ftlS Professor Necker 07i Mineralogy considered 



single crystals of primitive or secondary forms, however simple 

 or complicated they may be. 



§ 13. Now that we have found individuals to exist in the in- 

 organized world, we may be allowed to study and arrange them 

 according to the principles of natural history. Natural history, 

 indeed, by its very essence, is bound, not only to consider them, 

 but also to subject them to her method of classification. Hence 

 we are now called upon to compare all these very numerous and 

 varied individuals, in all their different properties, and to ar- 

 range them according to their analogies, as zoologists and bo- 

 tanists do with individual animals or plants. 



§ 14. It is now for the first time that mineralogists will be 

 called upon to study and classify real and positive beings ; for 

 hitherto they have only considered and attempted to arrange 

 abstract ideas. It was the substance of minerals, and not the 

 minerals themselves, that was the object of their studies and 

 comparisons, owing chiefly to the use which the arts derived 

 from these substances, so that the most useful element in such 

 minerals was therefore considered the most important in the 

 combination. The physical and external properties of a mine- 

 ral body were, in these cases, viewed in a manner quite subor- 

 dinate to the substance. They were not looked upon as equal- 

 ly essential to the existence of the body itself, but merely as 

 more speedy, and more ready, indicators of the nature of the 

 substance, than the chemical analysis. This observation, which, 

 I believe is as new as it is true, that mere abstract ideas have 

 been arranged into families, genera, species, which, as these very 

 names indicate, are notions derived from existing relations among 

 positive individuals, will account for the unfitness of such clas- 

 sifications to the objects for which they were employed. 



It is very curious to observe, that Mohs himself, although he 

 has perfectly recognised crystals to be the individuals of the mi- 

 neral kingdom, wishing as he did to introduce into the science 

 of mineralogy the modes of proceeding of the other branches of 

 natural history, has never thought of availing himself of his own 

 correct ideas on this subject, to compare individuals with one 

 another, as is always done in zoology and botany, and to give a 

 classification of mineral individuals and not of abstract ideas, as 



