Giving but little
attention to the properties and specific differences of matter filling
space, the great Italian school, in its Doric gravity, turned by preference
toward all that relates to measure, to the form of bodies, and to the number
and distances of the planets,* while the Ionian physicists directed their
attention to the qualities of matter, its true or supposed metamorphoses,
and to relations of origin.
[footnote] *Compare Otfried Muller's 'Dorien', bd. i., s. 365.
It was reserved for the powerful genius of Aristotle, alike profoundly
speculative and practical to sound with equal success the depths of
abstraction and the inexhaustible resources of vital activity pervading the
material world.
Several highly distinguished treatises on physical geography are prefaced by
an introduction, whose purely astronomical sections are directed to the
consideration of the earth in its planetary dependence, and as constituting
a part of that great system which is animated by one central body, the sun.
This course is diametrically opposed to the one which I propose following.
In order adequately to estimate the dignity of the Cosmos, it is requisite
that the sidereal portion, termed by Kant the 'natural history of the
heavens', should not be made subordinate to the terrestrial.
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