to the Electra of Sophocles is obscure, as the sun is never any
where expressly termed "all-seeing," as in the Iliad and the Odyssey,
and also in the Choephorce of ^Eschylus (v. 980), which Copernicus
would not probably have called Electra. According to Bockh's con-
jecture, the allusion is to be ascribed to an imperfect recollection of
verse 869 of the CEdipus Colcmeus of Sophocles. It very singularly
happens that quite lately, in an otherwise instructive memoir (Czynski,
Kopernik et ses Travaux, 1847, p. 102), the Electra of the tragedian is
confounded with electric currents. The pass^e of Copernicus, quoted
above, is thus rendered : " If we take the sun for the torch of the uni-
verse, for its spirit and its guide — if Trismegistes call it a god, and if
Sophocles consider it to be an electrical power which animates and
contemplates all that is contained in creation — "
t Pluribus ergo existeutibus centris, de centro quoque mundi non
temere quis dubitabit, an videlicet fuerit istud gravitatis terrenoe, an
aliud. Equidem existimo, gravitatem non aliud esse, quam appeteu-
tiam quandam naturalem partibus inditam a divina providentia offici?
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 309
On considering the different stages of the development of
cosmical contemplation, we are able to trace from the earliest
ages faint indications and presentiments of the attraction of
masses and of centrifuo^al forces. Jacobi, in his researches on
the mathematical knowledge of the Greeks (unfortunately still
in manuscript), justly comments on "the profound considera-
tion of nature evinced by Anaxagoras, in whom we read with
astonishment a passage asserting that the moon, if its centrif-
ugal force ceased, would fall to the earth like a stone from a
sling. ""*
I have already, when speaking of aerolites, noticed similar
expressions of the Clazomenian and of Diogenes of Apollonia
on the " cessation of the rotatory force."! Plato truly had a
clearer idea than Aristotle of the attractive force exercised by
the earth's center on all heavy masses removed from it, for the
Stagirite was indeed acquainted, like Hipparchus, with the
acceleration of falling bodies, although he did not correctly un-
derstand the cause. In Plato, and according to Democritus,
attraction is limited to bodies having an affinity for one an-
univei'soruin, ut in uuitatem iutegritateraque suam sese conferant in
formam globi coeuntes. Quam affectionem credibile est etiara Soli,
Lunae, Cceterisque errantium fulgoribus inesse, ut ejus efficacia in ea
qua se repraesentant rotunditate permaneaut, quae nihilominus multis
raodis suos efficiuutcircuitus. Si igitur at terra facial alios, utpote se-
cundum centrum (mundi), necesse erit eos esse qui similiter extrinse-
cus iu multis apparent, in quibus invenimus annuum circuitum. Ipse
denique Sol medium mundi putabitur possidere, quae omnia ratio ordi-
nis, quo ilia sibi invicem succedunt, et mundi totius harmonia nos do-
cet, si modo rem ipsam ambobus (ut aiunt) oculis inspiciamus." (Co-
pern., De Revol. Orb. Ccel., lib. i., cap. 9, p. 7, b.)
* Plut., De Facie in Orbe Lunce, p. 923. (Compare Ideler, Meteoro
logia veterum Groscorum et Romanoi-um, 1832, p. 6.) In the passage of
Plutarch, Anaxagoras is not named ; but that the latter applied the
same theory of " falling where the force of rotation had been intermit-
ted" to all (the material) celestial bodies, is shown in Diog. Laert., ii.
12, and by the many passages which I have collected (p. 122). Com-
pare, also, Aristot., I)e Coelo, ii., I, p. 284, a. 24, Bekker, and a remarkable
passage of Simplicius, p. 491, b., in the Scholia, according to the edition
of the Berlin Academy, where the " non-falling of heavenly bodies" is
noticed " when the rotatory force predominates over the actual falling
force or downward attraction." With these ideas, which also partially
belong to Empedocles and Democritus, as well as to Anaxagoras, may
be connected the instance adduced by Simplicius (1. c), "that water
in a vial is not spilled when the movement of rotation is more rapid
than the downward movement of the water," r^f km to Kara rov vdaro^
t See Cosmos, vol. i., p. 134. (Compare Letronne, Des Opiniona
Cosmographiqucs des Peres de VEglise, in the Revue de& Deux Mondes
1834, Cosmos,X. i., p. 621.)
310 COSMOS.
other, or, in. other words, to those in which there exists a tend-
ency of the homogeneous elementary substances to combine
together.* John Philoponiis, the Alexandrian, a pupil of Am-
monius, the son of Hermias, who probably lived in the sixth
century, was the first who ascribed the movement of the heav-
enly bodies to a primitive impulse, connecting with this idea
that of the fall of bodies, or the tendency of all substances,
whether heavy or light, to reach the ground. f The idea con-
ceived by Copernicus, and more clearly expressed by Kepler,
in his admirable work De Stella Martis, who even applied it
to the ebb and flow of the ocean, received in 1666 and 1674
a new impulse and a more extended application through the
sagacity of the ingenious Robert Hooke ;| Newton's theory of
gravitation, which followed these earlier advances, presented
the grand means of converting the whole of physical astrono-
my into a true 77iechams7n of the heave^is.k
Copernicus, as we find not only from his dedication to the
pope, but also from several passages in the work itself, had a
tolerable knowledge of the ideas entertained by the ancients
of the structure of the universe. He, however, only names in
the period anterior to Hipparchus, Hicetas (or, as he always
calls him, Nicetas) of Syracuse, Philolaiis the Pythagorean,
the TimsBus of Plato, Ecphantus, Heraclides of Pontus, and
the great geometrician Apollonius of Perga. Of the two
mathematicians, Aristarchus of Samos and Seleucus of Baby-
lon, whose systems came most nearly to his own, he mentions
only the first, making no reference to the second. 11 It has
* See, regarding all that relates to the ideas of the ancients on at-
traction, gravity, and the fall of bodies, the passages collected with gi*cat
industry and discrimination, by Th. Heni-i Martin, Etudes sur le Tim6e
de Platon, 1841, t. ii., p. 272-280, and 341.
t Joh. Piiilopouus, De Creatione Mundi, lib. i., cap. 12.
X He subsequently relinquished the correct opinion (Brewster, Mar-
tyrs of Science, 1846, p. 211) ; but the opinion that there dwells in the
central body of the planetary system — the sun — a power which governs
the movements of the planets, and that this solar force decreases either
as the squares of the distances or in direct ratio, was expressed by Kep-
ler in the Harmonices Mundi, completed in 1618.
$ See Cosmos, vol. i., p. 48 and 63.
II See op. cit., p. 177. The scattered passages to be found in the
work of Copernicus, relating to the ante-Hipparchian system of the
structure of the universe, are, exclusive of the dedication, the following :
lib. i., cap. 5 and 10 ; lib. v., cap. 1 and 3 (ed. princ, 1543, p. 3, b. ;
7,b. ; 8, b. ; 133, b. ; 141 and 141, b. ; 179 and 181, b.). Everywhere
Copernicus shows a predilection for, and a very accurate acquaintance
with, the views of the Pythagoreans, or, to speak less definitely, with
those which were attributed to the most ancient amon"; them. Thus
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 311
often been asserted that he was not acquainted with the views
of Aristarchus of Samos regarding the central sun and the
condition of the earth as a planet, because the Arenarius, and
all the other works of Archimedes, appeared only one year
after his death, and a whole century after the invention of the
art of printing ; but it is forgotten that Copernicus, in his ded-
ication to Pope Paul III., quotes a long passage on Philolaiis,
Ecphantus, and Heraclides of Pontus, from Plutarch's work
on The Ojnnions of Philosophei'S (III., 13), and therefore
that he might have read in the same work (II,, 24) that Ar-
istarchus of Samos regards the sun as one of the fixed stars.
for instance, he was acquainted, as may be seen by the beginning of the
dedication, with the letter of Lysis to Hipparchus, which, indeed, shows
that the Italian school, in its love of mystery, intended only to commu-
nicate its opinions to friends, " as had also at first been the purpose of
Copernicus." The age in which Lysis lived is somewhat uncertain ;
he is sometimes spoken of as an immediate disciple of Pythagoras him-
self; sometimes, and with more probability, as a teacher of Epaminou-
das (Bockh, Philolaos, s. 8-15). The letter of Lysis to Hipparchus, an
old Pythagorean, who had disclosed the secrets of the sect, is, like
many similar writings, a forgery of later times. It had probably be-
come known to Copernicus from the collection of Aldus Mauutius,
Epistola diversorum Philosophorum (Roma?, 1494), or from a Latin trans-
lation by Cardinal Bessarion (Venet., 1516). In the prohibition of Co-
pernicus's work, De Revolutionibus, in the famous decree of the Con-
pregazione delV Indice of the 5th of March, 1616, the new system of
the universe is expressly designated as " falsa ilia doctrina Pythagorica,
Divinae Scripturae omnino adversans." The important passage on Aris-
tarchus of Samos, of which I have spoken in the text, occurs ia the
ArejiaHus. Tp. 449 of the Paris edition of Archimedes of 1615, by David
Rivaltus. The editio pi'inceps is the Basle edition of 1544, ajiud .Jo.
Hervagium. The passage in the Arenarius says, very distinctly, that
" Aristarchus had confuted the astronomers who supposed the earth to
be immovable in the center of the universe. The sun, which constitu-
ted this center, was immovable like the other stars, while the earth
revolved round the sun." In the work of Copernicus, Aristarchus is
twice named, p. 69, b., and 79, without any reference being made to
his system. Ideler, in Wolf and Buttmann's Museum der AUerthums-
toissenschaft (bd. ii., 1808, s. 452), asks whether Copernicus was ac
quainted with Nicolaus de Cusa's work, De Docta Ignorantia. The first
Paris edition was indeed published in 1514, and the expression "jam
nobis manifestum est terram in veritate moveri," from a Platonizing car
dinal, might certainly have made some impression on the Canon of
Frauenburg (Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii., p.
343) ; but a fragment of Cusa's writing, discovered very recently (1843)
by Clemens in the library of the Hospital at Cues, proves sufficiently, as
does the work De Venatione Sapienfice, cap. 28, that Cusa imagined thai
the earth did not move round the sun, but that they moved together,
though more slowly, " roimd the constantly changing pole of the uni-
verse." (Clemens, in Giordano Bruno, and NicoL von Cusa, 1847. s
97-100.)
312 COSMOS.
Among all the opinions of the ancients, those which appeared
to exercise the greatest influence on the direction and gradual
development oi' the ideas of Copernicus are expressed, accord-
ing to Gassendi, in a passage in the encyclopaedic work of Mar-
tianus Mineus Capella, written in a half-barbarous language,
and in the System of the World of Apollonius of Perga. Ac-
cording to the opinions described by Martianus Mineus of
Madaura, and which have been very confidently ascribed,
sometimes to the Egyptians, and sometimes to the Chaldeans,*
* See the profound treatment of this subject in Martin, Etudes sur
Timee, t. ii., p. Ill, Cosmographie des Egyptiens), and p. 129-133) An-
tecedents du Systeme de Copernic). The assertion of this learned phi
lologist, that the original system of Pythagoras differed from that of
Philolaiis, and that it regarded the earth as fixed in the center of the
universe, does not appear to me to be entirely conclusive (t. ii., p. 103
and 107). I would here explain myself more fully respecting the re-
markable statement of Gassendi regarding the similarity of the systems
of Tycho Brahe and Apollonius of Perga, to which I have referred in
the text. We find the following passage in Gassendi's biographies :
" Magnam imprimis rationem habuit Copernicus duarura opinionum
affinium, quarum unam Martiano Capelbe, alteram ApoUonio Pergaco
attribuit. Apollonius solem delegit, circa quem, ut centrum, non modo
Mercurius et Venus, verum etiam Mars, Jupiter, Saturnus suas obirent
periodos, dum Sol interim, uti et Luna, circa Terrum,ut circa centrum,
quod foret Affixarum mundique centrum, moverentur ; quae deinceps
quoque opinio Tychonis propemodum fuit. Rationem autem magnam
harum opinionum Copernicus habuit, quod uti'aque eximie Mercurii ac
Veneris circuitiones reprasentaret, eximieque causam retrogradatio-
num, directionum, stationum in iis apparentium exprimeretet posterior
(Pergaei) quoque in tribus Planetis superioribus prajstaret." (Gassendi,
Tychonis Brahei Vita, p. 296.) My friend the astronomer Galle, to
whom I applied for information, agrees with me in thinking that noth-
ing could justify Gassendi's decided statement. " In the passages," he
writes to me, " to which you refer in Ptolemy's Almagest (in the com-
mencement of book xii.), and in the works of Copernicus (lib. v., cap.
3, p. 141, a. ; cap. 35, p. 179, a. and b. ; cap. 36, p. 181, b.), the only
questions considered are the retrogressions and stationary conditions of
the planets, in which Apollonius's assumption of their revolution round
the sun is indeed referred to (and Copernicus himself mentions exp:-ess-
ly the assumption of the earth's standing still), but it can not be de-
termined when he became acquainted with what he supposes to have
been derived from Apollonius. We can only, therefore, conjecture that
be assumed, on some later authority, that Apollonius of Perga had con-
Btructed a system similar to that of Tycho, although I do not find, even
in Copernicus, any clear exposition of such a system, or any reference
to ancient passages in which it may be spoken of. If lib. xii. of the
Almagest should be the only source from whence the complete Tycho-
nic view is ascribed to Apollonius, we may consider that Gassendi has
gone too far in his suppositions, and that the case is precisely the same
as that of the phases of Mercury and Venus, of which Copernicus spoke
(lib. i., cap. 10, p. 7, b., and 8, a.), without decidedly applying them to
his system. Apollonius may, perhaps, in a similar manner, have ti^eat
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 313
the earth is immovahly fixed in a central point, while the sun
revolves around it as a circling planet, attended by two satel-
lites, Mercury and Venus. Such a view of the structure of
the world might, indeed, prepare the way for that of the cen-
tral force of the sun. There is, however, nothing in the Al-
magest, or in the works of the ancients generally, or in the
work of Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, which justifies the
assertion so confidently maintained by Gassendi, of the perfect
resemblance existing between the system of Tycho Brahe and
that which has been ascribed to ApoUonius of Perga. After
Bockh's complete investigation, nothing further need be said
of the confusion of the Copernican system with that of the
Pythagorean, Philolaiis, according to which, the non-rotating
earth (the Antichthon or opposite earth, being not in itself a
planet, but merely the opposite hemisphere of our planet)
moves like the sun itself round the focus of the world — the
central fire, or vital flame of the whole planetary system.
The scientific revolution originated by Nicolaus Copernicus
has had the rare fortune (setting aside the temporary retro-
grade movement imparted by the hypothesis of Tycho Bralie)
of advancing without interruption to its object — the discovery
of the true structure of the universe. The rich abundance of
accurate observations furnished by Tycho Brahe himself, the
zealous opponent of the Copernican system, laid the founda-
tion for the discovery of those eternal laws of the planetary
movements which prepared imperishable renown for the name
of Kepler, and which, interpreted by Newton, and proved to
be theoretically and necessarily true, have been transferred
into the bright and glorious domain of thought as the intellect'
ual recognition of nature. It has been ingeniously said, al-
though, perhaps, with too feeble an estimate of the free and
independent spirit which created the theory of gravitation,
that '* Kepler wrote a code of laws, and Newton the spirit of
those laws.*"
ed mathematically the assumption of the retrogressions of the planets
under the idea of a revolution round the sun, without adding any thing
definite and general as to the tnithof this assumption. The diSerence
of the Apollonian system, described by Gassendi, from that of Tycho,
would only be, that the latter likewise explained the inequalities oixhe
movements. The remark of Robert Small, that the idea which forms
the basis of Tycho's system was by no means unfamiliar to the mind
of Copernicus, but had rather served him as a point of transition to his
own system, appears to me well founded."
* Schubert, Astronomic, th. i., s. 124. In the Philosophy of the In-
dttctive Sciences, vol. ii., p. 282, Whewell, in his Inductive Table of
Astronomy, has given iin exceedingly good and complete view of the-
V^OL. II.— O
314 COSMOS.
The figurative and poetical myths of the Pythagorean and
Platonic pictures of the universe, changeable as the fancy from
which they emanated * may still be traced partially reflected
in Kepler ; but while they warmed and cheered his often sad-
dened spirit, they never tm'ned him aside from his earnest
course, the goal of which he reached in the memorable night
of the 15th of May, 1618, twelve years before his death. i
Copernicus had furnished a satisfactory explanation of the ap-
astrouomical contemplation of the structure of the universe, from the
earliest ages to Newton's system of gravitation.
* Plato, in the PJitsdnts, adopts the system of Philolaiis, but in the
Timceus, that according to which the earth is immovable in the center,
and which was subsequently called the Hipparchian or the Ptolemaic.
(Bockh, De Platonico systemate catlestium globorum, ei de vera indole as-
tronomice PhilolaiccB, p. xxvi.— xxxii. ; the same author in the Pkilolaos,
8. 104-108. Compare, also, Fries, Geschichie der Pkilosophie, bd. i., s.
325-347, with Martin's Etudes sur Tirnee, t. ii., p. 64-92.) The astro-
nomical vision, in which the structure of the universe is shrouded, at
the end of the Book of the Republic, reminds us at once of the intercal-
ated spherical systems of the planets, and of the concord of tones, " the
voices of the Syrens moving in concert with the revolving spheres."
(See, on the discovery of the true system of the universe, the fine and
comprehensive w^ork of Apelt, Epochal der Gesch. der Menscheit, bd. i..
1845, s. 205-305, and 379-445.)
t ICepler, Harmonices Miindi, llbri qiiinque, 1619, p. 189. "On the
8th of March, 1618, it occurred to Kepler, after many unsuccessful at-
tempts, to compare the squares of the times of revolution of the planets
with the cubes of the mean distances ; but he made an error in his cal-
culations, and rejected this idea. On the 15th of May, 1618, he again
reverted to it, and calculated correctly. The third law of Kepler was
now discovered." This discovery, and those related to it, coincide
with the unhappy period when this great man, who had been exposed
from early childhood to the hardest blows of fate, was striving to save
from the torture and the stake his mother, who, at the age of seventy
years, in a trial for witchcraft, which lasted six years, had been accus-
ed of poison-mixing, inability of shedding tears, and of sorcery. The
suspicion was increased from the circumstance that her own son, the
wicked Christopher Kepler, a worker in tin, was her accuser, and that
she had been brought up by an aunt, who was burned at Weil as a
witch. See an exceedingly interesting work, but little known in for-
eign countries, drawn from newly-discovered manuscripts by Baron von
Breitschwert, entitled " Johann Keppler^s Leben und Wirken,'' 1831, s.
12, 97-147, and 196. According to this work, Kepler, who in German
letters always signed his name Keppler, was not born on the 21st of
December, 1571, in the imperial town of Weil, as is usually supposed,
but on the 27th of December, 1571, in the village of Magstadt, in WUr-
lemberg. It is uncertain whether Copernicus was born on the 19lh of
January, 1472, or on the 19th of February, 1473, as Mostlin asserts, or
(according to Czynski) on the 12th of February of the same year. The
year of Columbus's birth was long undetermined within pin-'t^ei' y^a-s.
Kamusio places it in 1430, Benialdez. the friend of thr^ Jiscovorer, in
1436, and the celebrated historian Munoz in 1446.
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 315
parent revolution of the heaven of the fixed stars by the di-
urnal rotation of the earth round its axis ; and by its annual
movement round the sun he had afforded an equally perfect
solution of the most striking movements of the planets (their
stationary conditions and their retrogressions), and thus given
the true reason of the so-called secondi7iequality of tJie plan-
ets. The first inequality, or the unequal movement of the
planets in their orbits, he left unexplained. True to the an-
cient Pythagorean principle of the perfectibility inherent in
crrcular movements, Copernicus thought that he required for
his structure of the universe some of the ejyicycles of Apollo-
nius of Perga, besides the eccentric circles having a vacuum
in their center. However bold was the path adventured on,
the human mind could not at once emancipate itself from all
earlier views.
The equal distance at which the stars remained, while the
whole vault of heaven seemed to move from east to west, had
led to the idea of a firmament and a solid crystal sphere, in
which Anaximenes (who was probably not much later than
Pythagoras) had conjectured that the stars w^ere riveted like
nails.* Geminus of Rhodes, the cotemporary of Cicero, doubt-
ed whether the constellations lay in one uniform plane, being
of opinion that some were higher and others lower than the
rest. The idea formed of the heaven of the fixed stars was
extended to the planets, and thus arose the theory of the ec-
centric intercalated spheres of Eudoxus and Menaechmus, and
of Aristotle, who was the inventor oi retrograde spheres. The
theory of epicycles — a construction which adapted itself most
readily to the representation and calculation of the planetary
movements — was, a century afterward, made by the acute
mind of ApoUonius to supersede solid spheres. However much
I may incline to mere ideal abstraction, I here refrain from
attempting to decide historically whether, as Ideler believes,
it was not until after the establishment of the Alexandrian
Museum that " a free movement of the planets in space was
regarded as possible," or whether, before that period, the in-
tercalated transparent spheres (of which there were twenty-
seven according to Eudoxus, and fifty-five according to Aris-
totle), as well as the epicycles which passed from Hipparchus
and Ptolemy to the Middle Ages, were regarded generally not
* Plat., De plac. PhUos., ii., 14; Aristot., MeteoroL, xi., 8; De Calo,
ii., 8. On the theory of spheres generally, and on the retrograding
spheres of Aristotle in particular, see Ideler's Vorlesvng.vher Endoantg.
1828, 8. 49-60.
316 COSMOS.
as solid bodies of material thickness, but merely as ideal ab-
stractions. It is more certain that in the middle of the six-
teenth century, when the theory of the seventy-seven homo-
centric spheres of the learned writer, Girolamo Fracastoro,
found general approval ; and when, at a later period, the op-
ponents of Copernicus sought all means of upholding the Ptol-
emaic system, the idea of the existence oi solid spheres, circles,
and epicycles, which was especially favored by the Fathers of
the Church, was still very widely diffused. Tycho Brahe ex-
pressly boasts that his considerations on the orbits of comets
first proved the impossibility of solid spheres, and thus destroy-
ed the artificial fabrics. He filled the free space of heaven
with air, and even believed that the resisting medium, when
disturbed by the revolving heavenly bodies, might generate
tones. The unimaginative Rothmann believed it necessary
to refute this renewed Pythagorean myth of celestial harmony.
