40 COSMOS. 



of the fifteenth century, to Lord Bacon, and from Bacon to 

 D'Alembert ; and in recent times to an eminent physicist, 

 Andre Marie Ampere.* The selection of an inappropriate 

 Greek nomenclature has, perhaps, been even more prejudicial 

 to the last of these attempts than the injudicious use of binary 

 divisions, and the excessive multiplication of groups. 



The physical description of the world, considering the uni- 

 verse as an object of the external senses, does undoubtedly 

 require the aid of general physics and of descriptive natural 

 history, but the contemplation of all created things, which are 

 linked together, and form one whole, animated by internal 

 forces, gives to the science we are considering a peculiar cha- 

 racter. Physical science considers only the general properties 

 of bodies ; it is the product of abstraction, a generalization 

 of perceptible phenomena ; and even in the work in which 

 were laid the first foundations of general physics, in the 

 eight books on physics of Aristotle,f all the phenomena of 

 nature are considered as depending upon the primitive and 

 vital action of one sole force, from which emanate all the 

 movements of the universe. The terrestrial portion of phy- 

 sical cosmography, for which I would willingly retain the 

 expressive designation of physical geography, treats of the dis- 

 tribution of magnetism in our planet with relation to its 

 intensity and direction, but does not enter into a considera- 



the beginning of the sixteenth century, and Chasles, the learned author of 

 L'Aperfu Historique des Methodes en Geometric (1837), has shown the 

 great importance of Reisch's Encyclopaedia in the history of mathematics 

 in the middle ages. I have had recourse to a passage in the Margarita 

 Philosophica, found only in the edition of 1513, to elucidate the important 

 question of the relations between the statements of the geographer of 

 Saint-Die, Hylacomilus (Martin Waldseemiiller), the first who gave the 

 name of America to the New Continent, and those of Amerigo Vespucci, 

 Rene, King of Jerusalem and Duke of Lorraine, as also those contained in 

 the celebrated editions of Ptolemy, of 1513 and 1522. See my Examen 

 Critique de la Geographic du Nouveau Continent, et des Proyres de V As- 

 tronomic Nautique aux 15e et 16? Siecles, t. iv., pp. 99 125. 



* Ampere, Essai sur la Phil, des Sciences, 1834, p. 25. Whewell, 

 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii., p. 277. Park, Pantology, 

 p. 87. 



f All changes in the physical world may be reduced to motion. Aris- 

 tot., Phyx. Anne., iii., 1 and 4, pp. 200, 201. Bekker, viii., 1, 8, and 9, 

 pp. 250, 262, 265. De Genore <>t Com, ii., 10, p. 336 Pseudo- 

 Aristot., J} Mundo. cap. vi.. j> 398 



