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, was 

 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.! 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 oflatitude 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 universal 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 Sprachvergleichiing in ihrem Verhdlfniss 

 zur Ctassischen Philologie, 1845, e. 5-7, and his Bilditng der Tempora 

 und Modi, 1846. s. 3-9. (Compare, also. Pott's Article, Indogermani- 

 scher 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. Beitruge zur Phi- 

 losophic, 1846, th. i., s. 23-32. 



t The schools of the Orchenes and Borsipenes (Strabo, lib. xvi., p 



