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simple bodies resolved into simpler still? To these questions we can
only answer, by referring to the history of chemistry;—by pointing out
what chemists have understood by analysis, according to the
preceding narrative. They have considered, as the analysis of a
substance, that elementary constitution of it which gives the only
intelligible explanation of the results of chemical manipulation, and
which is proved to be complete as to quantity, by the balance, since
the whole can only be equal to all its parts. It is impossible to
maintain that new substances may not hereafter be discovered; for
they may lurk, even in familiar substances, in doses so minute that
they have not yet been missed amid the inevitable slight
inaccuracies of all analysis; in the way in which iodine and bromine
remained so long undetected in sea-water; and new minerals, or old
ones not yet sufficiently examined, can hardly fail to add something
to our list. As to the possibility of a further analysis of our supposed
simple bodies, we may venture to say that, in regard to such
supposed simple bodies as compose a numerous and well-
characterized class, no such step can be made, except through
some great change in chemical theory, which gives us a new view of
all the general relations which chemistry has yet discovered. The
proper evidence of the reality of any supposed new analysis is, that it
is more consistent with the known analogies of chemistry, to
suppose the process analytical than synthetical. Thus, as has
already been said, chemists admit the existence of fluorine, from the
analogy of chlorine; and Davy, when it was found 310 that ammonia
formed an amalgam with mercury, was tempted to assign to it a
metallic basis. But then he again hesitates, 104 and doubts whether
the analogies of our knowledge are not better preserved by
supposing that ammonia, as a compound of hydrogen and another
principle, is “a type of the composition of the metals.”
 103 Turner, p. 971.

104 Elem. Chem. Phil. 1812, p. 481.

Our history, which is the history of what we know, has little to do

with such conjectures. There are, however, some not unimportant
principles which bear upon them, and which, as they are usually
employed, belong to the science which next comes under our review,
Mineralogy.

~Additional material in the 3rd edition.~

 B O O K XV.

THE ANALYTICO-CLASSIFICATORY SCIENCE.

HISTORY OF MINERALOGY.
Κρύσταλλον φαέθοντα διαυγέα λάζεο χερσὶ,
Λᾶαν ἀπόῤῥοιαν περιφεγγέος ἀμβρότου αἴγλης,
Αἰθέρι δ’ ἀθανάτων μέγα τέρπεται ἄφθιτον ἦτορ.
Τόν κ’ εἴπερ μετὰ χειρὰς ἔχων, περὶ νηὸν ἵκηαι,
Οὔτις τοι μακάρων ἀρνήσεται εὐχωλῆσι.
Orpheus. Lithica.

Now, if the bold but pious thought be thine,

To reach our spacious temple’s inner shrine,
Take in thy reverent hands the crystal stone,
Where heavenly light in earthy shroud is shown:—
Where, moulded into measured form, with rays
Complex yet clear, the eternal Ether plays;
This if thou firmly hold and rightly use,
Not long the gods thy ardent wish refuse.
 INTRODUCTION.

Sect. 1.—Of the Classificatory Sciences.

T HE horizon of the sciences spreads wider and wider before us,

as we advance in our task of taking a survey of the vast domain.
We have seen that the existence of Chemistry as a science which
declares the ingredients and essential constitution of all kinds of
bodies, implies the existence of another corresponding science,
which shall divide bodies into kinds, and point out steadily and
precisely what bodies they are which we have analysed. But a
science thus dividing and defining bodies, is but one member of an
order of sciences, different from those which we have hitherto
described; namely, of the classificatory sciences. Such sciences
there must be, not only having reference to the bodies with which
chemistry deals, but also to all things respecting which we aspire to
obtain any general knowledge, as, for instance, plants and animals.
Indeed it will be found, that it is with regard to these latter objects, to
organized beings, that the process of scientific classification has
been most successfully exercised; while with regard to inorganic
substances, the formation of a satisfactory system of arrangement
has been found extremely difficult; nor has the necessity of such a
system been recognised by chemists so distinctly and constantly as
it ought to be. The best exemplification of these branches of
knowledge, of which we now have to speak, will, therefore, be found
in the organic world, in Botany and Zoology; but we will, in the first
place, take a brief view of the science which classifies inorganic
bodies, and of which Mineralogy is hitherto the very imperfect
representative.
 The principles and rules of the Classificatory Sciences, as well as
of those of the other orders of sciences, must be fully explained
when we come to treat of the Philosophy of the Sciences; and
cannot be introduced here, where we have to do with history only.
But I may observe very briefly, that with the process of classing, is
joined the process of naming;—that names imply classification;—and
that even the rudest and earliest application of language
presupposes a distribution of objects according to their kinds;—but
that such a spontaneous 314 and unsystematic distribution cannot, in
the cases we now have to consider, answer the purposes of exact
and general knowledge. Our classification of objects must be made
consistent and systematic, in order to be scientific; we must discover
marks and characters, properties and conditions, which are constant
in their occurrence and relations; we must form our classes, we must
impose our names, according to such marks. We can thus, and thus
alone, arrive at that precise, certain, and systematic knowledge,
which we seek; that is, at science. The object, then, of the
classificatory sciences is to obtain fixed characters of the kinds of
things; and the criterion of the fitness of names is, that they make
general propositions possible.

