414 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



civilisation, grouped with Isis, Aphrodite, and Roma in the 

 attitude of reading a book inscribed ' Cosmos.' No one would 

 dream of interpreting Grimm's expression to allude to William 

 von Humboldt, although his imaginative productions would 

 bring him apparently much nearer to the great founder of 

 Grerman literature : it is a remarkable fact that the fame of 

 the younger brother little as he would have desired it has 

 so far eclipsed that of his elder brother that wherever the 

 name of Humboldt stands alone Alexander is always meant. 

 By men of science at least those of a mental calibre equal to 

 Grimm or Kaulbach Humboldt would never have been placed 

 side by side with the greatest poet of the last century, one of 

 the most comprehensive geniuses that has ever lived, nor 

 would his great work ' Cosmos ' have been chosen as an em- 

 blem of the ceaseless progress of modern investigation. The 

 achievements for which science is indebted to Humboldt are 

 of a character to be easily enumerated. However exaggerated 

 may be the modesty that led him in a moment of depression 

 to assert : 1 ' I know that in the realm of science I shall leave 

 behind me but a faint track,' it is yet true that the track he 

 has left in the world of thought of his century is neither so 

 deep nor so marked as to permit his name to be applied to the 

 whole or even a part of this high road of progress. Nor do we 

 find a sufficient cause for the splendour of his name in the 

 countless services he rendered to science by the powerful influ- 

 ence he was able to exert in inciting others to labour. It is 

 to be expected that a just estimate of the value of his achieve- 

 ments, now confined to the student of individual branches of 

 science, will in a future age become universal. 



In the world of knowledge, however, ' the intellectual world 

 proper,' as Humboldt used to term it, there are various degrees 

 of fame ; for, as in the philosophy of Spinosa, in which the unity 

 of Nature is pre-eminently maintained, Nature is yet divided 

 into two separate conditions active and passive so in the 

 phenomena of mental endowments we discover that genius 

 divides itself into active and passive. The former, by its crea- 

 tive activity, is directed to the attainment of new ideas ; the 

 latter, by assimilating in its comprehensive grasp the knowledge 



1 H. W. Dove's < Gedachtnissrede/ p. 13. 



