Cosmos

[Footnote] *This verse occurs in a poem of Schiller, entitled 'Der Spaziergang' which first appeared in 1795, in the 'Horen.' In order to trace to its primitive source the enjoyment derived from the exercise of thought, it is sufficient to cast a rapid glance on the earliest dawnings of the philosophy of nature, or of the ancient doctrine of the 'Cosmos.' We find even p 37 among the most savage nations (as my own travels enable me to attest) a certain vague, terror-stricken sense of the all-powerful unity of natural forces, and of the existence of an invisible, spiritual essence manifested in these forces, whether in unfolding the flower and maturing the fruit of the nutrient tree, in upheaving the soil of the forest, or in rending the clouds with the might of the storm. We may here trace the revelation of a bond of union, linking together the visible world and that higher spiritual world which escapes the grasp of the senses. The two become unconsciously blended together, developing in the mind of man, as a simple product of ideal conception and independently of the aid of observation, the first germ of a 'Philosophy of Nature.'