190 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



enter upon any defence of Humboldt, more particularly as 

 nearly every word of censure from the poet is in fact an ac- 

 knowledgment of merit in the scientific investigator. But one 

 is involuntarily led to seek a better grounded explanation of 

 this severity, and it seems to us to be found in the dissimilarity 

 of their mental constitution and mode of intellectual develop- 

 ment. The qualities regarded by Schiller as essential to the 

 scientific investigator the faculty of imagination and a sym- 

 pathetic feeling for nature were in fact the principles upon 

 which the new natural philosophy was founded, which shortly 

 after took its rise in Jena, and was zealously advocated by 

 Sehelling, Hegel, and Steffens. These ^philosophers were cha- 

 racterised by intellectual power, depth of feeling, susceptibility 

 of temperament, and power of imagination. And by this very 

 school of natural philosophy has it been convincingly demon- 

 strated that imagination is out of place in the investigation of 

 nature, that nowhere is intuitive perception, and the indulgence 

 of fancy more dangerous and mischievous than in the province 

 of natural science, where the laws of nature in all their precision 

 and purity must be comprehended and interpreted without a 

 taint of subjective feeling. 



In Schiller's criticism we see the reflection of his own pecu- 



accusations of a similar nature. He thus wrote to Pictet on January 3, 

 1806 : 



' I have been reproached in a matter in which I think you will be able to 

 justify me. I am often accused of engaging in too many studies at once 

 botany, astronomy, comparative anatomy, &c. My reply is, how can a man 

 be prohibited from desiring to know and comprehend everything that 

 surrounds him ? It is impossible to be writing at the same time on 

 chemistry and astronomy, but it is quite possible to carry on at the same 

 time accurate observations of lunar distances and experiments on the ab- 

 sorption of gas. To a traveller, a variety of knowledge is indispensable. 

 Let the small treatises which I have written on various subjects be appealed 

 to in proof whether I have not shown myself well acquainted with those 

 subjects, and whether (as for instance in my memoir with Gay-Lussac, and 

 my work upon the nerves the result of four years' experiments) I have not 

 had perseverance in following the same object. And, in order to obtain 

 comprehensive views and recognise the bond uniting the various phenomena 

 a bond to which we give the name of Nature it is first necessary to 

 become acquainted with the individual parts before we can unite them 

 organically under the same point of view. My constant travels have greatly 

 contributed to expand my interest in a variety of subjects.' (' Le Globe, 

 Journ. geogr. de la Soc. de Geneve,' 1868, vol. vii. pp. 8, 177.) 





