82 COSMOS. 



to distant regions. The belief in the uncommon and the won- 

 derful lends a definite outline to every manifestation of ideal 

 creation ; and the realm of fancy — a fairy-land of cosmolog- 

 ical, geognostical, and magnetic visions — becomes thus invol- 

 untarily blended vv^ith the domain of reaUty. 



Nature, in the manifold signification of the word — whether 

 considered as the universality of all that is and ever will be — 

 as the inner moving force of all phenomena, or as their mys- 

 terious prototype — reveals itself to the simple mind and feel- 

 ings of man as something earthly, and closely allied to him- 

 self It is only within the animated circles of organic struc- 

 ture that we feel ourselves peculiarly at home. Thus, 

 wherever the earth unfolds her fruits and flowers, and gives 

 food to countless tribes of animals, there the image of nature 

 impresses itself most vividly upon our senses. The impression 

 thus produced upon our minds limits itself almost exclusively 

 to the reflection of the earthly. The starry vault and the 

 wide expanse of the heavens belong to a picture of the uni- 

 verse, in which the magnitude of masses, the number of con- 

 gregated suns and faintly glimmering nebulae, although they 

 excite our wonder and astonishment, manifest themselves to 

 us in apparent isolation, and as utterly devoid of all evidence 

 of their being the scenes of organic life. Thus, even in the 

 earliest physical views of mankind, heaven and earth have 

 been separated and opposed to one another as an upper and 

 lower portion of space. If, then, a picture of nature were to 

 correspond to the requirements of contemplation by the senses, 

 it ought to begin with a delineation of our native earth. It 

 should depict, first, the terrestrial planet as to its size and 

 form ; its increasing density and heat at increasing depths in 

 its superimposed solid and liquid strata ; the separation of sea 

 and land, and the vital forms animating both, developed in 

 the cellular tissues of plants and animals ; the atmospheric 

 ocean, with its waves and currents, through which pierce the 

 forest-crowned summits of our mountain chains. After this 

 delineation of purely telluric relations, the eye would rise to 

 the celestial regions, and the Earth would then, as the well- 

 known seat of organic development, be considered as a planet, 

 occupying a place in the series of those heavenly bodies which 

 circle round one of the innumerable host of self-luminous stars. 

 This succession of ideas indicates the course pursued in the 

 earliest stages of perceptive contemplation, and reminds us of 

 the ancient conception of the " sea-girt disk of earth," sup- 

 porting the vault of heaven. It begins to exercise its action 



