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To do complete justice to the character, genius, and services of Humboldt in the narrow limits here granted is, of course, impossible. To do such justice to them in any limits indeed is not for us. Adequately to estimate them would require proximate if not equal powers. There is, therefore, probably but one man in America-but one man in the world-every way competent to be his biographer: him who once was his esteemed pupil, ever after his beloved friend, on whom the mantle of his scientific enthusiasm and manly worth seems to have fallen, and whom we are proud to claim as our countryman. A consciousness of inability to do justice to so transcendant merits, however, shall not deter us from mingling the notes of our admiration and reverence with those of others, or from casting, amidst the gorgeous wreaths that deck his resting-place, a simple wild-flower.

A discriminating analyst1 of character, himself endowed with many of the elements of greatness, has said that great men may be divided into three classes, according to the natural order of their work. The first consists of the Discoverers-those who are possessed of sufficient insight to detect particular phenomena, and of sufficient capacity for generalization to deduce from them great ideas, universal principles and laws. These are the greatest of all great men, dealing with essential realities, and touching the key note of all truth. They appear on the earth only at wide intervals of time and space, and dwell in sublime isolation of spirit. All of them that the world has seen can be numbered on one's thumb nail. When one such does appear however, then old opinions and received methods are subjected to a severer test. A fresh force is imported into human affairs, and a new epoch in history begun.

Next come the Organizers-the men who put grand ideas, truths, principles into corresponding concrete forms, making them recognized facts and positive powers. These are the translators from the realm of ideal possibilities into the sphere of actual and substantial realities. They are the founders of States, the originators of philosophic and scientific systems, the leaders of great political and religious

1 Rev. Theodore Parker: Sermon on John Quincy Adams.

movements. To this class also belong the practical inventors who organize thoughts into machines of wood and iron; and harness the elements-air, water, steam, electricity-to obey man's will, and to promote his welfare. Though in comparison with the discoverers these are quite numerous, yet compared with the great body of mankind they are very few.

The other class of great men consists of the Administrators-those who take care of, and keep in successful operation the institutions which wiser heads had planned, and adroiter hands established. These may have little aptitude for the original discovery of truths, and little genius for their organization when announced; but they have an appreciation of their importance, and a familiarity with the institutions in which they have become incarnate. They have a practical understanding, a resolute will, a great knowledge of methods, a large acquaintance with men. They have a wonderful tact for saying and doing the right thing, in the right way, and at the right time. On the lower planes of life, they are the most useful men; as what is most needed there is not the announcement of new truths, nor the construction of new organizations, so much as the wise administration of admitted principles and existing institutions. And wherever you find them, you find so far as they are responsible, order, prosperity, happiness, based upon sound precedents, acknowledged facts, and plain common sense. Though by no means so numerous as they are generally imagined, they yet vastly outnumber both the former classes united.

Accepting this classification, it is evident where the distinguished man of whom we now write belongs. In what are usually called the practical concerns of life-the conquest of external nature, the production and distribution of wealth, the relations of want and supply-he manifested comparatively little interest. Though at the earnest call of his country, he consented, in some of the most important crises of her history to participate in the administration of political affairs, and discharged with singular address and felicity some of the most delicate and responsible diplomatic offices, yet his achievements in this direction were no more striking or serviceable than those of multitudes of vastly inferior men. Indeed had he been only an administrator,

while he might have deserved well of his country, his fame would scarcely have reached beyond it, and every day have paled, instead of filling the civilized world, and continually growing stronger and brighter.

Neither was Humboldt eminent for constructive geniusor, at least, for the application of such genius. For were we asked what great ideas he organized into beneficent institutions what essential principles he embodied and made operative in the world, it would trouble us to answer. He invented no potent instrument, like the steam engine, or the magnetic telegraph, contributing to man's mastery over his accidents. He identified his name with no remarkable triumph in either the useful or the beautiful arts. He elaborated no scientific theory of the universe, like the Ptolemaic or Copernican; no philosophic system, like the Aristotelian or Baconian. He organized into no higher forms either justice in the state, or love in the family, or religion in the church. True, his voice was sometimes heard, and his influence felt in the councils of the nation -as during the troubled period of the Napoleonic wars, and the outburst of the popular heart in 1848-and they were always heard and felt in behalf of righteousness, and liberty, and human progress. But by something else than this did he win the profound respect and admiration of his own time, and for something else will he be remembered by the coming ages.

