THE LAST TEN YEARS. 369 



tempted. ' In collecting material/ remarks Humboldt, in allu- 

 ding to the astronomical portion, 1 ' I have taken down notes from 

 the lips of Laplace, Arago, Davy, and Wollaston, and in later 

 times from Bessel, Encke, Argelander, and Melloni. Thanks to 

 my love of knowledge, few men have reaped so largely from in- 

 tercourse with their illustrious contemporaries in the space of 

 sixty-two years ; for so long is it since, through George Forster, 

 I was led to make acquaintance with the giants of a former 

 age, Sir Joseph Banks, Cavendish, and William Herschel. 

 Both the text and the numerous notes bear witness to my in- 

 dustry, love of truth, and readiness to acknowledge the services 

 of those who have assisted me.' In these words there is no 

 exaggeration ; they exhibit with great modesty the value of 

 6 Cosmos ' as a record of science and intellectual progress. As 

 in the great Code of Justinian, to which we have already com- 

 pared it, the historical value would remain unimpaired, even 

 if not one of the principles there laid down found recognition 

 in the present day, so ' Cosmos ' will ever remain a valuable 

 record of the history of science, and of its stage of develop- 

 ment, during the period from the close of the eighteenth to the 

 middle of the nineteenth century. The more Humboldt availed 

 himself of the labour of others, the more complete on this very 

 account did his work become. It is very remarkable how, in 

 collecting material, he made precisely the same use of his 

 own productions as he did of the writings of his friends ; it 

 is clearly evident from ' Cosmos ' that with the ' Examen 

 critique ' Humboldt's power of originality became exhausted, 

 and that in physics he produced nothing new after he left 

 Paris. In later years, while engaged in collecting, arranging, 

 sifting, and compiling in preparation for this work, he was 

 accustomed to refer to his own early investigations and writings 

 with the same readiness, and to accord them the same autho- 

 rity, that he yielded to the researches of Arago or Leopold von 

 Buch. 



With a just sense of the value given to ' Cosmos ' by this 



record of the actual condition of science, Humboldt wrote to 



his publisher, on December 15, 1850: 'On account of the 



mass of material contained in " Cosmos," the most valuable por- 



1 'Briefe an Bunsen/ p, 139. 



VOL. II. B B 



