Humboldt to Agassiz.
Berlin, September 16, 1845.
. . . Your Nomenclator frightens me with its double entries.
The Milky Way must have crossed your path, for you seem to be dealing with nebulae which you are trying to resolve into stars.
For pity's sake husband your strength.
You treat this journey as if it were for life.
As to finishing,—alas!
my friend, one does not finish.
Considering all that you have in your well-furnished brain beside your accumulated papers, half the contents of which you do not yourself know, your expression ‘aufraumen,’—to put in final order, is singularly inappropriate.
There will always remain some burdensome residue, —last things not yet accounted for. I beg you, then, not to abuse your strength.
Be content to finish only what seems to you nearest completion,—the most advanced of your work.
Your letter reached me, unaccompanied, however, by the books it announces.
They are to come, no doubt, in some other way. Spite of the demands made upon me by the continuation of my ‘Cosmos,’ I shall find 