He was therefore mainly an explorer of untrodden realms a discoverer of new truths and laws. In his early youth, he consecrated himself to the study of nature, conscious how little really was then known of her principles. and methods, and of the sublime joys and blessings she was ready to confer upon her patient, earnest, docile servants. But while he sought so successfully to widen the domains of knowledge, it was his aim, and has proved his peculiar glory to do so with reference to one great end. And this aim, it need not be said, was no selfish nor trifling one. The hint of it was, perhaps, originally derived from the words of Aristotle,2 In this unity [of nature] there is nothing unconnected or out of place, as in a bad tragedy,' and was nothing less than "to comprehend the phenomena

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2 Metaph. lib. xiii. cap. 3. Vide Cosmos, vol. iii. p. 14, Harpers' ed.

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of physical objects in their general connection, and to represent Nature as one great whole, moved and animated by internal forces." But to do this in any considerable degree it was necessary that he should first push his researches as far as possible into every department of science, dropping his sounding-line into profounder depths than had been reached before, sending out rays of light into surrounding darkness, correcting errors which his less discriminating predecessors had committed, and arranging in their proper order the vast materials which the labor of others, conjoined with his own tireless industry, had gathered. "My intercourse with highly gifted men," he writes, "early led me to discover, that, without an earnest striving to attain a knowledge of special branches of study, all attempts to give a grand and general view of the universe would be nothing more than a vain illusion."4 There is, accordingly, hardly any considerable field of knowledge in which he did not at some period of life domiciliate himself, and on which there. is not now discernible the impress of his mighty intellect. There is not a zone that he did not personally explore; and no large region of the earth's surface with whose flora, and fauna, and physical characteristics he was not perfectly familiar. Astronomy, chemistry, geology, botany, zoology, geography, history, political economy, philology, and anthropology he seemed to be as conversant with as though he had made each his special pursuit for a life-time; while his positive contributions to our knowledge of many of them, and yet more, his contributions to the elucidation of heat, electricity, magnetism, and all those subtle agents which, within a generation or two, have excited so much attention, would be enough, and more than anough, to fill the measure of any ordinary fame. But all this vast, this almost measureless learning, never mastered, never confused him, never turned him aside from his great purpose. He mastered it, knowing far better how to make it all available for his ends than most men know how to employ their little attainments in the discharge of the commonest duties. And it all culminated and fruited in that gigantic work, "Cosmos, a Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe." being a summary of all existing knowledge of material things-a

3 Preface to Cosmos, p. vii.

4 Ibid.

work which he carefully meditated for more than fifty years, the substance of which, before committing it to posterity, he rehearsed to the great intellectual publics of Paris and Berlin, to the concluding volume of which he put the finishing touches only a few days previous to his death, and than which no broader, deeper, firmer basis of immortal fame was ever laid by man.

Very obviously therefore it is in the first class of great men-among the pioneers in the realm of thought-among the discoverers of eternal principles, who take of the things of God and show them to their brethren, that Humboldt is to be reckoned. He is no meteor in the intellectual firmament, glittering for a moment, and then vanishing in endless night; no comet darting around an incalculable orbit; no diminutive star of feeble and flickering ray; but a serene and stately planet, tranquilly pursuing its majestic course, and uninterruptedly diffusing its sweet and sacred light. His influence is not superficial, dazzling with a strange brilliancy, and leaving no permanent results. It lies far beneath the surface of society, deals only with the profoundest springs of thought and life, and of course, is not immediately appreciated. The full grandeur of such a career and character indeed can be recognized only when a sufficient opportunity has been vouchsafed for the development of their legitimate influence. A few facts in his experience, however, may here be gathered up, and a few of its lessons indicated.

Humboldt was born at Berlin on the fourteenth of September, 1769-the same year with Wellington, Napoleon, and Cuvier-and at his decease lacked only four months and eight days of having completed his ninetieth year. His parentage was ancient and noble. His father was an officer of some distinction in the Prussian army; his mother the widow of one Baron Holwede. The fruit of this marriage was two sons-William, born in 1767, eminent as a statesman, of most beautiful and attractive character, and Alexander, of whom we now write. And here let it be said, in passing, that the relations between the brothers were ever of the most intimate and tender nature. The glory of one was almost equally the glory of the other. Accordingly when, in 1835, the elder died, the younger poured fourth his grief and love in some of the most touching letters we remember

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