Ladies and Gentlemen: Great minds seem to be a part of the infinite.
Those possessing them seem to be brothers of the mountains and the seas.
Humboldt was one of these. He was one of the few great enough to rise
above the superstition and prejudice of his time, and to know that
experience, observation and reason are the only basis of knowledge.
He became one of the greatest of men in spite of having been born rich
and noble--in spite of position. I say in spite of these things,
because wealth and position are generally the enemies of genius, and
the destroyers of talent.
It is often said of this or that man that he is a self-made man--that
he was born of the poorest and humblest parents, and that with every
obstacle to overcome he became great. This is a mistake. Poverty is
generally an advantage. Most of the intellectual giants of the world
have been nursed at the sad but loving breast of poverty. Most of
those who have climbed highest on the shining ladder of fame commenced
at the lowest round. They were reared in the straw-thatched cottages
of Europe, in the log-houses of America, in the factories of the great
cities, in the midst of toil, in the smoke and din of labor, and on the
verge of want. They were rocked by the feet of mothers whose hands, at
the same time, were busy with the needle or the wheel.
It is hard for the rich to resist the thousand allurements of pleasure,
and so I say that Humboldt, in spite of having been born to wealth and
high social position, became truly and grandly great.
In the antiquated and romantic castle of Tegel, by the side of the pine
forest, on the shore of the charming lake, near the beautiful city of
Berlin, the great Humboldt, one hundred years ago to-day, was born, and
there he was educated after the method suggested by Rousseau--Campe,
the philologist and critic, and the intellectual Kunth being his
tutors. There he received the impressions that determined his career;
there the great idea that the universe is governed by law took
possession of his mind, and there he dedicated his life to the
demonstration of this sublime truth.
He came to the conclusion that the source of man's unhappiness is his
ignorance of nature.
He longed to give a physical description of the universe--a grand
picture of nature; to account for all phenomena; to discover the laws
governing the world; to do away with that splendid delusion called
special-providence, and to establish the fact that the universe is
governed by law.
To establish this truth was, and is, of infinite importance to mankind.
That fact is the death-knell of superstition; it gives liberty to every
soul, annihilates fear, and ushers in the Age of Reason.
The object of this illustrious man was to comprehend the phenomena of
physical objects in their general connection, and to represent nature
as one great whole, moved and animated by internal forces.
For this purpose he turned his attention to descriptive botany,
traversing distant lands and mountain ranges to ascertain with
certainty the geographical distribution of plants. He investigated the
laws regulating the differences of temperature and climate, and the
changes of the atmosphere. He studied the formation of the earth's
crust, explored the deepest mines, ascended the highest mountains, and
wandered through the craters of extinct volcanoes.
He became thoroughly acquainted with chemistry, with astronomy, with
terrestrial magnetism; and as the investigation of one subject leads to
all others, for the reason that there is a mutual dependence and a
necessary connection between all facts, so Humboldt became acquainted
with all the known sciences.
His fame does not depend so much upon his discoveries (although he
discovered enough to make hundreds of reputations) as upon his vast and
splendid generalizations.
He was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.
He found, so to speak, the world full of unconnected facts, all
portions of a vast system--parts of a great machine; he discovered the
connection that each bears to all, put them together, and demonstrated
beyond all contradiction that the earth is governed by law.
He knew that to discover the connection of phenomena is the primary aim
of all natural investigation. He was infinitely practical.
Origin and destiny were questions with which he had nothing to do.
His surroundings made him what he was.
In accordance with a law not fully comprehended, he was a production of
his time.
Great men do not live alone; they are surrounded by the great; they are
the instruments used to accomplish the tendencies of their generation;
they fulfill the prophecies of their age.
Nearly all of the scientific men of the eighteenth century had the same
idea entertained by Humboldt, but most of them in a dim and confused
way. There was, however, a general belief among the intelligent that
the world is governed by law, and that there really exists a connection
between all facts, or that all facts are simply the different aspects
of a general fact, and that the task of science is to discover this
connection; to comprehend this general fact or to announce the laws of
things.
Germany was full of thought, and her universities swarmed with
philosophers and grand thinkers in every department of knowledge.
