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For it was impossible that, out of an unsteady and confused matter, the equality of the sides, the likeness of the angles, and the exact proportion of octahedrons, icosahedrons, pyramids, and cubes should be deduced, unless by some power that terminated and shaped every particle of matter.
There is no more reason for attributing intelligence to the head which produced the "Iliad" than to a mass of matter which crystallizes in octahedrons; and, reciprocally, it is as absurd to refer the system of the world to physical laws, leaving out an ordaining ME, as to attribute the victory of Marengo to strategic combinations, leaving out the first consul.
Hence we may conclude what must be the heat in this solfatara at the depth of thirty or forty fathoms. The sulphur reduced into vapour is condensed into fine crystals, which however are not equal in size to those M. Dolomieu brought from Sicily. They are semi-diaphanous octahedrons, very brilliant on the surface, and of a conchoidal fracture.
Why in the thousand and more observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always be arranged at angles of 60 degrees or 120 degrees; why sulphate of potash and sulphate of alumina should crystallise in octahedrons or in cubes, but in no other forms; what is the real connection between molecular changes in the brain-substance and states of consciousness all these, and a myriad more, are unsolved mysteries: we can only say that we are dealing with facts of experience.
Then followed the rush of the Ambassadors to the Boodah, and the frivolous round of Court-life revolved, levee, audience, dinner, drawing-room, investiture; the Lord of the Sea descended from the throne before the Court to pin a cross upon the humble breast of his best shot and give him the title of Praeceps, gave fanciful honours to emperors, received them of them wore when throned a brow-band of gold with only one stone, the biggest of the meteor octahedrons, that glanced about his brow like an icicle in whose glass gallivanted a fairy clad in rags of the rainbow.
The basaltic rocks are of a black colour and thinly stratified; they are generally highly vesicular, but occasionally compact; some of them contain numerous crystals of glassy feldspar and octahedrons of titaniferous iron; others abound with crystals of augite and grains of olivine.
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