The starry vault and the wide
expanse of the heavens belong to a picture of the universe, in which the
magnitude of masses, the number of congregated suns and faintly glimmering
nebulae, although they excite our wonder and astonishment, manifest
themselves to us in apparent isolation, and as utterly devoid of all
evidence of their being the scenes of organic life. Thus, even in the
earliest physical views of mankind, heaven and earth have been separated and
opposed to one another as an upper and lower portion of space. If, then, a
picture of nature were to correspond to the requirements of contemplation by
the senses, it ought to begin with a delineation of our native earth. It
should depict, first, the terrestrial planet as to its size and form; its
increasing density and heat at increasing depths in its superimposed solid
and liquid strate; the separation of sea and land, and the vital forms
animating both, developed in the cellular tissues of plants and animals; the
atmospheric ocean, with its waves and currents, through which pierce the
forest-crowned summits of our mountain chains. After this delineation of
purely telluric relations, the eye would rise to the celestial regions, and
the Earth would then, as the well-known seat of organic development, be
considered as a planet, occupying a place in the series of those heavenly
bodies which circle round one of the innumerable host of self-luminous
stars.
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