The belief in the uncommon and the wonderful lends a definite outline to every manifestation of ideal creation; and the realm of fancy a fairy-land of cosmological, geognostical and magnetic visions becomes thus involuntarily blended with the domain of reality.

Translated by E.C. Otte, Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe (Volume 1), General Review of Natural Phenomena (p. 81)