ment and gushing philanthropy from France. German society now acquired a strong literary interest. But while that part of the educated world which was susceptible to the more tender emotions led an æsthetic dream-life, the stronger minds were chained to the contemplation of the antique, or were sunk in the profundities of the simultaneously ripened critical philosophy. Thus the thought of the nation was far removed from realities, and directed toward beautiful fancies and ideal truths. If this had had the result of only diverting some from research and observation, the loss might have been borne. But, with the thoroughness with which the German does everything, the damage went deeper. The distinctions between æsthetic and scientific demands were effaced from the universal comprehension. The intuitions of art usurped the place of induction and deduction. Even the critique of the reason, just achieved by Kant, was pushed aside as narrow-minded scholasticism. An arrogant speculation believed its synthetic judgments a priori had grown so strong that it could undertake to construct the world from a few delusive formulas, and it looked down with extreme insolence upon the unpretentious daily work of the empiric. In short, the day came of that false philosophy which redounded to the shame of German science for a quarter of a century, whose advocates threatened our own generation, and which the best heads, elevating vague fancy and taste above the practical, were least able to resist.

The recollection of this perversion of the German mind is the more mortifying because it occurred simultaneously with the brightest phases of science outside of Germany, especially in France. While under the first republic and the first empire the muses were hushed to silence, there was gathered in Paris a circle of learned men of whom not only has each one left a bright trace behind him, but also in which as a whole lived the comprehension of the true method to which the Academy of Sciences has always persistently adhered. Coulomb and Lavoisier, Laplace and Cuvier, Biot and Arago, were partly the forerunners, partly the coryphées of that great epoch from which is dated the leadership which, during the first half of this century, made Paris the scientific capital.

The period of this momentous transformation in Germany, when æsthetic contemplation of the world and overweening speculation were mutually crowning each other and pushing intelligent experiment, like Cinderella, into a corner-this period was that of Alexander von Humboldt's youth. A remarkable youth he must have been, exuberant of thought, and yet burning with the thirst for action; eloquent and enthusiastic like a poet, and yet devoted with all his mind to the study of Nature; in knowledge already a reflection of the Cosmos, and yet indefatigable in accurate examination and experiment; a born master of the German speech, yet at home in every idiom; in such guise he appeared in the intellectual center of the Germany of the day, in Jena,

younger than Goethe by twenty, than Schiller by ten years, and yet welcomed by both as if he were their peer in age.

He figured as the friend of Willdenow, Georg Forster, and Leopold von Buch, as the pupil of Blumenbach, Lichtenberg, and Werner, already known by minor writings in which his industrious manysidedness had early displayed itself, already a much-traveled man according to the ideas of the day, and, although of independent means, a servant of the state, on the way to the highest honors. In what was he not interested, and what did he not take up? Ancient weaving, subterranean flora, basalt, meteorological phenomena, the theory of logarithms, had engaged him; but, when it was worth while, he knew how to concentrate his strength upon a single point. Galvani's discovery had recently stirred naturalists and physicians to effort. "In the fall of 1792, having become acquainted with it in Vienna, Humboldt, traversing Germany in every direction as a miner, physicist, and botanist, 'wandering upon desolate and remote mountains where he was sometimes cut off from all literary intercourse,' already revolving the plan of his tropical journey in his head, had still found time to make thousands of most delicate experiments. Even on horseback, besides hammer, glass, and compass, he was never without 'his galvanic apparatus, a pair of metal rods, pincers, a glass stand and an anatomical knife,' and the curse which the Bolognan anatomist had invoked upon the poor race of batrachians overtook them under Humboldt's hand, even in places in which they had previously been secure from it." Now he had talked with Alessandro Volta, in his villa on the Lake of Como, of the crucial experiment in animal electricity, Galvani's convulsion without metals, and was preparing to collect the results of his investigations in the book on "Excited Muscular and Nervous Fibers." He must confirm his own researches with experiments on frogs' legs, and he opportunely called not only his brother, but also "Herr von Goethe," to be his witnesses.

