THE LAST TEN YEAKS. 371 



1848, the undertaking of Cotta, the geologist, to publish a 

 series of letters upon ' Cosmos ' : ' Bernhard Cotta has been 

 making water-gruel of " Cosmos ; " what kind of salt does he 

 put in ? Epsom salts, or incrustating and petrifying gypsum ? ' 

 The question here again comes before us as to the possibility 

 of popularising science. A quarter of a century had elapsed 

 since the delivery of the lectures upon physical geography 

 when the cultivated society of Europe was carried away by 

 the senseless infatuation of table-turning. The first volumes 

 of ' Cosmos ' had been promulgated in numbers of lectures ; 

 there was no name so popular, so renowned, and so universally 

 esteemed as that of Humboldt ; science, as the foundation of 

 the modern materialistic civilisation, had become the pride of 

 the age and yet, in 1853, the ravages of an intellectual 

 epidemic wrung from the amiable Faraday the despairing 

 outcry : l ' What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, 

 superstitious, bold, frightened what a ridiculous world ours 

 is, as far as concerns the mind of man ! How full of inconsis- 

 tencies, contradictions, and absurdities it is ! ' Humboldt at 

 first was inclined to view the affair, as was his wont, in a 

 humorous light, and did not care ' to disgust the children with 

 their toy.' ' In the wearisome dulness of the present age,' he 

 wrote to Carus on April 19, 1853, 'I would not disturb such a 

 harmless pleasure.' The rapid growth, however, of this univer- 

 sal infatuation soon led him to view it in a more serious light. 

 In a letter to Grauss of May 5, he remarks : ' And then the 

 arithmetical spirit-rappings, the capricious animation of pieces 

 of wood, stones, and tables, which " can be broken in like dogs, 

 and made subservient to the will of man," together with the 

 whole nonsense of science for the million, fostered by the 

 presumptuous superficial knowledge of the so-called upper 

 classes. " If you deny table-turning," I am told, " you must 

 also deny that heat is felt on contact with the south pole of a 

 magnet and cold with the north pole."' On May 10, Grauss 

 sent the following admirable reply : { I have viewed with 

 tolerable indifference the reigning folly of the day, and have 

 even laughed heartily over some of the exhibitions, especially 

 the table-turning experiments of the Heidelberg professors. 



1 H. W. Dove's Gedachtnissrede auf A. v. Humboldt,' p. 12. 

 BB 2 



