COSMOS. 



RESULTS OF OBSERVATION IN THE TELLURIC PORTION 

 OF THE PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSE. 



IN the attempt to grasp the inexhaustible materials afford- 

 ed by the study of the physical world ; or, in other words, 

 to group phenomena in such a manner as to facilitate our in- 

 sight into their causal connection, general clearness and lu- 

 cidity can only be secured where special details more par- 

 ticularly in the long and successfully cultivated fields of ob- 

 servation are not separated from the higher points of view 

 of cosmical unity. The telluric sphere, as opposed to the 

 uranological, is separable into two portions, namely, the in- 

 organic and the organic departments. The former comprises 

 the size, form, and density of our terrestrial planet ; its in- 

 ternal heat ; its electro-magnetic activity ; the mineral con- 

 stitution of the earth's crust ; the reaction of the interior of 

 the planet on its outer surface which acts dynamically by 

 producing earthquakes, and chemically by rock-forming, and 

 rock-metamorphosing processes ; the partial covering of the 

 solid surface by the liquid element the ocean ; the contour 

 and articulation of the upheaved earth into continents and 

 islands ; and, lastly, the general external gaseous investment 

 (the atmosphere). The second or organic domain comprises 

 not the individual forms of life which we have considered in 

 the Delineation of- Nature, but the relations in space which 

 they bear to the solid and fluid parts of the earth's surface, 

 the geography of plants and animals, and the descent of the 

 races and varieties of man from one common, primary stock. 



This division into two domains belongs, to a certain extent, 

 to the ancients, who separated from the vital phenomena of 

 plants and animals such material processes as change of form 

 and the transition of matter from one body to another. In 

 the almost total deficiency of all means for increasing the 

 powers of vision, the difference between the two organisms* 

 was based upon mere intuition, and in part upon the dogma 

 * See Cosmos, vol. iii., p. 42. 



