SI 4 Professor Necker on Mineralogy considered 



roneous ideas which have hitherto prevailed on this subject that 

 may be attributed the precarious, and, as it were, spurious rank 

 which mineralogy at present occupies among the natural sciences, 

 and the perpetual fluctuation that has always been observed in 

 its methods between the doctrines and the forms of natural his- 

 tory and those of chemistry. 



§ 6. We are now to shew that, according to sound reasoning, 

 the purposes, the doctrines, and the forms of natural history, 

 are in fact, and ought to be, different from those of natural 

 philosophy and chemistry. 



As the beings whose union forms the universe are the com- 

 mon fund out of which all the sciences of observation and ex- 

 perience draw the objects of their investigation, it might be, 

 and has been, said, that those sciences, having the same objects 

 of contemplation, are not so distinct from one another as preju- 

 dice has too long made us conceive them to be. This, indeed, 

 would be the case, if the material objects from which a science 

 draws its objects of contemplation were alone sufficient to con- 

 stitute such contemplations a science. But it is far from being 

 so : it is not so much the objects themselves, but the way in 

 which they are considered, and the particular purpose for which 

 they are studied, that establishes real and very distinct differ- 

 ences among the different pursuits to which the human mind 

 may be applied, and which raises these various pursuits to the 

 rank of so many distinct sciences. 



§ 7. Natural philosophy or physics, and chemistry, are, in 

 fact, abstract sciences, inasmuch as they abstract properties and 

 phenomena from the existing bodies in nature which are the 

 subjects of their consideration ; this abstraction is complete and 

 permanent, as they never return to consider and study the be- 

 ing themselves by which the abstract properties have been fur- 

 nished. Their mode of expression, also, is abstract ; they em- 

 ploy calculation, numbers, mathematics as much as it is possible; 

 they inquire into causes, they speculate, they analyze, and then 

 generalize. In the exposition of their doctrines they are not 

 restricted to any particular form or method, but each philoso- 

 pher is free to introduce his speculations or discoveries in the 

 mode which appears to him most convenient for his purpose, 

 finally, the ultimate end of these abstract sciences would be to 



