Humboldt's Essai Geog7iosHqtie. 321 



among" the gaping^ herd that surrounded him,' swallowing all Tiis 

 dogmas and doctrines, and repaying him with adulation and with 

 volumes^ of his own " crambe recocta." Dolomieu might have 

 taught him, if he had possessed sense enough to listen, that 

 obsidian and pumice were not formed by water ; nor volcanoes 

 ignited by coal; in his ^own day, he might have learnt some- 

 thing of real geognosy from others than Dolomieu, if he had 

 possessed talents or modesty enough to have become a pupil to 

 those whom he professed to teach. 



M. Humboldt also asserts, in a part of the paragraph which 

 we have not quoted, that his great teacher exercised a surprising* 

 perspicacity in eliciting the truth from the confused narratives of 

 travellers. Nothing so easy ; and his pupils have also profited 

 surprisingly by his example and his perspicacity. Nor any thing 

 so easy as to support his system, or any system, by the same per- 

 spicacity. It was only to translate the language of any other 

 geognost into his own, to know what the observer saw better 

 than he knew himself, and the work was done. It is a fashion 

 that is just as efficacious now. But we must take our leave of 

 Werner, to return to M. Humboldt himself. 



And Ave return to his sixty-seventh page, to his positive geo- 

 gnosy. This properly constitutes the book, and it is just such a 

 collection of naked facts about rocks, as Kirwan wrote, or might 

 have written, in his equally " admirable" work. If this com- 

 prises the whole of Positive Geognosy, we are very unfit review- 

 ers of M. Humboldt's book, since we entertain somewhat different 

 views about what is Positive Geognosy. In all the sciences, 

 there are things, objects, and there are relations, actions, causes, 

 analogies ; categories, in short, of different kinds, which have 

 generally been held essential parts of what is called a science. 

 Perhaps, however, we have misapprehended the meaning of the 

 term geognosy : but we do presume, that it implies somewhat 

 •more than what we find here, and that the adjective term, positive, 

 does not form our author's justification for what he has given us. 



It is indifferent where we take an example of this geognosy. 

 We should have taken the first, which comprises the history of 

 granite, but it is too long for extraction, and is beyond abridg- 

 ment. If any of our geological readers choose to read it, we 

 will permit them to judge for themselves, and shall not be 

 very uneasy at the prospect of the judgment which they will 

 pronounce between ourselves and the author, as to the general 

 issue. They may select any other part, or read the whole ; and 

 if they can extricate any knowledge out of the mass of confusion, 

 why then we shall envy them. Order, or system, there is none. 

 We are dazzled with references to authors, and references to the 

 new world, and hard names ; and when we have laboured 



Vol. XIX. Y 



