14 



COSMOS. 



of self-nutrition (Aristot. *De Anima, ii., 1, t. i., p. 412, a 14, 

 Bekker), and of a spontaneous incentive to motion. This 

 kind of mental comprehension which I have named intuition, 

 together with that felicitous acumen in the power of combin- 

 ing his ideas, which was so characteristic of the Stagyrite, 

 led him to the assumption of an apparent transition from 

 the inanimate to the living, from the mere element to the 

 plant, and induced him even to adopt the view that in the 

 ever-ascending processes of plastic formation there were grad- 

 ual and intermediate stages connecting plants with the low- 

 er animals (Aristot. ,* De part Animal, iv., 5, p. 681, a 12, 

 and Hist. Animal, viii., 1, p. 588, a 4, Bekker). The history 

 of organims (taking the word history in its original sense, 

 and therefore in relation to the faunas and floras of earlier 

 periods of time) is so intimately -connected with geology, 

 with the order of succession of the superimposed terrestrial 

 strata, and with the chronometrical annals of the upheaval 

 of continents and mountains, that it has appeared most ap- 

 propriate to me, on account of the connection of great and 

 widely diffused phenomena, to avoid establishing the natural 

 division of organic and inorganic terrestrial life as the main 

 element of classification in a work treating of the Cosmos. 

 We are not here striving to give a mere morphological rep- 

 resentation of the organic world, but rather to arrive at bold 

 and comprehensive views of nature, and the forces which 

 she brings into play. 



SIZE, CONFIGURATION, AND DENSITY OF THE EARTH. THE HEAT 

 IN THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH, AND ITS DISTRIBUTION. MAG- 

 NETIC ACTIVITY, MANIFESTED *IN CHANGES OF INCLINATION, 

 DECLINATION, AND INTENSITY OF THE FORCE UNDER THE IN- 

 FLUENCE OF THE SUN'S POSITION IN REFERENCE TO THE HEAT 

 AND RAREFACTION OF THE AIR. MAGNETIC STORMS. POLAR 

 LIGHT. 



THAT which in all languages is comprehended under 

 etymologically differing symbolical forms by the expression 

 Nature, and which man, who originally refers every thing 

 to his own local habitation, has further designated as Ter- 

 restrial Nature, is the result of the silent co-operation of a 

 system of active forces, whose existence we can only recog- 

 nize by means of that which they move, blend together, and 



