Everywhere the reader’s attention is directed to the perpetual influence which physical nature exercises on the moral condition and on the destiny of man. It is to minds oppressed with care that these pages are especially consecrated. He who has escaped from the stormy waves of life will joyfully follow me into the depths of the forests, over the boundless steppes and prairies, and to the lofty summits of the Andes. To him are addressed the words of the chorus who preside over the destinies of mankind:

On the mountains is freedom! the breath of decay

Never sullies the fresh flowing air;

Oh! nature is perfect wherever we stray;

’Tis man that deforms it with care.[[B]]

AUTHOR’S PREFACE,
TO THE SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS.

The twofold object of this work,—an anxious endeavour to heighten the enjoyment of nature by vivid representations, and at the same time to increase, according to the present state of science, the reader’s insight into the harmonious co-operation of forces,—was pointed out by me in the preface to the first edition, nearly half a century ago. I there alluded to the several obstacles which oppose themselves to the æsthetic treatment of the grand scenes of nature. The combination of a literary and a purely scientific aim, the desire to engage the imagination, and at the same time to enrich life with new ideas by the increase of knowledge, render the due arrangement of the separate parts, and what is required as unity of composition, difficult of attainment. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, however, the public have continued to receive with indulgent partiality, my imperfect performance.

The second edition of the Views of Nature, was published by me in Paris in 1826. Two papers were then added, one, “An inquiry into the structure and mode of action of Volcanos in different regions of the earth;” the other, “Vital Force, or The Rhodian Genius.” Schiller, in remembrance of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me, during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects. The inquiries in which I was then engaged, in preparing my work “On the condition of the fibres of muscles and nerves, when irritated by contact with substances chemically opposed,” often imparted a more serious direction to our conversation. It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force, called The Rhodian Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece, and which he admitted into his periodical, Die Horen, gave me courage to introduce it here. My brother, in a letter which has recently been published (William von Humboldt’s Letters to a Female Friend, vol. ii. p. 39), delicately alludes to the subject, but at the same time very justly adds; “The development of a physiological idea is exclusively the object of the essay. Such semi-poetical clothings of grave truths were more in vogue at the time this was written than they are at present.”

In my eightieth year I have still the gratification of completing a third edition of my work, and entirely remoulding it to meet the demands of the age. Almost all the scientific illustrations are either enlarged or replaced by new and more comprehensive ones.

I have indulged a hope of stimulating the study of nature, by compressing into the smallest possible compass, the numerous results of careful investigation on a variety of interesting subjects, with a view of shewing the importance of accurate numerical data, and the necessity of comparing them with each other, as well as to check the dogmatic smattering and fashionable scepticism which have too long prevailed in the so-called higher circles of society.