Kepler's great discovery that all the planets move round
the sun in ellipses, and that the sun lies in one of the foci of
these ellipses, at length freed the original Copernican system
from eccentric circles and all epicycles.* The planetary struc-
ture of the world now appeared objectively, and as it were
architecturally, in its simple grandeur ; but it remained for
Isaac Newton to disclose the play and connection of the intern-
al forces which animate and preserve the system of the uni-
verse. We have already often remarked, in the history of the
gradual development of human knowledge, that important but
apparently accidental discoveries, and the simultaneous ap-
pearance of many great minds, are crowded together in a short
period of time ; and we find this phenomenon most strikingly
manifested in the first ten years of the seventeenth century ;
for Tycho Brahe (the founder of modern astronomical calcula-
tions), Kepler, Galileo, and Lord Bacon, were cotemporaries.
All these, with the exception of Tycho Brahe, were enabled,
in the prime of life, to benefit by the labors of Descartes and
Format. The elements of Bacon's Instauratio Magna ap-
peared in the English language in 1605, fifteen years before
* A better insight into the free movement of bodies, and into the in-
dependence of the direction once given to the earth's axis, and into the
rotatory and progressive movement of the terrestrial planet in its orbit,
has freed the original system of Copernicus from the assumption of a
declination movement, or a so-called third movement of the earth {De
Revolut. Orb. C«Z.,lib. i., cap. 11, triplex motus telluris). The parallel-
ism of the earth's axis is maintained in the annual revolution round the
Bun, in conformity with the law of inertia, without the application of a
correcting epicycle.
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 317
the Novum Organon. The invention of the telescope, and
the greatest discoveries in physical astronomy (viz., Jupiter's
satellites, the sun's spots, the phases of Venus, and the remark-
able form of Saturn), fall between the years 1609 and 1612.
Kepler's speculations on the elliptic orbit of Mars*" were be-
gan in 1601, and gave occasion, eight years after, to the com-
pletion of the work entitled Astroiiomia nova seu Physica ce-
lestis. " By the study of the orbit of Mars," writes Kepler,
" we must either arrive at a knowledge of the secrets of astron-
omy, or forever remain ignorant of them. I have succeeded, by
untiring and continued labor, in subjecting the inequalities of
the movement of Mars to a natural law." The generaliza-
tion of the same idea led the highly-gifted mind of Kepler to
the great cosmical truths and presentiments which, ten years
later, he published in his work entitled Harmonices MiC7idi
libri quinque. "I believe," he well observes in a letter to
the Danish astronomer Longomontanus, " that astronomy and
physics are so intimately associated together, that neither can
be perfected without the other." The results of his researches
on the structure of the eye and the theory of vision appeared
in 1604 in the Parali'pomena ad Vitellioriem, and in 161 If
in the Diojotrica. Thus were the knowledge of the most im-
portant objects in the perceptive world and in the regions of
space, and the mode of apprehending these objects by means
of new discoveries, alike rapidly increased in the short period
of the first ten or twelve years of a centuiy which began with
Galileo and Kepler,, and closed with Newton and Leibnitz.
The accidental discovery of the power of the telescope to
penetrate through space originated in Holland, probably in the
closing part of the year 1608. From the most recent investi-
gations it would appear that this great discovery may be
claimed by Hans Lippershey, a native of Wesel and a spec-
tacle maker at Middlebarg ; by Jacob Adriaansz, surnamed
Metius, who is said also to have made burning glasses of ice ;
and by Zacharias Jansen.| The first-named is always called
* Delambre, Hist, de V Astronomie Anciernie. t. ii., p. 381.
t See Sir David Brewster's judgment on Kepler's optical works, in
the " Martyrs of Science,'" 1846, p"^ 179-182*. (Compare Wikle, Gesch.
der Optik, 1838, tli. i., s. 182-210.) If the law of the refraction of the
rays of light belong to Willebrord Snellius, professor at Leyden (162G),
who left it behind him buried in his papers, the publication of the law
in a trigonometrical form was, on the other hand, first made by Des-
cartes. See Brewstei', in the North British Review, vol. vii., p. 207 ;
Wilde, Gesch. der Optik, th. i., s. 227.
I Compare two excellent treatises on the discovery of the telescope,
by Professor Moll, of Utrecht, in the Journal of the Royal Institution,
318 coSiMos.
Laprey in the important letter of the Dutch embassador Bo-
reel to the physician Borelli, the author of the treatise De vero
1831, vol. i., p. 319 ; and by Wilde, of Berlin, in his Gesck. der Optik,
1838, th. i., s. 138-172. The work referred to, and written in the
Dutch language, is entitled " Geschiedkundig Onderzoek naar de eerste
Uitjinders der Vernkykers, uit de Aunekenningen van wyle den HoogL
van Swinden zamengesteld door, G. Moll," Amsterdam, 1831. Albers
has given an extract from this interesting treatise in Schumacher's Jahr-
buck fur 1843, s. 56-65. The optical instruments with which Jan-
eeu furnished Prince Maurice of Nassau, and the Archduke Albert (the
latter gave his to Cornelius Drebbel), were (as is shown by the letter
of the embassador Boreel, who, when a child, had been often in the
house of Jansen, the spectacle maker, and who subsequently saw the in-
struments in the shop) microscopes eighteen inches in length, " through
which small objects were wonderfully magnified when one looked
down at them from above." The confusion between the microscope
and the telescope has rendered the history of the invention of both in-
struments obscure. The letter of Boreel (Paris, 1655), above alluded
to, notwithstanding the authority of Tiraboschi, renders it improbable
that the first invention of the compound microscope belonged to Gali-
leo. Compare, on this obscure history of optical instruments, Vicenzio
Antinori, in the Saggi di Naturali Esperienze fatte nelV Accademia del
Cimento, 1841, p. 22-26. Even Huygens, who was born scarcely twen-
ty-five years after the conjectural date of the invention of the telescope,
does not venture to decide with certainty on the name of the first in
ventor {Opera Reliqua, 1728, vol. ii., p. 125). According to the re-
searches made in public archives by Van Swiden and Mole, Lippershey
was not only in possession of a telescope made by himself as early as
the 2d of October, 1608, but the French embassador at the Hague, Pres-
ident Jeannin, wrote, on the 28th of December of the same year, to
Sully, " that he was in treaty with the Middleburg spectacle maker for
a telescope, which he wished to send to the king, Henry IV." Simon
Marius (Mayor of Genzenhausen, one of the discoverers of Jupiter's
satellites) even relates that a telescope was offered for sale in the au-
tumn of 1608, at Frankfort-on-Maine, by a Belgian, to his friend Fuchs
of Bimbach, Privy Counselor of the Margrave of Ansbach. Telescopes
were made in London in Februaiy, 1610, therefore a year after Galileo
had completed his own. (Rigaud, On Hariot^s Papers, 1833, p. 23, 26,
and 46.) They were at first called cylinders. Porta, the inventor of
the camera obscura, like Francastero, the cotemporary of Columbus,
Copernicus and Cardanus, at earlier periods, had merely spoken of the
possibility " of seeing all things larger and nearer" by means of convex
and concave glasses being placed on each other (duo specilla ocularis
alterum alteri superposita) ; but we can not ascribe the invention of
the telescope to them (Tiraboschi, Storia della Letter., ital., t. xi., p
467 ; Wilde, Gesch. der Optik, th. i., s. 121). Spectacles had been
known in Haarlem since the beginning of the fourteenth century; and
an epitaph in the church of Maria Maggiore, at Florence, names Salvi-
no degli Armati, who died in 1317, as the inventor (inventore degli oc-
chiali). Some apparently authentic notices of the use of spectacles by
aged persons are to be met with as early as 1299 and 1305. The pas-
sages of Roger Bacon refer to the magnifying power of spherical seg-
ments of glass. See Wilde, Gesch. der Optik, th. i., s. 93-96 ; and ante,
p. 245.
U18(.'OVERIES IN THE CELESTIAE SPACES). *S\\)
telescoiiii inventore (1655). If the claim of priority be de-
termined by the periods at which offers were made to the
General States, the honor belongs to Hans Lippershey ; for, on
the 2d of October, 1608, he offered to the government three
instruments " by which one might see objects at a distance."
The offer of Metius was made on the i7th of October of the
same year ; but he expressly says " that he has already, for
two years, constructed similar instruments, through industry
and thought.'' Zacharias Jansen (who, like Lippershey, was
a spectacle maker at Middleburg) invented, in conjunction
with his father Hans Jansen, toward the end of the sixteenth
century, and probably after 1590, the compound microscope,
the eye-piece of which is a concave lens ; but, as we learn
from the embassador Boreel, it was not until 1610 that he
discovered the telescope, Avhich he and his friends directed to
distant terrestHal, but not toward celestial objects. The in-
fluence which has been exercised by the microscope in giving
us a more profound knowledge of the conformation and move-
ment of the separate parts of all organic bodies, and by the
telescope in suddenly opening to us the regions of space, has
been so immeasurably great, that it seems requisite to enter
somewhat circumstantially into the history of these discov
eries.
When, in May, 1609, the news of the discovery made in
Holland of telescopic vision reached Venice, Galileo, who was
accidentally there, conjectured at once what must be the es-
sential points in the construction of a telescope, and imme-
diately completed one for himself at Padua.* This instrument
* Tlie above-iiaoied pliysiciciu and mathematician of the Margravate
of Aiifbach, Simon Mariiis, after receiving a description of the action
of a Dutch telescope, is likewise believed to have constructed one him-
self as early as the year 1608 On Galileo's earliest observation of the
mountainous regions in the moon, to which I have referred in the text,
compare Nelli, Vita di Galilei, vol. i., p. 200-206 ; Galilei, Opere, 1744,
t. ii., p. 60, 403, and Lettera al Padre Cristoforo Grienberger, in mate-
ria delle Montuosita delta Lnna, p. 409-424. Galileo found in the moon
some circular districts, sutrouuded on all sides by mountains similar to
the form of Bohemia. " Eundem facit asjiectum Lunte locus quidam,
ac faceret in terris I'egio consimilis Boemite, si montibus altissimis, inque
periphenam perfect! circuli dispositis occluderetur undique" (t. ii., p.
8). The measurements of the mountains were made by the method
of tjie tangents of the solar ray. Galileo, as Helvetius did still later,
measured the distance of the summit of the mountains from the bound-
aiy of the illuminated portion, at the moment when the mountain sum-
mit was first struck by the solar ray. I find no observation of the
lengths of the shadows of the mountains. He found the summits "in-
circa miglia quattro" in height, and " much higher than the mountains
320 COSMOS.
he first directed toward the mountainous parts of the moon,
and showed how their summits might be measured, while he,
hke Leonardo da Vinci and Mostlin, ascribed the ash-colored
light of the moon to the reflection of solar light from the earth
to the moon. He observed with low magnifying powers the
group of the Pleiades, the starry cluster in Cancer, the Milky
Way, and the group of stars in the head of Orion. Then fol-
lowed, in quick succession, the great discoveries of the four
satellites of Jupiter, the two handles of Saturn (his indistinct-
ly-seen rings, the form of which was not recognized), the solar
spots, and crescent shape of Venus.
The moons of Jupiter, the first of all the secondary planety
discovered by the telescope, were first seen, almost simulta
ueously and wholly independently, on the 29 th of December,
1609, by Simon Marius at Ansbach, and on the 7th of Jan-
uary, 1610, by Gahleo at Padua. In the publication of this
discovery, Galileo, by the Nimcius Siderius (1610), preced-
ed the Mimdus Jovialis (1614) of Simon Marius,* who had
ou our earth." The comparison is remarkable, since, according to Ric-
cioli, very exaggerated ideas of the height of our mountains were then
entertained, and one of the principal or most celebrated of these ele-
vations, the Peak of TeneritFe, was first measured trigonometrically,
with some degree of exactness, by Feuillee, in 1724. Galileo, like all
other observers up to the close of the eighteenth century, believed in
the existence of many seas and of a lunar atmosphere.
** I here again find occasion {Cosmos, vol. i., p. 185) to refer to the
proposition laid down by Ai-ago : " The only rational and just method
of writing the history of science is to base it exclusively on works, the
date of wltose publication is certain. All beyond this must be confused
and obscure." The singularly-delayed publication of the Frdnkische
Kalender ov Practica (1612), and of the astronomically important mem-
oir entitled " 3In7idus Jovialis anno 1609 delectus ope perspicilli Bel-
gici (February, 1614)," may indeed have given occasion to the suspicion
that Marius had drawn his materials from the Nuncius Sidereus of Gal-
ileo, the dedication of which is dated March, 1610, or even from ear-
lier manuscript communications. Galileo, irritated by the s.till remem-
bered lawsuit against Balthasar Gapra, a pupil of Marius, calls him the
usurper of the system of Jupiter, " Usurpatore del sistema di Giove,"
and he even accuses the heretical Protestant astronomer of Gunzen-
hausen of having founded his apparently earlier observation on a con-
fusion between the calendars. " Tace il Mario di far cauto il lettore,
come essendo egli separato della chiesa nostra, ne avendo accettato
Temendatione Gregoriana, il giorno 7 di gennaio del 1610, di noi Cat-
i.olici (the day on which Galileo discovered the satellites) e I'istesso,
ohe il di 28 di Decembre del 1609, di loro eretici, e questa e tutta la
precedenza delle sue finte osservationi" (Venturi, Memoire e Lettere di
G. Galilei, 1818, Part i., p. 279 ; and Delambre, Hist, de VAstr. Mod.,
t. i., p. 696). According to a letter written by Galileo in 1614 to the
Accademia di Lincei, it would appear that he attempted, somewhat un-
philosophically, to direct his complaint against Marius to the Marchese
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 321
proposed to give to Jupiter's satellites the names of Sidera
Brandenhurgica, while Galileo preferred the names Sidera
Cosmica or Medicea, of which the latter found most approv-
al at the court of Florence. This collective appellation did
not satisfy the yearnings of flattery. Instead of designating
the satellites hy numhers, as we do at present, Marius had
named them lo, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto ; but for
these mythological designations Galileo's nomenclature sub-
stituted the family names of the ruling house of Medici —
Catharina, Maria, Cosimo the elder, and Cosimo the younger.
The knowledge of Jupiter's satellite-system, and of the
phases of Venus, has exercised the most marked influence on
the establishment and general diffusion of the Copernican sys-
tem. The little world of Jupiter (Mzmdus Jovialis) present
ed to the intellectual contemplation of men a perfect image
of the large planetary and solar systems. It was recognized
that the secondary planets obeyed the laws discovered by Kep
ler ; and it was now first observed that the squares of their
di Braudeburgo. On the whole, however, Galileo continued well dis-
posed toward the German astronomers. He writes, in March, 1611,
'* Gli ingegni singolari, che in gi'an uumero fioriscono nell' Alemagua,
mi hauno lungo tempo tenuto in desideno di vederla" {Opere, t. ii., p.
44). It has always appeared veiy remarkable to me, that if Kepler,
in a conversation with Marius, was playfully adduced as a sponsor for
these mythological designations of lo and Callisto, there should be no
mention of his countryman either in the Commentaiy published in
Prague, in April, 1610, to the Nuncius Siderius, miper ad mortales a
GalilcEo missus, or in his letters to Galileo, or in those addressed to the
Emperor Rudolph in the autumn of the same year ; but that, on the
contrary, Kepler should every where speak of " the glorious discovery
of the Medicean stars by Galileo." In publishing his own observations
on the satellites, from the 4th to the 9th of September, 1610, he gives
to a little memoir which appeared at Frankfort in 1611, the title, ^^ Kep-
leri Narratio de ohservatis a se quatuor Jovis satellitibus erronibus quos
Galilceus Mathematicus Florentinus jure inventionis Medicea Sidera nun-
cupavity A letter from Prague, October 25, 1610, addressed to Galileo,
concludes with the words " neminem habes, quem metuas amulum."
Compare Venturi, Part i., p. 100, 117, 139, 144, and 149. Misled by a
mistake, and after a very careless examination of the valuable manu-
scripts preserved at Petworth, the seat of Lord Egremont, Baron von
Zach asserted that the distinguished astronomer and Virginian traveler,
Thomas Hariot, had discovered the satellites of Jupiter simultaneous-
ly with, or even earlier than Galileo. A more careful examination of
Harlot's manuscripts, by Rigaud, has shown that his observations be-
gan, not on the 16th of January, but only on the 17th of October, 1610,
nine months after Galileo and Marius. (Compare Zach, Corr. Asiron.,
vol. vii., p. 105. Rigaud, Account of Harriotts Asiron. Papers, Oxf.,
1833, p. 37 ; Brewster, Martyrs of Science, 1846, p. 32.) The earliest
original observations of Jupiter's satellites made by Galileo and hifl
pupil Renieri were only discovered two vears ago.
O 2
322 COSMOS.
periodic times were as the cubes of the mean distances of the
satellites from the primary planets. It was this which led
Kepler, in the Hannonices Mundi, to state, with the firm
confidence and security of a German spirit of philosophical
independence, to those whose opinions bore sway beyond the
Alps ; "eighty years have elapsed,* during which the doctrines
of Copernicus, regarding the movement of the earth, and the
immobility of the sun, have been promulgated without hin-
derance, because it is deemed allowable to dispute concerning
natural things, and to elucidate the works of God ; and now
that neiu testimony is discovered in p)-oof of the truth of those
doctrines — testimony which was not known to the spiritual
judges — ye would prohibit the promulgation of the true sys-
tem of the structure of the universe I" Such a prohibition —
a consequence of the old contest between natural science and
the Church — Kepler had early encountered in Protestant Ger-
many.f
The discovery of Jupiter's satellites marks an ever-memo-
rable epoch in the history and the vicissitudes of astronomy. $
The occultations of the satellites, or their entrance into Jupiter's
shadow, led to a knowledge of the velocity of light (1675),
and, through this knowledge, to the explanation of the aber-
ratio?i-ellipse of the fixed stars (1727), in which the great orbit
of the earth, in its annual course round the sun, is, as it were,
reflected on the vault of heaven. These discoveries of Rbmer
and Bradley have been justly termed '* the keystone of the
Copernican system," the perceptible evidence of the transla-
tory motion of the earth.
Galileo had also early perceived (September, 1612) the im-
portance of the occultations of Jupiter's satellites for geograph-
ical determinations of longitude on land. He proposed this
method, first to the Spanish court in 1616, and afterward to
the States-General of Holland, with a view of its being ap-
plied to nautical purposes, § little aware, as it would appear,
* It should be seventy-three years ; for the prohibition of the Coper-
nican system by the Congregation of the Index was promulgated on
the 5th of March, 1616.
t Freiherr von Breitschwert, Keppler's Leben, s. 36.
X Sir John Herschel, Astron., s. 465.
§ Galilei, Opere, t. ii. {Longihidine per via d£ Pianeti Medicei), p.
435-506; Nelli, Vita, vol. ii., p. 656-688; Venturi, Memorie e J ettere
di G. Galilei, Part i., p. 177. As early as 1612, or scarcely tw_ years
after the discovery of Jupiter's satellites, Galileo boasted, somewhat
prematurely indeed, of having completed tables of those secondary sat-
ellites " to within 1' of time." A long diplomatic correspondence was
c^irried on with the Spauish embassador in 1616, and with the Dutch
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 323
of the insuperable difficulties presented to its practical appli-
cation on the unstable element. He wished to go himself, or
to send his son Vicenzio, to Spain, with a hundred telescopes,
which he would prepare. He required as a recompense " una
croce di San Jago," and an annual payment of 4000 scudi, a
small sum, he says, considering that hopes had been given to
him, in the house of Cardinal Borgia, of receiving 6000 ducats
annually.
The discovery of the secondary planets of Jupiter was soon
followed by the observations of the so-called triple form of
Saturn as a lolaneta tergemhiiis. As early as November,
1610, Galileo informed Kepler that " Saturn consisted of three
stars, which were in mutual contact with one another." In
this observation lay the germ of the discovery of Saturn's ring.
Hevelius, in 1656, described the variations in its form, the un-
equal opening of the handles (ansae), and their occasional total
disappearance. The merit of having given a scientific expla-
nation of all the phenomena of Saturn's ring belongs, how-
ever, to the acute observer Huygens, who, in 1655, in accord-
ance with the suspicious custom of the age, and like Galileo,
concealed his discovery in an anagram of eighty-eight letters.
Dominicus Cassini was the first who observed the black stripe
on the ring, and in 1684 he recognized that it is divided into
at least two concentric rings. I have here collected together
what has been learned during a century regarding the most
wonderful and least anticipated of all the forms occurring in
the heavenly regions — a form which has led to ingenious con-
jectures regarding the original mode of formation of the sec-
ondary and primary planets.
embassador in 163G, but without leading to the desired object. The
telescopes were to magnify from forty to fifty times. In order more
easily to find the satellites when the ship is in motion, and (as he be-
lieved) to keep them in the field, he invented, in 1617 (Nelli, vol. ii.,
p. 663), the binocular telescope, which has generally been ascribed tc
the Capucine monk Schyrleus de Rheita, who had much experience iu
optical matters, and who endeavored to construct telescopes magnifying,
four thousand times. Galileo made experiments with his binocular
(which he also called a celatone or testiera) in the harbor of Leghorn,
while the ship was violently moved by a strong wind. He also caused
a contrivance to be prepared in the arsenal at Pisa, by which the ob-
server of the satellites might be protected from all mutiou, by setiting
himself in a kind of boat, tloating in another boat filled with water or
vf\\\\. oil {Lettera al Picchena de^ 22 Marzo, 1617 ; Nelli, Vita, vol. i., p.
281 ; Galilei, Opere, t, ii., p. 473 ; Lettera a Lorenzo Realio del 5 Giug-
no, 1637). The proof which Galileo (Opere, t. ii., p. 454) brought for-
ward of the advantage to the naval service of his method over IVIorin's
method of lunar distances is very striking.
