[xii] COSMOS. 



application of the telescope. Principal epochs in the history of astro- 

 nomy and mathematics from Galileo and Kepler to Newton and 

 Leibnitz pp. 681-737 



VIII. Retrospect. Multiplicity and intimate connection of the scien- 

 tific efforts of recent times. The history of the physical sciences becomes 

 gradually associated with the history of the Cosmos . pp. 738-741 



SPECIAL SUMMAKY. 



A. Means of incitement to the Study of Nature . . pp. 370-372 



I. Poetic delineation of nature. The principal results of obser- 

 vation referring to a purely objective mode of treating a scientific 

 description of nature, have already been treated of in the picture of 

 nature ; we now, therefore, proceed to consider the reflexion of the 

 image conveyed by the external senses to the feelings and a poetically 

 framed imagination. The mode of feeling appertaining to the Greeks 

 and Komans. On the reproach advanced against these nations of 

 having entertained a leea vivid sentiment for nature. The expression, 

 of such a sentiment is more rare amongst them, solely in consequence 

 of natural descriptions being used as mere accessories in the great forms 

 of lyric and epic poetry, and all things being brought in the ancient 

 Hellenic forms of art within the sphere of humanity, and being made 

 subservient to it. Paeans to Spring, Homer, Hesiod. Tragic authors : 

 fragments of a lost work of Aristotle. Bucolic poetry, Nonnus, Antho- 

 logy, p. 379. Romans: Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Lucilius the 

 younger. A subsequent period, in which the poetic element appears only 

 as an incidental adornment of thought ; the Mosella, a poem of Ausonius. 

 Roman prose writers ; Cicero in his letters, Tacitus, Pliny. Description 

 of Roman villas p. 389. Changes in the mode of feeling and in their 

 representation produced by the diffusion of Christianity and by an 

 anchorite life. Minucius Felix in Octavius. Passages taken from the 

 writings of the fathers of the Church : Basil the Great in the wilderness 

 on the Armenian river Iris, Gregory Nyssa, Chrysostom. Melan- 

 choly and sentimental tone of feeling pp. 393-396. Influence of the 

 difference of races manifested in the different tone of feeling pervading 

 the natural descriptions of the nations of Hellenic, Italian, North Ger- 

 manic, Semitic, Persian, and Indian descent. The florid poetic litera- 

 ture of the three last-named races shows that the animated feeling for 

 nature evinced by the North Germanic races is not alone to be ascribed 

 to a long deprivation of all enjoyment of nature through a protracted 

 vinter. The opinions of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm on the chivalric 

 poetry of the Minnesingers and of the German animal epos; Celto- 

 Irish descriptions of nature p. 402. East and west Arian nations 

 (Indians and Persians). The Ramayana and Mahabharata; Sakuntala 

 and Kalidasa's Messenger of Clouds. Persian literature in the Iranian 

 highlands does not ascend beyond the period of the Sassanidse 

 p. 407. (A fragment of Theodor Goldstucker.) Finnish epic and 

 songs, collected by Elias Lonnrot from the lips of the Karelians 



