A fertile field is here opened to
discovery, although the voltaic pile has already taught us the intimate
connection existing between electric, magnetic, and chemical phenomena. Who
will venture to affirm that we have any precise knowledge, in the present
day, of that part of the atmosphere which is not oxygen, or that thousands
of gaseous substances affecting our organs may not be mixed with the
nitrogen, or, finally, that we have even discovered the whole number of the
forces which pervade the universe?
It is not the purpose of this essay on the physical history of the world to
reduce all sensible phenomena to a small number of abstract principles,
based on reason only. The physical history of the universe, whose
exposition I attempt to develop, does not pretend to rise to the perilous
abstractions of a purely rational science of nature, and is simply a
'physical geography, combined with a description of the regions of space and
the bodies occupying them.' Devoid of the profoundness of a purely
speculative philosophy, my essay on the 'Cosmos' treats of the contemplation
of the universe, and is based upon a rational empiricism, that is to say,
upon the results of the facts registered by science, and tested by the
operations of the intellect.
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