OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 229 



the number of the works of creation known to the inhabitants 

 of Europe, it hkewise offered to the intellect new and powerful 

 incitements toward the improvement of natural sciences, in 

 the departments of physics and mathematics.* 



The world of objects now, as in Alexander's campaigns, 

 although with still more overwhelming power, manifested 

 itself to the combining mind in individual forms of nature, and 

 in the concurrent action of vital forces. The scattered images 

 of sensuous perception were gradually fused together into one 

 concrete whole, notwithstanding their abundance and divers- 

 ity, and terrestrial nature was conceived in its general char-, 

 acter, and made an object of direct observation, and not of 

 vague presentiments, floating in varying forms before the im- 

 agination. The vault of heaven revealed to the eye, which 

 was as yet unaided by telescopic powers, new regions, unknown 

 constellations, and separate revolving nebulous masses. At 

 no other period, as we have already remarked, were a greater 

 abundance of facts, and a richer mass of materials for the es- 

 tablishment of comparative physical geography, presented to 

 any one portion of the human race. At no other period have 

 discoveries in the material world of space called forth more 

 extraordinary changes in the manners and well-being of men, 

 and in the long-enduring condition of slavery of a portion of 

 the human race, and their late awakening to political freedom ; 

 nor has any other age afibrded so large an extension to the 

 field of view by the multiplication of products and objects of 

 barter, and by the establishment of colonies of a magnitude 

 hitherto unknown. 



On investigating the course of the history of the universe, 

 we shall discover that the germ of those events which have 

 imparted any strongly-marked progressive movement to the 

 human mind may be traced deeply rooted in the track of pre- 

 ceding ages. It does not lie in the destinies of mankind that 

 all should equally experience mental obscuration. A princi- 

 ple of preservation fosters the eternal vital process of advanc- 

 ing reason. The age of Columbus attained the object of its 

 destination so rapidly because a track of fruitful germs had 

 already been cast abroad by a number of highly-gifted fnen, 

 who formed, as it were, a lengthened beam of light amid the 

 darkness of the Middle Ages. One single century — the thir- 

 teenth — shows us Roger Bacon, Nicolaus Scotus, Albertua 

 Magnus, and Vincentius of Beauvais. The mental activity, 



• Compare Humboldt, Examen Crit. de VHist. de la G^ograjrhie, t 

 i., p. viii. and xix. 



