118 Reflections on some Mineralogical Systems. 
ject than to render his means independent of every thing, 
even of mineralogy. itselfy with the certainty of depriving 
them of all. the advantages which an enlightened age was 
in a condition to furnish him. Most assuredly, had he 
designed. to plunge the subject, which he wished to make a 
scicnce in the most profound barbarism, he could have 
jmagined nothing better than what he has done to succeed, 
He whose intellectual faculties give bim a right to open 
to himself a career in the empire of the sciences, is very 
happy to find it already in a state of advanced culture. He 
makes use of every thing which has been previously pub- 
lished ; and it appears as if al] those who preceded him, had 
only prepared the materials, to which every one hopes to 
add something, or strives to compose an edifice :, while that 
in the seductive regions of the imagination, we meet only 
flowers which fade under the hand that first collects them ; 
and the poet of the 18th century may find in the Ihad 
thoughts which belong to him as well as to the chauter of 
Achilles, but of which others might question his originality 
because Homer lived before him. 
LITERARY STATE OF THE GERMANS, 
Here, were it not conducive to a too long digression, I 
should make some remarks on the advantages and disad- 
vantages which the Germans have had as. well in literature 
as in science. While England, France, Italy, and Spain 
had their poets who observed nature, who studied the ancients, 
and who polished their native tongues, the Germans were 
not advanced: their true hterary epoch took place near the 
end of the last century; that is to say, two or three hundred 
years later than that of other nations. They have been the 
last to reap, and it remains for them only to divide with 
their predecessors, and to.be accused of plagiarism, or con- 
tent themselves with mediocrity and remaining inferior, 
The Germans thought to avoid the one and the other rock ; 
others believe that they have struck on both. It is in 
roving through regions where buman thought had never 
penetrated, in associating ideas which nature had never as- 
similated, in creating images, in depicting passions which 
neither the mind nor soul ever knew; it is, im short, by 
doing what others have neither done nor wished to do, that 
they believe themselves original ;—these are the things in 
which they make genius consist. Difficulties are never the 
fashion; nevertheless, genius is the fashion mm Germany. 
The French, it has been said, hunt after wit; they pursue it 
at Jeast with grace, and often they have not far to run.) It 
is 
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