Humboldt's Essai GeognosHque. 311 



basalt, so does greenstone, and so does pitchstone. We may ask, 

 with Voltaire's ** Nonchalant," What then ? As to our " not 

 doubting that scales of mica form the base of clay-slate," we cer- 

 tainly not only doubt, but deny it. The one is a crystal, or a crys- 

 tallized mineral, the other not; and if we were to seek for an 

 identity " not to be doubted," it would rather be between clay 

 and clay-slate. 



That nature " favours the association of heterogeneous rocks," 

 is one of those frivolous and false generalizations which charac- 

 terize the whole of this author's writings. It is not the fact, and 

 if it were, what then ? If there be great spaces or depths of one 

 rock without intermixture, why then there are ; and if there are 

 not, why then nature must "please herself" with differences. 

 These are words ; and thus it is with this author, as if a different 

 wordage was philosophy and a discovery, a generalization and 

 une belle idee. 



There is another of these general laws, equally unmeaning, and, 

 to say truth, not exactly intelligible, at least in English, whatever 

 it may be in French or German geognosy, or in the geognosy of 

 New Spain. It is that, " when in the primitive class, rocks more 

 akin in composition than in structure or aggregation, such as gra- 

 nite and gneiss, or gneiss and mica-slate, alternate, " Ces roches 

 ne montrent guere cette m6me tendance de passer les unes aux 

 autres qu'elles presentent isolement dans des formations non com- 

 plexes." It is not by discovering such laws as this that geognosy, 

 or any gnosy will ever become a science. 



Here also we stumble on the threshold of the author's new 

 geognostic algebra ; and unquestionably, there is much profun- 

 dity in a pasigraphy of alpha, beta, gamma, delta ; but as we find 

 that this new lithological algorithm is lying in wait for us again in 

 the Appendix, we shall for the present pass it over, as well as the 

 remainder of a paragraph which, thus far, we owed to our readers. 



There are many ways of writing a new book, or a new para- 

 graph, or of seeming to have discovered a new idea, or to have 

 made a discovery ; and there is none much more effective than 

 that of translating a plain, vulgar, intelligible, well known fact 

 or proposition, into long-winded, altisonant, and obscure phrase- 

 ology. For example. It does not follow that, because any given 

 limestone, such as that which lies beneath the red marl, contains 

 pectines or terebratulae in England or Greenland, it must also 

 contain them in Peru or Napaul, and it is not true that because an 

 echinus belongs to chalk, it must not also exist in slate. Nothing 

 can be plainer ; the truth is, that it is a great deal too plain. 

 Now mark how it is improved by dress, how it is adornized, till 

 we are as puzzled to recognise it as we should be to know Mr. 

 Waithman, when tricked up in all the robinga and state of a Lord 

 Mayor. 



