

FKOM ACCESSION OF FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 313 



no better process than that of a deceptive phantasy, Hum- 

 boldt even at that time stood among them, not, indeed, as the 

 first, but as one of the earliest and most distinguished repre- 

 sentatives of a school of experimental philosophy, which we 

 justly designate as the experimental philosophy of the nine- 

 teenth century. In him may be said to be united the two 

 schools of philosophy, so brilliantly represented during the 

 closing years of the last century. On this account he was at 

 the same time exposed to the censure of the representatives 

 of either system. The well-known criticism of Schiller, 1 that 

 ' the same susceptibility of temperament is needed for the con- 

 templation of Nature in the most insignificant of her phe- 

 nomena as in the grandest of her laws' a criticism in 

 harmony with the teachings of Groethe is but the protest of the 

 ideal system of intuitive thought of that age against the intro- 

 duction of an earnest spirit of investigation, such as, if we 

 except Lessing and Kant, was unknown to the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, notwithstanding its great philosophers Voltaire, Montes- 

 quieu, Herder, andGroethe. The 'keen cold reason' condemned 

 by Schiller, because it would ' have all nature shamelessly ex- 

 posed to scrutiny,' has become the pride of the succeeding 

 generation, among whom philosophers would be ashamed to 

 employ a system of less rigorous investigation. Fourcroy, from 

 whom Humboldt suffered a criticism directly opposed to that 

 of Schiller, anticipated 2 the censure that has since been ex- 

 pressed by various distinguished mathematicians and physicists 

 concerning the tendency to generalise evinced in * Cosmos.' 

 They noticed, with surprise, that Humboldt excused himself in 

 the preface for having devoted several years almost exclusively 

 to the study of individual branches of science ; they forgot that 

 this was an echo from the past century. Division of labour in 

 the meantime had been adopted as a ruling principle in the 

 world of science ; thousands of industrious observers, each intent 

 upon his own particular field of research, and looking neither 

 to the right hand nor to the left, devoted themselves in the 

 most painstaking and indefatigable manner to individual sub- 

 jects of investigation. They were conscious that their strength 



1 See vol. i. p. 187, &c. 



2 Vol. i. p. 197. 



