CONTEMPLATION OP THE UNIVERSE. 109 



cal comparison of languages leads us to trace the native 

 country of certain productions which, since the earliest 

 times, have been important objects of trade and barter. We 

 find that the Sanscrit names of true Indian productions, 

 rice, cotton, nard, and sugar, have passed into the Greek, 

 and partly even into the Semitic languages. ( 143 ) 



The considerations here indicated, and illustrated by 

 examples, lead us to regard the comparative study of lan- 

 guages as an important means towards arriving, through scien- 

 tific and true philologic investigations, at a generalisation of 

 views in regard to the relationships of different portions of 

 the human race, which, it has been conjectured, have ex- 

 tended themselves by lines radiating from several points. 



We see from what has been said, that the intellectual 

 aids to the gradual development of the science of the Cos- 

 mos are of very various kinds : they include, for example, the 

 examination of the structure of language, the decipherment 

 of ancient inscriptions and historical monuments in hiero- 

 glyphics and arrow-headed characters, and the increased 

 perfection of mathematics, and especially of that powerful 

 analytical calculus, which brings within our intellectual 

 grasp the figure of the earth, the tides of the ocean, and the 

 regions of space. To these aids we must add, lastly, the 

 material inventions, which have made for us, as it were, 

 new organs, heightening the power of the senses, and 

 bringing men into closer communication with terrestrial 

 forces, and with distant worlds. Noticing here only those 

 instruments wliich mark great epochs in the history of the 

 knowledge of nature, we may name the telescope, and its too 

 long delayed combination with instruments for angular 

 determinations ; the compound microscope, which affords 



