FROM ACCESSION OF FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 311 



phenomena ; the ideal conception of c Cosmos ' will, therefore, 

 as such ever retain its value : in the same way as it has not 

 suffered hitherto from the rapid strides made in modern physics 

 and mathematics. The ideality of that immortal work will 

 ever meet a want felt in the human mind, and, as we feel 

 constrained to add, has ever satisfied that want. Humboldt has 

 himself traced the history of the development of ' Cosmos,' 

 from the time that the idea first floated before him as ' a 

 dim consciousness of a unity in the midst of changing phe- 

 nomena,' up to the period at which he was able to endow it 

 with a definite form. In its ideal completeness, he is not the 

 less to be regarded as its author, although in this very com- 

 pleteness he has to acknowledge the obligations he is under 

 to many of his contemporaries. 



In proof of this, we have biit to call to mind the intimate 

 communion he enjoyed in his earlier years with the most dis- 

 tinguished minds in the idealistic school of his country, one 

 might almost say of his century. To avoid needless repetition, 1 

 we shall here refer merely to some expressions of Groethe and 

 Herder, who, powerfully influenced by the teachings of Spinoza, 

 were eagerly directing their genius to the comprehension of 

 the unity of Nature in the midst of her multifarious phenomena. 

 In the soliloquy of 'Faust,' published as a fragment in 1790, 

 but composed much earlier, the universe is, with unmistakable 

 clearness, depicted in the lofty poetic strains of that wonderful 

 description of the ' Sign of the Macrocosm ' as an harmonious 

 whole, the several elements of which work together with 

 sympathetic reciprocity. Nor is the purely ideal character 

 of the conception unsupported by the truths of science less 

 forcibly given in Faust's exclamation : 2 



How grand a show ! "but, ah 1 a show alone. 



_ Nature in her infinity appears to him incomprehensible. 

 J Even Herder had, in 1784, thrown out suggestions for a 

 description of the physical aspect at least of our own globe, 

 which, with the addition of astronomical facts, would naturally 

 give ripe to a description of the physical universe. At the 



1 See vol. i. ch. iv. f Weimar and Jena/ pp. 161-210. 

 3 l Welch Schauspiel ! aber ach, ein Schauspiel nur ! ' 