I proceed to review the progress of certain sciences on these

principles, and first, though briefly, the science of Mineralogy.

Sect. 2.—Mineralogy as the Analytico-classificatory Science.

Mineralogy, as it has hitherto been cultivated, is, as I have already

said, an imperfect representative of the department of human
knowledge to which it belongs. The attempts at the science have
generally been made by collecting various kinds of information
respecting mineral bodies; but the science which we require is a
complete and consistent classified system of all inorganic bodies.
For chemistry proceeds upon the principle that the constitution of a
body invariably determines its properties; and, consequently, its kind:
but we cannot apply this principle, except we can speak with
precision of the kind of a body, as well as of its composition. We
cannot attach any sense to the assertion, that “soda or baryta has a
metal for its base,” except we know what a metal is, or at least what
properties it implies. It may not be, indeed it is not, possible, to
define the kinds of bodies by words only; but the classification must
proceed by some constant and generally applicable process; and the
knowledge which has reference to the classification will be precise
as far as this process is precise, and vague as far as this is vague.

There must be, then, as a necessary supplement to Chemistry, a

Science of those properties of bodies by which we divide them into
kinds. Mineralogy is the branch of knowledge which has discharged
the office of such a science, so far as it has been discharged; and,
indeed, Mineralogy has been gradually approaching to a clear
consciousness of her real place, and of her whole task; I shall give
the history of some of the advances which have thus been made.
They are, principally, 315 the establishment and use of External
Characters, especially of Crystalline Form, as a fixed character of
definite substances; and the attempts to bring into view the
connexion of Chemical Constitution and External Properties, made in
the shape of mineralogical Systems; both those in which chemical
methods of arrangement are adopted, and those which profess to
classify by the natural-history method.
CRYSTALLOGRAPHY.
 CHAPTER I.

Prelude to the Epoch of De Lisle and Haüy.

O F all the physical properties of bodies, there is none so fixed,

and in every way so remarkable, as this;—that the same
chemical compound always assumes, with the utmost precision, the
same geometrical form. This identity, however, is not immediately
obvious; it is often obscured by various mixtures and imperfections in
the substance; and even when it is complete, it is not immediately
recognized by a common eye, since it consists, not in the equality of
the sides or faces of the figures, but in the equality of their angles.
Hence it is not surprising that the constancy of form was not
detected by the early observers. Pliny says, 1 “Why crystal is
generated in a hexagonal form, it is difficult to assign a reason; and
the more so, since, while its faces are smoother than any art can
make them, the pyramidal points are not all of the same kind.” The
quartz crystals of the Alps, to which he refers, are, in some
specimens, very regular, while in others, one side of the pyramid
becomes much the largest; yet the angles remain constantly the
same. But when the whole shape varied so much, the angles also
seemed to vary. Thus Conrad Gessner, a very learned naturalist,
who, in 1564, published at Zurich his work, De rerum Fossilium,
Lapidum et Gemmarum maxime, Figuris, says, 2 “One crystal differs
from another in its angles, and consequently in its figure.” And
Cæsalpinus, who, as we shall find, did so much in establishing fixed
characters in botany, was led by some of his general views to
disbelieve the fixity of the form of crystals. In his work De Metallicis,
published at Nuremberg in 1602, he says, 3 “To ascribe to inanimate
bodies a definite form, does not appear consentaneous to reason;
for it is the office of organization to produce a definite form;” 317 an
opinion very natural in one who had been immersed in the study of
the general analogies of the forms of plants. But though this is
excusable in Cæsalpinus, the rejection of this definiteness of form a
hundred years later, when its existence had been proved, and its
laws developed by numerous observers, cannot be ascribed to
anything but strong prejudice; yet this was the course taken by no
less a person than Buffon. “The form of crystallization,” says he, 4 “is
not a constant character, but is more equivocal and more variable
than any other of the characters by which minerals are to be
distinguished.” And accordingly, he makes no use of this most
important feature in his history of minerals. This strange
perverseness may perhaps be ascribed to the dislike which Buffon is
said to have entertained for Linnæus, who had made crystalline form
a leading character of minerals.
1 Nat. Hist. xxvii. 2.

