Reflections an some Mineralogical Systems. 191 
minerals, and on their smallest shades, so that nothing 
more could be given to considerations of the highest im- 
portance, such as the specific gravity, and geometrical forms. 
Such is the way of tHe system founded on external cha- 
racters. 
M. Haiiy has drawn great and admirable results from one 
single principle. Werner in employing a multiplicity of 
precepts has not even told us what is a species. If the sy- 
stem of Haiiy may, in some respects, be taxed with micro- 
logy, it is with regard to what is the object of the eyes. In 
that of Werner, micrology is all in the mind, 
Let us distinguish generally, between sense and under- 
standing. The growing faces O U in the cube of muriated 
soda may be micrology to the eyes, but they speak forcibly 
to the mind. He who would dissect a flea would certainly 
have a micrological labour for the eyes and fingers; but if 
it had been hence that Hervey discovered the circulation 
of the blood, who would have accused him of a microloygi- 
eal spirit? Micrology has never been applied to the calcu- 
Jation of infinitesimals; Leibnitz has never been accused 
of it; and the name of Newton recalls whatever the human 
species has possessed of true greatness. The eyes are use- 
Jess in estimating dx and dy, the mind only can seize them, 
and he who does it is already imbued with a true sense of 
their grandeur. 
The materiality only of the objects treated by M. Haiiy 
has denied him the vplgar homage which Longinus would 
have rendered him. 
In reducing the two systems which we have just exa- 
mined to their true object; it appears as if we might say, 
that the system of external characters by Werner, in the 
form it is known to us according to the books which have 
treated of it, is very superior to all which have been pre- 
sented to the world before it; that it is extremely useful to 
the miner; that it may satisfy amateurs who limit their 
wishes to a knowledge how io name stones ; that it pre- 
sents no idea to the judgement, and requires noth.ng from 
the understanding ; that if it had appeared in an earlier age 
it would have advanced science, but at a more recent per riod 
it can only make it take a retrograde march. .It contains 
some rules, and presents us witha “useful code of methodize d 
empiricism. 
_ The system of M. Haiiy appears to me to be the science 
of mineralogy, and all mineralogy; and perhaps we shall 
one day or other see that it is more than mineralogy, 
One of the ideas which has been hitherto entertained in 
the 
