the Caspian Sea at the
instance of the Emperor of Russia in 1829; several
scientific works based on his travels appeared before 1845;
in 1845-58 published his masterpiece, "Cosmos"; a brother of
Frederick von Humboldt, who was a philologist.

AN ESSAY ON MAN[22]

The general picture of nature which I have endeavored to delineate
would be incomplete if I did not venture to trace a few of the most
marked features of the human race, considered with reference to
physical gradations--to the geographical distribution of
contemporaneous types--to the influence exercised upon man by the
forces of nature, and the reciprocal, altho weaker action which he, in
his turn, exercises on these natural forces. Dependent, altho in a
lesser degree than plants and animals, on the soil, and on the
meteorological processes of the atmosphere with which he is
surrounded--escaping more readily from the control of natural forces
by activity of mind and the advance of intellectual cultivation no
less than by his wonderful capacity of adapting himself to all
climates--man everywhere becomes most essentially associated with
terrestrial life. It is by these relations that the obscure and
much-contested problem of the possibility of one common descent enters
into the sphere embraced by a general physical cosmography. The
investigation of this problem will impart a nobler, and, if I may so
express myself, more purely human interest to the closing pages of
this section of my work.

[Footnote 22: From his "General Review of Natural Phenomena" in Volume
I of "Cosmos." The translation by E. C. Otte and W. S. Dallas, which
came out in 1849-59. A version by Mrs. Sabine appeared in 1846; and
one by Prichard in 1845-48.]

The vast domain of language, in whose varied structure we see
mysteriously reflected the destinies of nations, is most intimately
associated with the affinity of races; and what even slight
differences of races may effect is strikingly manifested in the
history of the Hellenic nations in the zenith of their intellectual
cultivation. The most important questions of the civilization of
mankind are connected with the ideas of races, community of language,
and adherence to one original direction of the intellectual and moral
faculties.

As long as attention was directed solely to the extremes in varieties
of color and of form, and to the vividness of the first impression of
the senses, the observer was natural