2 p. 25.

3 p. 97.

4 Hist. des Min. p. 343.

It is not necessary to mark all the minute steps by which

mineralogists were gradually led to see clearly the nature and laws
of the fixity of crystalline forms. These forms were at first noticed in
that substance which is peculiarly called rock-crystal or quartz; and
afterwards in various stones and gems, in salts obtained from
various solutions, and in snow. But those who observed the
remarkable regular figures which these substances assume, were at
first impelled onwards in their speculations by the natural tendency
of the human mind to generalize and guess, rather than to examine
and measure. They attempted to snatch at once the general laws of
geometrical regularity of these occurrences, or to connect them with
some doctrine concerning formative causes. Thus Kepler, 5 in his
Harmonics of the World, asserts a “formatrix facultas, which has its
seat in the entrails of the earth, and, after the manner of a pregnant
woman, expresses the five regular geometrical solids in the forms of
gems.” But Philosophers, in the course of time, came to build more
upon observation, and less upon abstract reasonings. Nicolas Steno,
a Dane, published, in 1669, a dissertation De Solido intra Solidum
Naturaliter contento, in which he says, 6 that though the sides of the
hexagonal crystal may vary, the angles are not changed. And
Dominic Gulielmini, in a Dissertation on Salts, published in 1707,
says, 7 in a true inductive spirit, “Nature does not employ all figures,
but only certain ones of those which are possible; and of these, the
determination is not to be fetched from the brain, or proved à priori,
but obtained by experiments and observations.” And 318 he speaks 8
with entire decision on this subject: “Nevertheless since there is here
a principle of crystallization, the inclination of the planes and of the
angles is always constant.” He even anticipates, very nearly, the
views of later crystallographers as to the mode in which crystals are
formed from elementary molecules. From this time, many persons
labored and speculated on this subject; as Cappeller, whose
Prodromus Crystallographiæ appeared at Lucern in 1723; Bourguet,
who published Lettres Philosophiques sur la Formation de Sels et de
Cristaux, at Amsterdam, in 1792; and Henckel, the “Physicus” of the
Elector of Saxony, whose Pyritologia came forth in 1725. In this last
work we have an example of the description of the various forms of
special classes of minerals, (iron pyrites, copper pyrites, and arsenic
pyrites;) and an example of the enthusiasm which this apparently dry
and laborious study can excite: “Neither tongue nor stone,” he
exclaims, 9 “can express the satisfaction which I received on setting
eyes upon this sinter covered with galena; and thus it constantly
happens, that one must have more pleasure in what seems
worthless rubbish, than in the purest and most precious ores, if we
know aught of minerals.”
5 Linz. 1619, p. 161.

6 p. 69.

7 p. 19.

8 p. 83.

9 p. 343.