324 COSMOS.
The spots upo?i the su7i were first observed through tele-
scopes by Johann Fabricius of East Friesland, and by Galileo
(at Padua or Venice, as is asserted). In the publication of
the discovery, in June, 1611, Fabricius incontestably preceded
Galileo by one year, since his first letter to the burgomaster,
Marcus Welser, is dated the 4th of May, 1612. The earliest
observations of Fabricius were made, according to Arago's
careful researches, in March, 1611,* and, according to Sir
David Brewster, even as early as toward the close of the year
1610 ; while Christopher Scheiner did not carry his own ob-
servations back to an earlier period than April, 1611, and it
is probable that he did not seriously occupy himself with the
solar spots until October of the same year. Concerning Gal-
ileo we possess only very obscure and discrepant data on this
subject. It is probable that he recognized the solar spots in
April, 1611, for he showed them publicly at Rome in Cardi-
nal Bandini's garden on the Quirinal, in the months of April
and May of that year. Hariot, to whom Baron Zach ascribes
the discovery of the sun's spots (16th of January, 1610), cer-
tainly saw three of them on the 8th of December, 1610, and
noted them down in a register of observations ; but he was
ignorant that they were solar spots ; thus, too, Flamstead, on
the 23d of December, 1690, and Tobias Mayer, on the 25th
of September, 1756, did not recognize Uranus as a planet
when it passed across the field of their telescope. Hariot first
observed the solar spots on the 1st of December, 1611, five
months, therefore, after Fabricius had published his discovery.
Galileo had made the observation that the solar spots, " many
of which are larger than the Mediterranean, or even than
Africa and Asia," form a definite zone on the sun's disk. He
occasionally noticed the same spots return, and he was con-
vinced that they belonged to the sun itself. Their differences
of dimension in the center of the sun, and when they disap-
peared on the sun's edge, especially attracted his attention,
^* See Arago, in the Anmiaire for 1842, p. 460-476 {Decouvertes des
taches Solaires et de la Rotation du Soleil). Brewster {Martyrs of
Science, p. 36 and 39) places the first observation of Galileo in October
or November, 1610. Compare Nelli, Vita,yo\. i., p. 324-384; Galilei,
Opere, t. i., p. lix. ; t. ii., p. 85-200 ; t. iv., p. 53. On Harriot's observ-
ations, see Rigaud, p. 32 and 38. The Jesuit Scheiner, who was sum-
moned from Gratz to Rome, has been accused of striving to revenge
himself on Galileo, on account of the literary contest regarding the dis-
covery of the solar spots, by getting it whispered to Pope Ui-ban VIII.,
through another Jesuit, Grassi, that he (the pope), in the Dialoghidelle
Scienze Nuove, was represented as the foolish and ignorant Sjmplicio
(Nelli, vol. ii., p. 515)
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 325
but still I find nothing in his second remarkable letter of the
14th of August, 1612, to Marcus Welser, that would indicate
his having observed an inequality in the ash-colored margin
on both sides of the black nucleus when approaching the
sun's edge (Alexander Wilson's accurate observation in 1773).
The Canon Tarde in 1620, and Malapertus in 1633, ascribed
all obscurations of the sun to small cosmical bodies revolving
around it and intercepting its light, and named the Bourbon
and Austrian stars* [Borbonia et Austriaca Sidera). Fa-
bricius recognized, like Galileo, that the spots belonged to the
Bun itself;! he also noticed that the spots he had seen vanish
all reappear ; and the observation of these phenomena taught
him the rotation of the sun, which had already been conject-
ured by Kepler before the discovery of the solar spots. The
most accurate determinations of the period of rotation were,
however, made in 1630, by the diligent Scheiner. Since the
strongest light ever produced by man, Drummond's incan-
descent lime-ball, appears inky black when thrown on the
sun's disk, we can not wonder that Galileo, who undoubtedly
first described the great solar faculce, should have regarded
the light of the nucleus of the sun's spots as more intense than
that of the full moon, or the atmosphere near the sun's disk.J
Fanciful conjectures regarding the many envelopes of air,
clouds, and light, which surround the black, earth-like nucleus
of the sun, may be found in the writings of Cardinal Nicholas
of Cusa as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, s^
To close our consideration of the cycle of remarkable dis-
coveries, which scarcely comprised two years, and in which the
great and undying name of the Florentine shines pre-eminent,
it still remains for us to notice the observation of the phases
of Venus. In February, 1610, Galileo observed the crescentic
form of this planet, and on the 11th of December, 1610, in
accordance with a practice already alluded to, he concealed
this important discovery in an anagram, of which Kepler
makes mention in the preface to his Dioptrica. We learn
* Delambre, Hist, de V Astronomie Moderne, t. i., p. 690.
t The same opinion is expressed in Galileo's Letters to Prince Cesi
(May 25, 1612) ; Veuturi, Part i., p. 172.
X See some ingenious and interesting considerations on this subject
by Arago, in the Annuaire pour Van 1842, p. 481-488. Sir John Her-
schel, in his Astronomy, $ 334, speaks of the experiments with Drum-
mond's light projected on the sun's disk.
$ Giordano Bruno und Nic. von Cusa verglichen, von J. Clemens,
1847, s. 101. On the phases of Venus, see Galilei, OpereA. ii., p. 53,
and Nelli, Vita, vol. i., p. 21.3-215.
326 cosMu.s.
also, from a letter of his to Benedetto Castelli (30th of De-
cember, 1610), that he believed, notwithstanding the low mag-
nifying power of his telescope, that he could recognize changes
in the illumined disk of Mars, The discovery of the moon-
like or crescent shape of Venus was the triumph of the Coper
nican system. The founder of that system could scarcely fail
to recognize the necessity of the existence of these phases ;
and we find that he discusses circumstantially, in the tenth
chapter of his first book, the doubts which the more modern
adherents of the Platonic opinions advance against the Ptole-
maic system on account of these phases. But, in the develop-
ment of his own system, he does not speak expressly of the
phases of Venus, as is stated by Thomas Smith in his Optics.
The enlargement of cosmical knowledge, whose description
can not, unhappily, be wholly separated from unpleasant dis-
sensions regarding the right of priority to discoveries, excited,
like all that refers to physical astronomy, more general atten-
tion, from the fact that several great discoveries in the heavens
had aroused the attention of the public mass at the respective
periods of thirty-six, eight, and four years prior to the invention
of the telescope in 1608, viz., the sudden apparition and dis-
appearance of three new stars, one in Cassiopeia in 1572, an-
other in the constellation of the Swan in 1600, and the third
m the foot of Ophiuchus in 1604. All these stars were bright-
er than those of the first magnitude, and the one observed by
Kepler in the Swan continued to shine in the heavens for
twenty-one years, throughout the whole period of Galileo's dis-
coveries. Three centuries and a half have now nearly passed
since then, but no new star of the first or second magnitude
has appeared ; for the remarkable event witnessed by Sir
John Herschel in the southern hemisphere (in 1837)* was a
great increase in the intensity of the light of a long-known star
of the second magnitude (?/ Argo), which had not until then
been recognized as variable. The writings of Kepler, and our
own experience of the effect produced by the appearance of
comets visible to the naked eye, will teach us to understand
how powerfully the appearance of new stars, between the
years 1572 and 1604, must have arrested attention, increased
the general interest in astronomical discoveries, and excited
the minds of men to the combination of imaginative conject-
ures. Thus, too, terrestrial natural events, as earthquakes in
regions where they have been but seldom experienced ; the
eruption of volcanoes that had long remained inactive ; the
* Compare Cosmos, vol. i., p. 153 and 353.
DISCOVERIES IN TIIK (*KT,F,STIAL SPACES. 327
sounds of aerolites traversing our atmosphere and becoming
ignited within its confines, impart a new stimukis, for a cer-
tain time, to the general interest in problems, which appear
to the people at large even more mysterious than to the dog-
matizing physicist.
My reason lor more particularly naming Kepler in these
remarks on the influence of direct sensuous contemplation has
been to point out how, in this great and highly-gifted man, a
*aste for imaginative combinations was combined with a re-
markable talent for observation, an earnest and severe meth-
od of induction, a courageous and almost unparalleled perse-
verance in calculation, and a mathematical profoundness of
mind, which, revealed in his Ste7'eometria Dolicntt77i, exer-
cised a happy influence on Fermat, and, through him, on the
invention of the theory of the infinitesimal calculus.* A man
endowed with such a mind was pre-eminently qualified by
the richness and mobility of his ideas,! and by the bold cos-
mical conjectures which he advanced, to animate and aug-
ment the movement which led the seventeenth century unin-
terruptedly forward to the exalted object presented in an ex-
tended contemplation of the universe.
The many comets visible to the naked eye from 1577 to
the appearance of Halley's comet in 1607 (eight in number),
and the sudden apparition already alluded to of three stars
almost at the same period, gave rise to speculations on the
origin of these heavenly bodies from a cosmical vapor filling
the regions of space. Kepler, like Tycho Brahe, believed
that the new stars had been conglomerated from this vapor,
and that they were again dissolved in it.$ Comets to which,
* Laplace says of Kepler's theoiy of the measurement of casks {Ste-
reometria Doliorum), 1615, " which, like the sand-reckoning of Archi-
medes, develops elevated ideas on a subject of little importance;"
" Kepler presente dans cet ouvrage des vues sur I'infini qui ont influe
sur la revolution que la Geometrie a eprouvee k la fin du l?""® siecle ;
et Fermat, que Ton doit regarder comme le veritable inventeur du calcul
differentiel, a fonde sur elles sa belle methode de maximis et minimis.
{Precis de VHist. de VAstronomie, 1821, p. 95.)" On the geometrical
power manifested by Kepler in the five books of his Harmonices Mundi,
see Chasles, Aperqu Hist, des Miihodes en G^omitrie, 1837, p. 482-487.
t Sir David Brewster elegantly remarks, in the account of Kepler's
method of investigating triith, that " the influence of imagination as an
instniment of research has been much overlooked by those who have
ventured to give laws to philosophy. This faculty is of greatest value
in physical inquiries ; if we use it as a guide and confide in its indica-
tions, it will infallibly deceive us; but if we employ it as an auxiliary,
it will aflbrd us the most invaluable aid" {Martyrs of Science, p. 215).
X Arago, in the Annvaire. 1842. p. 434 {Dc la Ti-ansformation dej
328 COSMOS.
before the discovery of the elliptic orbit of the planets, he as-
cribed a rectilinear and not a closed revolving course, were
regarded by him, in 1608, in his '' new and singular discourse
on the hairy stars," as having originated from "celestial air,"
He even added, in accordance with ancient fancies on sjion-
taneous generation, that comets arise " as an herb springs from
the earth without seed, and as fishes av jrmed in the sea by
a generatio s.ponta7iear
Happier in his other cosmical conjectures, Kepler hazarded
the following propositions : that all the fixed stars are suns
like our own luminary, and surrounded by planetary systems ;
that our sun is enveloped in an atmosphere which appears
like a white corona of light during a total solar eclipse ; that
our sun is so situated in the great cosmical island as to con-
stitute the center of the compressed stellar ring of the Milky
Way ;* that the sun itself, whose spots had not then been
discovered, together with all the planets and fixed stars, rotates
on its axis ; that satellites, like those discovered by Galileo
round Jupiter, will also be discovered round Saturn and Mars ;
and that in the much too great interval of space between
Mars and Jupiter,t where we are now acquainted with seven
asteroids (as between Venus and Mercury), there revolve
planets which, from their smallness alone, are invisible to the
naked eye. Presentient propositions of this nature, felicitous
conjectures of that which was subsequently discovered, excit-
ed general interest, while none of Kepler's cotemporaries, in-
cluding Galileo, conferred any adequate praise on the discov-
ery of the three laws, which, since Newton and the promul-
Nibuleuses et de la Matiire diffuse en Etoiles). Compare Cosmos, vol.
i., p. 144 and 152.
* Compare the ideas of Sir John Herschel on the position of our
planetary system, vol. i., p. 141 ; also Struve, Etudes d'' Astronomie Stel-
laire, 1847, p. 4.
t Apelt says {Epocken der Geschichte der Menschheit, bd. i., 1845, s.
223) : " the remarkable law of the distances, which is usually known
under the name of Bode's law (or that of Titius), is the discovery of
Kepler, who, after many years of persevering industry, deduced it from
the observations of Tycho de Brahe." See Harmonices Mundi librt
quinque, cap. 3. Compare, also, Cournot's Additions to his French
translation of Sir John Herschel's Astronomy, 1834, ^ 434, p. 324, and
Fries, Vorlesungen uber die Sternkunde, 1813, s. 325 (On the Law of
the Distances in the Secondary Planets). * The passages from Plato,
PHny, Censorinus, and Achilles Tatius, in the Prolegomena to the
Aratus, are carefully collected in Fries, Geschichte der Philosophie, bd.
i., 1837, s. 146-150; in Martin, Etudes sur le Tim6e, t. ii., p. 38; and in
Brandis, Geschichte der Griechisch-Romischen Philosophie, th. ii., abth.
i., 1844. s. 364.
DISCOVKRiE3 IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 329
gallon of the theory of gravitation, have immortalized the
name of Kepler.* Cosmical considerations, even when based
merely on feeble analogies and not on actual observations,
riveted the attention more powerfully then, as they still fre-
quently do, than the most important results of calculating
astronomy.
After having described the important discoveries which in
so small a cycle of years extended the knowledge of the re-
gions of space, it still remains for me to revert to the advances
in physical astronomy which characterize the latter half of
this great century. The improvement in the construction of
telescopes led to the discovery of Saturn's satellites. Huy-
gens, on the 25th of March, 1655, forty-five years after the
discovery of Jupiter's satellites, discovered the sixth of these
bodies through an object-glass which he had himself polished.
Owing to a prejudice, which he shared with other astrono-
mers of his time, that the number of the secondary planetary
bodies could not exceed that of the primary planets,! he did
not seek to discover other satellites of Saturn. Dominicus
Cassini discovered four of these bodies, the Sidera Lodivicea,
viz., the seventh and outermost in 1671, which exhibits
great alternation of light, the fifth in 1672, and the fourth
and third in 1684, through Campani's object-glass, having a
focal length of 100-136 feet ; the two innermost, the first and
second, were discovered more than a century later (1788 and
1789) by William Herschel, through his colossal telescope.
The last-named of these satellites presents the remarkable
phenomenon of accomplishing its revolution round the prima-
ry planet in less than one day.
Soon after Huygens's discovery of a satellite of Saturn,
Childrey first observed the zodiacal light, between the years
1658 and 1661, although its relations in space were not de-
termined until 1683 by Dominicus Cassini. The latter did
not regard it as a portion of the sun's atmosphere, but believ-
ed, with Schubert, Laplace, and Poisson, that it was a de-
tached revolving nebulous ring.J Next to the recognition of
the existence of secondary planets, and of the free and con
centrically divided rings of Saturn, the conjecture of the prob-
able existence of the nebulous zodiacal light belongs incon-
testably to the grandest enlargement of our views regarding
the planetary system, which had previously appeared so sira-
* Delambre, Hist, de V Astronomie Moderne, t. i., p. 360.
t Arago, in the Annuaire for 1842, p. 560-564; also Cosmos, vol. i..
p. 97. X Compare Cosmos, vol. i., p. 137-144.
330 COSMOS.
pie. In our own time, the intersecting orbits of the small
planets between Mars and Jupiter, the interior comets, which
were first proved to be such by Encke, and the swarms of
falling stars associated with definite days (since we can not
regard these bodies in any other light than as such cosmical
masses moving with planetary velocity), have enriched our
views of the universe with a remarkable abundance of new
Dbjects.
During the age of Kepler and Galileo, our ideas were very
considerably enlarged regarding the contents of the regions of
space, or, in other words, the distribution of all created mat-
ter beyond the outermost circle of the planetary bodies, and
beyond the orbit of any comet. In the same period in which
(1572-1604) three new stars of the first magnitude suddenly
appeared in Cassiopeia, Cygnus, and Ophiuchus, David Fa-
bricius, pastor at Ostell, in East Friesland (the father of the
discoverer of the sun's spots), in 1596, and Johann Bayer, at
Augsburg, in 1603, observed in the neck of the constellation
Cetus another star, which again disappeared, whose changing
brightness was first recognized by Johann Phocylides Holwar-
da, professor at Franeker (in 1638 and 1639), as we learn
from a treatise of Arago, which has thrown much light on the
history of astronomical discoveries.* The phenomenon was
not singular in its occurrence, for, during the last half of the
seventeenth century, variable stars were periodically observed
in the head of Medusa, in Hydra, and in Cygnus. The man-
ner in which accurate observations of the alternations of light
in Algol are able to lead directly to a determination of the
velocity of the light of this star, has been ably shown by the
treatise to which I have alluded, and which was published in
1842.
The use of the telescope now excited astronomers to the
* Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour Van 1842, p. 312-353 {EtO'
lies Changeantes ou Piriodiques). In the seventeenth century there
were recognized, as variable stars, besides Mira Ceti (Holwarda, 1638),
a Hydrae (Montanari, 1672), /? Persei or Algol, and x Cygni (Kirch,
1686). On w^hat Galileo calls nebulae, see his Opere, t. ii., p. 15, and
Nelli, Vita, vol. ii., p. 208. Huygens, in the Systema Saturninum, re-
fers most distinctly to the nebula in the sword of Oi'ion, in saying of
nebulae generally, " Cui certe simile aliud nusquara apud reliquas fixas
potui animadvertere. Nam ceterae nebulosae olim existimatae atque ipsa
via lactea, perspicillis inspectae, nuUas nebulas habere comperiuntur,
neque aliud esse quam plurium stellarum congeries et frequentia." It
is seen from this passage that the nebula in Andromeda, which was
first described by Marius, had not been attentively considered by
Huygens any more than by Galileo.
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 331
earnest observation of a class of phenomena, some of which
could not even escape the naked eye. Simon Marius describ-
ed in 1612 the nebula in Andromeda, and Huygens, in 1656,
drew the fisfure of that in the stars of the sword of Orion.
Both nebulae might serve as types of a more or less advanced
condensation of nebulous cosmical matter. Marius, when he
compared the nebula in Andromeda to "a wax taper seen
through a semi-transparent medium," indicated very forcibly
the diHererkce between nebulae generally and the stellar mass-
es and groups in the Pleiades and in Cancer, examined by
Galileo. As early as the sixteenth century, Spanish and Port-
uguese sea-farers, without the aid of telescopic vision, had no-
ticed with admiration the two Magellanic clouds of light re-
volving round the south pole, of which one, as we have observ-
ed, was known as " the white spot" or " white ox" of the Per-
sian astronomer Abdurrahman Sufi, who lived in the middle
of the tenth century. Gahleo, in the Niincius Siderius, uses
the terms " stellce ncbulosce" and " nebidosce" to designate clus-
ters of" stars, which, as he expresses it, like areolce sparsiin loer
cethera siibfulgent. As he did not bestow any especial atten-
tion on the nebula in Andromeda, which, although visible to
the naked eye, had not hitherto revealed any star under the
highest magnifying powers, he regarded all nebulous appear-
ances, all his jiebuloscB, and the Milky Way itself, as lumin-
ous masses formed of closely-compressed stars. He did not
distinguish between the nebula and star, as Huygens did in
the case of the nebulous spot of Orion. These are the feeble
beginnings of the great works on Nebulce, which have so hon-
orably occupied the first astronomers of our own time in both
hemispheres.
Although the seventeenth century owes its principal splen-
dor at its beginning to the sudden enlargement afforded to the
knowledge of the heavens, imparted by the labors of Galileo
and Kepler, and at its close to the advance in mathematical
science, due to Newton and Leibnitz, yet the greater number
of the physical problems which occupy us in the present day
likewise experienced beneficial consideration in the same cen-
tury. In order not to depart from the character peculiarly
appropriate to a history of the contemplation of the universe,
I limit myself to a mere enumeration of the works which have
exercised direct and special influence on general, or, in other
words, on cosmical views of nature. With reference to the
processes of light, heat, and magnetism, I would first name
Huygens. Galileo, and Gilbert. While Huygens was occu-
332 COSMOS.
pied with the double refraction of light in crystals of Iceland
spar, i. e., with the separation of the pencils of light into two
parts, he also discovered, in 1678, that kind of polarization of
light which bears his name. The discovery of this isolated
phenomenon, which was not published till 1690, and, conse-
quently, only five years before the death of Huygens, was fol-
lowed, after the lapse of more than a century, by the great
discoveries of Malus, Arago, Fresnel, Brewster, and Biot.*
Malus, in 1808, discovered polarization by reflection from pol-
ished surfaces, and Arago, in 1811, made the discovery of col-
ored polarization. A world of wonder, composed of manifold
modified waves of light, having new properties, was now re-
vealed. A ray of light, which reaches our eyes, after travers-
ing millions of miles, from the remotest regions of heaven, an-
nounces of itself, in Arago' s polariscope, whether it is reflected
or refracted, whether it emanates from a solid, or fluid, or
gaseous body ; announcing even the degree of its intensity.!
By pursuing this course, which leads us back through Huygens
to the seventeenth century, we are instructed concerning the
constitution of the solar body and its envelopes ; the reflected
or the proper light of cometary tails and the zodiacal light ;
the optical properties of our atmosphere ; and the position of
the four neutral points of polarization! which Arago, Babinet,
and Brewster discovered. Thus does man create new organs,
which, when skillfully employed, reveal to him new views of
the universe.
Next to polarization I should name the interference of light,
the most striking of all optical phenomena, faint traces of which
were also observed in the seventeenth century — by Grimaldi
in 1665, and by Hooke, although without a proper understand-
ing of its original and causal conditions.^ Modern times owe
the discovery of these conditions, and the clear insight into the
laws, according to which, (unpolarized) rays of light, emana-
ting from one and the same source, but with a different length
of path, destroy one another and produce darkness, to the suc-
cessful perietration of Thomas Young. The laws of the in
* On the important law discovered by Brewster, of the connection
betw^een the angle of complete polarization and the index of i-efraction,
see Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for the Year 1815
p. 125-159. t See Cosmos, vol. i., p. 39 and 52.
X Sir David Brewster, in Berghaixs and Johnson's Physical Atlas, 1847
Part vii., p. 5 (Polarization of the Atmosphere).
$ On Grimaldi's and Hooke's attempt to explain the polarization of
soap-bubbles by the interference of the rays of light, see Arago, in th«
Annuaire for 1831, p. 164 (Brewster's Life of Newton, p. 53).
DISCOVERIES IX THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 333
terference of polarized liglit were discovered in 1816 by Ara-
go and Fresnel. The theory of nndulations advanced by Huy-
gens and Hooke, and defended by Leonhard Euler, was at
length established on a firm and secure basis.
