28 COSMOS. 



something existing in nature, as a fact, but which I cannot 

 designate as merely causal, because their causes and mutual 

 connection have not yet been discovered. They are the result 

 of occurrences in the realms of space coeval with the for- 

 mation of our planetary system, and of geognostic processes 

 in the upheaval of the outer strata of the earth into continents 

 and mountain chains. Our knowledge of the primeval ages 

 of the world's physical history does not extend sufficiently far 

 to allow of our depicting the present condition of things as 

 one of development. 44 



Wherever the causal connection between phenomena has 

 not yet been fully recognized, the doctrine of the Cosmos, or the 

 physical description of the universe, does not constitute a 

 distinct branch of physical science. It rather embraces the 

 whole domain of nature, the phenomena of both the celestial 

 and terrestial spheres but embraces it only under the 

 single point of view of efforts made towards the knowledge 

 of the universe as a whole. 43 As in the " exposition of past 

 events in the moral and political world, the historian 46 can only 

 divine the plan of the government of the world, according 

 to human views, through the signs which are presented to him, 

 and not by direct insight ;" so also the enquirer into nature, 

 in his investigation of cosmical relations, feels himself pene- 

 trated by a profound consciousness that the fruits hitherto 

 yielded by direct observation and by the careful analysis of 

 phenomena, are far from having exhausted the number of 

 impelling, producing, and formative forces. 



44 Cosmos, pp. 79-82. 



45 Op. cit. pp. 36, 38-44. 



48 Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gesammelte Werke, bd. i. s. 23. 



