RESULTS OF OBSERVATION IN THE TELLURIC PORTION 

 OF THE PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSE. 



In the attempt to grasp the inexhaustible materials 

 afforded by the study of the physical world or in other 

 words to group phenomena in such a manner as to lacili- 

 tate our insight into their causal connection, general clear- 

 ness and lucidity can only be secured where special 

 details more particularly in the long and successfully 

 cultivated fields of observation are not separated from the 

 higher points of view of cosmical unity. The telluric 

 sphere, as opposed to the uranological, is separable into 

 two portions, namely, the inorganic and the organic depart- 

 ments. The former comprises the size, form, and density 

 of our terrestrial planet ; its internal heat ; its electro-mag- 

 netic activity ; the mineral constitution of the earth's crust ; 

 the reaction of the interior of the planet on its outer surface 

 which acts dynamically by producing earthquakes, and che- 

 mically by rock-forming, and rock-metamorphosing processes ; 

 the partial covering of the solid surface by the liquid ele- 

 ment the ocean ; the contour and articulation of the up- 

 heaved earth into continents and islands ', and lastly the 

 general external gaseous investment (the atmosphere). The 

 second or organic domain comprises not the individual forms 

 of life which we have considered in the Delineation of Nature, 

 but the relations in space which they bear to the solid and 

 fluid parts of the earth's surface, the geography of plants and 

 animals, and the descent of the races and varieties of man 

 from one common, primary stock. 



This division into two domains belongs to a certain extent 

 to the ancients, who separated from the vital phenomena of 

 plants and animals such material processes as change of form 

 and the transition of matter from one body to another. In 

 the almost total deficiency of all means for increasing the 

 powers of vision, the difference between the two organisms 1 

 was based upon mere intuition, and in part upon the dogma 

 of self-nutrition (Aristot. de Anima, ii, It. i, p. 412, a 14, 



1 See Cosmos, vol. iii, p. 54. 



