MEMOIR OF WERNER. 23 . 



his name known, and procured him the means of 

 transmitting his ideas in a more agreeable form. 



He was nominated in 1 775 Professor and Inspec- 

 tor of the Cabinets of Freyberg ; — an appointment 

 bestowed on him that he might devote himself with- 

 out restraint to his strongest inclination, and which 

 retained him in a district the most calculated of any 

 in Europe to satisfy it, since it is the most abundant 

 in different kinds of minerals, and has, from a re- 

 mote period, been pierced in all directions by the 

 operations of miners. All his efforts, therefore, from 

 this monientj were directed to mineralogy, and to it 

 alone ; but this single science, fecundated by his ge- 

 nius, became one of immense extent. 



His 6rst step had been to create for it a language : 

 liis second was to form a system ; but the latter, as 

 it was much the most important, was also greatly 

 the most difficult. 



Organized beings present two bases of classifica- 

 tion, obviously given by nature ; the individual, re- 

 sulting from the concourse of all the organs to a 

 common action, and the species, resulting from the 

 connexions which generation has established between 

 individuals. 



More remote resemblances, however natural the 

 relations on which they are founded may be, are al- 

 ways more or leas dependent on abstractions of the 

 mind. 



In mineralogy, classificators have sought in vuin 

 for some principle corresponding iu every respect to 



