OF THE COSMOS. INTRODUCTION. 11 



mental labour, the boundaries of which are hereby marked, 

 consist in the elevating consciousness of the infinite nature of 

 the object of its efforts, the comprehension of the unknown 

 and inexhaustible fulness of creation, whether formed or in 

 process of formation, whether existing or to be hereafter 

 developed. 



Such efforts, acting throughout all ages, must have led 

 often, and under many various forms, to the illusory 

 hope of having attained the goal, and found the prin- 

 ciple by which all that is variable in the material 

 universe, the totality of all the phsenomena which are cog- 

 nizable by the senses, might be explained. After a long 

 period in which, in conformity with the early fundamental 

 mode of contemplation of the Hellenic national mind, the 

 forming, transforming, and destroying forces of nature had 

 been honoured as divine or spiritual powers, clothed in 

 human forms, ( 10 ) there became developed amidst the phy- 

 siological fancies of the Ionic school the germ of a scientific 

 contemplation of Nature. The first cause of all phenomena 

 was explained in two different directions ( n ), sometimes ac- 

 cording to mechanical, and sometimes according to dynamic 

 views, from the assumption of concrete corporeal princi- 

 ples called " elements of nature," or from processes of 

 rarefaction and condensation. The hypothesis, primarily 

 perhaps of Indian origin, of four or five substantially dif- 

 ferent elements, has continued, from the didactic poem of 

 Empedocles to the most recent times, to mingle itself with 

 all systems of natural philosophy, forming an evidence and 

 monument of high antiquity of man's desire to seek for the 

 generalisation and simplification of ideas, not only in forces, 

 but also in the qualitative essences of substances. 



In the later development of the Ionic physiology, An ax- 



