PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 477 



have been revealed to the primitive races of men the natural 

 philosophy ascribed to savage nations, and since obscured by 

 civilisation belongs to a sphere of science or rather of belief, 

 which is foreign to the object of the present work. We find 

 this belief deeply rooted in the most ancient Indian doctrine 

 of Krischna. * "Truth was originally implanted in mankind, 

 but having been suffered gradually to slumber, it was finally 

 forgotten, knowledge returning to us since that period as a 

 recollection." We will not attempt to decide the question 

 whether the races, which we at present term savage, are all 

 in a condition of original wildness, or whether, as the struc- 

 ture of their languages often allows of our conjecturing, many 

 among them may not be tribes that have degenerated into a 

 wild state, remaining as the scattered fragments saved from 

 the wreck of a civilisation that was early lost. A more inti- 

 mate acquaintance with these so-called children of nature 

 reveals no traces of that superiority of knowledge regarding 

 terrestrial forces, which a love of the marvellous has led men 

 to ascribe to these rude nations. A vague and terror-stricken 

 feeling of the unity of natural forces, is no doubt awakened in 

 the breast of the savage, but such a feeling has nothing in 

 common with the attempt to prove, by the power of thought, 

 the connection that exists among all phenomena. True cos- 

 mical views are the result of observation and ideal combination, 

 and of a long- continued communion with the external world; 

 nor are they a work of a single people, but the fruits yielded 

 by reciprocal communication, and by a great if not general 

 intercourse between different nations. 



As in the considerations on the reflection of the external 

 world on the powers of the imagination, at the beginning of 

 this section of the present work, I selected from the general 

 history of literature, examples illustrative of the expression of 

 an animated feeling for nature, so in the history of the contem- 

 plation of the universe, I would likewise bring forward from the 

 general history of civilisation, whatever may serve to indicate 

 the progress that has been made towards the recognition of the 

 unity of nature. Both portions not separated arbitrarily, 

 but by determined principles have the same relations to one 

 another as the studies from which they have been borrowed. 



* Wilhelm ron Humboldt, Uefier eine Episode des Maha-Bharata, in 

 bis Oesammeltt Werke, bd. i. 8. 73 



