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Alexander von Humboldt
Prussian-German Explorer
1769-1859 A selection from
COSMOS: A SKETCH OF THE PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSE
Narrated by Barrett Whitener
This file is 5.6 MB;
running time is 12 minutes
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In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings
on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the
intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important
result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural
forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and
it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles
our enjoyments. Such a result can, however, only be reaped as the fruit of
observation and intellect, combined with the spirit of the age, in which are
reflected all the varied phases of thought. He who can trace, through
by-gone times, the stream of our knowledge to its primitive source, will
learn from history how, for thousands of years, man has labored, amid the
ever-recurring changes of form, to recognize the invariability of natural
laws, and has thus, by the force of mind, gradually subdued a great portion
of the physical world to his dominion. In interrogating the history of the
past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas yielding the first glimmering
perception of the same image of a Cosmos, or harmoniously ordered whole,
which, dimly shadowed forth to the human mind in the primitive ages of the world,
is now fully revealed to the maturer intellect of mankind as the result of long and laborious observation.
Each of these epochs of the contemplation of the external world — the
earliest dawn of thought and the advanced stage of civilization — has its
own source of enjoyment. In the former, this enjoyment, in accordance with
the simplicity of the primitive ages, flowed from an intuitive feeling of
the order that was proclaimed by the invariable and successive reappearance
of the heavenly bodies, and by the progressive development of organized
beings; while in the latter, this sense of enjoyment springs from a definite
knowledge of the phenomena of nature. When man began to interrogate nature,
and, not content with observing, learned to evoke phenomena under definite
conditions; when once he sought to collect and record facts, in order that
the fruit of his labors might aid investigation after his own brief
existence had passed away, the 'philosophy of Nature' cast aside the vague
and poetic garb in which she had been enveloped from her origin, and, having
assumed a severer aspect, she now weighs the value of observations, and
substitutes induction and reasoning for conjecture and assumption. The
dogmas of former ages survive now only in the superstitions of the people
and the prejudices of the ignorant, or are perpetuated in a few systems,
which, conscious of their weakness, shroud themselves in a vail of mystery.
We may also trace the same primitive intuitions in languages exuberant in
figurative expressions; and a few of the best chosen symbols engendered by
the happy inspiration of the earliest ages, having by degrees lost their
vagueness through a better mode of interpretation, are still preserved among
our scientific terms.
Nature considered 'rationally', that is to say, submitted to the process of
thought, is a unity in diversity of phenomena; a harmony blending together
all created things, however dissimilar in form and attributes; one great
whole animated by the breath of life. The most important
result of a rational inquiry into nature is, therefore, to establish the
unity and harmony of this stupendous mass of force and matter, to determine
with impartial justice what is due to the discoveries of the past and to
those of the present, and to analyze the individual parts of natural
phenomena without succumbing beneath the weight of the whole. Thus, and
thus alone, is it permitted to man, while mindful of the high destiny of his race, to comprehend nature, to lift the vail that shrouds herphenomena, and as it were, submit the results of observation to the test of reason and of intellect.
In reflecting upon the different degrees of enjoyment presented to us in the
contemplation of nature, we find that the first place must be assigned to a
sensation, which is wholly independent of an intimate acquaintance with the
physical phenomena presented to our view, or of the peculiar character of
the region surrounding us. In the uniform plain bounded only by a distant
horizon, where the lowly heather, the cistus, or waving grasses, deck the
soil; on the ocean shore, where the waves, softly rippling over the beach,
leave a track, green with the weeds of the sea; every where, the mind is
penetrated by the same sense of the grandeur and vast expanse of nature,
revealing to the soul, by a mysterious inspiration, the existence of laws
that regulate the forces of the universe. Mere communion with nature, mere
contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet strengthening influence
on the wearied spirit, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when
shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths. Every where, in every region of the
globe, in every stage of intellectual culture, the same sources of enjoyment
are alike vouchsafed to man. The earnest and solemn thoughts awakened by a
communion with nature intuitively arise from a presentiment of the order and
harmony pervading the whole universe, and from the contrast we draw between
the narrow limits of our own existence and the image of infinity revealed on
every side, whether we look upward to the starry vault of heaven, scan the
far-stretching plain before us, or seek to trace the dim horizon across the
vast expanse of ocean.
