COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVEHSE. 483
But that which, as has already been frequently remarked,
has rendered the geographical position of the Mediterranean
most beneficial in its influence on the intercourse of nations,
is the proximity of the eastern continent, where it projects
boldt, Examen critique, t. i. pp. 112 and 171; Otfried Miiller, Minyer,
s. 64; and the latter again in a too favourable critique of my memoir
on the Mythische Gcoyraphie der Griechen, (Go'tt. gelehrte Anzeigen,
.1838.) I expressed myself as follows: "In raising questions which
are of so great importance with respect to philological studies, I
cannot wholly pass over all mention of that which belongs less to the
description of the actual world, than to the cycle of mythical geography.
[t is the same with space as with time. History cannot be treated
from a philosophical point of view, if the heroic ages be wholly lost
sight of. National myths when blended with history and geography,
cannot be regarded as appertaining wholly to the domain of the
ideal world. Although vagueness is one of its distinctive attributes, and
symbols cover reality by a more or less thick veil, myths, when intimately
connected together, nevertheless reveal the ancient source, from which
the earliest glimpses of cosmography and physical science have beea
derived. The facts recorded in primitive history and geography, are not
mere ingenious fables, but rather the reflection of the opinion generally
admitted regarding the actual world." The great investigator of antiquity
(whose opinion is so favourable to me, and whose early death in the
land of Greece, on which he had bestowed such profound and varied
research, has been universally lamented,) considered, on the contrary,
that " the chief part of the poetic idea of the earth, as it occurs in Greek
poetry, is by no means to be ascribed to actual experience, which may
have been invested, from credulity, and love of the marvellous, with a
fabulous character, as has been conjectured especially with respect
to the Phrenician maritime legends; but rather that it was to be
traced to the roots of the images which lie in certain ideal presuppositions
and requirements of the feelings, on which a true geographical
knowledge has only gradually begun to work. From this fact there
has often resulted the interesting phenomenon, that purely subjective
creations of a fancy guided by certain ideas, become almost imperceptibly
blended with actual countries, and well-known objects of scientific geogra-
phy.
From these considerations it may be inferred, that all genuine, or
artificially mythical pictures of the imagination belong, in their proper
groundwork, to an ideal world, and have no original connexion with the
actual extension of the knowledge of the earth, or of navigation beyond
the Pillars of Hercules." The opinion expressed by me in the French
work, agreed more fully with the earlier views of Otfried Miiller, for in
the Prolegomenon zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, s. 68 and
109, he said very distinctly, that " in mythical narratives of that which
is done and that which is imagined, the real and the ideal, are most
closely connected together." See also on the Atlantis and Lyktonia,
Martin, Etudes sur k Timee de Platon, t. i. pp. 293-326.
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