Although the latter half of the seventeenth century acquir-
ed distinction from the attainment of a successful insight into
the nature of double refraction, by which optical science was
so much enlarged, its greatest splendor was derived from New-
ton's experimental researches, and Olaus Romer's discovery,
in 1675, of the measurable velocity of light. Haifa century
afterward, in 1728, this discovery enabled Bradley to regard
the variation he had observed in the apparent place of the
stars as a conjoined consequence of the movement of the
earth in its orbit, and of the propagation of light. Newton's
splendid work on Optics did not appear in English till 1704,
having been deferred, from personal considerations, till two
years after Hooke's death ; but it would seem a well-attested
fact that, even before the years 1666 and 1667,* he was in
possession of the principal points of his optical researches, his
theory of gravitation and differential calculus (method of flux-
ions).
In order not to sever the links which hold together the gen-
eral primitive phenomena of matter in one common bond, I
would here immediately, after my succinct notice of the op-
tical discoveries of Huygens, Grimaldi, and Newton, pass to
* Brewster, The Life of Sir Isaac Newton, p. 17. The date of the
year 1665 has been adopted for that of the invention of the method of
fluxions, which, according to the official explanations of the Committee
of the Royal Society of London, April 24, 1712, is "one and the same
with the differential method, excepting the name and mode of nota
tion." With reference to the whole unhappy contest on the subject of
priority with Leibnitz, in which, strange to say, accusations against
Newton's orthodoxy were even advanced, see Brewster, p. 189-218.
The fact that all colors are contained in white light was already main-
tained by De la Chambre, in his work entitled "La Lumiere'^ (Paris,
1657), and by Isaac Vossius (who was afterward a canon at Windsor),
in a remarkable memoir entitled " De Lncis Natura et Proprietate'^
(Amstelod., 1662), for the knowledge of which I was indebted, two
ydUrs ago, to M. Arago, at Paris. Brandis treats of this memoir in the
new edition oi Ge\i\ex^& PhysikaUsche Wdrlerb7ich,h6.\x. (1827), s. 43,
and Wilke notices it very fully in his Gesck. der Opt'ik, th. i. (1838),
s. 223, 228, and 317. Isaac Vossius, however, considered the funda-
mental substance of all colors (cap. 25, p. 60) to be sulphur, which
forms, according to him, a component part of all bodies. In Vossii llc-
tponsTim ad Objecta, Joh. de Bruyn, Professoris Trajectini, ct Petri Pefiti,
1663, it is said, p. 69, Nee lumen ullnm est absque calore, nee calor ul-
lus absque lumine. Lux sonus, anima (!) odor, vis magnetica, quamvia
incorporea, sunt tamen aliquid. (De Lucis Nat., cap. 13, p. 29.)
334 COSMOS.
the consideration of terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric
temperature, as far as these sciences are included in the cen-
tury which we have attempted to describe. The able and
important work on magnetic and electric forces, the Physio-
logia nova cle Magnele, by William Gilbert, to Avhich I have
frequently had occasion to allude,* appeared in the year 1600.
This writer, whose sagacity of mind was so highly admired
by Galileo, conjectured many things of which we have now
acquired certain knowledge. t Gilbert regarded terrestrial
magnetism and electricity as two emanations of a single fun-
damental force pervading all matter, and he therefore treated
of both at once. Such obscure conjectures, based on analogies
of the effect of the Heraclean magnetic stone on iron, and the
attractive force exercised on dry straws by amber, when ani-
mated, as Pliny expresses it, with a soul by the agency of
heat and friction, appertain to all ages and all races, to the
Ionic natural philosophy no less than to the science of the
Chinese physicists. $ According to Gilbert's idea, the earth
itself is a magnet, while he considered that the inflections of
the lines of equal declination and inclination depend upon the
distribution of mass, the configuration of continents, or the
form and extent of the deep, intervening oceanic basins. It
is difficult to connect the periodic variations which character-
ize the three principal forms of magnetic phenomena (the iso-
clinal, isogenic, and isodynamic lines) with this rigid system
of the distribution of force and mass, unless we represent to
ourselves the attractive force of the material particles modi-
fied by similar periodic changes of temperature in the interior
of the terrestrial planet.
In Gilbert's theory, as in gravitation, the quantity of the
material particles is merely estimated, without regard to the
specific heterogeneity of substances. This circumstance gave
his work, at the time of Galileo and Kepler, a character of
cosmical greatness. The unexpected discovery of rotation-
magnetism by Arago in 1825, has shown practically that ev-
ery kind of matter is susceptible of magnetism ; and the most
recent investigations of Faraday on dia-magnetic substances
• Cosmos, vol. i., p. 177, 179, and vol. ii., p. 278.
t Lord Bacon, whose comprehensive, and, generally speaking, free
and methodical views, were unfortunately accompanied by very limit-
ed mathematical and physical knowledge, even for the age in which
he lived, was veiy unjust to Gilbert. " Bacon showed his inferior apt-
itude for physical research in rejecting the Copernican doctrine which
William Gilbert adopted" (Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sci-
ences, vol. ii., p. 378). \ Cosmos, vol. i., p. 188-
DISCOVERIES I\ THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 335
have, under especial conditions of meridian or equatorial direc-
tion, and of solid, fluid, or gaseous inactive conditions of the
bodies, confirmed this important result. Gilbert had so clear
an idea of the force imparted by telluric magnetism, that he
ascribed the magnetic condition of iron rods on crosses of old
church towers to this action of the Earth. "^
The increased enterprise and activity of navigation to the
higher latitudes, and the improvement of magnetic instru-
ments, to w^hich had been added, since 1576, the dipping
needle (inclinatorium), constructed by Robert Norman, of
Ratclift, were the means, during the course of the seventeenth
century, of extending the general knowledge of the periodical
advance of a portion of the magnetic curves or lines of no va-
riation. The position of the magnetic equator, which was be-
lieved to be identical with the geographical equator, remained
uninvestigated. Observations of inclination were only carried
on in a few of the capital cities of Western and Southern Eu-
rope. Graham, it is true, attempted in London, in 1723, to
measure, by the oscillations of a magnetic needle, the intensity
of the magnetic terrestrial force, which varies both with space
and time ; but, since Borda's fruitless attempt on his last voy-
age to the Canaries in 1776, Lemanon was the first who suc-
ceeded, in La Perouse's expedition in 1785, in comparing the
intensity in different regions of the earth.
In the year 1683, Edmund Halley sketched his theory of
four magnetic poles or points of convergence, and of the peri-
odical movement of the magnetic line without declination, bas-
ing his theory on a large number of existing observations of
declination of very unequal value, by Baffin, Hudson, James
Hall, and Schouten. In order to test this theory, and render
it more perfect by the aid of new and more exact observations,
the English government permitted him to make three voyages
(1698-1702) in the Atlantic Ocean, in a vessel under his own
command. In one of these he reached 52^ S. lat. This ex
pedition constituted an epoch in the history of telluric mag
netism. Its result was the construction of a general variatior
chart, on which the points at which navigators had found an
equal amount of variation were connected together by curved
* The first- observation of the kind was made (1590) on the tower of
ihe church of the Augustines at Mantua. Grimaldi and Gassendi were
acquainted with similar instances, all occurring in geographical lati-
tudes where the inclination of the magnetic needle is very considerable.
On the first measurements of magnetic intensity by the oscillation of a
needle, compare my Relation Hist., t. i., p. 260-264, and Cosmos, vol.
i., p. 186, 187.
336 COSMOS.
lines. Never before, I believe, had any government fitted out
a naval expedition for an object whose attainment promised
such advantages to practical navigation, while, at the same
time, it deserved to be regarded as peculiarly scientific and
physico-mathematical.
As no phenomenon can be thoroughly investigated by a
careful observer, without being considered in its relation to
other phenomena, Halley, on his return from his voyage, haz-
arded the conjecture that the northern light was of a magnet-
ic origin. I have remarked, in the general picture of nature,
that Faraday's brilliant discovery (the evolution of light by
magnetic force) has raised this hypothesis, enounced as early
as in the year 1714, to empirical certainty.
But if the laws of terrestrial magnetism are to be thorough
ly investigated — that is to say, if they are to be sought in the
great cycle of the periodic movement in space of the three va-
rieties of magnetic curves, it is by no means sufficient that
the diurnal regular or disturbed course of the needle should
be observed at the magnetic stations which, since 1828, have
begun to cover a considerable portion of the earth's surface,
both in northern and southern latitudes ;* but four times in
every century an expedition of three ships should be sent out,
to examine, as nearly as possible at the same time, the state
of the magnetism of the Earth, so far as it can be investiga-
ted in those parts which are covered by the ocean. The mag-
netic equator, or the curve at which the inclination is null,
must not merely be inferred from the geographical position of
its nodes (the intersections with the geographical equator), but
the course of the ship should be made continually to vary ac-
cording to the observations of inclination, so as never to leave
the track of the magnetic equator for the time being. Land
expeditions should be combined with these voyages, in order,
where masses of land can not be entirely traversed, to determ-
ine at what points of the coast-line the magnetic curves (es-
pecially those having no variation) enter. Special attention
might also, perhaps, be deservedly directed to the movement
and gradual changes in the oval configuration and almost con-
centric curves of variation of the two isolated closed systems
in Eastern Asia, and in the South Pacific in the meridian of
the Marquesas Group.t Since the memorable Antarctic ex-
pedition of Sir James Clark Ross (1839-1843), fitted out
with admirable instruments, has thrown so much light over
the polar regions of the southern hemisphere, and has determ-
* Cosmos, vol. i., p. 190-192. t Cosmos, vol. i., p. 182.
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 337
ined empirically the position of the magnetic south pole ; and
since my honored friend, the great mathematician, Frederic
Gauss, has succeeded in establishing the first general theory
of terrestrial magnetism, we need not renounce the hope that
the many requirements of science and navigation will lead to
the realization of the plan I have already proposed. May
the year 1850 be marked as the first normal epoch in which
the materials for a magnetic chart shall be collected ; and
may permanent scientific institutions (academies) impose upon
themselves the practice of reminding, every twenty-five or
thirty years, governments favorable to the advance of naviga-
tion, of the importance of an undertaking whose great cosmic-
al importance depends on its long-continued repetition.
The invention of instruments for measuring temperature
(Galileo's thermoscopes of 1593 and 1602,* depending simul-
taneously on the changes in the temperature and the external
pressure of the atmosphere) gave origin to the idea of determ-
ining the modifications of the atmosphere by a series of con-
nected and successive observations. We learn from the Di
ario delV Accademia del Cimento, which exercised so happy
an influence on the taste for experiments, conducted in a reg-
ular and systematic method during the brief term of its activity,
that observations of the temperature were made with spirit
thermometers similar to our own at a great number of sta-
tions, among others at Florence, in the Convent Degli Angeli,
in the plains of Lombardy, on the mountains near Pistoja, and
even in the elevated plain of Innspruck, as early as 1641, an
five times daily. t The Grand-duke Ferdinand II. employea
the monks in many of the monasteries of his states to perform
this task4 The temperature of mineral springs was also de-
termined at that period, and thus gave occasion to many ques-
* On the oldest thermometers, see Nelli, Vita e Commercio Letterario
dl Galilei (Losanna, 1793), vol. i., p. 68-94 ; Opere di Galilei (Padovo,
1744), t. i., p. Iv. ; Libri, Histoire des Sci^ces Mathematiques en Italic,
t. iv. (1841), p. 183-197. As evidences of first comparative observa-
tions on temperature, we may instance the letters of Gianfrancesco Sa-
gredo and Benedetto Castelli in 1613, 1615, and 1633, given in Veuturi,
Memorie e Lettere inedite di Galilei, Part i., 1818, p. 20.
t Vincenzio Antinori, in the Saggi di Naturali Esperienze, fatte nelV
Accademia del Cimento, 1841, p. 30-44.
X On the determination of the thermometric scale of the Accademia
del Cimento, and on the meteorological observations continued for six-
teen years by a pnpil of Galileo, Father Raineri, see Libri, in the Aw
nales de Chimieet de Physique, t. xlv., 1830, p. 354 ; and a more recent
similar work by Schouw, in his Tableau du Climat et de la V^gitation
de Vltalie, 1839, p. 99-106.
A^OL. II.— P
338 cosxvios.
tions regarding- the temperature of the Earth. As all natural
phenomena — all the changes to which terrestrial matter is
subject — are connected with modifications of heat, light, and
electricity, whether at rest or moving in currents, and as like-
wise the phenomena of temperature, acting by the force of
expansion, are most easily discernible by the sensuous percep-
tions, the invention and improvement of thermometers must
necessarily, as I have already elsewhere observed, indicate a
great epoch in the general progress of natural science. The
range of the applicability of the thermometer, and the rational
deductions to be arrived at from its indications, are as immeas-
urable as the sphere of those natural forces which exercise
their dominion over the atmosphere, the solid portions of the
earth, and the superimposed strata of the ocean — alike over
inorganic substances, and the chemical and vital processes of
organic matter.
The action of radiating heat was likewise investigated, a
century before the important labors of Scheele, by the Floren-
tine members of the Accademia del Cimento, by remarkable
experiments with concave mirrors, against which non-lumin-
ous heated bodies, and masses of ice weighing 500 lbs., act-
ually and appare7itly radiated.* Mariotte, at the close of
the seventeenth century, entered into investigations regarding
the relations of radiating heat in its passage through glass
plates. It has seemed necessary to allude to these isolated
experiments, since in more recent times the doctrine of the
radiation of heat has thrown great light on the cooling of the
ground, the formation of dew, and many general climatic
modifications, and has led, moreover, through Melloni's admi-
rable sagacity, to the contrasting diathermism of rock salt
and alum.
To the investigations on the changes in the temperature of
the atmosphere, depending on the geographical latitude, the
seasons of the year, and the elevation of the spot, were soon
added otner inquiries into' the variation of pressure and the
quantity of vapor in the atmosphere, and the often-observed
periodic results, known as the laiv of rotation of the winds.
Galileo's correct views respecting the pressure of the atmos-
phere led Torricelli, a year after the death of his great teacher,
to the construction of the barometer. It would appear that
the fact that the column of mercury in the Torricellian cohimu
stood higher at the base of a tower or hill than at its summit,
* Aiiliuori, Saggi delV Accad. del Cim., 1841, p. IH, ami in the Ag
ffiunte at the end of tlio book. p. lxx.vi.
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 339
was first observed at Pisa by Claudio Beriguardi ;=* and fiv€
years later in France, at the suggestion of Pascal, by Perrier,
the brother-in-law of the latter, when he ascended the Puy de
Dome, which is nearly one thousand feet higher than Vesu-
vius. The idea of employing barometers for measuring eleva-
tions now presented itself readily ; it may, perhaps, have been
suggested to Pascal in a letter of Descartes. t It is not nec-
essary to enter into any especial explanation of the influence
exercised on the enlargement of physical geography and mete-
orology by the barometer when used as a hypsometrical instru-
ment in determining the local relations of the Earth's surface,
and as a meteorological instrument in ascertaining the influ-
ence of atmospheric currents. The theory of the atmospheric
currents already referred to was established on a solid foun-
dation before the close of the seventeenth century. Bacon
had the merit, in 1664, in his celebrated work entitled His-
toria Naturalis et Experimentalis de Vends, t of considering
the direction of the winds in their dependence on thermometric
and hydrometric relations ; but, unmathematically denying the
correctness of the Copernican system, he conjectured the pos-
sibility " that our atmosphere may daily turn round the earth
like the heavens, and thus occasion the tropical east wind."
Hooke's comprehensive genius here also diffused order and
light. ^ He recognized the influence of the rotation of the
Earth, and the existence of the upper and lower currents of
warm and cold air, which pass from the equator to the poles,
and return from the poles to the equator. Galileo, in his last
JDialogo, had indeed also regarded the trade winds as the con-
sequence of the rotation of the Earth ; but he ascribed the
detention of the particles of air within the tropics (when com-
pared with the velocity of the Earth's rotation) to a vaporless
purity of the air in the tropical regions. 11 Hooke's more cor-
* Antinori, p. 29.
+ Ren. Cartesii Epistolce (Amstelod., 1682), Pai't iii., ep. 67.
X Bacon's Works, by Shaw, 1733, vol. iii., p. 441. (See Cosmos, vol
i., p. 315.)
§ Hooke's Posthumous Works, p. 364. (Compare my Relat. Histo
rique, t. i., p. 199.) Hooke, however, like Galileo, unhappily assumed
a difference in the velocity of the rotation of the Earth and of the atmos-
phere. See Posth. Works, p. 88 and 363.
11 Although, according to Galileo's views, the detention of the parti
cles of air is one of the causes of the trade winds, yet his hypothesis
ought not to be confounded, as has recently been done, with that of
Hooke and Hadley. Galileo, in the Dialogo quarto {Opere, t. iv., p.
311), makes Salviati say, " Dicevamo pur' ora che' I'aria, come corpo
tenue, e fluido, e non saldamente congluuto alia terra, pareva che nou
640 COSMOS
/ect view was taken up by Halley late in the eighteentii
century, and was then more fully and satisfactorily explained
with reference to the action of the velocity of rotation pe-
culiar to each parallel of latitude. Halley, prompted by his
long sojourn in the torrid zone, had even earlier (1686) pub-
lished an admirable empirical work on the geographical ex-
tension of trade winds and monsoons. It is surprising that
he should not have noticed, in his magnetic expeditions, the
law of rotation of the winds, which is so important for the
whole of meteorology, since its general features had been rec-
ognized by Bacon and Johann Christian Sturm, of Hippol-
stein (according to Brewster, the actual discoverer of the
differential thermometer*).
In the brilliant epoch characterized by the foundation of
mathematical natural philosophy, experiments were not v/ant-
ing for determining the connection existing between the hu-
midity of the atmosphere, and the changes in the tempera-
ture and the direction of the winds. The Accademia del
Cimento had the felicitous idea of determining the quantity
of vapor by evaporation and precipitation. The oldest Flor-
entine hygrometer was accordingly a condensation-hygrome-
ter— an apparatus in which the quantity of the discharged
avesse necessity d'obbedire al suo moto, se non in quanto 1' asprezza
della superficie teirestre ne rapisce, e seco porta una parte a se contigua,
che di non molto intervallo sopravauza le maggiori altezze delle nion-
tagne ; la qual pozzion d'aria tanto meiK> dovr^ esser renitente alia
conversion terrestre, quanto che ella h ripiena di vapori, fumi, ed esala-
zioni, materie tutte participanti delle qualita terrene : e per conseguen-
za atte nate per lor uatura (? ) a i medesimi raovimenti. Ma dove, man-
cassero le cause del moto, cioe dovala superficie del globo avesse grandi
spazii piani, e meno vi fusse della mistione de i vapori terreni, quivi ces-
serebbe in parte la causa, per la quale 1' aria ambiente dovesse total-
mente obbedire al i-apimento della conversion terrestre ; si che in tali
uoghi, mentre che la terra si volge verso Oriente, si dovrebbe sentir con-
tinuamente un vento. che si ferisse, spirando da Levante verso Ponente;
e tale spiramento dovrebbe farsi piu sensibile, dove la vertigine del
globo fusse piu veloce : il che sarebbe ne i luoghi piu remoti da i Poli,
e vicini al cerchio massinio della diurna conversione. L'esperienza ap-
plaude molto a questo filosofico discorso,poich^ ne gli ampi mari sotto-
posti alia Zona torrida, dove anco I'evaporazioni terresti'i raancano (?)
si sente una perpetua aura muovere da Oriente "
* Brewster, in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, vol. ii., 1825, p. 145.
Sturm has described the Differential Thermometer in a little vt^ork, en-
titled Collegium Experimentale Curiosum (Nuremberg, 1676), p. 49.
On the Baconian lav^r of the rotation of the wind, which was first ex-
tended to both zones, and recognized in its ultimate connection with
the causes of all atmospheric currents by Dove, see the detailed treatise
of Muncke, in the new edition of Gehler's Physikal. Worterbuch, bd
X., 8. 2003-2019 and 2030-2035.
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 341
precipitated water was determined by weight.* In addition
to the condensation-hygrometer, which, by the aid of the ideas
of Le Roy in our own times, has gradually led to the exact
psychrometrical methods of Dalton, Daniell, and August, we
have (in accordance with the examples set by Leonardo da
Vincit) the absorption-hygrometer, composed of substances
taken from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, made by San-
tori (1625), TorricelU (1646), and Molineux. Catgut and the
spikes of grasses were employed almost simultaneously. In-
struments of this kind, which were based on the absorption by
organic substances of the aqueous vapor contained in the at-
mosphere, were furnished with indicators or pointers, and small
counter-weights, very similar in their construction to the hair
and whalebone hygrometers of Saussure and De Luc. The
instruments of the seventeenth century were, however, defi-
cient in the fixed points of dryness and humidity so necessary
to the comparison and comprehension of the results, and which
were at length determined by Regnault (setting aside the sus-
ceptibility acquired by time in the hygrometrical substances
employed). Pictet found the hair of a Guanche mummy
from TenerifTe, which was perhaps a thousand years old, suf-
ficiently susceptible in a Saussure's hygrometer.|
The electric process was recognized by William Gilbert as
the action of a proper natural force allied to the magnetic
force. The book in which this view is first expressed, and in
which the words electric force, electric emanations, and elec-
tric attr-action are first used, is the work of which I have al-
ready frequently spoken, § and which appeared in the year
* Antiuori, p. 45, and even in the Saggi, p. 17-19.
t Veuturi, Essai svr les Ouvrages Phi/sico-math6matiques de Leonard
de Vinci, 1797, p. 28.
X Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, t. xxvii., 1824, p. 120.