Among the various individualities which were united in him into a complicated whole, and which we meet in analyzing this being, is first of all an artist. The "Rhodian Genius," the "Views of Nature," the address at the opening of the assembly of naturalists, are art-works. That work of Humboldt's which, like Goethe's "Faust," contemplated from youth, was completed with an astonishing energy only in an advanced old age, may certainly claim to be an artist's production. We shall for the present leave unanswered the question of the utility of this kind of mingling of the poetic element with the scientific, in which we may recognize a return to the models of Plato and Lucretius. Aside from his native propensity, Humboldt was led toward it by the æsthetic manner of thinking then prevailing in Germany, which had become a second nature to him, and especially by his intercourse with our great poets. It must not, however, be forgotten that something of the same kind had been observed a little while before in France. Buffon's

"Epoques de la Nature," his sketches, flowing in splendid word-waves, of men and animals, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's magnificent pictures. of tropical nature, were well fitted to spur Humboldt's literary ambition in emulation of them. If his style has lately been criticised, that shows that he had a style. Indulgence in the creation of beautiful forms of language was agreeable to the taste of his age; and why should I not tell how he, presuming upon a similar receptivity in myself, read to me from the proof-sheets of his "Cosmos" passages which particularly pleased him, such as the one in which he ingeniously summarizes all that the moon is to our earth; enlivening the firmament by its changes, comforting the heart with its mild luster, and in geological periods carving out continents through the erosive work of the tides?

More subject to criticism is the other influence which the dominating mind of Humboldt exercised over Germany in his ninetieth year. At nothing are laymen more surprised than when they hear that Humboldt did not stand on the extreme height as a naturalist, but that his situation in a mental respect was like that he found himself in on Chimborazo, when an impassable chasm separated him from the summit. The gap which opened between him and the topmost peak of natural science was the want of physico-mathematical knowledge. Not that this was denied his talents. He had in his youth an inclination to pure mathematical research. But the taste, and later also the mental habit, of analyzing phenomena within a certain scope and tracing them to their ultimate recognizable principles, deserted him. He became satisfied with establishing and examining facts. The mere telling, even at large, of those things that occupied his vision, and which he comprehended to the most minute details, or could deduce at every instant, was tiresome to him. It was, indeed, the cosmos; only there is, in that highest sense, no scientific comprehension of the cosmos. Mathematical physics knows of no difference between cosmos and chaos. By blind natural necessity, by the central forces of atoms independent of time, or by some other equivalent hypothesis of the constitution of matter, it concedes that cosmos may have come out of chaos. The cosmos, the beautiful and harmonious aggregate of nature, is an æsthetic anthropomorphism. Humboldt explained the title "Cosmos" with the phrase, "Sketch of a physical description of the universe." According to Herr Gustav Kirchhoff's definition of mechanics, one might easily place these words upon Newton's "Principia" or Laplace's Mécanique céleste." But, by description, Humboldt understood only a graphic, not a mechanical description, and there is the same difference between his description of the world and that of Newton or Laplace as between the description of a plant and the calculation of a disturbance. In that he adhered to his conception through his whole life, and attached the highest value to it, he showed himself a genuine child of a stage of discipline more fitted for artistic methods of view than for scientific analysis.

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While German science was involved in the enervating network of æsthetic speculations, his own energy and happy skill enlisted Humboldt in wider spheres of healthy activity for its salvation. Even in our fast-living age, it is hard to conceive that only two years after he had been enjoying in the Saal Valley those visions, short indeed, but in a certain sense, like a young love, decisive as to his life, he was observing in Cumana the first periodical shower of stars, and discovering the electric folds in the brain of the torpedo-eel; was exploring the caves of Caripe resonant with the cries of the guachero; was threading in a pirogue, environed with alligators, the stream-net of the Rio Negro and the Cassiquiare between the Orinoco and the Amazon ; and in Esmeralda, on the upper Orinoco, was observing the concoction by the natives of the weird arrow-poison, curare, which owes its name to him. Nothing was wanting to raise the fantastic charm of these journeys, from which, nevertheless, Humboldt brought back a greater sum of acute, distinct observations in every conceivable field of science, in geography and anthropology, than any single observer ever collected either before him or after him. No! The world will "never see his like" in comprehensive, restless activity, combined with lofty thought; in dauntless venture for ideas, with the wisest saving of means and strength; in soaring height of feeling, the expression of which frequently, in view of the sad contentions of mankind or of the horrors of slavery, for instance, has an elegiac tone, as in a similar way a delicate haze adorns his sketches of the giant heights of the Cordilleras.

