412 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



it seemed as if the arrogant town was bent on taking ven- 

 geance on her noblest son for his unfriendly satire, by which, 

 however, he had proved most clearly his descent from her. The 

 interment took place with country simplicity on the morning 

 of the llth. Along the avenue of limes and by the shores of 

 the lake, the world-renowned traveller took his last short jour- 

 ney home, to repose by the side of his distinguished brother, 

 within that venerable enclosure surrounded by dark pines, upon 

 which, from a slender Ionic column, the ideal creation of hope 

 looks down with serenity, one might almost say with com- 

 placency. 



In a letter to Varnhagen of November 30, 1856, Alexander 

 von Humboldt had remarked : l ' It is not in general till a 

 man is dead and buried that the world begins to discuss what 

 he has believed and what he has not believed.' In the case of 

 Humboldt, a discussion of this nature was almost inevitable, 

 especially as upon the vital questions of faith he had, as Hoff- 

 mann justly pointed out in the funeral sermon, maintained a 

 reserve amounting almost to shyness. It was indeed a charac- 

 teristic of Humboldt's faith that he brought into it the modesty 

 of science, and in presence of the unknown felt called upon to 

 renounce distinct hypotheses. His system of Pantheism, or 

 Naturalism, differed from that of his distinguished contempo- 

 raries and fellow-countrymen chiefly in this, that he held him- 

 self aloof from any attempt to reduce it to formulae. To this 

 many things had contributed, the warning voice of Kant's 

 philosophy, his own realistic tendencies and pursuits, but 

 above all his cautious temperament. We shall leave it to the 

 hyenas of orthodoxy to drag from the grave of the dead that 

 which he to some extent kept concealed from himself. 



Notwithstanding the tumult of warlike preparation resound- 

 ing in all quarters, the news of Humboldt's death was received 

 throughout the civilised world with feelings of deep sympathy. 

 It is unnecessary to enumerate the various languages in which 

 he was made the subject of a graceful eloge, or the numerous 

 monuments which were erected or proposed to his memory, nor 

 is it needful to give a list of the scientific institutions inaugu- 

 rated in his honour, or of the places in the New World to which 



1 < Briefe an Varnhagen,' No. 188. 



