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 1775 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 moment, were directed to mineralogy, and to it 
alone ; but this single science, fecundated by his ge- 
nius, became one of immense extent. 
His first step had been to create for it a language : 
his 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 less dependent on abstractions of the 
mind. 
In mineralogy, classificators have sought in vain 
for some principle corresponding in every respect to 
