FEOM ACCESSION OP FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 309 



being investigated by Montesquieu, and their morals satirised 

 by Voltaire, Herder did not despair, from the analysis of 

 national poetry, of securing a comprehensive view of the de- 

 velopment and history of man. In such an atmosphere, the 

 conception of a universal science was almost inevitable. 



This science of physics, or of cosmology, 1 as we may term it, 

 when speaking exclusively of Humboldt's undertaking, is to be 

 carefully distinguished from the pure philosophy of nature, the 

 physico-mathematical theory of the universe. If, in picturing 

 the movements towards the generalisation of ideas charac- 

 terising the last century, we failed to include philosophy, 

 properly so called, it is because philosophy in all ages has a 

 natural tendency to generalisation. The natural philosophy of 

 Newton possessed a like tendency, but as a system could pro- 

 ceed no further than the limits proscribed to its deductions by 

 the actual state of science. At the period of which we speak 

 this philosophy found its representative in Kant,, the last 

 great exponent of the metaphysics of nature, by whose original 

 speculations this philosophy was carried'even beyond the prin- 

 ciples advanced by Newton. With all his admiration for 

 Kant, 2 Humboldt felt no more impelled than the rest of his 

 generation to carry on the development of this- the highest 

 order of philosophy ; and although his mind, far from being 

 of a speculative or mathematical turn, was mainly given to 

 inductive reasoning, his expressions were often of a conclu- 

 sive character. Nor had the time arrived for a more com- 

 plete development of this philosophy ; as the Newtonian theory 

 had necessarily been preceded by an age of empirical investi- 

 gation, so before the erection of a scheme of philosophy in 

 which nature was to be revealed through a higher process of 

 deduction, it was requisite that a suitable foundation should 

 first be laid through a system of experiment and inductive 

 reasoning prosecuted continuously for a series of years. It 

 was during this preparatory period that the ideas brought 

 out in ' Cosmos ' suggested themselves to Humboldt's mind ; 



1 In support of the following deductions we refer our readers to l Kosmos/ 

 vol. i. pp. 49-78 ; vol. ii. pp. 341-400, 496-520 ; vol. iii. pp. 3-34 ; vol. Y. 

 pp. 3-22. 



a See particularly ' Kosmos,' vol. v. pp. 7, 8. 



