\ 200 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



in his youth Humboldt was too really great to be vain in the 

 ordinary sense of the word. Where he appears vain, and where 

 he himself confesses to vanity, he employs the word only as a 

 means to indicate the importance of the subject upon which he 

 is engaged. 



In later years Schiller referred to many of his early expres- 

 sions of opinion with almost a feeling of horror. Among them 

 must, without doubt, be classed his censure of Alexander von 

 Humboldt. He lived to see the universal homage paid to 

 Humboldt on his return from America, on August 3, 1804. 

 The friendship existing between them to the death of Schiller, 

 the high esteem which Humboldt during his long life ever 

 cherished for the man of genius so early separated from him, the 

 friendly interest he manifested towards Schiller's family, were 

 never interrupted by the slightest veil of misunderstanding, not 

 even when Schiller's severe judgment was brought under his 

 notice at the time that the correspondence between Schiller 

 and Korner was preparing for the press. He used to term hasty 

 judgments of this nature, into which he was himself frequently 

 betrayed through the excitement of feeling, ' momentary ebul- 

 litions.' The same feeling that led Korner, upon the rumour of 

 Humboldt's appointment as President of the Berlin Academy in 

 September 1804, to at once anticipate that such a step would 

 be productive of advantage to Schiller, likewise instigated 

 Schiller's sister-in-law, Caroline von Wolzogen, to cherish till 

 her latest hour the valued letters of Alexander von Humboldt 

 as one of her greatest treasures. 



Let us now consider the attitude assumed by Humboldt, the 

 scientific investigator, towards the modern school of philosophy 

 emanating from Jena. 



Humboldt had been educated in the liberal school of philo- 

 sophy rendered so popular by Mendelssohn and Engel, side 

 by side with the severe rules of thought and perception 

 inculcated by Kant. The fundamental separation now recog- 

 nised between philosophy and science was not then acknow- 

 ledged. The object of Kant's philosophy was not to increase 

 knowledge by the exercise of pure reason, for its chief propo- 

 sition was that all knowledge of truth must be learnt by 

 experience; its aim was only to test the accuracy of our 



