28 



PICTURE OF NATURE. 



threefold elements of terrestrial magnetism ; 

 the mean pressure of the atmosphere, and the 

 quantity of heat which the sun dispenses in the 

 course of every year, and in each division of the 

 year, over the several points of the solid or 

 liquid surface of our planet. The poet of na- 

 ture is less satisfied with such results ; the ap- 

 petite for the marvellous, inherent in the many, 

 is less appealed to by them. The poet com- 

 plains that science has made a desert of na- 

 ture ; the vulgar find many questions returned 

 to them with doubtful solutions, or declared un- 

 answerable, which formerly were met without 

 misgivings. In her graver form, in her less 

 ample garments, she is robbed of that seducing 

 grace by which the dogmatic and symbolic 

 physics of former times sought to deceive the 

 reason, to occupy the imagination. Long be- 

 fore the discovery of the New World, it was 

 thought that land could be seen in the West 

 from the Canaries and the Azores. These 

 were phantasms, not produced by any extraor- 

 dinary refraction of rays of light, but merely by 

 a longing for the distant, for that which lies be- 

 yond the present. The natural philosophy of 

 the Greeks, and the physics of the middle ages, 

 and even of much later centuries, presented 

 swarms of such fantastic forms to the imagina- 

 tion. The mental eye still essays to pass the 

 horizon of limited knowledge, even as the ma- 

 terial eye endeavours to pierce the natural ho- 

 rizon from an island height or shore. Faith in 

 the unusual and wonderful gives definite out- 

 lines to every product of imagination, and the 

 realm of fancy, a strange land of cosmological, 

 geognostical, and magnetic dreams, is inces- 

 santly blended with the world of reality. 



Nature, in the manifold significance of the 

 term, now as implying entireness of that which 

 is, and is becoming ; now as an inherent ac- 

 tuating force ; and again, as the mysterious 

 prototype of all phenomena, reveals itself to 

 the simple sense and feeling of mankind as 

 something more especially terrestrial, as some- 

 thing that is near akin to them. We seem at 

 first to recognize our proper home in the liv- 

 ing circle of organic formation. Where the 

 bosom of the earth is adorned with fruits and 

 flowers, where it supports and nourishes in- 

 numerable kinds of animals, there does the im- 

 age of nature come up in living tints before the 

 soul. We are more immediately connected 

 with the earth, with the terrestrial ; the cano- 

 py of heaven, inlaid with shining stars, the 

 boundless realms of space, belong to a picture, 

 the magnitude of whose elements — ^hosts of 

 suns, glimmering nebulous specks, infinity of 

 space — arouse our wonder and amazement, in- 

 deed, but still remain foreign to our mind and 

 feelings, through a sense of desolation, and a to- 

 tal want of immediate impression through the 

 presence of organic life. To mankind at large, 

 therefore, the heaven and the earth have still re- 

 mained distinct, as the above and the below in 

 space, in consonance with the earliest notions 

 entertained on the subject. Were a picture of 

 nature at large, then, solely intended to meet the 

 requirements of sense, it would have to be be- 

 gun with a representation of our proper home 

 for a foundation. It would first portray the 

 earth in its dimensions and configuration, in its 

 increasing densitv and temperature as its cen- 



tre was approached, in its solid and fluid su- 

 perposed strata ; it would exhibit the severance 

 of sea and land ; the life which in both is evolv- 

 ed as cellular tissue in plants and animals ; 

 and the atmospheric ocean, with its waves 

 and currents, from the bottom of which wood- 

 crested mountain-chains emerge like reefs and 

 shoals. After this exhibition of purely terres- 

 trial relations, the eye would rise to the celes- 

 tial spaces ; the earth, the well-known seat of 

 organic formative processes, would now be 

 contemplated as a planet. It would fall into 

 the series of bodies which circulate around one 

 of the innumerable host of self-efFulgent stars. 

 This sequence of ideas indicates the path pur- 

 sued in the first contemplation of nature by 

 the senses ; it still reminds us of the ''sea-sur- 

 rounded disc of earth," which supported heav- 

 en : it sets out from the station of simple per- 

 ception, from the known and the near, to the 

 unknown and the far removed. It corresponds 

 with the method observed in our elementary 

 astronomical works, which pass from the ap- 

 parent to the true motions of the heavenly 

 bodies. 



In a work, however, which undertakes to 

 speak of the actually known, of that which, in 

 the present state of science, is held for certain, 

 or which, in various degrees, is looked upon as 

 probable, but which does not propose to give 

 the details upon which results are founded, 

 another course of procedure appears advisable. 

 Here we do not set out from the subjective 

 point of view, from that which regards human 

 interests. The terrestrial can only appear as 

 a part in the whole, and as subordinate to this. 

 The view taken of nature must be general, it 

 must be grand and free, not contracted by no- 

 tions of vicinity, of affection, of relative use- 

 fulness. A physical cosmography, or true pic- 

 ture of the universe, cannot, therefore, com- 

 mence with the terrestrial ; it must needs be- 

 gin with the contents of heavenly space. But 

 as the spheres of contemplation, in reference 

 to space, contract, the amount of individual 

 details, the variety of physical phenomena, 

 knowledge of the qualitative heterogeneous- 

 ness of matter, augment. From regions in 

 which we can only distinguish the empire of 

 the universal laws of gravitation, we descend 

 to our planet, to the intricate play of forces 

 that constitute the life of the globe. The nat- 

 ural descriptive method now sketched out is 

 opposed to that which establishes conclusions. 

 The one enumerates what the other demon- 

 strates. 



Man assumes the external world into his in- 

 terior by means of certain organs. The phe- 

 nomena of light make us aware of the exist- 

 ence of matter in the farthest depths of heav- 

 en. The eye is the organ by which the uni- 

 verse is perceived, and the discovery of tele- 

 scopic vision some century and a half ago has 

 conferred a power upon later generations whose 

 limits have not yet been reached. The first 

 and most general consideration, in Cosmos is 

 that of the contents of space, the contempla- 

 tion of division in matter, of Creation, as we 

 are accustomed to designate all that is or is 

 about to be. We perceive matter here aggre- 

 gated into revolving and circulating masses of 

 most dissimilar density and magnitude ; there 



