HUMBOLDT was past seventy when he set himself seriously to the completion of the greatest work of his life,—his “Cosmos,” and he succeeded so well that the world at once accepted it as one of the greatest masterpieces of civilization. It has not lost in reputation with the passage of time. The severity of thought required to follow Humboldt’s reasoning does not make an intellectual diversion of reading the “Cosmos,” but Humboldt had neither the desire to be entertaining nor the faculty of being so. In 1794 he wrote for Schiller’s “Die Horen,” an allegorical essay, “The Rhodian Genius,” in what is an unmistakable attempt at high literary form. It is, perhaps, the only one Humboldt ever made, and it will not detract from his great reputation as a scientific teacher to confess the melancholy nature of its failure.

  He was born at Berlin, September 14th, 1769. After study at Frankfort on the Oder, Göttingen, and other universities, he began a systematic attempt to acquire a juster and more comprehensive view of nature than was exhibited in the writings of the scientists and philosophers who had preceded him. The natural German tendency to lofty metaphysical exploration of the unseen universe, he steadfastly resisted. The “Cosmos” he explored was the humble world of the visible, and he counted nothing in it too low to be without infinite significance. When at last he realized his idea in the “Cosmos,” not only Germany, but all Europe, honored him as no scientific investigator had been honored since Newton. He deserved it, for if he made no astonishing actual discovery, he discovered new continents of possible achievement for those who were to carry on his work after him.