Humboldt's Essai GSognostique, 315 



The positive quality we grant ; as this geognosy never betrayed 

 any want of confidence and assertion. The remainder might be 

 mooted, if we were much inclined that way. We remember the 

 late Mr. Tennant, and we remember his pronouncing in one of his 

 lectures respecting this creator of positive Geognosy, — " a stupid 

 German blockhead" — : "aside," however, as is sometimes the usage 

 of the stage. Really, Mr. Tennant, these were hard words ; but 

 Mr. Tennant had not scaled Cotopaxi or Popocatepetl. Dans le 

 pays des aveugles les borgnes sont Rois. 



There is a vast virtue in hard words, just as there is in the x*s 

 and y's of Algebra. Baron Humboldt is not unacquainted with 

 the value of " Loxodromisme," however we may be. The office 

 near Soho-square for plundering, alternately, servants and mas- 

 ters, would lose half its attractions but for its Therapolegia in- 

 scription. The guinea paid for supplying it, was well bestow- 

 ed. Loxodromism, or Loxodromy. What a mass of know- 

 ledge is contained in this little word. Elevation, parallel po- 

 sition, these are household terms, and carry no weight. The 

 clown does not admire the preacher whom he understands : 

 " he is no Latiner." When a man can express himself in the 

 ordinary language which he has picked up from his nurse, we 

 have generally a suspicion that he knows what he means. 

 Solomon seemed to be of the same opinion when he com- 

 plained of the man who " darkened counsel by words without 

 knowledge." 



This Greek coinage is a false money, which cheats us with a 

 semblance for solid gold. We wish the French nation would 

 burn its Lexicons, since it has not yet learnt to make any other 

 use of them. Great evils arise from petty causes, now and then. 

 Had Brongniart not been the lucky, (unlucky for us), possessor 

 of a Greek Lexicon, we should have been spared Phyllade, and 

 Dolerite, and Trachyte, and Psammite, and Euphotide, and Dia- 

 base, and heaven knows what more ; we should have been spared 

 the arrangement, and the system, and the whole, and we might 

 now have understood what his nation is writing about, if indeed 

 they understand it themselves. 



But the Greek is not the sole criminal, for the German does 

 as well. Geognosy, or aught else, there is nothing so easy as 

 phrases, phraseology, conventional language ; cant, we were 

 very nearly saying. All the Gnosies have their phrases and tlieir 

 cant ; and words go for sense. They save the trouble of think- 

 ing, which is a vast convenience ; and of understanding, which is 

 more convenient still. Explain, explain, as they say in the 

 House of Commons. Read Swift, and learn to write your own 

 language : Read Blaise Pascal, Mons. le Baron. 



But we must return to the Loxodromy, the oblique course of 



