18 
MEMOIR OF WERNER. 
man faculties, and, confining itself to the modest task 
of observing the globe as it actually exists, has pe- 
netrated into its bowels, and, in some degree, ex- 
plained its anatomy. It has henceforth taken its 
place among the subjects of positive knowledge, and, 
what is very remarkable, it has done so without losing 
any thing of its marvellous character. The objects 
which it has been enabled to see and to touch, — the 
truths which it has daily brought under our eyes, — 
are even more admirable and surprising than all that 
the most prolific imagination had ventured to con- 
ceive. 
This happy reformation was commenced by two 
celebrated men, Pallas and Saussure ; and it was 
completed by Werner. With him commences the 
most remarkable epoch of the science of the earth, 
— an epoch indeed which he himself may be said to 
have filled ; for he had the good fortune to witness, 
during his own lifetime, the universal prevalence of 
his ideas and views, although they were so novel in 
their character, and foreign to the previous notions 
of most naturalists. He has left as many inheritors 
of his methods and doctrine as there are observers 
in the world ; and wherever mines are wrought, or 
the history of minerals taught, some distinguished 
man is to be found, who accounts it an honour to 
have been his pupil. Entire academies * have been 
formed and distinguished by his name, as if they had 
* See Account of Wernerian Natural History Society 
at the end of this memoir. 