$ Gilbert, De Magnete, lib. ii., cap. 2-4, p. 46-71. With respect to
the interpretation of the nomenclature employed, he already said,
Electrica quae attrahit eadem ratione ut electrum ; versorium non mag-
neticum ex quovis metallo, inserviens electricis experimeutis. In the
text itself we find as follows : Magnetice ut ita dicam, vel electrice
attrahere (vim illam electricam nobis placet appellare . . . .) (p. 52);
effluvia electrica, attracliones electricae. We do not find either the ab-
stract expression electricitas or the barbarous word magnetismus intro-
duced in the eighteenth century. On the derivation of jjlenrpov, '' the
attractor and the attracting stone," from e/lfif and DiKstv, already in
dicated in the Timseus of Plato, p. 80, c, and the probable transition
through a harder e?,eKTpov, see Buttmann, Mythologus, bd. ii. (1829),
s. 357. Among the theoretical propositions put forward by Gilbei't
(which are not always expressed with equal clearness), I give the fol-
lowing: "Cum duo sint corporum genera, qune maaifestis scnsibua
342 COSMOS.
1600, under the title of " Physiology of Magnets and of the
Earth as a great Magnet (de magno magneto tellure)." " The
property," says Gilbert, " of attracting light substances, when
rubbed, be their nature what it may, is not peculiar to amber,
which is a condensed earthy juice cast up by the waves of
the sea, and in which flying insects, ants, and worms lie en-
tombed as in eternal sepulchers (seternis sepulchris). The
force of attraction belongs to a whole class of very different
substances, as glass, sulphur, sf^aling wax, and all resinous sub-
stances, rock crystal, and all precious stones, alum, and rock
salt." Gilbert measured the strength of the excited electrici-
ty by means of a small needle, not made of iron, which moved
freely on a pivot {versorium electricum), and perfectly similar
to the apparatus used by Haiiy and Brewster in testing the
electricity excited in minerals by heat and friction. " Fric-
tion," says Gilbert further, " is productive of a stronger effect
in dry than in humid air ; and rubbing with silk cloths is
most advantageous. The globe is held together as by an elec-
tric force C?) Globus telluris per se electrice congregatur et
cohseret ; for the tendency of the electric action is to produce
the cohesive accumulation of matter (motus electricus est mo-
tus coacervationis materise)." In these obscure axioms we
trace the recognition of terrestrial electricity — the expression
of a force — which, like magnetism, appertains as such to mat-
ter. As yet we meet with no allusions to repulsion, or the
difference between insulators and conductors.
Otto von Guericke, the ingenious inventor of the air pump,
was the first who observed any thing more than mere phenom-
ena of attraction. In his experiments with a rubbed piece
of sulphur, he recognized the phenomena of repulsion, which
nostris motiouibus corpora allicere videntur, Electrica et Magnetica;
Electrica naturalibus ab humore efHuviis; Magnetica fonnalibus effi
cientiis seu potius primariis vigoribus, incitatioues faciunt. Facile est
hominibus ingenio acutis, absque experimentis et usu rerum labi, et
errare. Substantiae proprietates aut familiaritates, sunt generales nimis,
nee tamen verse designatae causae, atque, ut ita dicam, verba quaedam
sonant, re ipsd nihil in specie ostendunt. Neque ista succini credita
attractio, a singulari aliqu^ proprietate substantiae, aut familiaritate as-
surgit ; cum in pluribus aliis corporibus eundem efFectum, majori indus-
tria invenimus, et omnia etiam corpora cujusmodicunque propiietatis,
ab omnibus illiis alliciuiitur." (De Magnete, p. 50, 51, 60, and 65.)
Gilbert's principal labors appear to fall between the years from 1590
to IGOO. Whewell justly assigns him an important place among those
w^hom he terms " practical reformers of the physical sciences." Gilbert
was surgeon to Queen Elizabeth and James I., and died in 1603. After
his death there appeared a second work, entitled " De Mundo nostre
Sublunari Philosophia Nova.'^
DISCOVERIES IN TIIK CELESTIAL SPACES. 343
subsequently led to the establishment of the laws of the sphere
of action, and of the distribution of electricity. He heard the
first sound, and saw the first light in artificially-produced elec-
tricity. In an experiment instituted by Newton in 1675, the
first traces of the electric charge in a rubbed plate of glass
were seen.* We have here only sought the earliest germs
of electric knowledge, which, in its great and singularly-re-
tarded development, has not only become one of the most im-
portant branches of meteorology, but has also thrown much
light on the internal action of terrestrial forces, since magnet-
ism has been recognized as one of the simplest forms under
which electricity is manifested.
Although Wall in 1708, Stephen Gray in 1734, and Nol-
let conjectured the identity of friction-electricity and of light-
ning, it was first proved with empirical certainty in the mid-
dle of the eighteenth century by the successful efforts of the
celebrated Benjamin Franklin. From this period the electric
process passed from the domain of speculative physics into that
of cosmical contemplation — from the recesses of the study to
the freedom of nature. The doctrine of electricity, like that
of optics and of magnetism, experienced long periods of ex-
tremely tardy development, until in these three sciences the
labors of Franklin and Volta, of Thomas Young and Mains,
of CErsted and of Faraday, roused their cotemporaries to an
admirable degree of activity. Such are the alternations of
slumber and of suddenly-awakened activity that appertain to
the progress of human knowledge.
But if, as we have already shown, the relations of tempera-
ture, the alternations in the pressure of the atmosphere, and
the quantity of the vapor contained in it, were made the ob-
ject of direct investigation by means of the invention of ap-
propriate, although still ver}^ imperfect physical instruments,
and by the acute penetration of Galileo, Torricelli, and the
members of the Accademia del Cimento, all that refers to the
chemical composition of the atmosphere remained, on the other
hand, shrouded in obscurity. The foundations of pneumatic
chemistry were, it is true, laid by Johann Baptist von Hel-
mont and Jean Rey in the first half of the seventeenth cen-
tury, and by Hooke, Mayow, Boyle, and the dogmatizing Be-
cher in the closing part of the same century ; but, howevei
striking may have been the correct apprehension of detached
and important phenomena, the insight into their connection
was still wanting. The old belief in the elementary siraplie-
* V>vew?,Xev, Life of Neicton, p. 307.
314 COSMOS.
ity of the air, which acts on combustion, on the oxydation of
metals, and on respiration, constituted a most powerful imped-
iment.
The inflammable or light-extinguishing gases occurring in
caverns and mines (the spiritus let ales of Pliny), and the es-
cape of these gases in the form of vesicles in morasses and
mineral springs, had already attracted the attention of Basilius
Valentinus, a Benedictine monk of Erfurt (probably at the
close of the fifteenth century), and of Libavius, an admirer
of Paracelsus, in 1612. Men drew comparisons between that
which was accidentally observed in alchemistical laboratories,
and that which was found prepared in the great laboratories
of nature, especially in the interior of the Earth. The work-
ing of mines in strata, rich in ores (especially those containing
iron pyrites, which become heated by oxydation and contact-
electricity), led to conjectures of the chemical relation existing
between metals, acids, and the external air having access to
them. Even Paracelsus, whose visionary fancies belong to
the period of the first discovery of America, had remarked the
evolution of gas when iron was dissolved in sulphuric acid.
Van Helmont, who first employed the term gas, distinguished
it from atmospheric air, and also, by its non-condensibility,
from vapors. According to him, the clouds are vapors, and
become converted into gas, when the sky is very clear, " by
means of cold and the influence of the stars." Gas can only
become water after it has been again converted into vapor.
Such were the views entertained in the first half of the sev-
enteenth century regarding the meteorological process. Van
Helmont was not acquainted with the simple method of tak-
ing up and separating his gas sylvestre (the name under which
he comprehended all uninflammable gases which do not main-
tain combustion and respiration, and differ from pure atmos-
pheric air) ; but he caused a light to burn in a vessel under
water, and observed that, when the flame was extinguished,
the water entered, and the volume of air diminished. Van
Helmont likewise endeavored to show by determinations of
weight (which we find already given by Cardanus) that all
the solid portions of plants are formed from water.
The alchemistic opinions of the Middle Ages regarding the
composition of metals, and the loss of their brilliancy by com-
bustion in the open air (incineration, calcination), led to a de-
sire of investigating the conditions by which this process was
attended, and the changes experienced by the calcined metals,
and by the air in contact with them. Cardanus, as early aa
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 343
in 1553, had noticed the increase of weight that accompanies
the oxydation of lead, and, perfectly in accordance with the
idea of the myth of Phlogiston, had attributed it to the escape
of a " celestial fiery matter," causing levity ; and it was not
until eighty years afterward that Jean Rey, a remarkably
skillful experimenter at Bergerac, who had investigated with
the greatest care the increase of weight during the calcination
of lead, tin, and antimony, arrived at the important conclu-
sion that this increase of weight must be ascribed to the ac-
cess of the air to the metallic calx. " Je responds et soutiens
glorieusement," he says, " que ce surcroit de poids vient de
Fair qui dans le vase a ete espessi."*
Men had now discovered the path which was to lead them
to the chemistry of the present day, and through it to the
knowledge of a great cosmical phenomenon, viz., the connec-
tion between the oxygen of the atmosphere and vegetable life.
The combination of ideas, however, which presented itself to
the minds of distinguished men, was strangely complicated in
its nature. Toward the close of the seventeenth century a
belief arose in the existence of nitrous particles {spiritus nitro-
dereus pabulum nitrosicni), which, contained in the air, and
identical with those which are fixed in saltpetre, were sup-
posed to possess the necessary requirements for combustion ;
an opinion which, obscurely expressed by Hooke in his Micro-
graphia (1671), is found more fully developed by Mayow in
1669, and by Willis in 1671. " It was maintained that the
extinction of flame in a closed space is not owing to the over-
saturation of the air with vapors emanating from the burning
body, but is the consequence of the entire absorption of the
spiritus nitro-ah'eus contained in the nitrogenous air." The
sudden increase of the glowing heat when fusing saltpetre •
(emitting oxygen) is strewed upon coals, and the formation of
* Rey, strictly speaking, only mentions the access of air to the oxyds;
he did not know that the oxyds themselves (which were then called
the earthy metals) are only combinations of metals and air. Accord-
ing to him, the air makes " the metallic calx heavier, as sand increases
in weight when water hangs about it." The calx is susceptible of be-
ing saturated with air. " L'air espaissi s'attache a la chaux, ainsi le
poids augmente du commencement jusqu'd la fin: mais quand tout en ,
est afi'uble, elle n'en S(jauroit prendre d'avantage. Ne continuez plus
votre calcination soubs cet espoir, vous perdriez vostre peine." Key's
work thus contains the first approach to the better explanation of a
phenomenon, whose more complete understanding subsequently exer-
cised a favorable influence in reforming the whole of chemistry. See
Kopp, Gesch. der Chemie, th. iii., s. 131-133. (Compare, also, in the same
work, th. i., s. 116-127, and th. iii., s. 119-138, as well as s. 175-195.)
P 2
346 . COSMOS.
saltpetre on clay walls in contact with the atmosphere, ap-
pear to have contributed jointly to the adoption of this view.
The nitrous particles of the air influence, according to Mayow,
the respiration of animals, the result of which is to generate
animal heat, and to deprive the blood of its dark color ; and,
while they control all the processes of combustion and the
calcination of metals, they play nearly the same part in the
antiphlogistic chemistry as oxygen. The cautious and doubt-
ing Robert Boyle was well aware that the presence of a
certain constituent of atmospheric air was necessary to com-
bustion, but he remained uncertain with regard to its nitrous
nature.
Oxygen was to Hooke and Mayow an ideal object — a delu-
sion of the intellect. The acute chemist and vegetable phys-
iologist Hales first saw oxygen evolved in the form of a gas
when, in 1727, he was engaged at Mennige in calcining a
large quantity of lead under a very powerful heat. He ob-
served the escape of the gas, but he did not examine its na-
ture, or notice the vivid burning of the flame. Hales had no
idea of the importance of the substance he had prepared.
The vivid evolution of light in bodies burning in oxygen, and
its properties, were, as many persons maintain, discovered in-
dependently— by Priestley in 1772-1774, by Scheele in 1774-
1775, and by Lavoisier and Trudaine in 1775.*
The dawn of pneumatic chemistry has been touched upon
in these pages with respect to its historical relations, because,
like the feeble beginning of electrical science, it prepared the
way for those grand views regarding the constitution of the
atmosphere and its meteorological changes which were mani-
fested in the following century. The idea of specifically dis
tinct gases was never perfectly clear to those who, in the sev-
enteenth century, produced these gases. The difference be-
tween atmospheric air and the irrespirable light-extinguishing
or inflammable gases was now again exclusively ascribed to
the admixture of certain vapors. Black and Cavendish first
sliowed, in 1766, that carbonic acid (fixed air) and hydrogen
^combustible air) are specifically different aeriform fluids. So
long did the ancient belief of the elementary simplicity of the
atmosphere check all progress of knowledge. The final knowl-
edge of the chemical composition of the atmosphere, acquired
by means of the delicate discrimination of its quantitative re-
* Triestley's last complaint of that which " Lavoisier is considered to
have appropriated to himself," is put forth in liis little memoir entitled
''The Doctrine of Phlogiston Established,'" 1800, p. 43.
DISCOVERIES 1\ THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 34
lations by the beautiful researches of Boussingault and Dumas
is one of the brilliant points of modern meteorology.
The extension of physical and chemical knowledge, which
we have here briefly sketched, could not fail to exercise an
influence on the earliest development of geognosy. A great
number of the geognostic questions, with the solution of which
our own age has been occupied, were put forth by a man
of the most comprehensive acquirements, the great Danish
anatomist, Nicolaus Steno (Stenson), in the service of the
Grand-duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II. ; by another physi-
cian, Martin Lister, an Englishman, and by Robert Hooka,
the " worthy rival" of Newton.* Of Steno's services in the
geognosy of position I have treated more circumstantially in
another work.f Leonardo da Vinci, toward the close of the
fifteenth century (probably when he was planning the canals
in Lombardy which intersect the alluvial and tertiary forma-
tions), Fraeastoro in 1517, on the occasion of the accidental
exposure of rocky strata, containing fossil fishes, at Monte
Bolca, near Verona, and Bernard Palissy, in his investiga-
tions regarding fountains in 1563, had indeed recognized the
existence of traces of an earlier oceanic animal world. Leo-
nardo, as if with a presentiment of a more philosophical classi-
fication of animal forms, terms conchylia ''■ aniniali die hanno
Vossa di fuoray Steno, in his work on the substances con
tained in rocks (De Solido intra Solidum naturaliter Contento),
distinguishes (1669) between (primitive ?) rocky strata which
have become solidified before the creation of plants and ani-
mals, and therefore contain no organic remains, and sediment-
ary strata (turbidi maris sedimenta sibi invicem imposita)
which alternate with one another, and cover the first-named
strata. All fossiliferous strata were originally deposited in
horizontal beds. This inclination (or fall) has been occasion-
ed partly by the eruption of subterranean vapors, generated
by central heat (ignis in medio terrse), and partly by the giv-
mg way of the feebly-supported lower strata. $ The valleys
are the result of this falling in."
Steno's theory of the formation of valleys is that of De Luc,
while Leonardo da Vinci, like Cuvier, regards the valleys as
* Sir John Herschel, Discourse on the Study of 'Natural Philosophy,
p. 116.
t Humboldt, Essai GCognostique sur le Gisement des Roches dans let
ieux Hemispheres, 1823, p. 38.
X Steno, De Solido intra Solidum naturaliter Contento, 1669 p. 2, 17.
28, 63, and 69 (fig. 20-25).
348 COSMOS
the former beds of streams * In. the geognostic character of
the soil of Tuscany, Steno recognized convulsions which must,
in his opinion, be ascribed to six great natural epochs (Sex
sunt distinctse EtrurisB facies ex preesenti facie Etrurise col-
lectas). The sea had broken in at six successive periods, and,
after continuing to cover the interior of the land for a long
time, had retired within its ancient limits. All petrifactions
were not. however, according to his opinion, referable to the
sea ; and lie distinguished between pelagic and fresh-water
formations. Scilla, in 1 670, gave drawings of the petrifac-
tions of Calabria and Malta ; and among the latter, our great
anatomist and zoologist, Johannes Miiller, has recognized the
oldest drawing of the teeth of the gigantic Hydrarchus of Al-
abama (the Zeuglodo7i cetoides of Owen), a mammal of the
ofreat order of the Cetacea.f The crown of these teeth is
formed similarly to those of seals.
Lister, as early as 1678, made the important assertion that
each kind of rock is characterized by its own fossils, and that
" the species of Murex, Tellina, and Trochus, which occur in
the stone quarries of Northamptonshire, are indeed similar to
those existing in the present seas, but yet, when more closely
examined, they are found to differ from them." They are, he
says, specifically different. $ Strictly conclusive proofs of the
truth of these grand conjectures could not, however, be ad-
vanced in the then imperfect condition of descriptive morphol-
ogy- We here indicate the early dawn and speedy extinction
of light prior to the noble palsBontological researches of Cuvier
and Alexander Brongniart, which have given a new foim to
the geognosy of sedimentary formations. § Lister, whose at-
* Venturi, Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-mathimatiques de Leonard
de Vinci, 1797, § 5, No. 124.
t Agostino Scilla, La vana Speculazione disingannata dal Senso, Nap.,
1670, tab. xii., fig. 1. Compare Joh. Miiller, Bericht uber die von Herrn
Koch, in Alabama Gesdmmelten Fossilen Knochenreste seines Hydrachus
(the Basilosaurus of Harlan, 1835 ; the Zeuglodou of Owen, 1839 ; the
Squalodon of Grateloup, 1840; the Dorudon of Gibbes, 1845), read in
the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, April — June, 1847. These
valuable fossil remains of an ancient world, which were collected in
the State of Alabama (in Washington county, near Clarksville), have
become, by the munificence of our king, the property of the Zoological
Museum at Berlin since 1847. Besides the remains found in Alabama
and South Carolina, parts of the Hydrarchus have been found in Eu-
rope, at Leognan near Bordeaux, near Linz on the Danube, and, in
1670, in Malta.
X Martin Lister, in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. vi., 1671, No.
Ixxvi., p. 2283,
$ See a luminous expositic n of the earlier progress of palaeontological
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 349
tentioii had been drawn to the regular succession of strata in
England, first felt the want of geognostic maps. Although
these phenomena, and their dependence on ancient inundations
(either single or repeated), riveted the attention of men, and,
mingling belief and knowledge together, gave origin in En-
gland to the so-called systems of Ray, Woodward, Burnet, and
Whiston ; yet, owing to the total want of mineralogical dis-
tinction between the constituents of compound minerals, all
that relates to crystalline and massive rocks of eruption re-
mained unexplored. Notwithstanding the opinions held with
respect to a central heat in the Earth, earthquakes, hot springs,
and volcanic eruptions were not regarded as the consequence
of the reaction of the planet against its external crust, but
were attributed to trifling local causes, as, for instance, the
spontaneous combustion of beds of iron pyrites. The unscien-
tific experiments of Lemery (1700) unhappily exercised a long-
continued influence on volcanic theories, although the latter
might certainly have been raised to more general views by
the richly-imaginative Protogcea of Leibnitz (1680).
The ProtogcBa, occasionally even more imaginative than
the many metrical attempts of the same author which have
lately been made known,* teaches " the scorification of the
cavernous, glowing, once self-luminous crust of the Earth, the
gradual cooling of the radiating surface enveloped in vapors,
the precipitation and condensation of the gradually-cooled, va-
porous atmosphere into water, the sinking of the level of the
sea by the penetration of water into the internal cavities of
the earth, and, finally, the breaking in of these caves, which
occasions the fall, or horizontal inclination of these strata."
The physical portion of this wild and fanciful view presents
some features which will not appear to merit entire rejection
by the adherents of our modern geognosy, notwithstanding its
more perfect development in all its branches. Among ijiese
better traits we must reckon the movement and heat in the
interior of the globe, and the cooling occasioned by radiation
from the surface ; the existence of an atmosphere of vapor ;
the pressure exercised by these vapors on the Earth's strata
during their consolidation ; and the two-fold origin of the mass-
studies, in Whe well's History of the Inductive Sciences, 1837, vol. iii.,
p. 507-545.
* Leibnizens, Gesckichtliche Aufsdtze und Gedichte, edited by Pertz,
1S47, in the Gesammclte Werke : Geschichte, bd. iv. On the first sketch
of the Protogtjea of 1691, and on its subsequent revisions, see Tellkarapf.
Jahresbericht der Burgerschule zu Hannover, 1847, s. 1-32.
350 COSMOS.
es by fusion and solidification, or by precipitation from the
waters. The typical character and mineralogical differences
of rocks, or, in other words, the associations of certain mostly
crystallized substances recurring in the most remote regions,
are as little made a subject of consideration in the Protogcea
as in Hooke's geognostic views. Even in the last-named
writer, physical speculations on the action of subterranean
forces in earthquakes, in the sudden upheaval of the sea's
bottom and of littoral districts, and in the origin of islands and
mountains, hold a prominent place. The nature of the organ-
ic remains of a former world even led him to conjecture that
the temperate zone must originally have enjoyed the heat of a
tropical climate.
It still remains for us to speak of the greatest of all geog-
nostic phenomena — the mathematical figure of the Earth — in
which we distinctly trace a reflection of the primitive world
in the condition of fluidity of the rotating mass, and its solid-
ification into our terrestrial spheroid. The main outlines of
the figure of the Earth were sketched as early as the close of
the seventeenth century, although the relation between the
polar and equatorial axes was not ascertained with numerical
exactness. Picard's measurement of a degree, made in 1670
with instruments which he had himself improved, is so much
the more important, since it was the means of inducing New-
ton to resume with renewed zeal his theory of gravitation
(which he discovered as early as 1666, but had subsequently
neglected), by offering to that profound and successful inves-
tigator the means of proving how the attraction of the Earth
maintained the Moon in its orbit, while urged on its course
by the centrifugal force. The fact of the compression of the
poles of Jupiter, which was much earlier recognized,* had, as
it is supposed, induced Newton to reflect on the causes of a
form* which deviated so considerably from sphericity. The
experiments on the actual length of the seconds pendulum by
Richer at Cayenne in 1673, and by Varin on the western
coast of Africa, had been preceded by others of less decisive
character, prosecuted in London, Lyons, and Bologna at a
difference of 7° of latitude.!
The decrease of gravity from the poles to the equator, which
even Picard had long denied, was now generally admitted.
