SIDEEEAL ASTRONOMY. 313 



becomes a loose and almost metaphysical abstraction, 

 upon the opposite plan, an embodiment of facts and details 

 so various and endless as utterly to set at nought all power 

 of compression or scientific arrangement. The expression of 

 Seneca, designating his idea of the Divinity of the Universe, 

 ( quod vides totum et quod non vides totum,' has, in some 

 points, close relation to our author's conception of the 

 Cosmos ; which is here and there denoted in terms savouring 

 more of the school of Fichte and Schelling than of the sober 

 severity of modern science. We presume it likely that 

 Humboldt had before him the idea, if not the words, of 

 D'Alembert, 6 L'Univers, pour qui saurait 1'embrasser d'un 

 seul point de vue, ne serait qu'un fait unique, et une grande 

 verite' a phrase intelligible in no other sense than as it 

 points to that unity of creation and of the Divine power, 

 which, while establishing through the elementary forces 

 mutual relations among the most remote bodies of the 

 universe, has equally designed the most subtle atomical rela- 

 tions of matter, and those exquisite organic textures which 

 minister to the functions of life in its numberless forms on 

 our own globe.* 



The difficulties and incongruities resulting from this struggle 

 between the abstractions of a name, and the real genius and 

 acquirements of the author, are apparent in the methods and 

 construction of the whole work. We see them in the frequent 



* The conceptions of Goethe, as embodied in his strenuous verse, were 

 doubtless also present to our author's mind in forming the scheme of the 

 Cosmos : 



' TJnd hier schliesst die Natur den Ring der ewigen Krafte, 



Doch ein neuer sogleich fasset den Vorigen an ; 



Pass die Kette sich fort durch alle Zeiten vorlange, 



Und das Ganze belebt, so wie das Einzelne sey.' 



The ' Traite du Monde ' of Descartes, and the ' Cosmotheoros ' of Huyghens, 

 may occur here to some of our readers. But the first work was never published 

 entire ; the second was little worthy of the name of Huyghens ; and neither of 

 them could suggest anything to the mind of Humboldt, so well exercised in the 

 sounder science of the present day. 



