154 ON THE WORKS AND CHARACTER 



The following extracts illustrate his manner of thinking: 



u Chemistry is yet so new a science, what we know of it bears so small a 

 proportion to what we are ignorant of, our knowledge in every department 

 of it is so incomplete, so broken, consisting so entirely of isolated points 

 thinly scattered like lucid specks on a vast field of darkness, that no re- 

 searches can be undertaken without producing some facts, leading to some 

 consequences, which extend beyond the boundaries of their immediate 

 object," (p. 26.) 



" The only requisite for this operation (crystallization) is a freedom of 

 motion in the masses which tend to unite, which allows them to yield to 

 the impulse which propels them together, and to obey that sort of polarity 

 which occasions them to present to each other the parts adapted to mutual 

 union," (p. 31.) 



"I doubt the existence of triple, quadruple, &c., compounds ; I believe 

 that all combination is binary ; that no substance whatever has more than 

 two proximate or true elements," (p. 36.) 



" Many persons, from experiencing much difficulty in comprehending 

 the combination together of the earths, have been led to suppose the exis- 

 tence of undiscovered acids in stony crystals. If quartz itself be consid- 

 ered as an acid, to which order of bodies its qualities much more nearly 

 assimilate it, than to the earths, their composition becomes readily intelli- 

 gible. They will then be neutral salts, silicates, either simple or compound," 

 (p. 46.) 



It would be interesting to know if this be the first men- 

 tion of the acid nature of silica ; if so, it should be noticed. 

 This was written in January, 1811 : 



" A knowledge of the productions of art, and of its operations, is indis- 

 pensable to the geologist. Bold is the man who undertakes to assign effect* 

 to agents with which he has no acquaintance ; which he never has beheld 

 in action ; to whose indisputable results he is an utter stranger ; who en- 

 gages in the fabrication of a world alike unskilled in the forces and the 

 materials which he employs," (p. 70.) 



The following passages would not be lost on certain mod- 

 ern philosophers : 



" A want of due conviction that the materials of the globe and the pro- 

 ducts of the laboratory are the same, that what nature affords spontaneously 

 to men, and what the art of the chemist prepares, differ no ways but in 

 the sources from whence they are derived, has given to the industry of the 

 collector of mineral bodies an erroneous direction," (p. 94.) 



** There may be persons who, measuring the importance of the subject by 

 the magnitude of the objects, will cast a supercilious look on this discussion 

 (on intumescence }; but the particle and the planet are subject to the same 

 laws; and what is learned upon the one will be known of the other," 

 (p. 101.) 



" In the arts of an ancient people much may be seen concerning them j 

 the progress they have made in knowledge of various kinds ; their habits ; 

 their ideas on many subjects," (p. 101.) 



" It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happi- 

 ness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who in- 

 habit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably with- 

 nnt IOR to him no error without evil." (v. 104. } 



