86 ALEXANDEE VON HUMBOLDT. 



teachings of Schleiermacher, who by his writings, his personal 

 character, and his pulpit ministrations, exercised a powerful 

 influence over a promiscuous and influential, if not a very large 

 section of the community. But even this healthier tone of 

 thought failed to afford a soil much better prepared for the 

 reception of scientific truth. Humboldt was by nature more 

 allied to this school than to that of Hegel. There was much 

 to attract him in its benevolent sentiments, conveyed in the 

 language of subtle reasoning, sparkling with flashes of intellec- 

 tual power; but to him the manner in which pure worldly 

 matter-of-fact views were combined with the sublime mysteries 

 of faith and emotional feeling must have been almost repellant. 

 Although not wholly a stranger to the power of religious senti- 

 ment, he is always extremely careful in his writings, whenever 

 there is the slightest allusion to the subject, to keep it in 

 marked separation from any scientific reasoning. In his 

 character as scientific investigator he could only approach the 

 spiritual world in the attitude of a sceptical critic, if not of 

 an incredulous rationalist, for he had by education ever been 

 led to think for himself. 



It may be objected that it is surely too much to say that a 

 man like Humboldt could find no sympathy in the society of 

 Berlin, as above described, especially as he, the most distin- 

 guished savant of his day, could not have been 'indifferent to the 

 progress of science in Germany, of which his native city, since the 

 establishment of the University, had become a powerful centre. 

 That Berlin was even at this time to some extent worthy of 

 such a designation, may be gathered from a hasty glance through 

 the ' Gelehrtes Berlin im Jahre 1825,' where a general review 

 of the state of society is given by Julius Eduard Hitzig. 1 But 

 there does not appear to have been any of that concentration 

 of scientific energy perhaps scarcely to be regretted so con- 

 spicuous at Paris ; men of science laboured, isolated from the 

 public, and maintained among themselves no bond of union. 

 Each student of science lived almost exclusively within his 

 own family circle, rarely was there an interchange of thought 

 with any fellow-labourer; unlike art and literature, science 



1 'Gelehrtes Berlin im Jahre 1825 ' (Berlin, 1826). 



