296 Reflections on some Mineralogical Systems. 



The forme- eludes our senses by its extreme tenuity long 

 before it has attained its limit ; the latter would not be less 

 correctly represented by a mountain of pure silica than by 

 the smallest atom. The function of the one in nature is to 

 aggregate itself in quantities more or less considerable to 

 form masses, from those particles which we can perceive 

 only by the aid of the mircroscope, to those enormous piles 

 which we can scarcely embrace in imagination; the office 

 of the other is to form bodies which we ball compound : thus 

 the simplicity of one of these elements does not affect the 

 other. They have nothing in common, but as being the 

 results to which we are led by the only two means of divi- 

 sion hitherto known. We may affirm that in every case we 

 can obtain these results, or that we cannot be obliged to 

 £ake the limits of our knowledge for those of nature. This 

 is sufficient; and we are not in opposition to philosophy, 

 when, in making some efforts to advance towards the end, 

 we substitute the one for the other; and when we find a 

 representation, which in every thing essential resembles the 

 object of research, we may dispense with a rigour which 

 would in some respects be superfluous. 



Hence, from the combination of these elements under 

 different circumstances, results that infinite variety of 

 nature which we call fantastical when we do not compre- 

 hend it ; and it is by depriving the products of nature of 

 the accidents which alter them, that we bring them back to 

 that simplicity in which alone they are constant. What, 

 then, remains for genius to do, but to investigate nature in 

 a manner in which it cannot escape our researches, and to 

 obtain unequivocal proofs, or else consider it in a state in 

 which it ceases to be changeable?, 



MECHANICO-CHEMICAL OR CRYSTALLOGRAPHICAL SYSTEM 

 OF HAUY, AND HIS DEFINITION OF MINERALOGICAL 

 SPECIES. 



Now, what has the author of a mineralogical system 

 founded on internal properties effected in our times? In- 

 stead of stopping at the surface, he has penetrated into the 

 interior of the mineral, and a new world has presented itself 

 to bis contemplation. He has seen it in its simplicity, 

 considered the elements which compose it, examined their 

 habits and mutual relations, discovered the chain which in 

 an invariable manner unites the final results of the only 

 two means of division of which we know ^he possibility, 

 and has defined the species. "The mineralogical species," 

 says M. Haiiy, il is a collection of minerals whose integral 



molecules 



