196 COSMOS. 



earth's surface, and all terrestrial objects, from the vegetable 

 mantle with which the land is covered, and the mollusca 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 different 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 (nemoapud Grcecos qui unus omnia tractaverii) . If my 

 undertaking should not succeed, it is, at any rate, both beau- 

 tiful and noble ( pulchrum atque magnificum) 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 