The contemplation of the individual characteristics of the landscape, and of
the conformation of the land in any definite region of the earth, gives rise
to a different source of enjoyment, awakening impressions that are more
vivid, better defined, and more congenial to certain phases of the mind,
than those of which we have already spoken. At one time the heart is
stirred by a sense of the grandeur of the face of nature, by the strife of
the elements, or, as in Northern Asia by the aspect of the dreary barrenness
of the far-stretching steppes; at another time, softer emotions are excited
by the contemplation of rich harvests wrested by the hand of man from the
wild fertility of nature, or by the sight of human habitations raised beside
some wild and foaming torrent. Here I regard less the degree of intensity
than the difference existing in the various sensations that derive their charm and permanence from the peculiar character of the scene.
If I might be allowed to abandon myself to the recollections of my own
distant travels, I would instance, among the most striking scenes of nature,
the calm sublimity of a tropical night, when the stars, not sparkling, as in
our northern skies, shed their soft and planetary light over the
gently-heaving ocean; or I would recall the deep valleys of the Cordilleras,
where the tall and slender palms pierce the leafy vail around them, and
waving on high their feathery and arrow-like branches for, as it were, "a
forest above a forest;"* or I would describe the summit of the Peak of
Teneriffe, when a horizontal layer of clouds, dazzling in whiteness, has
separated the cone of cinders from the plain below, and suddenly the
ascending current pierces the cloudy vail, so that the eye of the traveler
may range from the brink of the crater, along the vine-clad slopes of
Orotava, to the orange gardens and banana groves that skirt the shore. In
scenes like these, it is not the peaceful charm uniformly spread over the
face of nature that moves the heart, but rather the peculiar physiognomy and
conformation of the land, the features of the landscape, the ever varying
outline of the clouds, and their blending with the horizon of the sea,
whether it lies spread before us like a smooth and shining mirror, or is
dimly seen through the morning mist. All that the senses can but
imperfectly comprehend, all that is most awful in such romantic scenes of
nature, may become a source of enjoyment to man, by opening a wide field to
the creative powers of his imagination. Impressions change with the varying
movements of the mind, and we are led by a happy illusion to believe that we
receive from the external world that with which we have ourselves invested
it.
When far from our native country, after a long voyage, we tread for the
first time the soil of a tropical land, we experience a certain feeling of
surprise and gratification in recognizing, in the rocks that surround us,
the same inclined schistose strata, and the same columnar basalt covered
with cellular amygdaloids, that we had left in Europe, and whose identity of
character, in latitudes so widely different, reminds us that the
solidification of the earth's crust is altogether independent of climatic
influences. But these rocky masses of schist and of basalt are covered with
vegetation of a character with which we are unacquainted, and of a
physiognomy wholly unknown to us; and it is then, amid the colossal and majestic forms of an exotic flora, that we feel how wonderfully the flexibility of our nature
fits us to receive new impressions, linked together by a certain secret
analogy. We so readily perceive the affinity existing among all the forms
of organic life, that although the sight of a vegetation similar to that of
our native country might at first be most welcome to the eye, as the sweet
familiar sounds of our mother tongue are to the ear, we nevertheless, by
degrees, and almost imperceptibly, become familiarized with a new home and a
new climate. As a true citizen of the world, man every where habituates
himself to that which surrounds him; yet fearful, as it were, of breaking
the links of association that bind him to the home of his childhood, the
colonist applies to some few plants in a far-distant clime the names he had
been familiar with in his native land; and by the mysterious relations
existing among all types of organization, the forms of exotic vegetation
present themselves to his mind as nobler and more perfect developments of
those he had loved in earlier days. Thus do the spontaneous impressions of
the untutored mind lead, like the laborious deductions of cultivated
intellect, to the same intimate persuasion, that one sole and indissoluble
chain binds together all nature.
It may seem a rash attempt to endeavor to separate, into its different
elements, the magic power exercised upon our minds by the physical world,
since the character of the landscape, and of every imposing scene in nature,
depends so materially upon the mutual relation of the ideas and sentiments
simultaneously excited in the mind of the observer.
The powerful effect exercised by nature springs, as it were, from the
connection and unity of the impressions and emotions produced; and we can
only trace their different sources by analyzing the individuality of objects
and the diversity of forces. More information about Alexander von Humboldt from Wikipedia
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