22 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



sary to give it from time to time new strength and new life, and 

 to treat it as if it were a novelty, the most important novelty of 

 our own time. Among the best exponents of it in the last century, 

 was a man who was also one of the pioneers of our own studies. 

 Can you guess whom I mean? I will help you. He should not be 

 difficult to find, for he was, a hundred years ago, the most famous 

 man in the world. He is not so famous now, for the wheel of for- 

 tune never stops turning, even after one's death. He is a bit for- 

 gotten, and when our schoolboys are asked to name the most 

 prominent men, no one would think of choosing him. After having 

 received a scientific preparation which was as elaborate as it was 

 diversified, and having crowned it with a literary initiation in the 

 Weimar circle (Goethe, so critical of others, never wavered in his 

 admiration of him) , he spent five years exploring South America, 

 then thirty more discussing and publishing the results of his ob- 

 servations. At the age of fifty-eight he delivered in Berlin a series 

 of lectures which were but the sketch of the grand fresco of which 

 he began the publication eighteen years later and to which he de- 

 voted the remainder of his life. 



That man is — need I name him — Alexander von Humboldt, 

 and the work of his old age to which I referred is the Cosmos. 

 The first two volumes appeared in 1845 and 1847 (when he was 

 76 and 78), vols. 3 and 4 between 1850 and 1858; he died in 1859 

 at the age of 90, and volume 5 appeared three years later. We 

 need consider only the first two volumes. The first contains an 

 elaborate description and explanation of the physical world, and 

 the second is a history of science. Thus Humboldt was a pioneer 

 in geographical synthesis, and also in historical synthesis. He was 

 a founder of the new geography and also of the new history. The 

 first innovation was rapidly understood and was developed in 

 many countries; the second was comparatively neglected. Geog- 

 raphy and history are two necessary bases of a man's education; 

 just as some knowledge of geography removes his provincialism 

 with regard to space — that is, teaches him that things are not 

 necessarily better in his own village, in his own metropolis or in 



