408 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 
is abundant room for future discovery. I do not, howeverj 
look upon the great merit of the system of Werner and his 
disciples as arising from the satisfactory manner in which 
it enables us to explain the formation of minerals (though 
in this respect^ also, it certainly appears to me to be greatly 
superior to every other that has yet been introduced) ; I 
consider its merit as arising chiefly from the facility and 
certainty with which it enables us to distinguish the objects 
of the mineral kingdom from one another, or to arrange 
and classify them. This is the principal point. No doubt, 
it would be satisfactory, aye, inexpressibly gratifying and 
delightful, to know the particular way in which every ob- 
ject in the mineral, as well as in the other two kingdoms of 
nature, was formed. " Fehx qui potuit rerum cognoscere 
causas," is a principle deeply seated in the human breast, 
and of which we all very powerfully feel the influence. 
But I am afraid the desire of gratifying it not unfrequently 
leads us astray. What but this desire, operating in an ex- 
cessive manner, led to all the fanciful theories and singu- 
larly extravagant positions, which I have already taken no- 
tice of, with a great many more of the same sort, too tedi- 
ous to mention 
Mineralogy and Geognosy have, I think, abundant in- 
terest in their investigations, independent of the manner in 
which the objects about which they are conversant were 
formed. To know and distinguish these, to arrange or 
classify them ; ascertain their properties and relations, so 
as that when we find one, we may in some degree know 
where to look for another ; to ascertain then- uses ; to find 
whether there is any order in the structure of the earth on 
the great scale, and if so, what it is these, I should think, 
are subjects sufficiently attractive and interesting to any 
philosophic mind, and this is perhaps all the length we 
shall ever be able with certainty to go in the path of the 
