INTRODUCTION. 2b 



ber and distance of their satellites ; the configuration of con- 

 tinents, and the position of their highest mountain chains. 

 Those relations in space, which we have referred to merely 

 by way of illustration, can at present be regarded only as 

 something existing in nature, as a fact, but which I can net 

 designate as merely causal, because their causes and mutual 

 connection have not yet been discovered. They are the re- 

 sult of occurrences in the realms of space coeval with the 

 formation of our planetary system, and of geognostic process- 

 es in the upheaval of the outer strata of the earth into con- 

 tinents and mountain chains. Our knowledge of the prime- 

 val ages of the world's physical history does not extend suf- 

 ficiently far to allow of our depicting the present condition 

 of things as one of development.^ 



Wherever the causal connection between phenomena has 

 not yet been fully recognized, the doctrine of the Cosmos, or 

 the physical description of the universe, does not constitute a 

 distinct branch of physical science. It rather embraces the 

 whole domain of nature, the phenomena of both the celestial 

 and terrestrial spheres, but embraces it only under the single 

 point of view of efforts made toward the knowledge of the 

 universe as a whole. "f As, in the " exposition of past events 

 in the moral and political world, the historian^ can only di- 

 vine the plan of the government of the world, according to 

 human views, through the signs which are presented to him, 

 and not by direct insight," so also the inquirer into nature, 

 in his investigation of cosmical relations, feels himself pene- 

 trated by a profound consciousness that the fruits hitherto 

 yielded by direct observation and by the careful analysis of 

 phenomena are far from having exhausted the number of 

 impelling, producing, and formative forces. 



* Cosmos, vol. i., p. 94-97. t Op. cit., p. 55-62. 



t Wilhelm von Humboldt, Gesammelte Werke, bd. i., s. 23. 



Vol. III.— B 