It is essential to the success of a scientific journey, first of all, that the traveler return. But, besides threatening him with physical dangers, which Humboldt's apparently not very strong body resisted wonderfully, long journeys in wild regions have other inconvenient consequences. Habituation to perfect freedom in solitude, to constant change and external stimulation, even excitement, the diversion from accustomed literary occupations, render it very hard for travelers to feel themselves at home again, to give themselves up to the complicated demands of cultivated society, and to be satisfied to make the most of the treasures they have brought with them. They seem to prefer to such allegiance a return to the wilderness, so that it is said of African travelers that the greatest danger that threatens them is the unconquerable propensity, when they have once escaped the perils of the journey, to try them again. Thus it was with Humboldt's fellow-traveler, Bonpland, who was drawn back to South America, where it was his fate, not to perish, but to be lost to science, a prisoner to Dr. Francia. He left to Humboldt, in whom no trace of such weakness could be found, the fruit of many of their common labors.

Humboldt had lived in Paris before his journey. He now permanently fixed his place of labor there, as the only place where he could perfect the literary undertakings he had planned; and as with curious

facility he had become a Spaniard in New Spain, so, without denying his German, he made the Parisian academicians forget that he was not a Frenchman. In this, that gift of ready wit with which, while a student at Frankfort, he had troubled the more serious William, and which he used as a powerful weapon in his subsequent court-life, was of much advantage to him. Associated with Gay-Lussac and Provençal in labors which are still instructive, he was received into that small circle of learned men that gathered around the venerable Berthollet at Arcueil. All of these and numerous other friendships of Humboldt's are thrown into the shade by the life-long connection he formed with Arago, to which the contrast of their natures lent a peculiar charm.

Humboldt was at first sight of insignificant, flattering, and pliant appearance, Arago of imposing bearing, a type of fiery Southern manhood; Humboldt of encyclopedic mind and knowledge, Arago an astronomer and mathematico-physicist of so sharply limited a scope and so strict a school that, while he analyzed according to three axes the modifying effects which neighboring masses of metals exercise upon magnetic deflections, he left it to Faraday, who could not square a binomial, to find out their causes. Like Humboldt, Arago was a master of comprehensive scientific description; but, while Humboldt inclined to melting pathos, the dazzling polish of Arago's keen language becomes a tiresome mannerism. Sympathy in political views was a bond between them. Arago was a republican, Humboldt called himself a democrat of 1789. Probably this was the reason of the contemptuous condescension with which Napoleon I, among whose faults was not want of respect for science, used to meet him.

In connection with Arago, Humboldt, as he was fond of telling, ruled for twenty years what was then the first scientific body in the world. If not of his fame, this period was the climax of his life. As in the primitive forest he had watched through nights undisturbed by the murmur of the cataracts, the humming of the mosquitoes, the near roaring of the jaguars, and the fearful cry of the beasts in the tree-tops above him, so now were the confusing pressure of the world's metropolis, the thousand personal demands daily thrust upon him, the brilliant society of the salon, the intrigues of academical lobbies, to him only a pleasant, stimulating life-element. He found gratification in this mental tumult, which, busy with the air and matter of life, overlooked him while he built up the gigantic coral structure of the many-membered story of his travels. More and more consumed with an inextinguishable enthusiasm for science; in unlimited devotion to knowledge, neglecting domestic fortune; drawing into the line of his activity hosts of learned men and artists, and skillfully utilizing their talents for his own objects; pot, indeed, teaching ex cathedra, but inspiring youth by his example and continually encouraging them-he was at that time in Paris, as afterward in Berlin, a central figure, from