Abstract
We have lived through and are living through great political and social upheavals in recent years, and it is natural that the minds of the reading public have been diverted from an interest in learning about the nature in which we live and of which we are members. It would not be good if this were to continue.
Perhaps it may be that a return to nature, a return to interest in it and in the progress of its knowledge, may contribute to turn our thoughts to the natural further development of humanity, to rise above the daily passions and to look round life from the point of view of the eternal cycle of nature. [...] With the magazine Vesmír we want to put into the hands of the widest strata of the Czechoslovak reading public a source of all-round, reliable instruction in the natural sciences and their use in everyday life, in technology, agriculture, medicine and the national economy in the spirit of the preceding words. The Universe will be written in a style accessible to all readers, but it will present the knowledge gained through real scientific research and thinking.
It will follow Frič's Vesmír in its popularity and illustration, and Purkinje's Živa in taking a higher point of view, aiming at the ennoblement of the spirit and the strengthening of the intellect through the knowledge of nature and its laws.