Humboldt was the friend and companion of the greatest poets,
historians, philologists, artists, statesmen, critics and logicians of
his time.
He was the companion of Schiller, who believed that man would be
regenerated through the influence of the beautiful; of Goethe, the
grand patriarch of German literature; of Wieland, who has been called
the Voltaire of Germany; of Herder, who wrote the outlines of a
philosophical history of man; of Kotzebue, who lived in the world of
romance; of Schleiermacher, the pantheist; of Schlegel, who gave to his
country the enchanted realm of Shakespeare--of the sublime Kant, author
of the first work published in Germany on Pure Reason; of Fichte, the
infinite idealist; of Schopenhauer, the European Buddhist who followed
the great Gautama to the painless and dreamless Nirvana, and of
hundreds of others whose names are familiar to and honored by the
scientific world.
The German mind had been grandly roused from the long lethargy of the
dark ages of ignorance, fear and faith. Guided by the holy light of
reason, every department of knowledge was investigated, enriched and
illustrated.
Humboldt breathed the atmosphere of investigation; old ideas were
abandoned; old creeds, hallowed by centuries, were thrown aside;
thought became courageous; the athlete, Reason, challenged to mortal
combat the monsters of superstition.
No wonder that under these influences Humboldt formed the great purpose
of presenting to the world a picture of nature, in order that men
might, for the first time, behold the face of their Mother.
Europe becoming too small for his genius, he visited the tropics in the
new world, where, in the most circumscribed limits, he could find the
greatest number of plants, of animals, and the greatest diversity of
climate, that he might ascertain the laws governing the production and
distribution of plants, animals and men, and the effects of climate
upon them all. He sailed along the gigantic Amazon--the mysterious
Orinoco--traversed the Pampas--climbed the Andes until he stood upon
the crags of Chimborazo, more than eighteen thousand feet above the
level of the sea, and climbed on until blood flowed from his eyes and
lips. For nearly five years he pursued his investigations in the new
world, accompanied by the intrepid Bonpland. Nothing escaped his
attention. He was the best intellectual organ of these new revelations
of science. He was calm, reflective and eloquent; filled with a sense
of the beautiful, and the love of truth. His collections were immense,
and valuable beyond calculation to every science. He endured
innumerable hardships, braved countless dangers in unknown and savage
lands, and exhausted his fortune for the advancement of true learning.
Upon his return to Europe he was hailed as the second Columbus; as the
scientific discoverer of America; as the revealer of a new world; as
the great demonstrator of the sublime truth that universe is governed
by law.
I have seen a picture of the old man, sitting upon a mountain
side--above him the eternal snow; below, smiling valley of the tropics,
filled with vine and palm. His chin upon his breast, his eyes deep,
thoughtful and calm, his forehead majestic--grander than the mountain
upon which he sat. "Crowned with the snow of his whitened hair," he
looked the intellectual autocrat of this world.
Not satisfied with his discoveries in America, he crossed the steppes
of Asia, the wastes of Siberia, the great Ural range, adding to the
knowledge of mankind at every step. His energy acknowledged no
obstacle, his life knew no leisure; every day was filled with labor and
with thought. He was one of the apostles of science, and he served his
divine master with a self-sacrificing zeal that knew no abatement--with
an ardor that constantly increased, and with a devotion unwavering and
constant as the polar star.
In order that the people at large might have the benefit of his
numerous discoveries, and his vast knowledge, he delivered at Berlin a
course of lectures, consisting of sixty-one free addresses, upon the
following subjects:
Five upon the nature and limits of physical geography.
Three were devoted to a history of science.
Two to inducements to a study of natural science.
Sixteen on the heavens.
Five on the form, density, latent heat, and magnetic power of the
earth, and to the polar light.
Four were on the nature of the crust of the earth, on hot springs,
earthquakes and volcanoes.
Two on mountains, and the type of their formation.
Two on the form of the earth's surface, on the connection of
continents, and the elevation of soil over ravines.
Three on the sea as a globular fluid surrounding the earth.
Ten on the atmosphere--as an elastic fluid surrounding the earth, and
on the distribution of heat.
One on the geographic distribution of organized matter in general,
Three on the geography of plants.