Still, however, Henckel 10 disclaims the intention of arranging

minerals according to their mathematical forms; and this, which may
be considered as the first decided step in the formation of
crystallographic mineralogy, appears to have been first attempted by
Linnæus. In this attempt, however, he was by no means happy; nor
does he himself appear to have been satisfied. He begins his
preface by saying, “Lithology is not what I plume myself upon.”
(Lithologia mihi cristas non eriget.) Though his sagacity, as a natural
historian, led him to see that crystalline form was one of the most
definite, and therefore most important, characters of minerals, he
failed in profiting by this thought, because, in applying it, he did not
employ the light of geometry, but was regulated by what appeared to
him resemblances, arbitrarily selected, and often delusive. 11 Thus he
derived the form of pyrites from that of vitriol; 12 and brought together
alum and diamond on account of their common octohedral form. But
he had the great merit of animating to this study one to whom, more
perhaps than to any other person, it owes its subsequent progress; I
mean Romé de Lisle. “Instructed,” this writer says, in his preface to
his Essais de Crystallographie, “by the works of the celebrated Von
Linnée, how 319 greatly the study of the angular form of crystals
might become interesting, and fitted to extend the sphere of our
mineralogical knowledge, I have followed them in all their
metamorphoses with the most scrupulous attention.” The views of
Linnæus, as to the importance of this character, had indeed been
adopted by several others; as John Hill, the King’s gardener at Kew,
who, in 1777, published his Spathogenesia; and Grignon, who, in
1775, says, “These crystallizations may give the means of finding a
new theory of the generation of crystalline gems.”
10 p. 167.

11 Marx. Gesch. p. 97.

12 Syst. Nat. vi. p. 220.

The circumstance which threw so much difficulty in the way of

those who tried to follow out his thought was, that in consequence of
the apparent irregularity of crystals, arising from the extension or
contraction of particular sides of the figure, each kind of substance
may really appear under many different forms, connected with each
other by certain geometrical relations. These may be conceived by
considering a certain fundamental form to be cut into new forms in
particular ways. Thus if we take a cube, and cut off all the eight
corners, till the original faces disappear, we make it an octohedron;
and if we stop short of this, we have a figure of fourteen faces, which
has been called a cubo-octohedron. The first person who appears
distinctly to have conceived this truncation of angles and edges, and
to have introduced the word, is Démeste; 13 although Wallerius 14 had
already said, in speaking of the various crystalline forms of calcspar,
“I conceive it would be better not to attend to all differences, lest we
be overwhelmed by the number.” And Werner, in his celebrated work
On the External Characters of Minerals, 15 had formally spoken of
truncation, acuation, and acumination, or replacement by a plane, an
edge, a point respectively, (abstumpfung, zuschärfung, zuspitzung,)
as ways in which the forms of crystals are modified and often
disguised. He applied this process in particular to show the
connexion of the various forms which are related to the cube. But still
the extension of the process to the whole range of minerals and
other crystalline bodies, was due to Romé de Lisle.
13 Lettres, 1779, i. 48.

14 Systema Mineralogicum, 1772–5, i. 143.

15 Leipzig, 1774. 320

 CHAPTER II.

Epoch of Romé De Lisle and Haüy.—Establishment of the Fixity of

Crystalline Angles, and the Simplicity of the Laws of Derivation.

W Ehadhaverecognized
already seen that, before 1780, several mineralogists
the constancy of the angles of crystals, and
had seen (as Démeste and Werner,) that the forms were subject to
modifications of a definite kind. But neither of these two thoughts
was so apprehended and so developed, as to supersede the
occasion for a discoverer who should put forward these principles as
what they really were, the materials of a new and complete science.
The merit of this step belongs jointly to Romé de Lisle and to Haüy.
The former of these two men had already, in 1772, published an
Essai de Crystallographie, in which he had described a number of
crystals. But in this work his views are still rude and vague; he does
not establish any connected sequence of transitions in each kind of
substance, and lays little or no stress on the angles. But in 1783, his
ideas 16 had reached a maturity which, by comparison, excites our
admiration. In this he asserts, in the most distinct manner, the
invariability of the angles of crystals of each kind, under all the
changes of relative dimension which the faces may undergo; 17 and
he points out that this invariability applies only to the primitive forms,
from each of which many secondary forms are derived by various
changes. 18 Thus we cannot deny him the merit of having taken
steady hold on both the handles of this discovery, though something
still remained for another to do. Romé pursues his general ideas into
detail with great labor and skill. He gives drawings of more than five
hundred regular forms (in his first work he had inserted only one
hundred and ten; Linnæus only knew forty); and assigns them to
their proper substances; for instance, thirty to calcspar, and sixteen
to felspar. He also invented and used a goniometer. We cannot
doubt that he would have been 321 looked upon as a great
discoverer, if his fame had not been dimmed by the more brilliant
success of his contemporary Haüy.
16Cristallographie, ou Description de Formes propres à tous les
Corps du Règne Minéral. 3 vols. and 1 vol. of plates.

