48 Reflections on some Mineralogical Systems. 
turies. But the faculty of appreciating qualities imme- 
diately sensible, not requiring either profound study or 
complicated reasoning, 3ooner attains its highest point, 
since the improvement of our senses by the habit of using 
them is the most certain way to succeed. No series of 
words can represent the facet which distinguishes a practi~ 
tioner from a theorist; no precept can communicate it. 
He who has p:ssed a long life in seeing, touching, and 
feeling, even when he has done every thing for himself, bas 
no legacy to leave to posterity. In the balance, which I 
suppose at first to have been a simple pole suspended by 
the middle, imperfections were scen and attempted to be 
corrected ; possible meliorations were perceived and exe- 
cuted. The instruments themselves have been the registers 
of these changes, and we have many of them less imperfect 
than those of our ancestors. Yet he who could have ac- 
quired the faculty of judging of masses near to the millionth 
part, would have contributed Jess to the instruction of after 
ages than the balance which would bave been broken. 
If the external characters are so stable as Werner tells 
us; and thev are so in effect; why has he so often changed 
the place of all minerals one after another in his system ? 
Js it that the colour, the specific gravity, the hardness, are 
not the same this year as the last? Have they not the 
same value; or are they not seen with the same eye? If by 
the extension of means, by the acquisition of new know- 
ledge, he had prepared rational changes; if he had substi- 
tuted a verity in place of an error, his system would have 
truly gained. But simply to change one truth for another, 
or put one error in the place of another, is not a progressive 
march in the sciences. 
As to the second of these objections, it appears sufiiciently 
proved by all which bears the name of accurate knowledge, 
that definitions are the language of the sciences. The 
mathematics rest on definitions; chemisiry and physics can 
define much; natural history, rarely. Zoology and botany 
may define the generalities and describe the details. Mi- 
neralogy describes both, aud defines almost nothing. Not 
that a descriptive method is unnatural; it is without doubt 
the first which men used. If we open our eyes on the 
grand features of Nature, the Janguage of description is ail 
that will remain with us, as it belongs to astonishment and 
admiration. It lends itself to all our sentiments, it alters 
not the vivaciiy of them, and we may almost add that to 
exaggerate with it is not to pervert truth. It especially suits 
that majestic harshness of nature which refuses our rules 
aud 
