e nineteenth
century, has praised Albert's work very highly. Almost needless to
say, Humboldt was possessed of a thorough critical faculty and had a
very wide range of knowledge, so that he was in an eminently proper
position to judge of Albert's work. He has summed up his appreciation
briefly as follows:

"Albertus Magnus was equally active and influential in promoting the
study of natural science and of the Aristotelian philosophy. His
works contain some exceedingly acute remarks on the organic
structure and physiology of plants. One of his works, bearing the
title of 'Liber Cosmographicus de Natura Locorum,' is a species of
physical geography. I have found in it considerations on the
dependence of temperature concurrently on latitude and elevation,
and on the effect of different angles of incidence of the sun's rays
in heating the ground, _which have excited my surprise._"

I have thought that perhaps the best way to bring out properly
Albert's knowledge in the physical sciences would be to take up
Humboldt's headings in their order and illustrate them by quotations
from the great scholar's writings--the only scholar to whom the
epithet has been applied in all history--and from condensed accounts
as they appear in his life written by Sighart. [Footnote 40] These
will serve to show at once the extent of Albert's knowledge and the
presumptuous ignorance of those who make little of the science of the
medieval period.

[Footnote 40: Sighart, Albertus Magnus: Sein Leben und Seine
Wisenschaft, Ratisbon, 1857, or its translation by Dixon; Albert the
Great, his life and scholastic labors. London, 1870.]

When we have catalogued, for instance, the many facts with regard to
astronomy and the physics of light that are supposed to be of much
later entrance into the sphere of human knowledge that were grasped by
{318} Albert, and evidently formed the subject of his teaching at
various times at both Paris and Cologne, since they are found in his
authentic works, we can scarcely help but be amused at the pretentious
lack of knowledge that has relegated their author to a place in
education so trivial as is that which is represented in many minds by
the term scholastic.

"He decides that the Milky Way is nothing but a vast assemblage of
stars, but supposed, naturally enough, that they occupy the orbit
which receives the light of the sun. The figures visible on the
moon's disc are not, he says, as hith