182 ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 



man in Germany in this department of science, and perhaps 

 even excels his brother in intellectual power gifted as he un- 

 doubtedly is.' 



From a letter from Humboldt to Pfaff at Helmstadt a few 

 months later, dated from Goldkronach, in the Fichtelgebirge, 

 November 12, 1794, we learn that at that time he was very 

 busily engaged on this branch of botanical science. ' I am at 

 work,' he writes, ' upon a portion of the world's history that 

 has been hitherto entirely neglected. The results will be pub- 

 lished in about twenty years, under the title of " Suggestions 

 for a future History and Geography of Plants, or an Historical 

 Account of the gradual Spread of Vegetation over the Earth's 

 Surface in its connection with Geology." ' From some letters 

 that passed between Theodore Korner 1 and his father at a subse- 

 quent date (Dresden, November 22, 1811, and Vienna, January 15, 

 1812), it appears that Humboldt left at Dresden under the care 

 of Korner, in the year 1797, a small box containing various 

 manuscripts and preparations for this work, labelled c Catalecta 

 Phytologica,' and c Physik der Welt.' Humboldt's contribution 

 to the ' Horen ' was not, however, on any botanical subject, but 

 consisted of a physiological treatise upon the chemistry of 

 life in the form of an allegory. 



What is Life the Principle of Life ? 



This perplexing question has resounded as a mysterious 

 enigma through every succeeding century of the world's history. 

 Scientific investigators and philosophers, materialists and spi- 

 ritualists, have in all ages sought by the most varied means to 

 explain the fact of life. From the restless desire of mankind 

 to discover the secret conditions of life and contemplate them 

 in imagination originated the symbolic poetry of the ancients, 

 the dream of the alchemists in the middle ages, and the theories 

 and philosophic problems of modern times. The youthful god 

 of the Greeks, pointing mysteriously with his finger to his lips 

 closed in silence, the Enormon, 2 the Archeus of Van Helmont, 

 were similar poetic symbols, similar philosophic impersonations 

 of a power existing independently of matter, to which it is 



1 Ad. Wolff, ' Th. Korner's Gesammelte Werke ' (Berlin, G. Mertens), 

 vol. iv. pp. 206, 220. 



2 [The ancient name in physiology for the aura vitalis, or vital principle.] 





