62 Guyot on Carl Bitter. 



volumes on Arabia, which are entirely unique of their kind. 

 The monographs of Sinai, Palestine, and Syria, belong, it will be 

 conceded on all hands, to the most thorough which exist. A 

 series of monographs of another nature, treating of the his- 

 tory, the geographical extension, and influence on civilization 

 of several plants of culture and of domesticated animals, such 

 as of cotton, coffee, of the camel, and others, are interspersed 

 among the volumes of the Erdkunde, and remain models of 

 the kind. In questions of that order Eitter seeks the laws, 

 and one of his academical memoirs is devoted to an essay on 

 the principles of a Geography of the natural productions useful 

 to man. 



The picture that I have just attempted of Bitter's ideas, 

 method, and labors, sufficiently defines, if I err not, the part 

 performed in geographical science by that faithful and gifted 

 scholar, from that achieved by Humboldt Humboldt seeks 

 to determine the general laws of the physical world. Eitter 

 seizes them as applied, and in their concrete and actual connec- 

 tion in every given country and in the whole globe, and consid- 

 ers nature in its totality as an element in the development 

 of mankind, from which alone these natural forms and influ- 

 ences receive their true and final significance. 



At the moment these faithful guides leave us to ourselves, 

 when their voice will utter no more words of wisdom, it may be 

 well for us to ask ourselves how far they led us in the high 

 road of science, and what is the task which is still before us. 

 Humboldt, with a surpassing richness of knowledge, attempted 

 to give us a connected picture of the totality of the physical 

 universe ; but admirable as is the Cosmos, after having read its 

 eloquent pages, we pause and involuntarily ask for the final 

 object of the Creator in building up that marvellous structure ; 

 we ask f6r a tie which connects it with Him, at least that por- 

 tion of the creation in which we dwell ; for a voice which rises 

 from it as a word of praise, and we find it not. Far from me 

 even the idea of casting a blame upon the great and good phi- 

 losopher ; I am fully aware that his plan was purposely lim- 

 ited to the material world which is his theme. I only wish to 

 remark that we cannot stop there. 



It is, indeed, a universal law of all that exists, as I have else- 

 where said, not to have in itself either the reason or the en- 

 tire aim of its existence. Every order of facts, like every indi- 

 vidual being, forms but a portion of a greater organization, 

 the plan and the idea of which go infinitely beyond it, and in 

 which it is destined to play a part. The reason of its exist- 



