104 Discottrse delivered hy Baron Humboldt to the 



Unfortunately, in the physical sciences, the civilization of 

 Europe did not commence at so early a period. We are, as the 

 priests of Sais said of the Hellenes, a new people. The almost 

 simultaneous invention of those organs by which we are brought 

 into contact with the external world, — the telescope, the thermo- 

 meter, the barometer, the pendulum, and that other instrument, 

 the most general and the most powerful of all, the infinitesimal 

 calculus, — hardly dates thirty lustrums back. In this conflict of 

 the powers of nature, which yet does not destroy her stability, 

 the periodical variations do not seem to surpass certain limits ; 

 they make the entire system oscillate round a mean state of equi- 

 librium, — at least such is the case in the present state of things, 

 since the great cataclysms which swallowed up so many genera- 

 tions of animals and plants. Now the value of the periodical 

 change is determined with so much the more precision, the 

 greater the interval between the extreme observations. 



It is the duty of the scientific bodies which ax*e continually 

 forming and renovating themselves, — the academies, the univer- 

 sities, the many learned societies scattered over Europe, in the 

 two Americas, at the southern extremity of Africa, in India, and 

 even in New Holland, which, although but of late so wild, al- 

 ready possesses an observatory, — to observe, to measure, and, as 

 it were, to watch over, what is variable in the economy of na- 

 ture. The illustrious author of the Mecanique Celeste, has of- 

 ten verbally expressed the same thought in the midst of the In- 

 stitute, where I have had the honour of sitting with him for 

 eighteen years. 



The western nations have carried, into the different parts of 

 the world those forms of civilization, that development of the 

 human intellect, whose origin ascends to the epoch of the intel- 

 lectual greatness of the Greeks, and to the gentle influence of 

 Christianity. Divided in languages and manners, and in politi- 

 cal and religious institutions, the enlightened nations form in 

 our days but a single family (and this is one of the most beauti- 

 ful results of modern civihzation), when the object in view is 

 the great interests of science, literature, and art, all that, spring-' 

 ing from an internal source, the depths of thought and feeling, 

 elevates man above the vulgar cares of society. 



In this noble community of interests and action, most of the 



