Cosmos, Vol. 4

is also inherently suited to reveal the causal connection; yet the general painting of nature original: "Naturgemälde" — a central concept for Humboldt, referring to a holistic, aesthetic, and scientific synthesis of the natural world can only produce a fresh and vivid impression if, enclosed within narrow limits, it does not lose its clarity through an excessive accumulation of compressed facts.

Just as in collections of graphic representations of the Earth's surface, or the internal construction of the Earth's crust, one allows general overview maps to precede the specific ones; so it has seemed to me most appropriate in the physical description of the world original: "physischen Weltbeschreibung", and most conducive to the understanding of the lecture, to follow the consideration of the world-whole from general and higher points of view with those specific results of observation, separated into the last two volumes of my writing, which primarily establish the current state of our knowledge. These two volumes are therefore, according to my previously made reminder (Vol. III. pp. 4–9), to be regarded only as an expansion and more careful execution of the general painting of nature (Vol. I. pp. 79–493); and just as of the two spheres of the Cosmos original: "Kosmos" — the universe understood as an ordered and harmonious system the uranological term: uranological — relating to the study of the heavens or astronomy or sidereal term: sidereal — relating to the stars and constellations sphere was treated exclusively in the third volume, so the telluric term: telluric — relating to the Earth (from the Latin 'tellus') sphere remains destined for the now appearing final volume. In this way, the ancient, simple, and natural division of the created into Heaven and Earth, as it appears among all peoples in the earliest monuments of human consciousness, has been maintained.

Even if in the universe the transition from the firmament of fixed stars original: "Fixsternhimmel", in which countless suns, whether isolated or around