162 SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS 



The abundance of his material proved a 

 valuable present to men of science, illuminated, 

 as it was, by perfect order and classification. 

 The general survey of his investigations, which 

 he presented at the evening of his splendid 

 career to his native country, he dated from the 

 period when he first appeared as a public 

 teacher his lectures in Berlin. 



Humboldt perceived, more than any one else, 

 the great difficulty in producing a work which 

 would furnish a faithful and lasting picture of 

 a world engaged in the perpetual process of 

 formation and development.* He had ever 

 in view the continually increasing insight of 

 mankind into nature's laws, and the extension 

 of natural phenomena. 



Works on natural philosophy lose their ap- 

 plicability in process of time, and disappear. 

 Humboldt, however, one of the most faithful 



* " I grow, I grow. All is nascent, infant. When we 

 are dizzied with the arithmetic of the savant toiling to com- 

 pute the length of her line, the return of her curve, we are 

 steadied by the perception that a great deal is doing ; that 

 all seems just begun ; remote aims are in active accomplish- 

 ment. We can point nowhere to anything final ; but 

 tendency appears on all hands : planet, system, constellation . 

 total nature is growing like a field of maize in July ; is 

 becoming something else; is in rapid metamorphosis." 

 (R. W. Emerson's Oration, " The Method of Nature") 



