438 PROOFS OP DESIGN 



had not assumed their present state, and consequently that 

 there is not one of them, which can have existed, where 

 they now are, fore ever. The Mineralogist has ascertained, 

 that Granite is a compound substance, made up of three dis- 

 tinct and dissimilar simple mineral bodies. Quartz, Felspar, 

 and Mica, each presenting certain regular combinations of 

 external form and internal structure, with physical proper- 

 ties pecuHar to itself. And Chemical Analysis has shown 

 that these several bodies are made up of other bodies, all of 

 which had a prior existence in some more simple state, be- 

 fore they entered on their present union in the mineral con- 

 stituents of what are supposed to be the most ancient rocks 

 accessible to human observation. The Crystallographer 

 also has farther shown that the several ingredients of Gra- 

 nite, and of all other kinds of Crystalline Rocks are com- 

 posed of Molecules which are invisibly minute, and that 

 each of these Molecules is made up of still smaller and more 

 simple Molecules, every one of them combined in fixed and 

 definite proportions, and affording at all the successive stages 

 of their analysis, presumptive proof that they possess deter- 

 minate geometrical figures. These combinations and figures 

 are so far from indicating the fortuitous result of accident, 

 that they are disposed according to laws the most severely 

 rigid, and in proportions mathematically exact.* 



The Atheistical Theory assuming the gratuitous postulate 

 of the eternity of matter and motion, would represent the 

 question thus. All matter, it would contend, must of neces- 

 sity have assumed some form or other, and therefore may 



* The above Paragraphs of tliis Chapter excepting the first, are taken 

 ahuost verbatim from the Author's MS. Notes of his Lectures on Mineralogy, 

 bearing the date of June 1822, and lie has adhered more closely to the form 

 under which they appear, than he might otherwise have done, for the sake 

 of showing that no part of them has been suggested by any recent publica- 

 tions ; and that the views here taken have not originated in express consi- 

 derations called forth by the occasion of the present Treatise, but are the 

 natural result of ordinary serious attention to the phenomena of Geology and 

 Mineralogy, viewed in their conjoint relations to one another, and of inquiry 

 pursued a few steps farther beyond the facts towards the causes in wJiich. 

 tliey originated. 



