328 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Tiew. 



country, not only in the region of scientific, but quite 

 as much in that of philosophical, thought. 

 29. So far as the purely scientific aspect is concerned, the 



Triumph of 



the genetic ' Origin of Species ' firmly established the genetic or 

 developmental in the place of the morphological view, or 

 the earlier purely systematic and classificatory treatment 

 of the objects and processes of nature ; and it is interest- 

 ing to note how the period from the publication of the 

 ' Vestiges ' to that of the ' Origin of Species,' the fifteen 

 years from 1844 to 1859, was also the period during 

 which Humboldt published his 'Kosmos' the r6sum6 

 of the labours of a lifetime. This was the consumma- 

 tion of that aspect of nature which I have termed the 

 purely morphological one, and which in his mind was 

 expanded to the panoramic view : the attempt to unroll 

 before his readers a picture or panorama of the whole 

 world as the scientific mind was then able to see it. 

 Nature appeared mapped out in bold and characteristic 

 lines and colours, without allowing the questions of past 

 history or future development, the origin, life, and 

 fate of the cosmos, to present itself at all. The fact 

 that this latter question was professedly excluded as 

 foreign, or premature, is probably the reason why the 

 book attracted so little attention in this country, where 

 a new manner of treating all the problems of natural 

 science was being inaugurated; but it is interesting to 

 learn from Darwin that his whole life was influenced 1 



1 See ' Life and Letters of Charles 

 Darwin,' vol. i. p. 25 : " During my 

 last year at Cambridge I read with 

 care and profound interest Hum- 

 boldt's ' Personal Narrative.' This 

 work, and Sir J. Herschel's ' Intro- 



duction to the Study of Natural 

 Philosophy,' stirred up in me a 

 burning zeal to add even the most 

 humble contribution to the noble 

 structure of natural science. No 

 one or a dozen other books influ- 



