PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. T-^ I 



coasts, many straits and isthmuses. Such a configuration of 

 continents and of islands that have been partly severed and 

 partly upheaved by volcanic agency in rows or in far project- 

 ing fissures, early led to geognostic views regarding eruptions, 

 terrestrial revolutions, and outpourings of the swollen higher 

 seas into those below them. The Euxine, the Dardanelles, 

 the Straits of Gades, and the Mediterranean, with its numer- 

 ous islands, were well fitted to draw attention to such a sys- 

 tem of sluices. The Orphic Argonaut, who probably lived in 

 Christian times, has interwoven old mythical narrations in his 

 composition. He sings of the division of the ancient Lyktonia 

 into separate islands, " when the dark-haired Poseidon, in an- 

 ger with Father Kronion, struck Lyktonia with the golden 

 trident." Similar fancies, which may often certainly have 

 sprung from an imperfect know^ledge of geographical relatione, 

 were frequently elaborated in the erudite Alexandrian school, 

 which was so partial to every thing connected with antiquity. 

 Whether the myth of the breaking up of Atlantis be a vague 

 and western reflection of that of Lyktonia, as I have else- 

 where shown to be probable, or whether, according to Otfried 

 Miiller, " the destruction of Lyktonia (Leukoma) refers to the 

 Samothracian legend of a great flood which changed the form 

 of that district,"* is a question that it is unnecessary here to 

 decide. 



* Ukert, Geogr. dcr Griechen und Romer, th. i., abth. 2, s. 345-348, 

 and th. ii.,abth. 1, s. 194; Johannes v. Miiller, Werke, bd. i., s. 38 ; Hum- 

 boldt, Examen Critique, t. i., p. 112 and 171 ; Otfried Miiller, Minyer, 

 s. 64 ; and the latter, again, in a too favorable critique of my memoir 

 on the Mythische Geographic der Griechen {Gott. gelehrte Anzeigen, 

 1838). I expressed myself as follows: "In raising questions which 

 are of so great importance with respect to philological studies, I can 

 not wholly pass over all mention of that which belongs less to the de- 

 scription of the actual world than to the cycle of mythical geography. 

 It is the same with space as with time. History can not be treated 

 from a philosophical point of view, if the heroic ages be wholly lost 

 sight of. National myths, when blended with history and geography, 

 can not be regarded as appertaining wholly to the domain of the ideal 

 world. Although vagueness is one of its distinctive attributes, and sym- 

 bols cover reality by a more or less thick vail, myths, when intimately 

 connected together, nevertheless reveal the ancient source from which 

 the earliest glimpses of cosmography and physical science have been 

 derived. The facts recorded in primitive history and geography are 

 not mere ingenious fables, but rather the reflection of the opinion gen- 

 erally admitted regarding the actual world." The great investigator 

 of antiquity (whose opinion is so favorable to me, and whose early 

 death in the land of Greece, on which he had bestowed such profound 

 and varied research, has been universally lamented) considered, on the 

 contrary, that " the cliief part of the poetic idea of the earth, as it oc 



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