17 p. 68.

18 p. 73.

Réné-Just Haüy is rightly looked upon as the founder of the

modern school of crystallography; for all those who have, since him,
pursued the study with success, have taken his views for their basis.
Besides publishing a system of crystallography and of mineralogy,
far more complete than any which had yet appeared, the peculiar
steps in the advance which belong to him are, the discovery of the
importance of cleavage, and the consequent expression of the laws
of derivation of secondary from primary forms, by means of the
decrements of the successive layers of integrant molecules.

The latter of these discoveries had already been, in some

measure, anticipated by Bergman, who had, in 1773, conceived a
hexagonal prism to be built up by the juxtaposition of solid rhombs
on the planes of a rhombic nucleus. 19 It is not clear 20 whether Haüy
was acquainted with Bergman’s Memoir, at the time when the
cleavage of a hexagonal prism of calcspar, accidentally obtained, led
him to the same conception of its structure. But however this might
be, he had the indisputable credit of following out this conception
with all the vigor of originality, and with the most laborious and
persevering earnestness; indeed he made it the business of his life.
The hypothesis of a solid, built up of small solids, had this peculiar
advantage in reference to crystallography; it rendered a reason of
this curious fact;—that a certain series of forms occur in crystals of
the same kind, while other forms, apparently intermediate between
those which actually occur, are rigorously excluded. The doctrine of
decrements explained this; for by placing a number of regularly-
decreasing rows of equal solids, as, for instance, of bricks, upon one
another, we might form a regular equal-sided triangle, as the gable of
a house; and if the breadth of the gable were one hundred bricks,
the height of the triangle might be one hundred, or fifty, or twenty-
five; but it would be found that if the height were an intermediate
number, as fifty-seven, or forty-three, the edge of the wall would
become irregular; and such irregularity is assumed to be
inadmissible in the regular structure of crystals. Thus this mode of
conceiving crystals allows of certain definite secondary forms, and
no others.
19 De Formis Crystallorum. Nov. Act. Reg. Soc. Sc. Ups. 1773.

20 Traité de Minér. 1822, i. 15.

The mathematical deduction of the dimensions and proportions

322 of these secondary forms;—the invention of a notation to express
them;—the examination of the whole mineral kingdom in accordance
with these views;—the production of a work 21 in which they are
explained with singular clearness and vivacity;—are services by
which Haüy richly earned the admiration which has been bestowed
upon him. The wonderful copiousness and variety of the forms and
laws to which he was led, thoroughly exercised and nourished the
spirit of deduction and calculation which his discoveries excited in
him. The reader may form some conception of the extent of his
labors, by being told—that the mere geometrical propositions which
he found it necessary to premise to his special descriptions, occupy
a volume and a half of his work;—that his diagrams are nearly a
thousand in number;—that in one single substance (calcspar) he has
described forty-seven varieties of form;—and that he has described
one kind of crystal (called by him fer sulfuré parallélique) which has
one hundred and thirty-four faces.
21 Traité de Minéralogie, 1801, 5 vols.

In the course of a long life, he examined, with considerable care,

all the forms he could procure of all kinds of mineral; and the
interpretation which he gave of the laws of those forms was, in many
cases, fixed, by means of a name applied to the mineral in which the
form occurred; thus, he introduced such names as équiaxe,
métastatique, unibinaire, perihexahèdre, bisalterne, and others. It is
not now desirable to apply separate names to the different forms of
the same mineral species, but these terms answered the purpose, at
the time, of making the subjects of study more definite. A symbolical
notation is the more convenient mode of designating such forms,
and such a notation Haüy invented; but the symbols devised by him
had many inconveniences, and have since been superseded by the
systems of other crystallographers.

Another of Haüy’s leading merits was, as we have already

intimated, to have shown, more clearly than his predecessors had
done, that the crystalline angles of substances are a criterion of the
substances; and that this is peculiarly true of the angles of cleavage;
—that is, the angles of those edges which are obtained by cleaving a
crystal in two different directions;—a mode of division which the
structure of many kinds of crystals allowed him to execute in the
most complete manner. As an instance of the employment of this