Newton recognized the polar compression^ and the spheroidal
form of the earth as a consequence of its rotation ; and ho
* Cosmos, vol. i., p. 164.
t Delambre. Hist, de VAstronomie Mod., t. ii., p. 60 J
DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 351
tven ventured to determine numerically the amount of this
compression, on the assumption of the homogeneous nature of
the mass. It remained for the comparative measurements of
degrees in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at the
equator, near the north pole, and in the temperate zones of
lioth the southern and northern hemispheres, to determine
exactly the mean amount of this compression, and by that
means to ascertain the true figure of the Earth. The exist-
ence of this compression announces, as has already been ob-
served in the " Picture of Nature,"* that which may be nam-
ed the most ancient of all geognostic events — the condition of
general fluidity of a planet, and its earlier and progressive so-
lidification.
We began our description of the great epoch of Galileo,
Kepler, Newton, and Leibnitz with the discoveries in the re-
gions of space by means of the newly-invented telescope, and
we now close it with the figure of the Earth, as it was then
recognized from theoretical conclusions. " Newton was ena-
bled to give an explanation of the system of the universe be-
cause he succeeded in discovering the forcef from whose action
the laws of Kepler necessarily result, and which most corre-
spond with these phenomena, since these laws corresponded to
and predicted them." The discovery of such a force, the ex-
istence of which Newton has developed in his immortal work,
the JP?'i?icipia (which comprise the general sciences of nature),
was almost simultaneous with the opening of the new paths to
greater mathematical discoveries by means of the invention of
the infinitesimal calculus. Intellectual labor shows itself in
all its exalted grandeur where, instead of requiring external
material means, it derives its light exclusively from the sources
opened to pure abstraction by the mathematical development
of thought. There dwells an irresistible charm, venerated by
all antiquity, in the contemplation of matViematical truths —
m the everlasting revelations of time and space, as they reveal
* Cosmos, vol. i., p. 163. The dispute regarding priority as to the
knowledge of the Earth's compression, in reference to a memoir read
by Huygens in 1669 before the Paris Academy, was first cleared up by
Delambre in his Hisl. de VAstr. Mod., t. i., p. lii., and t. ii., p. 558.
Richer's return to Europe occurred indeed in 1673, but his work was
not printed until 1679; and as Huygens left Paris in 1682, he did not
write the Additamentum to the Memoir of 1669, the publication of which
was very late, until he had already before his eyes the results of Rich-
er's Pendulum Experiments, and of Newton's great work, Philosophia
Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
t Bessel. in Schumacher'' s Jahrbuch fUr 1843, s. 32.
352 COSMOS.
themselves in tones, numbers, and lines.* The improvement
of an mtellectual instrument of research — analysis — has pow-
erfully accelerated the reciprocal fructification of ideas, which
is no less important than the rich abundance of their creations.
It has opened to the physical contemplation of the universe
new spheres of immeasurable extent in the terrestrial and ce-
lestial regions of space, revealed both in the periodic fluctua-
tions of the ocean and in the varying perturbations of the
planets.
RETROSPECT OF THE EPOCHS THAT HAVE BEEN SUCCESSIVEL"i
CONSIDERED.— INFLUENCE OF EXTERNAL OCCURRENCES ON THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RECOGNITION OF THE UNIVERSE AS ONE
WHOLE.— MULTIPLICITY AND INTIMATE CONNECTION OF THE SCIEN-
TIFIC EFFORTS OF RECENT TIMES.— THE HISTORY OF THE PHYSIC-
AL SCIENCES BECOMES GRADUALLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE HISTO-
RY OF THE COSMOS.
I APPROACH the termination of my bold and difficult under-
taking. Upward of two thousand years have been passed in
review before us, from the early stages of civilization among
the nations who dwelt around the basin of the Mediterranean
and the fruitful river valleys of Western Asia, to the begin-
ning of the last century, to a period, therefore, at which gen-
eral views and feelings were already beginning to blend with
those of our own age. I have endeavored, in seven sharply-
defined sections, forming, as it were, a series of as many sep-
arate pictures, to present a history of the physical contem-
plation of the universe, or, in other words, the history of the
gradual development of the knowledge of the universe as a
whole. To what extent success may have attended the at-
tempt to apprehend the mass of accumulated matter, to seize
on the character of the principal epochs, and to indicate the
paths on which ideas and civilization have been advanced, can
not be determined by him who, with a just mistrust of his re-
maining powers, is alone conscious that the image of so great
an undertaking has been present to his mind in clear though
general outlines.
At the commencement of our consideration of the period
of the Arabs, and in beginning to describe the powerful in-
fluence exercised by the admixture of a foreign element in
European civilization, I indicated the limits beyond whicl(
the history of the Cosmos coincides with that of the physical
* Wilhelm vou Humboldt, Gesammelie Werke, bd. i., s. 11.
GENERAL RETROSPECT. 353
sciences. According to my idea, the historical recognition of
the gradual extension of natural science in the two spheres
of terrestrial and celestial knowledge (geography and astrono-
my) is associated with certain periods and certain active intel-
lectual events, which impart a peculiar character and coloring to
those epochs. Such, for instance, were the undertakings which
led Europeans into the Euxine, and permitted them to con-
jecture the existence of another sea-shore beyond the Phasis ;
the expeditions to tropical lands rich in gold and incense ; the
passage through the Western Straits, or the opening of that
great maritime route on which were discovered, at long inter-
vals of time, Cerne and the Hesperides, the northern tin and
amber lands, the volcanic islands of the Azores, and the New
Continent of Columbus, south of the ancient settlement of the
Scandinavians. To the consideration of the movements which
emanated from the basin of the Mediterranean, and the most
northern part of the neighboring Arabian Gulf, and of the ex-
peditions on the Euxine and to Ophir, succeed, in my histor-
ical delineation, the campaigns of the Macedonian conqueror,
and his attempts to fuse together the west and the east ; the
influence exercised by Indian maritime trade and by the Alex-
andrian Institute under the Ptolemies ; the universal dominion
of the Romans under the Csesars ; and, lastly, the taste evinc-
ed by the Arabs for the study of nature and of natural forces,
especially with reference to astronomy, mathematics, and prac-
tical chemistry, a taste that exercised so important and bene-
ficial an influence. According to my view, the series of events
which suddenly enlarged the sphere of ideas, excited a taste
for the investigation of physical laws, and animated the efforts
of men to arrive at the ultimate comprehension of the uni-
verse as a whole, terminated with the acquisition of an entire
hemisphere which had till then lain concealed, and which con-
stituted the greatest geographical discovery ever made. Since
this period, as we have already remarked, the human mind
has brought forth great and noble fruits without the incite-
ment of external occurrences, and, as the effect of its own in-
herent power, developed simultaneously in all directions.
Among the instruments which man formed for himself, like
new organs, as it were, to heighten his powers of sensuous
perception, there was one which exercised an influence similar
to that of some great and sudden event. By the power of
penetrating space possessed by the telescope, considerable por-
tions of the heavens were almost at once explored, the num-
ber of known heavenly bodies was increased, and attempts
354 COSMOS.
made to determine their forms and orbits. Mankind now
first attained to the possession of the " celestial sphere" of the
Cosmos. Sufficient foundation for a seventh section of the
history of the contemplation of the universe seemed to be af-
forded by the importance of the acquisition of this celestial
knowledge, and of the unity of the efibrts called forth by the
use of the telescope. If we compare another great invention,
and one of recent date, the voltaic pile, with the discovery of
this optical instrument, and reflect on the influence which it
has exercised on the ingenious electro-chemical theory ; on
the production of the metals ; of the earths and alkalies ; and
on the long-desired discovery of electro-magnetism, we are
brought to the consideration of a series of phenomena called
forth at will, and which, by many different paths, lead to a
profound knowledge of the rule of natural forces, but which
constitute rather a section in the history of physical science
than a direct portion of the history of cosmical contemplation.
It is this multiplied connection between the various depart-
ments of modern knowledge that imparts such difficulty to the
description and limitation of its separate branches. We have
very recently seen that electro-magnetism, acting on the di-
rection of the polarized ray. of light, produces modifications
like chemical mixtures. Where, by the intellectual labors
of the age, all knowledge appears to be progressing, it is as
dangerous to attempt to describe the intellectual process, and
to depict that which is constantly advancing as already at the
goal of its efforts, as it is difficult, with the consciousness of
one's own deficiencies, to decide on the relative importance
of the meritorious efforts of the living and of the recentlv de-
parted.
In the historical considerations T have almost every where,
in describing the early germs of natural knowledge, designated
the degree of development to which it has attained in recent
times. The third and last portion of my work will, for the
better elucidation of the general picture of nature, set forth
those results of observation on which the present condition of
scientific opinions is principally based. Much that, accord-
ing to other views than mine, regarding the composition of a
book of nature, may have appeared wanting, will there find
its place. Excited by the brilliant manifestation of new dis-
coveries, and nourishing hopes, the fallacy of which often con-
tinues long undetected, each age dreams that it has approxi-
mated closely to the culminating point of the recognition and
comprehension of nature. I doubt whether, on serious reflec*
GENERAL RETROSPECT. 355
tion, such a belief will tend to heighten the enjoyment of the
present. A more animating conviction, and one more conso-
nant with the great destiny of our race, is, that the conquests
already achieved constitute only a very inconsiderable por-
tion of those to which free humanity will attain in future ages
by the progress of mental activity and general cultivation.
Every acquisition won by investigation is merely a step to the
attainment of higher things in the eventful course of human
affairs.
That which has especially favored the progress of knowl-
edge in the nineteenth century, and imparted to the age its
principal character, is the general and beneficial endeavor not
to limit our attention to that which has been recently acquir-
ed, but to test strictly, by measure and weight, all earlier ac-
quisitions ; to separate certain knowledge from mere conject-
ures founded on analogy, and thus to subject every portion of
knowledge, whether it be physical astronomy, the study of
terrestrial natural forces, geology, or archaeology, to the same
strict method of criticism. The generalization of this course
has, most especially, contributed to show, on each occasion, the
limits of the separate sciences, and to discover the weakness
of certain studies in which unfounded opinions take the place
of certain facts, and symbolical myths manifest themselves
under ancient semblances as grave theories. Vagueness of
language, and the transference of the nomenclature of one
science to another, have led to erroneous views and delusive
analogies. The advance of zoology was long endangered, from
the belief that, in the lower classes of animals, all vital actions
were attached to organs similarly formed to those of the
higher classes. The knowledge of the history of the develop-
ment of plants in the so-called Cryptogamic Cormophytes
(mosses and liverworts, ferns, and lycopodiaceee), or in the still
lower Thallophytes (algse, lichens, and fungi), has been still
more obscured by the supposed general discovery of analogies
with the sexual propagation of the animal kingdom.*
If art may be said to dwell within the magic circle of the
imagination, the extension of knowledge, on the other hand,
especially depends on contact with the external world, and
this becomes more manifold and close in proportion with the
increase of general intercourse. The creation of new organs
(instruments oi observation) increases the intellectual and nol
* Schleideu, Grundzuge der wissenschaftlichen Botanik, th. i., 184.^
s. 152, th. ii., 8. 7Q ; Kunth, Lehrbnch der Botanik, th. i., 1847, s. 91-10(i
and 505.
350 COSMOS.
unfrequently the physical powers of man. More rapid than
hght, the closed electric current conveys thought and will to
the remotest distance. Forces, whose silent operation in ele-
mentary nature, and in the delicate cells of organic tissues,
still escape our senses, will, when recognized, employed, and
awakened to higher activity, at some future time enter within
the sphere of the endless chain of means which enable man to
subject to his control separate domains of nature, and to ap-
proximate to a more animated recognition of the Universe aa
a Whole
INDEX TO VOL II.
Ababis, the Magician, myth of his expe-
ditions and " guiding" arrow, 143.
Abdurrahman I. (Calif), his promotion of
the study of botany, 217.
Abeken, Rudolph, admirable work by,
" Cicero, in his Letters," 31.
Abelard, 248.
Abul-Hassan Ali, of Morocco, an Arabian
astronomer, 214.
Abul Wefa, the Almagest of, 222.
Acosta, Joseph, " Natural and Moral His-
tory of the Indies," 259, 266, 280, 281,
286, 289, 290.
Adriaansz, Jacob, his claim to the discov-
ery of the telescope discussed, 317-319.
Adrian (Emperor), 175 ; visit to his vari-
ous dominions, 182.
Adulis, inscription of, 282.
^iian, description of the Vale of Tempe,
28 ; Natural History, 194.
-S^olians, their mental characteristics, 143.
-Sltna, Mount, on the distance at which its
eruptions are visible, 135. 136.
Africa, early colonization of its northern
coast, 119-121 ; early circumnavigation,
127 ; settlements of the Phcenicians,
132 ; earliest comparison of the African
races with the Arian races and the In-
dian aborigines, 165.
Agathodaemon, 190.
Agesinax, hypothesis of the marks on the
moon's disk, 193.
Albertus Magnus, 43, 91, 229, 241, 243 ; his
scientific researches and writings, 243,
244 ; commendation of, by Dante, 244.
Albinovanus, Pedo, heroic poem on the
deeds of Germanicus, 36.
Albiruni (Arabian mathematician). Histo-
ry of India by, 222.
Alexander the Great, magnitude of the in-
fluence of his campaigns, 152, 153, 155;
their rapidity, 155 ; unity and grandeur
of his polity, 154 ; diversity of the coun-
tries he traversed, 155, 157 ; views re-
specting Alexandria and Babylon, 171.
Alexander of Aphrodisius, on distillation
of sea-water, 194, 218, 272.
Alexander VI. (Pope), his "line of de-
markation," 277, 278.
Alexandria, its commercial greatness,
171 ; Alexandrian school of philosophy,
121 ; its scientific characteristics, 174 ;
museum and libraries, 175, 176 ; myth
of the burning of its library, 211.
Alhassen (Alhazen), Arabian geographer,
213, 219, 246.
AUiacus, Cardinal, his " Picture of the
World," 246, 247, 268.
Al-Mamun (Calif), translation of numer-
ous works from the Greek, &c., 215 ;
measurement of a degree, 223.
Alphabets, ancient, investigation of, 141.
Alphabetical writing, spread of, by the
Phcenicians, its powerful influence on
civilization and higher results, 128, 129.
Amber coast, visited by the Phcenicians,
its probable locality, 130 ; amber trade,
its origin and extension, 131, 132.
Amenemha III. formed Lake Mceris, 124.
America, discovery of, its influence on
men's imaginations, 64, 65, 260 ; on the
physical and mathematical sciences,
200, 201, 238-241, 273-301 ; accidental
discovery by the Northmen, 230, 231 ;
dates of its discovery bj' the Spaniards
and Portuguese, 264-267 ; supposed dis-
covery by Madoc, 235, 236 ; important
results of trivial circumstances in its
discovery, 262, 263 ; its discoverers and
adventurers, Amerigo Vespucci, 239-
301 ; Balboa, 266-270, 271 ; Columbus,
260-285 ; Cortez, 270, 271, 296 ; Gama,
263 ; accidents which led to the naming
of America, 297-301.
Anghiera, correspondence and writings
of, 66, 260, 269, 282, 284-286, 298.
Anglo-Saxon poem on the names of the
Runes, 47.
Animal Epos (the German), its genuine
delight in nature, 47, 48.
Antar, early Bedouin poem, 60, 61.
Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, his embassy
to China, 187.
Apollonius Myndius on comets, 167.
ApoUonius of Perga, 179, 315; similarity
of his " System of the Worid" to that
of Tycho Brahe, 312, 313.
Apuleius, his conjectures on fossils, 189,
195.
Aquinas (St. Thomas), 244.
Arabian Gulf, its geognostic phenomena,
123.
Arabs, their poetry, in relation to nature,
60 ; its characteristics, 61 ; influence of
their invasions on the advancement of
the physical and mathematical sciences,
200-228, 241-244 ; their incursions, com-
merce, &c., 203 : configuration of Ara-
bia and its natural productions, 204, 205;
their nomadic life as compared with
that of the Scythians, 207, 208 ; inter-
course with the Nestorians, 208 ; their
knowledge of botany and the science of
medicine, 210, 211 ; scientific qualifica-
tions, 212, 213 ; their geographers, 213-
215 ; repugnance to anatomy, 214, 215 ;
358
COSxMOS.
valuable translations from Greek, Syr-
iac, Indian, &c., 215, 217 ; their botanists
and school of medicine, 216 ; chemistry
and pharmacy, 218-220 ; astronomy,
221-224, 287 ; algebra, 225-227 ; general
results of their scientific researches,
227, 228.
Arago on the magnifying power of Gali-
leo's telescope, 303; true method of
writing the history of science, 320 ;
treatise on changing or periodic stars,
330 ; discovery of colored polarization,
332 333.
Archimedes, 179, 190 ; his " Catoptrica,"
193.
Argonautic expedition to Colchis, elucida-
tion of the myth, 144.
Aristarchus of Samos, his correct knowl-
edge of the Earth's structure, 109 ; of
astronomy, 177 ; acquaintance of Co-
pernicus with his writings, 310-313.
Aristobulus, 156, 158.
ArUtotle, noble passage on the effect of
natural scenery, 29 ; on Empedocles,
30 ; on Rameses the Great, 126 ; his idea
of the proximity of India to the Pillars
of Hercules, 152 ; on the advantages of
political unity, 154 ; his doctrines and
expositions, 160 ; Dante on, 160 ; his
"Historia Animalium" and "Meteoro-
logica," 160-163, 192, 196 ; his zoologic-
al specimens and collection of books,
163 ; anatomical dissection, 162 ; his
school and leading followers, 163, 164 ;
important results of his teaching, 174,
175, 176 ; on the weight of the atmos-
phere, 194; Arabic translations of, 215;
letter of the Emperor Frederic II. on,
215, 216 ; influence of his philosophy in
the Middle Ages, 242, 243 ; imperfect
ideas on attraction, 309, 310 ; inventor
of retrograde spheres, 315.
Aristyllus, early Alexandrian astronomer,
177, 178.
Aryabhatta, Indian mathematician, 187.
Astrolabes, use of, in navigation, 255-262,
Astronomy, knowledge of, by the Chalde
ans, 167, 168 ; Greeks, 166, 167, 176-179
Arabs, 220-223 ; observations by the dis
coverers of America, 285-294 ; applica
tion of, to navigation. 255-262, 291-295
brilliant progress from the discovery of
the telescope, 301-307.
Augustus, his collection of fossils, 195.
Ausonius. descriptions of nature in his
poem " Mosella," 35.
Austraha, discovery of, 272, 273.
Avicenna, Zoological History of, 216;
work on Materia Medica, 217.
Avienus, Festus, writings of, 134.
Bacon, Lord, " Instauratio Magna," 316 ;
conjectures on atmospheric currents,
339.
Bacoii, Roger, 43, 229, 241, 243, 318; his
Scientific writings and their influence on
the extension of the natural sciences,
244-246.
Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, his navigation of
the Pacific, 266-269, 271.
Banana (the), the ariena of Pliny, 159.
Barometei-, invention of, 338 ; hypsomet
rical uses, 339.
Barros, Johannes, Portuguese historian,
writings of, 240. 272, 291, 293.
Basil the Great, simple and beautiful de-
scription of Nature in his letter to Greg-
ory of Nazianzum, 40, 41 ; his Ilexse-
meron, 41.
Behaim, Martin, of Numberg, 239, 255, 269,
291.
Bembo, Cardinal, his ^tna Dialogus, 34,
64 ; Historise Venetse, 64.
Berghaus, Professor, on the extent of the
Roman empire, 181.
Beriguardi, Claudio, first observed the
pressure of the atmosphere at varying
altitudes, 338, 339.
Bernaldez, Andres, MS. writings of, 265.
Bhatti-Kavya, Indian poem, 53.
Bles, Henry de, Flemish landscape paint-
er, 88.
Boccaccio, a reviver of the study of clas-
sical literature, 248.
Bockh on the " Adonis Gardens" of the
ancients, 91 ; on the knowledge of the
Pythagoreans of the " precession," 178.
Bodner, Carl, fidelity of his drawings to
nature, 93.
Boethius, Geometry of, 225.
Boiardo, smaller poems of, 64.
Boreas, meteorological myth of, 147.
Botanical knowledge of the Arabs, 211,
216; of the Mexicans, 274, 275.
Brahmagupta, Indian mathematician, 187.
Brahmins and Brahminical districts, 169.
Breughel, Johann, his fruit and flower
pieces, 90.
Brewster, Sir David, on Kepler's method
of investigating truth, 327 ; important
discovery of the connection between
the angle of complete polarization and
the index of refraction, 332 ; on the date
of Newton's optical discoveries, 333.
Breytenbach, Bernhard von, early travel-
er, 78.
Bri:l, Matthew and Paul, Flemish land-
scape painters, 88.
Brongniart, Alexander, palseontological
researches of, 348.
Bruchium, Libi-ary of, 175.
Bucolic poetry, its characteristics, 26.
Buffbn, 75 ; deficiency of personal observ-
ation in his writings, 75.
Bun sen , Chevalier, note from his " Egypt,"
125.
Byron, Lord, his poetry, 76.
Cabot, Sebastian, voyages and discoveries
of, 264, 265, 279, 280.
Cabral, Alvarez, 240, 263.
Cabrillo, Rodriguez, 230, 272.
CiFsar, Julius, writings of, 35, 38, 196.
Calderon, dazzling description of nature
in his writings, 73.
Callimachus, gloomy descriptions of Na-
ture in his " Hymn on Delos," 26.
Callisthenes of Olynthus, 163, 164, 166.
Camoens, faithful individuahty of nature
, in his " Lusiad," and its inimitable de-
INDEX.
359
Bcription of physical pheuomena, 68-
71.
Canary Islands, regarded by Don Fernan-
do, son of Columbus, as the Cassiteri-
des of the Carthaginians, 132, 133 ; sup-
posed " happy islands" of the ancients,
133, 134 ; early notices of, 134, 135.
Caravan trade oi the Phoenicians, 130 ; of
Western Asia, 170, 171 ; Egypt, 171, 17-2.
Cardanus, Hieronymus, writings of, 260,
261.
Carthage, its geographical site, 120 ; nav-
igation, 132 ; greatness, 149. See Phoe-
nicians.
Carus on the tone of mind awakened by
landscape, 89.
Caspian Sea, 145 ; Chinese expedition to,
186.
Cassini, Dominicus. his observations on
Saturn's ring, 323, 329 ; zodiacal hght,
329.
Cassius, Mount, the probable " amber
coast" of the Phoenicians, 130.
Castilian heroic ages, impulses of, 65.
Castor, Antonius, botanical gardens of,
195.
