INTRODUCTION. 53 



Uranus, or +he heavens, and Cosmos, or how the same word, 

 used in a plural sense, could be applied to certain heavenly bo- 

 dies (the planets) rqvolving round one central focus of the world,' 

 or to groups of stars. In this work I use the word Cosmos in 

 conformity with the Hellenic usage of the term subsequently to 

 the time of Pythagoras, and in accordance with the precise 

 definition given of it in the treatise entitled De Mundo, which 

 was long erroneously attributed to Aristotle. It is the assem- 

 blage of all things in heaven and earth, the universality 

 created things constituting the perceptible world. If scien- 

 tific terms had not long been diverted from their true verbal 

 signification, the present work ought rather to have borne the 

 title of Cosmography, divided into Uranography and Geo- 

 graphy.fs'Xhe Romans, in their feeble essays on philosophy, 

 imitated the Greeks by applying to the universe the term 



gag ami (I go), the root of which is gd. In restricting ourselves to the 

 cir.de of Hellenic etymologies, we find (Etymoh*M., pp. 532, 12) that 

 KO(T/iog is intimately associated with &aw, or rather with Kaivv/Jiai, whence 

 we have RtKac^ikvoQ or KtRaCfitvog. Welcker, (Eine Kretische Col. in 

 T/ieben, s. 23, A Cretan colony in- Thebes,) combines with this the name 

 Kao/*o, as in Hesychius /cafyioe signifies a Cretan suit of arms. When the 

 scientific language of Greece was introduced amongst the Romans, the word 

 mundus, which at first had only the primary meaning of KO<T/ZO (fernala 

 ornament), was applied to designate the entire universe. Ennius seems to 

 have been the first who ventured upon this innovation. In one of the 

 fragments of this poet, preserved by Macrobius, on the occasion of his 

 quarrel with Virgil, we find the word used in its novel mode of acceptation. 

 " Mundus Coeli vastus constitit silentio" (Sat. vi., 2). Cicero also says : 

 " quern nos lucentem mundum vocamus." (Timseus, S. de Univer., cap. x.) 

 The Sanscrit root mand, from which Pott derives the Latin mundus, (JLtym. 

 Forsch, th. i., s. 240,) combines the double signification of shining and 

 adorning. L6ka designates in Sanscrit the world and people in general, 

 in the same manner as the French word monde, and is derived, according 

 to Bopp, from lok (to see and shine) ; it is the same with the Sclavonic 

 root swjetj which means both light and world. (Grimm, Deutsche 

 Gramm., b. iii., s. 394, German Grammar.) The word welt, which the 

 Germans make use of at the present day, and which was weralt in old 

 German, worold in old Saxon, and veruld in Anglo-Saxon, was, according 

 to James Grimm's interpretation, a period of time, an age (sceculwn), 

 rather than a term used for the world in space. The Etruscans figured to 

 themselves mundus as an inverted dome, symmetrically opposed to the 

 celestial vault (Ottfried Muller's Etrusken, th. ii., s. 96, &c.) Takeii 

 in a still more Limited sense, the word appears to have signified amongst 

 the Goths the terrestrial surface girded by seas (marei, meri), ihemerigard, 

 literally garden of seas, 



