42 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



by sympathies and antipathies : but every sort of mineral can convert 

 immense masses into its own proper nature, as we convert our ali- 

 ments into flesh and blood. Mountains are the organs of the respira- 

 tion of the globe, and the schists the secreting organs ; it is by these 

 that sea- water is decomposed to engender volcanic eruptions ; the veins 

 in mines are the caries, the abscesses, of the mineral kingdom ; and 

 the metals a production of putrefaction and disease ; and this accounts 

 for their bad smell *. 



Still more recent is a philosophy which substitutes metaphors for 

 reasoning, setting out with a system of absolute identity, or pantheism, 

 produces all phenomena or (what it thinks the same thing) all beings 

 by polarization similar to the two electricities; and calling polarization, 

 all opposition, every obstacle, whether we consider its situation, nature, 

 or functions, it seems to oppose God and the world ; in the world the 

 sun and the planets ; in each planet solidity and liquidity ; and, pur- 

 suing this system, changing when needful its figures and allegories, 

 it reaches at last to the minutest details of organized speciesf. 



We must allow that we have selected the most opposite examples, 

 and that all geologists have not carried the boldness of their concep- 

 tions as far as those we have cited. But amongst those who have ad- 

 vanced with more caution, and have not sought arguments beyond 

 physics or ordinary chemistry, how much diversity of opinion and con- 

 tradiction have arisen ! 



Opposition of all these Systems. 



According to one, all is precipitated successively by crystallization : 

 all was deposited as it now is ; but the sea which covered all has re- 

 tired gradually | . 



With another the materials of mountains are incessantly lowered 

 and carried away by rivers to the depths of the ocean, there to become 

 heated beneath enormous pressure, and to form layers which the heat 

 that hardens them will one day elevate with violence§. 



A third supposes the liquid divided into a multitude of lakes, am- 

 phitheatrically one above another, which, after having deposited our 

 layers of shells, have successively broken down their banks to fill the 

 basin of the ocean ||. 



* M. Patvin has shown much imagination in supporting these fantastic ideas in 

 many articles in " Le Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle." 



T We particularly find this application of pantheism to geology in the works of M. 

 Steffens and M. Oken. 



% M. Delametherie admits crystallization as a principal cause in his Geology. 



§ Hutton and Playfair : Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth. Edin. 

 1802. 



|| Lamanon, in many parts of the Journal de Physique, after Michaelis, and many 

 otheis. 



