478 COSMOS. 



The history of the civilisation of mankind comprises in itself the 

 history of the fundamental powers of the human mind, and 

 also therefore of the works in which these powers have been 

 variously displayed in the different departments of literature 

 and art. In a similar manner, we recognise in the depth and 

 animation of the sentiment of love for nature, which we have 

 delineated according to its various manifestations at different 

 epochs and amongst different races of men, active means of 

 inducement towards a more careful observation of phenomena, 

 and a more earnest investigation of their cosmical connection. 

 Owing to the diversity of the streams which have in the 

 course of ages so unequally diffused the elements of a more 

 extended knowledge of nature over the whole earth, it will be 

 most expedient, as we have already observed, to start in the 

 history of the contemplation of the external world from a 

 single group of nations, and for this object I select the one, 

 from which our present scientific cultivation, and indeed that 

 of the whole of Western Europe, has originated. The mental 

 cultivation of the Greeks and Romans must certainly be 

 regarded as very recent in comparison with that of the 

 Egyptians, Chinese, and Indians, but all that the Greeks and 

 Romans received from the east and south, blended with what 

 they themselves produced and developed, has been uninter- 

 ruptedly propagated on our European soil, notwithstanding 

 the continual alternation of historical events, and the admix- 

 ture of foreign immigrating races. In those regions in which 

 a much greater degree of knowledge existed thousands of 

 years earlier, a destructive barbarism has either wholly dark- 

 ened the pre-existing enlightment, or where a stable and 

 complex system of government has been preserved together 

 with a maintenance of ancient customs, as is the case in 

 China, advancement in science or the industrial arts has been 

 very inconsiderable, whilst the almost total absence of a free 

 intercourse with the rest of the world has interposed an 

 insuperable barrier to the generalisation of views. The cul- 

 tivated nations of Europe, and their descendants who have 

 been transplanted to other continents, may be said, by the 

 gigantic extension of their maritime expeditions to the 

 remotest seas, to be familiarised with the most distant shores; 

 and those countries which they do not already possess, they 

 may threaten. In the almost uninterrupted course of the 



