Translated for The Chautauquan from the Révue Scientifique.
The definition given to-day to mineralogy places it among the exact sciences. Long continued study has shown that it possesses all the inflexibility of chemistry, of physics, of mathematics. The work of one making a specialty of this subject is similar to that of a millwright who collects the different pieces, forged and cast and prepared in various ways by other workmen, and arranges them all in their proper relations to one another, joins them, and forms the mill with all its complication of machinery in good order, ready to run without friction, without jar. The mineralogist gathers up the facts and theories wrought out by workers in other fields of science, studies their variations, their agreements and connections, demonstrates their presence and their union in inorganic bodies, and sums up and announces all the results of his labor in the form of laws which shall be exact rules for events past, present, and future; for a science incapable of foreseeing and foretelling is not a true science. Mineralogy is not chemistry, nor physics nor mathematics, any more than the millwright is the smith or the smelter. It is a distinct science pursuing a particular aim, and which, although borrowing from other sciences certain of their results, nevertheless possesses its own individuality. It might be said to be a direct application of these three sciences, together with geology, to the study of the life of minerals.
I have just used a very significant expression: The life of minerals. Others have used it before me. “Not only do stones live, but they suffer from sickness, from old age, and death,” wrote Cardan in the sixteenth century. And he was right. Eternal matter performs an eternal cycle; the incessant variations which it experiences; the movement which is never arrested, which from modification to modification, from transformation to transformation draws it along without a single moment of rest; the continual births and deaths and resurrections are life. Every man, every animal, every plant, and every stone obey without any power to resist, and they are all borne along without relaxation or repose toward a vortex whose beginning and ending are concealed within the shadows of eternity. There is no difference between the mineral and vegetable, or animal. Inorganic life is identical with organic life, varying only in degree.
From the moment which we call birth, that is to say at the commencement of one of these periods of transformation, our eyes see, hour by hour, moment by moment, the living being develop. The atoms entering into its construction seek like atoms to which they ally themselves, and molecules combine with other molecules. What matters it about the form of being? Simple or complicated, the law is the same, and it is obeyed. The individual appears with its own chemical constitution, its own form and look, its own variations, all decided under its predetermined conditions. Among these conditions a single one is variable, but the equilibrium is constantly preserved; the individual changes from time to time in its own appointed way, but it never ceases to exist.
In the same manner as organic life bears the impress of its surroundings, so do minerals submit themselves to external influences. The one perhaps is more frail, more delicate, less able to resist, more susceptible to impressions; the natural forces of the other, more powerful because they are simpler, yield less readily to circumstances. Both alike are forced to take their part in the great concert of forces in which they fare only infinitely feeble notes; both alike are influenced by the majestic assembly of powers which act upon them, and upon which they, in turn, also act, conformably to one of the first laws of matter, that of equality between action and reaction.
Let us take any mineral whatever and subject it to a constantly increasing temperature. We notice first that it undergoes a change of form. Cease the application of heat and it will gradually resume its former shape. Let us heat it again, and more intensely. All the properties of the matter which constitutes it become changed, some quickly, some slowly, and it is incapable now of taking back its first appearance. Its crystalline form is different, and its mechanical elasticity, its hardness, and its electric properties; even its color is changed. We will still increase the heat. The molecules disperse, following certain directions, and, following others, gather themselves together. Suddenly a limit, varying according to the chemical composition, the crystalline type, or the pressure, is broken; the solid, beginning to melt, becomes a liquid. Heat it still higher and we shall see new phenomena appearing, volatilization and dissolution. Another limit is passed and the atom, becoming isolated, is free henceforward from the laws of chemistry, and must now obey laws yet unknown, the task of discovering and formulating which is awaiting some worker in the realms of physics or mechanics.
The dissolution of a mineral, is it not death? Every abrupt limit of all the powers of a body is death, and all death precedes a resurrection.
As a child, which at the same moment when it opens its eyes upon the light and utters its first cry, begins already to die, so with the mineral scarcely formed, death commences. Feldspar, which constitutes in great part the soil pressed by our feet, under the influence of air and of water, of drought by day and dews by night, of the heat of summer and the cold of winter, of all agents mechanical, chemical and physical acting upon it, is reduced to its elements by a series of almost insensible transformations. Its fragments are broken to still finer bits, and when they have become dust disintegration still goes on, and gradually the silicon, the aluminum, the iron, the lime, the magnesium, and the potassium which composed them form clay. The iron oxydizes, the silicon separates itself, is dissolved by rain and carried off by the streams. Each element then enters into a new combination; sometimes it again becomes part of a stone; sometimes it helps to form the structure of a plant; sometimes that of a man. Where can birth, signifying the beginning of all existence, be placed, or where shall we find any real death? I perceive only periods of life.