Catlin on the language and descent of the
Indian tribe of the Tuscaroras, 236.
Caucasus, Grecian myths respecting, 144.
Celto-Irish poems, 48.
Cervantes, his Don Quixote and Galatea,
68, 71.
Chaeremon, his remarkable love of nature
compared by Sir William Jones to that
of the Indian poets, 28.
Chaldean asti-onomers and mathemati-
cians, 167, 177.
Charlemagne, Arabian presents sent to,
220.
Charles V., letter to Cortez, 270.
Chateaubriand, Auguste de, 75-77.
Chemistry, pneumatic, dawn of, 344-346 ;
chemical knowledge of the Romans,
194; of the Arabs, 211, 212, 217, 218.
Childrey, first observed the zodiacal light,
329.
Chinese, their pleasure gardens, and pas-
sages from their writers on the subject,
103-105; antiquity of their chronology,
114, 115 ; warlike expedition to the Cas-
pian, 186 ; Roman embassy to China,
187; early use of the magnetic needle,
191, 253 ; of movable types in printing,
249.
Chivalric poetry of the thirteenth centu-
ry, 46.
Christianity, results of its diffusion in the
expansion of the views of men, in their
communion with nature, 38, 39 ; its hu-
manization of nations, 199.
Chrysostom, his eloquent admiration of
nature, 43.
Cicero on the golden flow of Aristotle's
eloquence, 29; his keen susceptibility
for the beauties of nature, 31, 32 ; on
the ennobling results of its contempla-
tion, 197, 198.
Cimento, Accademia del, scientific re-
searches of, 337-343.
Civilization, early centers of, 115, 117, 122.
Classical literature, why so termed, 180 ;
influence of its revival on the contem-
plation of nature, 248, 249.
Claude Lorraine, his landscapes, 89, 96.
Claudian, quotation from, on the domin-
ion of the Romans, 198.
Colaeus of Samos, his passage through tha
Pillars of Hercules into the Western
Ocean, 150, 151, 152.
Colchis, Argonautic expedition to, 144,
145.
Colebrooke on the epochs of the Indian
mathematicians, 187 ; on the incense of
Arabia, 204, 205 ; Arabic translation of
Diophantus, 224.
Colonna, Vittoria, her poems, 64.
Columbus, peculiar charm lent to his de
lineations of nature, 65 ; their religious
sentiment, 65 ; their beauty and sim-
plicity, 66 ; his acute and discriminating
observation of nature, 66, 67; his dream
on the shore of Veragua, 67 ; letter to
Queen Isabella, 78 ; on the land of
Ophir, 138 ; visit to Iceland, 238 ; died
in the belief that the lands discovered
in America were portions of Eastern
Asia, 239, 264, 265; made use of the
writings of Cardinal Alliacus, 247, 251 ;
his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, on
the coast of Veragua, 251 ; on his knowl-
edge of the log, 257 ; scientific charac-
teristics, 263, 264, 274 ; erroneous views
on the extent of the Old Continent, 267-
269 ; heraldic bearings bestowed on,
270 ; physical observations in his letter
from Haiti, October, 1498, 276; discov-
ery of the magnetic line of no variation,
278, 279 ; first described the equatorial
current, 283, 284 ; the Mar de Sargasso,
285 ; on the method of taking a ship's
reckoning, 293, 294.
Compass, its discovery and employment,
253-255 ; transmission through the
Arabs to Europe from the Chinese,
253-255.
Conquista, asre of the, great events it em-
braced, 296.
Conquistadores, impulses which animated
them, 271.
Copernicus, 301 ; greatness of his epoch,
303 ; his life and studies, 304, 305 ; grand-
eur of his views, and boldness of his
teaching, 305-308 ; his eloquent de-
scription of his system, 307, 308 ; knowl-
edge of the ideas of the ancients on the
structure of the universe, 310, 311.
Cortenovis, Father Angelo. story related
by, on the tomb of Lars Porsena, 139,
140.
Cortez, Hernan, expeditions of, 270, 271,
296.
Cosa, Juan de la, map of the world, 263,
265, 298.
Cosmas Indicopleustes, 188. 189, 272.
Cosmos, its science and history discrim-
inated, 106, 108.
Coupvent and Dumoulin on the height
of the Peak of Teneritte, 135.
Covilham, Pedro de, and Alonso de Pavya,
embassy to Prester John, 252
3(50
COSMOS,
Creuzer on the " Adonis Gardens" of the
ancients, 92.
Crusades, slightness of their influence on
the Minnesingers, 47.
Ctesias, his account of an Indian spring,
138 ; on the relations between lightning
and conducting metals, 140; on India,
154, 156, 158.
Ctesibus, hydraulic clock of, 179, 220.
Curtius, fine natural picture in his writ-
ings, 36.
Cuss, Nicholas de, a German cardinal, re-
vived the doctrine of the Earth's rota-
tion on its axis, and ti'anslation in space,
109.
Cuvier, his life of Aristotle, 160-162 ; on
the scientific merits of Frederic II., 244 ;
palajontological researches, 348.
Cuyp, his landscapes, 89.
Dante, "soutliern stars," quotation, 20;
instances of his deep sensibihty to the
charms of nature, 63 ; notices in his po-
eti-y — on Aristotle, 160; on Albertus
Magnus, 244 ; on the magnetic needle,
254 ; on the constellation of the South-
ern Cross, 288-290.
Darwin, Charles, vivid pictures in his
writings, 80.
Delille, his poems on nature, 80.
Dschayadeva, Indian poet, his " Gitago-
vinda," 53, 54.
Diaz, Bartholomew, his discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope, 252.
Dicsearchus, diaphragm of, 152, 177.
Dicuil, Irish monk, his work " De Mensu-
ra Orbis Terra?," 235.
Diodorus on the Gardens of Semiramis,
101 ; praise of the Etruscans, 140.
Diophantus, the arithmetician and alge-
braist, 183, 187. 224.
Dioscorides of Cilicia, botanical investiga-
tions of, 182, 194, 195, 204, 210.
Distillation of a fluid, first mention of,
1G2.
Dorians, their mental characteristics, 143 ;
migrations, 148-150.
Drummond's incandescent lime-ball, 325.
Dscheber (Djaber), Arabian chemist, 209,
218.
Duran, D. Augustiu, his Romancero, 72.
Ebn-Junis, first employed a pendulum to
measure time, 219, 220 ; his astronom-
ical observations, 222, 223.
Eckhout, his large pictures of tropical
productions, 92.
Eginhard on the Arabian clock sent to
Charlemagne, 220.
Egypt, its chronological data, 114, 115,
123-128; civilization, 125-128; monu-
ments of its kings, 124 ; victories and
distant expeditions of Rameses Mia-
moun, 124-126 ; Egyptian navigation,
125-128 ; foundation of a permanent
foreign commerce introduced with
Greek hired troops, and its results, 127,
128, 138 ; its greatness unrier tho Ptol-
emies. 170, 179 ; intercourse witli dis-
tant countries, 171-174.
Ehrenberg on the incense and myrrh ol
Arabia, 204, 205.
Elcano, Sebastian de, completed the first
circumnavigation of the globe after the
death of Magellan, 270.
Electrical science, gradual dawn of, 341-
344.
Elephants, African and Indian, 174 ; im«
mense armies of, 174.
El-Istachri, Arabian geographer, 213.
Elliptic movement of the planets, discov-
ery of, 314-317.
Elmo, St., fire of, 69.
Elysium, or " Islands cf the Blessed" of
the ancients, 134.
Empedocles, his poems " on Nature," 34.
Encke, Professor, on the distance at which
eruptions of ^tna are visible, 136.
Encyclopaedic scientific works of the Mid-
dle Ages, 246.
Epochs, early comparisons of, among civ-
ilized nations, 114, 115.
Epochs, great, in the advancement of hu-
man knowledge, 303, 316.
Equatorial cun-ent, first described by Co-
lumbus, 283, 284.
Eratosthenes, 152, 154, 156, 188; on the
number of peninsulas in the Mediterra-
nean, 120 ; his geographical labors, 176,
177 ; conjecture of the equal level of the
whole external sea, 177 ; measurement
of degrees, 177 ; enlarged physical and
geognostic opinions, 176-178, 196.
Ercilla, Don Alonso de, his Epic poem
" Araucana," 71, 72, 266, 285.
Eric Upsi, first bishop of Greenland, 232.
Etruscans, the, their inland traffic, 139 ;
influence of their chai-acter on Rome,
and her political institutions. 139 ; their
notice of the meteorological processes
of nature, 139, 140.
Euclid, 179.
Eudoxus, his attempted circumnaviga-
tion of Cyzicus, 127.
Euripides, picturesque descriptions of na*
ture in his writings, 25, 26 ; prophecy
in the chorus of his Medea, 182.
Eutocius, method of. See Numerals.
Everdingen, his landscapes, 89, 96.
Eyck, Hubert and Johann van, landscapes
in their paintings^ 87.
Fabricius, Johann, first observed the solar
spots, 324, 325.
Falero, Ruy, Portuguese astronomer, 293.
Faraday, investigations on dia-magnetic
substances, 334, 335 ; discovery of the
evolution of light by magnetic force,
336. 343.
Ferdinandea, volcanic island of, 120.
Finnish tribes, their poetry, in relation to
nature, 56.
Firdusi, Persian poet, 55 ; myth of the or-
igin of the cypress in Paradise, 101.
Flemming, Paul, old German poet, 76, 77
Forster's"" Delineations of the South Sea
Islands," its eSect on the authors mind,
20; his translation of Sacontala, 50; hi3
merits as a writer, 80.
Frederic II. of Hohenstaufen, letter of, to
INDEX.
361
tiis universities, on the translation of ]
Aristotle, 215, 216 ; intercourse with
Arabian and Spanish literati, 217 ; curi-
ous piece of mechanism presented to
him, 220, 221 ; researches in natural
history, 244.
Freytag, remark on the Arabic poetry, 61.
Fulgatores, the, of the Etruscans, 139,
140.
Galen of Pergamus, his scientific research-
es, 182, 183, 194.
Gahleo, 219, 318, 319 ; his telescopic dis-
coveries, 318-331 ; of the mountains in
the moon, 319, 320; satellites of Jupi-
ter, 320-323 ; ring of Saturn, 323 ; solar
spots, 324, 325 ; crescent shape of Ve-
nus, 325, 326; conjectures on nebulsfi,
331 ; his invention of the binocular tel-
escope, 323 ; thermoscopes, 337 ; on the
origin of the trade winds, 339.
Galle, Dr., on the constellation of the
Southern Cross, 290, 291.
Gardens, pleasure derived from, 103; ar-
rangement, 104; extent and character
of the Chinese gardens, 103 ; Roman,
195.
Gassendi on Copernicus, 304, 312 ; on the
similarity of the systems of Apollonius
of Perga and Tycho Brahe, 312, 313.
Gauss, Frederic, 337.
Geography as blended vrith national
myths, 121, 122.
Geographies, maps and charts of the an-
cients and the writers of the Middle
Ages — Universal Geography of Eratos-
thenes, 176-178 ; " Map of the World"
of Hipparchus, 178 ; Geographies — of
Strabo, 187-190 ; of Claudius Ptolemse-
us, 190-193 ; of El-Istachri and Alhas-
sen, 213, 214 ; of Dicuil, 235 ; of Alber-
tus Magnus, 243, 244 ; Picture of the
World of Cardinal AUiaco, 246 ; plani-
epherium of Sanuto, 252, 253 ; sea-chart
of Paolo Toscanelli, 261, 262 ; map of
the world by Juan de la Cosa, 263 ;
World-Apple of Martin Behaim, 269 ;
hydrography of Job. Rotz, 272 ; varia-
tion chart of Santa Cruz, 280.
G6rard, his illustrations to the "Lusiad"
of Camoens, 70.
Germanic nations, their poetry, 44-46;
love of nature in the Minnesingers, 45,
46; their "Animal Epos," its genuine
delight in nature, 47, 48.
Gibbon, his estimate of the extent of the
Roman empire, 181 ; on the nomadic
life of the Arabs as compared with that
of the Scythians, 207, 208.
Gilbert, William, of Colchester, on the
compass, 279, 280 ; magnetic discover-
ies, 334 ; observations on electricity,
341 342.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 284, 285.
Giorgione, 88.
Gobar (Arabian "dust- writing"), 226.
Goethe, his fine distichs on the appear-
ance of Forster's translation of the Sa-
contala, 51; profound veneration for
Nature in his works, 82.
Vol. II.— Q
Gold-sand, region of, in Northern Asia, its
locality, 147, 148.
Goldstlicker, Herr Theodor, MS. Notes
on Indian Literature, 51-54.
Gravitation, general discovery of, 309, 310.
Greece, peculiar charm of its scenery,
25, 143 ; heightened by its deeply-in-
dented shore-line, 25, 143.
Greeks, infrequency of a poetic treatment
of nature in their writings, 22 ; mythic-
al ti-eatment of the vegetable world, 25 ;
decay of the true Hellenic poetry in the
time of Alexander, 26 ; deep feeling
for nature in the Greek anthology, 27 ;
Greek prose writers, 28, 29 ; Greek fa-
thers, descriptions of Nature in their
writings, 40-43 ; landscape painting, 82-
86 ; Greek language, its magical power
over all kindred and foreign nations,
110, 111; their voyages of discovery,
120 ; intercourse with Egypt, 127, 128,
142 ; mental characteristics of the Greek
races, 143 ; their early maritime expe-
ditions, 120, 143, 144 ; elucidation of the
myths of the Argonautic expedition,
Prometheus, lo, and others, 144-147 ;
colonies, 148-150 ; mental and artistical
cultivation, 149, 150 ; important results
of the campaigns of Alexander, 153-169,
192 ; celebrated scientific writers, 182,
183 ; revival of the study of Greek lit-
erature in the Middle Ages, 247-249.
Gregory of Nazianzum, letter of Basil the
Great to, 40, 41 ; his beautiful poem
" On the Nature of Man," 41.
Gregory of Nyssa, plaintive expressions
regarding nature in his writings, 42.
Greenland, first colonization of, 231-233.
Grimm, Wilhelm, on the Minnesingers,
45, 46.
Gudrun, old German Epos, 45.
Guericke, Otto von, discoverer of the air
pump, 342, 343.
Guillen, Felipe, constructed the first vari-
ation compass, 280, 293.
Gunpowder, its invention discussed, 219.
Hafiz, Persian poet, 55.
Haller, his local descriptions, 77.
Halley, Edmund, theory of four magnetic
poles, 335 ; on the northern lights, 336 ;
atmospheric currents, 340.
Hamamat, sculptural inscriptions of, 126.
Happy Islands of the ancients, 133.
Hariot, Thomas, observations by, of the
satellites of Jupiter, 321 ; on the solar
spots, 324.
Haroun Al-Raschid, curious clock pre-
sented by, to the Emperor Frederic II.,
220.
Heat, gradual investigations of its phenom-
ena, 337-341.
Hebrews, profound feeling for nature in
their most ancient poetry, 22, 57-60;
its special attraction for the nations of
the West, 57 ; its characteristics, 57 ;
its bold and faithful descriptions, 58.
Hedschaz, Arabian tribe of, 203, 204, 207.
Heeren on the circumnavigation of Libya,
126 ; on Madeira, 134 ; on Ophir, 137 ;
362
COSMOS.
writings of Ctesias, 15G ; extent of the
Roman empire, 181.
Hellenic. See Greece, Greeks.
Helmont, Johann Baptiste von, one of the
founders of pneumatic chemistry, 344.
Heraclidee, their return into Peloponne-
sus, 148.
Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae, land-
scape paintings discovered at, 85.
Hernandez, physician to Philip II., 275.
Herodotus, account of ancient paintings,
83, 84 ; delight taken by Xerxes in the
great plane-tree of Lydia, 102 ; his no-
tices of the memorial pillars of the vic-
tories of Raraeses Miamoun, 124-126 ;
notices on the circumnavigation of Lyd-
, la, 127 ; of the expeditions and con-
quests of Rameses Miamoun, 124-127 ;
regarded Scythian Asia as a portion of
Europe, 142; myth of Aristeas, 143 ; ac-
ciirate knowledge of the configuration
of the Caspian Sea, 145, 192 ; his de-
scription of the Indian races, 164 ; ca-
nal completed by Darius Hystaspes, 173.
Herschel, Sir William, his discovery of
the two innermost satellites of Saturn,
329.
Hesiod, his " Works and Days," 23 ; doc-
trine of four ages of the world, 156.
Hicetas of Syracuse, his knowledge of the
earth's rotation on its axis, 109.
Himerius the Sophist, Eclogues of, 27.
Hippalus, 172.
Hipparchus, bis isthmus hypothesis, 127,
266 ; the originator of astronomical ta-
bles, and the discoverer of the preces-
sion of the equinoxes, 178, 187.
Hiram, ruler of Tyre, 136, 137.
Hirt on the origin of the French style of
gardening, 37.
Historical events which have extended
the horizon of the physical contempla-
tion of the universe, 109, 110.
Hiuen-thsang, early Chinese ti'aveier, 148,
250.
Hiungnu (a Turkish race), migrations of,
186, 202.
Hobbima, landscapes of, 89.
Hoces, Francisco de, discovery of Cape
Horn, 265, 266.
Hoft'meister, Dr., girth of the trunk of the
Cedrus deodvara, 168.
Hojeda, Alonso de, 240, 282, 298, 299.
Homer and the Homeric songs, their
beautiful and sublime descriptions of
nature, 24, 46.
Hooke, Robert, 310, 332 ; correct views
on the rotation of the earth, 339, 340 ;
observed the existence of nitrous par-
ticles in the air, 345.
Humboldt, Alexander von, works by,
quoted in various notes :
Ansichten der Natur, 96.
Asie Centrale, 120, 138, 142, 144-147,
152, 157, 161, 168, 173, 177, 189, 191,
208, 214, 215, 232, 250, 282.
De Distributione Geographic^ Plan-
tarum, 158, 159.
Essai Geognostique sur le Gisement
des Roches, 347.
Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle E»
pagne, 159, 271, 272, 280.
Examen Critique de I'Histoire de la
Geographie, 92, 119, 121, 127, 134,
136, 138, 152, 162, 165, 166, 177, 188,
192, 194, 214, 215, 219, 225, 229, 235,
236, 238, 239, 245, 246, 252, 256, 261,
263-266, 269, 270, 276, 277, 282, 284-
288, 290, 293, 297-299, 301.
Recueil d'Observations Asti'onom-
iques, 183.
Relation Historique du Voyage aux
Regions Equinoxiales, 20, 119, 131,
135, 159, 236, 264, 290, 335, 339.
Vues des Cordilleres, 156.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, comparison of
the works of Luci'etius with an Indian
epic, 30, 31 ; the sky in the landscape
compared in its effect to the charm of
the chorus in the Greek tragedy, 100;
irresistible charm of mathematical stud-
ies, 351.
Huygens, first explained the phenomena
ol" Saturn's ring, 323, .329 ; on the nebu-
las in the sword of Orion, 330 ; his re-
searches on light, 331-333.
Hygrometers, invention of, 340. 341.
Hyksos, the, their Semitic origin and mi-
gration, 206, 207.
Hyperboreans, the, meteorological myth
of, 147.
Ibn-Baithar, Arabian botanist, 216.
Iceland, its discovery and colonization by
the Northmen, 231 ; its early free con-
stitution and Uterature, 237.
Ilschan Holagu, observatory founded by,
223.
Incense of Arabia, researches on the, 204,
205.
India, expedition of Alexander to, and its
important results on physical and geo-
graphical science, 153-158.
Indians, profound feeling of nature in
their most ancient poetry, 22, 101 ; its
influence on the imagination of the East
Arian nations, 44, 48-51 ; its character-
istics, 51-54 ; their knowledge of land-
scape painting, 84, 85 ; numerical sys-
tem, 169, 225-227 ; their chemistry, 218,
219 ; planetary tables, 222 ; algebra,
224-227.
Inductive reasoning, 179.
-Infinitesimal calculus, results of its inven-
tion, 351.
Ingolf, his colonization of Iceland, 231, 237.
lonians, their mental characteristics, 143.
Irish, conjectures ©n their early discovery
of America, 234-237.
Isabella, Queen, letters to Columbus, 274,
293,
Isaiah, quotation from his prophecies, 206.
Islands of the Blessed, myth of the an-
cients, 133.
Italian poetry, as descriptive of nature,
62-64.
Ivory, commerce in, 174.
Jansen, Zacharias, optical instrumonts
invented by, 318, 319.
INDEX.
nm
rfo'j, book of, its impressive descriptions
of the natural scenery of the East, 59, 60.
John of Salisbury, 248.
Jupiter, controversy on the discovery of
his satellites, and marked influence of
the discovery on the extension of the
Copernican system, 320-322.
Kalidasa, Indian poet, 50-54 ; his Sakun-
tala, 50, 51, 85 ; Vikrama and Urvasi, 51,
53 ; The Seasons, 51, 53, 74 ; Messenger
of Clouds, 51, 53.
Kepler, his eulogium on Copernicus, 307;
ideas on gravitation, 310 ; great discov-
ery of the elliptic motion of the planets
round the sun, 314-317 ; astronomical
writings, 317 ; on the papal prohibition
of the Copernican system, 322 ; his
great mental and scientiiic characteris-
tics, 327; on comets and fixed stars,
327-329 ; Brewster, Chasles, and La-
place on his writings and theories, 327.
Kien-lonij, Chinese emperor, descriptive
poem by, 103, 104.
KirgMs steppe, its extent and population,
208.
Klaproth, his rese^ches on the Indo-Ger-
manic races, 186 ; letter to Hvmnboldt
on the invention of the compass, 254.
Klopstock, 76.
Lagides, the. See Ptolemies.
Lambrecht, his " Song of Alexander," 49.
Landscape painting. See Painting.
Languages, their value and importance in
the history of the physical contempla-
tion of the universe, 110-112.
Laplace on Kepler's theory of the meas-
urement of casks, 327 ; on the zodiacal
light, 329.
Las Casas, Bartholomew de, 261, 262, 299-
301.
Lassen, author's correspondence with, on
the ariena of Pliny, 159; on the black
Asiatic races, 165 ; on tlie incense of
Arabia, 204, 205.
Leibnitz, character of his Protogoea, 349,
350.
Le^, his discovery of America, 230, 231,
234.
