It is
no more a truth that water is able to dissolve salt, than that we never
have been able to detect the smallest disposition in water to dissolve
crystal, flint, quartz, or metals. Therefore, to allege the possibility
of water being capable of dissolving those bodies in the mineral
regions, and of thus changing the substance of one body into another, as
naturalists have supposed, contrary to their knowledge, or in order to
explain appearances, is so far from tending to increase our science,
that it is abandoning the human intellect to be bewildered in an error;
it is the vain attempt of lulling to sleep the scientific conscience,
and making the soul of man insensible to the natural distress of
conscious ignorance.
But besides that negative argument concerning the insolubility of
crystal, by which the erroneous suppositions of naturalists are to
be rejected, crystal in general is found regularly concreted in the
cavities of the most solid rock, in the heart of the closest agate, and
in the midst of granite mountains. But these masses of granite were
formed by fusion; I hope that I shall give the most satisfactory proof
of that truth: Consequently, here at least there is no occasion for the
action of water in dissolving siliceous substances in one place, in
order to concrete and crystallise it in another.
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