INTRODUCTION. 47 



descriptive natural history, geology, or mathematical astron- 

 omy ? I think we ought to distinguish here between him 

 whose task it is to collect the individual details of various 

 observations, and study the mutual relations existing among 

 them, and him to whom these relations are to be revealed, 

 under the form of general results. The former should be ac- 

 quainted with the specialities of phenomena, that he may ar- 

 rive at a generalization of ideas as the result, at least in part, 

 of his own observations, experiments, and calculations. It 

 can not be denied, that where there is an absence of positive 

 knowledge of physical phenomena, the general results which 

 impart so great a charm to the study of nature can not all 

 be made equally clear and intelligible to the reader, but still 

 I venture to hope, that in the work which I am now prepar- 

 ing on the physical laws of the universe, the greater part of 

 the facts advanced can be made manifest without the neces- 

 sity of appealing to fundamental views and principles. The 

 picture of nature thus drawn, notwithstanding the want of 

 distinctness of some of its outlines, will not be the less able to 

 enrich the intellect, enlarge the .sphere of ideas, and nourish 

 and vivify the imagination. 



There is, perhaps, some truth in the accusation advanced 

 against many German scientific works, that they lessen the 

 value of general views by an accumulation of detail, and do 

 not sufficiently distinguish between those great results which 

 form, as it were, the beacon lights of science, and the long 

 series of means by which they have been attained. This 

 method of treating scientific subjects led the most illustrious 

 of our poets* to exclaim with impatience, " The Germans 

 have the art of making science inaccessible." An edifice can 

 not produce a striking efTect until the scaffolding is removed, 

 that had of necessity been used during its erection. Thus the 

 uniformity of figure observed in the distribution of continental 

 masses, which all terminate toward the south in a pyramidal 

 form, and expand toward the north (a law that determines 

 the nature of climates, the direction of currents in the ocean 

 and the atmosphere, and the transition of certain types of 

 tropical vegetation toward the southern temperate zone), may 

 be clea,rly apprehended without any knowledge of the geo- 

 desical and astronomical operations by means of which these 

 pyramidal forms of continents have been determined. In like 

 manner, physical geography teaches us by how many leagues 



* G6the, ill Die Aphorismen uber Naturwissen»chaft, bd. 1.. s, 155 

 { Werke kleine Ausgabe, von 1833.") 



