OF BARON HUMBOLDT. 21 



ments have been devised only by the rarest 

 exertions of mental skill ; their successful 

 application ever demands the co-operation of 

 intellectual agencies. 



Those scientific travellers who possess both 

 the capacity to collect material and to present 

 new scientific acquisitions in the natural order 

 and place, are very rare; but to this class 

 belongs Alexander von Humboldt; and here 

 he occupies a most conspicuous place, which 

 secured his sacred fame in the world. It 

 is requisite for such a purpose to possess 

 general and positive knowledge; an intimate 

 acquaintance with all known scientific facts ; 

 and further, a considerable talent of observa- 

 tion, and the power of generalization ; the 

 peculiar capacity to perceive in new-discovered 

 facts, with certainty and intuitively, their 

 positive place and natural connection with 

 older scientific facts; so that by this con- 

 tinued process the unity of the whole is, by 

 every step in advance, more firmly esta- 

 blished. And perhaps no one understood this 

 better than Alexander von Humboldt; and 

 his intellectual superiority is above all percep- 

 tible in the order and place which he assigned 

 to the rich treasures of his own observation 

 and experience, in connection with all former 



