56 COSMOS. 



The higher the point of view, the greater is the necessity io\ 

 a systematic mode of treating the subject in language at once 

 animated and picturesque. 



liut thought and language have ever been most intimately 

 allied. If language, by its originality of structure and its 

 native richness, can, in its delineations, interpret thought with 

 grace and clearness, and if, by its happy flexibility, it can pamt 

 with vivid truthfulness the objects of the external world, it 

 reacts at the same time upon thought, and animates it, as it 

 were, with the breath of life. It is this mutual reaction which 

 makes words more than mere signs and forms of thought ; and 

 the beneficent influence of a language is most strikingly man- 

 ifested on its native soil, where it has sprung spontaneously 

 from the minds of the people, whose character it embodies. 

 Proud of a country that seeks to concentrate her strength in 

 intellectual unity, the writer recalls with dehght the advant- 

 ages he has enjoyed in being permitted to express his thoughts 

 ill his native language ; and truly happy is he who, in at- 

 tempting to give a lucid exposition of the great phenomena of 

 the universe, is able to draw from the depths of a language, 

 which, through the free exercise of thought, and by the eliu- 

 sions of creative fancy, has for centuries past exercised so pow- 

 erful an influence over the destinies of man. 



LIMITS AND METHOD OF EXPOSITION OF THE PHYSICAL DESCIIPTIOK 



OF THE UNIVERSE. 



I HAVE endeavored, in the preceding part of my work, to 

 explain and illustrate, by various examples, how the enjoy- 

 ments presented by the aspect of nature, varying as they do 

 in the sources from whence they flow, may be multiplied and 

 ennobled by an acquaintance with the connection of phenom- 

 ena and the laws by which they are regulated. It remains, 

 then, for me to examine the spirit of the method in which the 

 exposition of the ^:'/i?/s/caZ description of the universe should 

 be conducted, and to indicate the limits of this science in ac- 

 cordance with the views I have acquired in the course of my 

 studies and travels in various parts of the earth. I trust I 

 may flatter myself with a hope that a treatise of this nature 

 will justify the title 1 have ventured to adopt for my work, 

 and exonerate me from the reproach of a presumption that 

 would be doubly reprehensible in a scientific discussion. 



Before entering upon the delineation of the partial phenom- 