[-epsius, his chronological data for Egypt,
115, 124 ; on the monuments of the dis-
tant expeditions of Rameses Miamoun,
125 ; on the Semitic written characters,
129.
Letronne on the Greek zodiac, 167; on
the canal of the Red Sea, 173 ; on the
epoch of Diophantus, 183 ; on tlae early
discoveries of the Irish, 235.
Liegnitz, Mongolian battle at, 202, 249.
t^ieu-tscheu, ancient Chinese writer, on
the pleasure felt in the possession of
gardens, 103.
Light, gradual discovery of its phenome-
na, 332. 333.
Lippershey, Hans, his claims to the dis'
covery of the telescope discussed, 317-
319.
Lister, early researches by, Tn palaeontol^
ogy, 348, 349.
Ivivy, writings of, 35.
Log, use of in navigation, and date of its
introduction, 256-258.
Longinus, 166.
Longus, his pastoral romance "Daphnis
et Chloe," 28.
Lonnrot, Elias, collection of Finnish
songs, 56.
Lucan, vivid description of nature in his
works, 34.
Lucius the younger, his didactic poem of
iEtna, 34.
Lucretius, his great poem "De Natura,"
30, 31 69.
Ludius, ancient Roman painter, 84.
Luis, Fray de Leon, description of night,
72.
Lully, Raymond, scientific acquirements
of, 254, 255.
Lusiad of Camoens, its truth to nature,
68-71.
Macedo, J. J. da Costa de, work on the
discovery of the Canaries. 135.
Macedonians, influence of their cam-
paigns imder Alexander the (Treat, 153,
192.
Macpherson's Ossian, 48.
Madeira, supposed notice of iu Plutarch,
134.
Madoc, western voyage of, 235, 236.
Magellan, navigation and discoveries of.
in the Pacific, 269, 270.
^lagellanic clouds, first notices of, 286-
288.
Magnetism, observations and discoveries
in the Middle Ages — of Columbus, 277-
279; Cabot, 279, 280; Gassendi, 280;
Robert Norman, 281, 335 ; modern re-
searches— William Gilbert's, 334 ; Ara
go, 334 ; Faraday, 334, 33(5 ; Edmund
Halley, 3.35 ; Frederic Gauss, 337 ; Ant-
arctfc expeditions, 335, 336.
Mahabharata, Indian heroic poem, 50, 52,
147, 156.
Mains, discovery of polarization by, 332,
343.
Maude ville, John, his travel?, 78 ; their
characteristics, 251.
Manetho, Egyptian dynasty of, 124.
Marco Polo, his travels and admirable
narrative, 250, 251 ; early editions of",
and whether known to Columbus, 251.
Marinus Sanuto, writings of, 252.
Marinus of T3're, his isthmus hypothesis,
127, 266 ; myth on the Indian Ocean,
193; on the 'breadth of the Old Conti-
nent, 268.
Marius, Simon, on the invention of the
telescope, 318; discovered the moona
of Jupiter simultaneously with Galileo,
320, 321; nebula in Andromeda, .'331.
Martel, Charles, on the I'esults of liis vic-
tory over the Moslems at Tours, 2<)2.
Masudi, Arabian historinn, account of the
remains of a ship of the Red Sea, 127.
Materia Medica, Hindoo and Arabic
knowledge of, 211.
Mathematicians, Grecian, 164, 176-179 ;
Babylonian, 167 ; Indian, 168, 224, 223
364
COSMOS.
Arabic, 224 ; of the Middle Ages, 245,
246, 255, 283 ; modern, 303-352.
Mayow on the influence of nitrous parti-
cles in the air, 345.
Mediterranean, its geographical position
t'lnd configuration, IIU ; its triple con-
struction, 120, 121.
Megasthenes, 155, 156 ; his descriptive ac-
curacy, 156 ; embassies, 169.
Meleager of Gadara, his Idyl " on Spring,"
27.
Menander the Rhetorician, his severe crit-
icism on the poems of Empedocles, 30.
Mes.sina. Antonio di, transplanted the pred-
ilection for landscape painting to Ven-
ice, 87.
Microscope, its discovery and scientific
results, 10(1, 318,
Migration, direction of its early impulses,
186, 187, 202.
Miletus, 149.
Milton, character of the descriptions of
nature in his " Paradise Lost," 74.
Minnesingers, love of nature as expressed
in their poetry, 44-46.
Minucius, Felix, early Christian writer
on nature, 39.
Missals, landscape illustrations in, 86.
Mohammed, 206, 208.
Mohammed Ben-Musa, his compendium
of Algebra. 224.
Mongolians, battle at Liegnitz, 202, 249 ;
Buddhism, 202.
Monsoon, Indian, causes of, 123.
Monsoons, known to the companions of
Alexander, 172.
Mosaics, Byzantine, 86. *
Miiller, Johannes. See Regiomontanus.
Miiller, Otfried, on the characteristics of
the landscape paintings of the ancients,
85 ; on the myth of the destruction of
Lyktonia, 121; on national myths blend-
ed with history and geography, 121 ;
date of the Doric immigration into the
Peloponnesus, 124.
Museum of Alexandria, 175, 176.
Naddod, his discovery of Iceland, 230, 231.
Nature, incitements to the study of, 19 ;
inducements, three different kinds, 19,
20 ; i. Poetical descriptions of nature,
21-82 ; ii. Landscape painting, 82-98,
100 ; iii. Cultivation of tropical plants,
99-105 ; powerful effect in after years
of striking impressions in childhood,
20; an increased impulse lent to the
study of nature by the discovery of
America, 65; modern descriptive and
landscape poetry, 80, 81.
Nautical astronomy, 255-262, 291-301.
Nearchus, 156, 172.
Neku, commenced the canal of the Red
Sea, 173.
Neophytes, numeral characters of, 226.
Nestorians, their intercourse with the
Arabs and Persians, and its results, 208,
209.
Newton, Sir Isaac, his invention of the
mirror sextant, 292 ; discovery of the
Hw of gravitation, 313, 316, 331, 3.50,
351 ; experiments on the velocity ol
light, 333 ; early electrical experiment
313.
Niebelungen, absence of any description
of natural scenery in, 45.
Nominalists, school of, in the Middle
Ages, 243.
Nonnus, his Dionysiaca, 27.
Norman, Robert, his invention of the dip-
ping needle, 281, 335.
North, nations of, their love of nature, 44.
Northmen, dates of their discovery and
colonization of America, Greenland,
and Iceland, 230-232.
Numerals, Indian, 169 ; spread of, 225-
227 ; early methods of expressing the
multiplier of the fundamental groups,
225-226; " Suanpan," "Method of Eu-
tocius," "Gobar," Arabian "dust-writ
ing," characters of Neophytos, 225-227.
Oceanic discoveries, 228-301.
Omar, Calif, his religious toleration, 20U,
204.
Onesicritus on the Indian fig-tree, 159;
on the Indian races, 164.
Ophir, conjecture on its locality /36-138,
its exports, 137.
Oppianus of Cilicia, poem on fishes, 194.
Optical instruments, dates of their discov-
ery, 317-319; optical experiments of
Claudius Ptolema3Us, 183, 193, 194.
Osiander, Andreas, his preface to the
writings of Copernicus, 306.
Ossian and the Celto-Irish poems, 48.
Ovid, his vivid pictures of nature, 3.3, 34.
Oxygen and its properties, first notices
of, 346.
Pacific, discovery and navigation of, 266-
273 ; its results on the extension of cos-
mical knowledge, 267.
Painting, Landscape, its influence on the
study of nature, 82-98 ; early paintings
of the Greeks, 83, 84 ; of the Romans,
85, 86 ; of the Indians, 84, 85 ; paintings
found at Herculaneum, Pompeii, Sta-
bice, 85 ; missals and mosaics of Byzan-
tine art, 86 ; Flemish school of the Van
Eycks, 87 ; Venetian and Bolognese
schools, 87, 88 ; Claude and the Land-
scape painters, 89, 90 ; early paintings
of tropical scenery, 90-92 ; advantages
oftered to the artist by the landscapes
and vegetation of the tropics, 93-95 ;
panoramas, dioramas, and neoramas,
their scenic effect, 97, 98.
Palajontological science, dawn of, 347-
349.
Panoramas, more productive of effect
than scenic decoration.s, 98 ; sugges-
tions for their increase, 98.
Pantschab, Chinese expedition under, to
the shores of the Caspian, 186.
Parks of the Persian kings, 101, 102.
Pastoral romances, their defects, 68.
Pendulum, earliest use as a time measur-
er, 219; moderr^, 3-50.
Persia, extension of its rule, 142.
Persians, their poetry in relation to n<^-
INDEX.
365
ture, 43, 44, 48, 49, 52-56. 101, 102 ; its
characteristics, 54 ; the four paradises
celebrated by the Persian poets, 54 ;
parks of the Persian kings, 101.
Petrarch, his sonnet " on the death of
Laura," 63, 64 ; revival of the study of
classical literature, 248.
Phoenicians, their position among the
non-Hellenic civilized nations, on the
shores of the Mediterranean, their col-
onies, commerce, and navigation, 119-
139 ; use of vireights and measures, and
metalhc coinage, 128 ; of alphabetical
writing, 128, l^; extent of their navi-
gation and caravan trade, 129-131, 136 ;
amber trade, ''^l, 132.
Phannacy, chemical, first created by the
Arabs, 211.
Philostratus, his mention of aifcient paint-
ings, 84.
Pigafetta, Antonio, nautical works of, 256-
258, 286, 289, 292.
Pindar, kis descriptions of nature, 24.
Pinturicchio, landscapes of, 87, 88
Pinzon, Martin Alonzo, his disputes with
Columbus, 257, 262, 263.
Plato, character of his descriptions of na-
ture, 29-31 ; on landscape painting, 84 ;
limits of the Mediterranean, 119 ; value
of his doctrines in the Dark Ages, 176 ;
misconceived dogmas, 241, 242 ; his
ideas on attraction, 309, 310 ; on the
structure of the universe, 3i4.
Playfair, 75.
Pliny the elder, his great work on Nature,
36 ; its arrangement and style, 195-197;
on the locality of the amber islands, 131 ;
his description of the aiiena (banana) of
India, 1.59 ; on the benefits of civiliza-
tion, 185.
Pliny the younger, descriptions of nature
in his letters, 32, 37, 38 ; on the " Histo-
ry of Nature," by his uncle, 195, 196.
Plutarch, notice of two Atlantic islands
in his works, supposed to be Porto San-
to and Madeira, 134 ; on the marks on
the moon's disk, 193 ; work on " The
Opinions of Philosophers," 311.
Poetry, modem, descriptive, and land-
scape, its defects, 80-82.
Polarization of light, discovery of, 332.
Polybius on the number of peninsulas in
the Mediterranean, 120 ; on African and
Indian elephants, 174.
Polygnotus, paintings of, 83.
Porsena, Lars, tradition on his tomb,
139.
Porto Santo, 134, 135. See Plutarch.
Portuguese heroic ages, impulses of, 65 ;
faithful individuality of nature in their
great epic poet, Camoens, 68, 71.
Posidonius, his comparison of the tides
with the moon's supposed influence,
152. 153.
Post, Franz, his paintings of South Amer-
ican landscapes, 90, 91.
Poussin, Gaspard and Nicholas, their land-
scapes, 89, 95.
Printing, invention of, 249.
Prometheus, myth of, 144.
Psalms, the, their sublime poetic feeling
for nature, 57, 58, 59.
Ptolemaeus, Claudius, on the locality of
Sapphara, 136, 137 ; influence of his
Universal Geography, its morits and
defects, 190-192; researches on optical
refraction, 183, 193, 194 ; geographical
and mathematical knowledge, 183, 187,
188 ; on the configuration of the Caspi-
an, 192.
Ptolemies, the, important result of theii
rule in Egypt, 170-179 ; their inter-
course with distant countries, 171-174 ;
scientific expeditions, 174 ; peculiar
character of the Ptolemaic period, 174 ;
accessions to general knowledge, 176 ;
to astronomical knowledge, 177-179 ;
mathematical investigations, 179.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, his restoration of
the canal of Darius Hystaspes, 173 ; sci-
entific researches, 173-175.
Punic, see Carthage, Phoenicians ; Punic
work on agriculture, 185.
Pythagoreans, their views on the struc-
ture of the universe, 109 ; on the mo-
tion of the planets, 314-316.
Quatremere, Etienne, on the circumnav-
igation of Libya, 127 ; on the locality
of Ophii-, 137.
Quinsay, Chinese city, as described by
Rubruquis, 249, 250 ; erroneous views
of Columbus on its geographical local-
ity, 268, 269.
Rachias, his embassy from Ceylon to
Rome, 187.
Rafn, Christian, American antiquities ot)
231, 233, 234.
Ramayana, Indian heroic poem, 50, 52, 53.
Rameses Miamoun, king of Egypt, his ex-
peditions, victories, and achievements,
124-126, 173.
Razes, Arabian chemist, 218.
Realists, school of, in the Middle Ages, 243.
Red Sea, canal of, early attempts at its
construction, 173.
Regiomontanus (Johann Miiller),255, 267,
305 ; on the anatomical dissections of
Aristotle, 163 ; on the drawings of pet-
rifactions by Scilla, 348 ; meteoroscope
of, 255; astronomical ephemerides, 292.
Reisch, Gregory, Margarita Philosophica,
246, 297.
Remusat, Abel, researches on the Indo-
Germanic races, 186.
Renaud, his researches on the intercourse
of the Arabs and Persians with India,
213.
Key, Jean, one of the founders of pneu-
matic chemistry, 343 ; experiments by,
345.
Rhakotis, library of, 175.
Ritter, Carl, his monograph on incense,
204.
Romans, the, rarity of their poetic de-
scriptions of nature, 29 , their land-
scape paintings. 84-86 ; influence of
their universal dominion, 180-199; ex-
tent of their empire and its diversity
366
COSMOS.
181 ; their expeditions and statistical
labors, 182 ; (on the superior scientitic
knowledge of the Hellenic races, 183 ;)
causes of the rise and fall of their uni-
versal sway, 184 ; embassy to China,
187; use of way-measurers in their nav-
• igation. 256, 257.
Romer, Olaus, discovery of the measura-
ble velocity of light, 333.
Rosen, Friedrich, translated the Algebra
of Mohammed Ben-Musa, 224.
Ross, Sir James Clark, Antarctic expedi-
tion of, 336.
Ross, Ludwig, on the early intercourse
between Greece and Egypt, 128.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 75, 76.
Rubens, truth and vividness of his land-
scapes, 90.
Ruckert, his translations from Eastern lit-
erature, 54, 61.
Rufus of Ephesus, early anatomist, 191.
Ruisbrock (Rubruquis), travels of, and
results of his narrative. 249, 250, 264.
Rumohr, Baron von, description of an
early Psalter, 86 ; on conical forms of
mountains in early Italian landscapes,
87, 88.
Ruth, book of, its naive simplicity, 60.
Ruysdael, his landscapes, 89, 95.
Sadi, Persian poet, 55.
Ste. Croix, 154.
St. Pierre, Bernardin de, 46, 75, 76 ; inim-
itable truth to nature of his writings,
76, 77.
Sanctorius, 220.
Sanscrit language, its intermixture with
the Greek, 111.
Santa Cruz, Alonso de, his general varia-
tion chart, 280 ; proposals for determin-
ing longitudes, 293, 294.
Saturn, gradual discovery of its ring, 323 ;
Kepler's conjectures, 328 ; discovery of
its satellites, 329.
Scheiner, Christopher, his observations
on the solar spots, 324, 325.
Schiller on the rarity of descriptions of
nature in the poetry of Greece, 21.
Schiltberger, Hans, of Munich, early trav-
eler, 78.
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, 154,
162.
Schoner, Johann, of Nuremberg, calum-
nies on Amerigo Vespucci, 297 ; super-
intended the publication of the writ-
ings of Columbus, 306, 307.
Scilla, drawings by, of the petrifactions
of Calabria and Malta, 348.
Scotus, Nicolaus, 229.
Scylax of Karyanda, explored the course
of the Indus, 142.
Scytliians, the, investigations on their re-
lationship to the Goths, 146.
S6dillot, M., on the astronomical instru-
ments of the Arabians, 214, 215, 222,
223, 255.
See-ma-kuang (early Chinese statesman),
hiB poem of " the Garden," 104.
Seleucidae, 170.
Seleucus of Babylon, his corn' t knowl-
edge of the Earth's structure, 109, 310,
of astronomy, 178.
Seleucus Nicator, 169, 171.
Seneca, Etruscan Augur-theory, 140 ; nar-
row confines of the earth, 152.
Sevign6, Madame de, letters of, 76.
Sextus JEmpiricus, 183.
Shakspeare, powerful descriptions of nat-
ural scenery in his writings, 73, 74.
Sidonians, their commerce, knowledge
of astronomy, arithmetic, and naviga-
tion, 130. See Phoenicians.
Silius Italicus, scenery of the Alps and It-
aly, 38.
Simplicius, on the date of Babylonian as-
tronomical notices, 115.
Sismondi on Camoens, 70, 71 ; Ercilla, 72.
Solis, Juan Diaz de, discovery of the Rio
de la Plata, 269.
Solomon, route of his maritime expedi
tions, 136, 137.
Sophocles, beautiful descriptions of na-
ture in his " CEdipus Colonos," 25,
102.
Sousa, Martin Alfonso de, botanic garden
at Bombay, 275.
Southern Cross, constellation of, early no-
tices, 288-291.
Spanish writers of the I6th century,. char-
acteristics of, 2.59-264.
Staunton, Sir George, description of the
imperial garden of Zhe-hol, 103.
Steno on the substances contained in
rocks, 347.
Strabo on the Mediterranean coast-line,
120 ; on Rameses the Great, 126 ; on
the circumnavigation of Libya, 127 ; on
the Sidonians, 130 ; on the Tyrian cit-
ies of the Northwest Coast of Africa,
132 ; PhcBuician commercial settle-
ments in the Persian Gulf, 136 ; on the
Turduli and Turdetani, 141 ; conjecture
of undiscovered lands in the Northern
hemisphere, 152 ; on the passage of Al-
exander's army across the mountain-
ous district of the Paropanisadas, 157 ;
his great work on Geography, 187-190 ;
supposed existence of another conti-
nent between the west of Europe and
Asia, 189, 268.
Sturm, Johann Christian, discoverer of tne
diiierential thermometer, 340.
Suanpan, Mogul reckoning machine, 225.
Syracuse, 148, 149.
Tacitus, descriptions of nature in his
writings, 35, 36 ; acquaintance with the
glessura of the shores of the Baltic, 131 ;
discrimination of human races, 190.
Tasso, his " Jerusalem Liberated," 68 ;
stanza on the discovery of America.
240.
Teuei-iffe, volcano of, 135.
Telescope, results of its invention, 301-
303, 3.53 ; date of its accidental disoov
ery discussed, 317-319.
Theocritus, his idyls, 26.
Theophrastes, 183, 195.
Thermometers, invention of. 3.37-339.
Thomson, his " Seasons," 74.
INDEX.
807
TibuUns, his " Lustration of the Fields,"
34.
Tieck, Ludvvig, quotation from, on Cal-
deron, 73 ; on Shakspeare, 73, 74.
Timochares, early Alexandrian astrono-
mer, 177, 178.
Tin, early commerce for, 130, 131.
Titian, landscapes in his pictures, 88.
Toledo, astronomical congress of, "223.
Torricelli, his invention of the barometer,
338.
Toscanelli, letters of, 246, 251 ; sea-chart,
261, 262 ; scientific acquirements, 267.
Travels and travelers of the Middle Ages,
78, 249-253, 259 ; character of their nar-
ratives compared w^ith those of modern
times, 78, 79.
Tropics, luxuriant beauty of the land-
scapes, 97 ; cultivation of exotic plants,
99-105 ; paint;ings of tropical scenery,
90-92 ; why more accurate and beauti-
ful paintings may be anticipated, 99;
associations connected with descrip-
tions of tropical scenery, 99.
Troy, data of its destruction, 115.
Tscheu-kung, early measurement of the
length of the solstitial shadow, 115.
Tsing-wang (Chinese emperor), use of
the compass and " magnetic cars," 191,
253.
Tuscaroras, on the language and descent
of, 236.
Tycho Brahe, 109, 313, 316 ; his astro-
nomical discovery of the " variation,"
222.
Tyre, Tyrians. See PhcBnicians.
Ukert on the amber trade of the ancients,
131.
Ulugh Beig, observatory and gymnasiiim
founded by, 223.
Vedas, Indian hymns, in praise of nature,
50.
Vegetation of the cold and tropical zones,
96, 97.
Venus, discovery of its crescent shape
325, 326.
Vespucci, Amerigo, 239, 282, 286, 289, 292,
294 ; peculiar charm lent to his deline-
ations of nature, 65 ; examination of the
accidental causes which led to the nam-
ing of the New World, 297-301.
Vidal, Capt, height of the Peak of Tene-
ritfe, 135.
Vincentius of Beauvais, 229. 241 ; hia
" Mirror of Nature," 246, 253. 254.
Vinci, Leonardo da, landscape in his pic-
ture of Mona Lisa. 88 ; attainments in
physical science, 283; on the ash-col-
ored hght of the moon, 320 ; geognos-
tic conjectures, 347.
Vinland, early American settlement of
• the Northmen, 230-232, 238.
Virgil, beauty of his descriptions of na-
ture, 32, 33.
Vitruvius, 85. 98, 256.
Voltaic pile, its discovery compared with
that of the telescope, 354.
Voltaire on the "Araucana" of Ercilla,
71, 72.
Vossius, Isaac, researches on light, 333.
Waagen, Professor, notes on early paint
ings, 86, 87.
Warahamihara, Indian mathematician,
187.
Wellsted, first reported the existence of
three mountain chains in Arabia, 205.
Weilauff on the amber trade, 131.
Xenophanes, his geognostic conjectures,
189.
Yemen, its natural products, 204, 205.
Young, Thomas, his discovery of the in-
terference of light, 332, 343.
Zeni, the Fratelli, travels of, 238.
Zodiacal light, its discovery and scientific
results, 329, 330.
Zuniga, Juana de, wife of Cortez, 271.
END OP VOL. II.
WILLIAMS COLLEGE
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Humboldt, Alexander von,
1769-1859
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