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THE

EDINBURGH

PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL.

ART. I.-Historical Eloge of ABRAHAM GOTTLOB WERNER, read at a sitting of the Royal Institute of France. By M. Le Chevalier CUVIER, Perpetual Secretary to the Royal Institute of France, &c. &c. &c.

THE end of the seventeenth century saw a new science arise, which assumed, in its infancy, the proud name of the Theory of the Earth. Setting out from a small number of ill-observed facts,-connecting these together by fantastical suppositions,— it pretended to remount to the origin of worlds, to amuse itself, as it were, with them, and to form a history of them. Its arbitrary methods, its pompous language, all seemed to disunite it from the other sciences; and in fact, philosophers by profession excluded it, for a long time, from the circle of their studies.

At last, after a century of ineffectual attempts, it has entered within the limits assigned to the human mind. Submitting itself to the modest occupation of observing the globe as it actually exists, it has penetrated into its bowels, and has made a kind of dissection of it. From that period, it has taken its place among those departments of knowledge that are positive; and, what is very remarkable, it has done so, without losing any. thing of the marvellous which it had always possessed.

The objects which have been given to it, to see and to touch, -the truths which it has every day been placing under our eyes, are more admirable and more surprising than any which rash imaginations had amused themselves with conceiving.

Two celebrated men, Pallas and Saussure, had prepared the way for this happy reform, a third has accomplished it,-I VOL. IV. NO. 7. JANUARY 1821.

A

mean WERNER. With him, the most remarkable epoch of the science of the Earth commences; and we may even say, that he alone has filled that epoch. For he has had the good fortune to see those ideas, which were so novel, and those views, which, before his time, were so unknown to naturalists, universally prevalent during his own life. He has left as many inheritors of his methods and his doctrine, as there are observers in the world; and wherever mines are explored, or the history of minerals is taught, some distinguished man is to be found, who boasts of having been his disciple. Entire academies have been formed, which have taken his name, as if they had wished to invoke his genius, and to make him, in a manner before unknown, their patron.

On hearing of such extraordinary success, who would not suppose, that it had belonged to some of those keen propagators of their own doctrines, who have overwhelmed their contemporaries by numerous and eloquent works, or who have acquired partizans by the ascendancy of great riches, or of an elevated rank in the social order? Nothing of all this was the case with Werner. Confined to a small town of Saxony, and destitute of any authority in his own country, he had no influence on the fortunes of his disciples. He had no connection with persons in power. Of a disposition singularly timid,—at all times unwilling to write, -he has left behind him but a few sheets of print. Far from seeking to make himself of consequence, he was so little sensible of his own merit, that the trifling rewards, granted him at a time when his fame was spread throughout all parts of the world, surpassed to a great degree whatever he had hoped for or desired.

But this man, so little occupied with himself,-believing himself so little called upon to write, or to instruct others, had in his language and in his conversation an indefinable charm. When once any person had listened to him,-when, over some fragments of stones or of rocks, arranged almost by accident, he had developed, as it were by inspiration, all those general conceptions, all those innumerable relations which his genius had discovered, it was impossible to detach one's self from him. The scholars of Werner, subdued by his talent, respected him as a great master, -allured by the affection which he shewed for them, they often cherished him as a father, wherever they went, they propa

gated his doctrine, and spoke of his person with respect and with

tenderness.

It was thus, that in a few years the small school of Freyberg, intended only at first to form some miners for Saxony, renewed the spectacle of the first Universities of the middle ages,—that scholars flocked to it from every country in which any civilization exists, and that, in the most distant countries, men far advanced in life, and philosophers who had already obtained celebrity, were seen addressing themselves to the study of the German language, solely that they might be in a condition to hear, in their own person, this great oracle of Geology.

A fame so rare, has deservedly placed Werner on the list of our foreign associates ;-it demands this day this tribute of our regrets;-it will dispose you, I doubt not, to listen with some indulgence to the history of a life, altogether secluded,-altogether devoted to science,-perhaps altogether monotonous,—but the labours of which have been rewarded by such great renown.

Abraham Gottlob Werner was born on the 25th September 1750, at Wehrau on the Queiss, in Upper Lusatia. From his earliest years, he saw himself surrounded by objects which were to form the occupation and the glory of his life. His father, who was the director of a forge, used to give him brilliant minerals of different sorts as playthings; and before he could pronounce their names, the child had accustomed himself, whilst occupied in heaping, in throwing, or even in breaking them, to compare them together, and to recognise them by their more marked appearances.

From that time, he kept during his whole life, some of those specimens; and when he shewed his collection, after it had become one of the richest in Europe, he never failed to point out these small beginnings of it, as if he had wished to express a sort of gratitude to those first sparks from which such great lights had proceeded.

He was intended for the employment of a miner; and as the regulations of Saxony require that those who are to enter on this branch of service should be regularly licensed, he proceeded, after having attended a course of Metallurgy at Freyberg, to follow out that of Jurisprudence at the University of Leipsic.

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