COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 | Page 4

strongly manifested, than by means of any thing which it could itself
impart. In the work on the Cosmos on which I am now engaged, I have endeavored to
show, as in that entitled 'Ansichten der Natur', that a certain degree of scientific
completeness in the treatment of individual facts is not wholly incompatible with a
picturesque animation of style. Since public lectures seemed to me to present an easy and
efficient means of testing the more or less successful manner of connecting together the
detached branches of any one science, I undertook, for many months consecutively, first
in the French language, at Paris, and afterward in my own native German, at Berlin
(almost simultaneously at two different places of assembly), to deliver a course of
lectures on the physical description of the universe, according to my conception of the
science. My lectures were given extemporaneously, both in French and German, and
without the aid of written notes, nor have I, in any way, made use, in the present work, p
10 of those portions of my discourses which have been preserved by the industry of
certain attentive auditors. With the exception of the first forty pages, the whole of the
present work was written, for the first time, in the years 1843 and 1844.
A character of unity, freshness, and animation must, I think, be derived from an
association with some definite epoch, where the object of the writer is to delineate the
present condition of knowledge and opinions. Since the additions constantly made to the
latter give rise to fundamental changes in pre-existing views, my lectures and the Cosmos
have nothing in common beyond the succession in which the various facts are treated.
The first portion of my work contains introductory considerations regarding the diversity
in the degrees of enjoyment to be derived from nature, and the knowledge of the laws by
which the universe is governed; it also considers the limitation and scientific mode of
treating a physical description of the universe, and gives a general picture of nature which
contains a view of all the phenomena comprised in the Cosmos.

This general picture of nature, which embraces within its wide scope the remotest
nebulous spots, and the revolving double stars in the regions of space, no less than the
telluric phenomena included under the department of the geography of organic forms
(such as plants, animals, and races of men), comprises all that I deem most specially
important with regard to the connection existing between generalities and specialities,
while it moreover exemplifies, by the form and style of the composition, the mode of
treatment pursued in the selection of the results obtained from experimental knowledge.
The two succeeding volumes will contain a consideration of the particular means of
incitement toward the study of nature (consisting in animated delineations, landscape
painting, and the arrangement and cultivation of exotic vegetable forms), of the history of
the contemplation of the universe, or the gradual development of the reciprocal action of
natural forces constituting one natural whole; and lastly, of the special p 11 branches of
the several departments of science, whose mutual connection is indicated in the
beginning of the work. Wherever it has been possible to do so, I have adduced the
authorities from whence I derived my facts, with a view of affording testimony both to
the accuracy of my statements and to the value of the observations to which reference
was made. In those instances where I have quoted from my own writings (the facts
contained in which being, from their very nature, scattered through different portions of
my works), I have always referred to the original editions, owing to the importance of
accuracy with regard to numerical relations, and to my own distrust of the care and
correctness of translators. In the few cases where I have extracted short passages from the
works of my friends, I have indicated them by marks of quotation; and, in imitation of the
practice of the ancients, I have invariably preferred the repetition of the same words to
any arbitrary substitution of my own paraphrases. The much-contested question of
priority of claim to a first discovery, which it is so dangerous to treat of in a work of this
uncontroversial kind, has rarely been touched upon. Where I have occasionally referred
to classical antiquity, and to that happy period of transition which has rendered the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so celebrated, owing to the great geographical
discoveries by which the age was characterized, I have been simply led to adopt this
mode of treatment, from the desire we experience from time to time, when considering
the general views of nature, to escape from the circle of more strictly dogmatical modern
opinions, and enter the free and fanciful domain of earlier presentiments.