6 SPECIAL RESULTS OF OBSERVATION IN THE DOMAIN 



extent of the continental masses in the vertical as well as in 

 the horizontal direction. These features of the earth's 

 surface constitute, in their turn, conditions on which depend 

 the thermic state of oceanic currents, the meteorological 



J O 



processes of the aerial covering of our planet, and the geo- 

 graphical and typical distribution and extension of animal 

 and vegetable forms. This brief allusion to the order and 

 manner in which the various telluric phenomena are pre- 

 sented, in the view or picture of Nature in the first volume 

 of my work, is, I think, sufficient to shew that the mere 

 bringing together of great and apparently complicated 

 results of observation, may promote insight into their causal 

 connection. On the other hand, the interpretation of 

 Nature is obscured when the description languishes under 

 too great an accumulation of insulated facts. 



If, in a carefully designed objective representation of the 

 world of phsenomena, completeness in the enumeration of par- 

 ticulars ought not to be desired, neither should it be sought 

 for in the description of the reflex of external nature on the 

 human mind. Here it was needful to draw the limits still 

 closer. The measureless domain of human thought, fer- 

 tilised for thousands of years by the impulses and powers 

 of mental activity, presents in different races, and at dif- 

 ferent stages of civilisation, at one time a cheerful, and at 

 another a melancholy, aspect ; ( 2 ) a delicate appreciation of 

 the beautiful in nature, or a dull insensibility to all that 

 she can display. At an early period we see the human 

 mind directed to the deification of natural forces or powers, 

 and of certain objects of the material universe ; at a later 

 period it followed religious impulses of a higher and more 

 purely spiritual character. ( 3 ) The internal reflex of external 



