Читать книгу On Anything онлайн

8 страница из 38

You may think I have exhausted the matter of clay, but you are wrong. Clay has a further quality: it is a mystery. Any one can see how granite came about. And as for chalk, it was made by a vast number of little fishes. Sand is a thing a tom-fool can understand; limestone is self-evident; and I never knew any one yet who was puzzled by alluvial soil; but clay is a harder nut to crack. How was it made? Those who were there when the foundations of the earth were laid and who pretend that they know everything, those whose god is matter and whose infallible authority is printer's ink, boast like Lucifer their father, and will explain everything to you on their eight fingers and two thumbs—but they confess that they cannot explain clay. It is all very well to say that clay is full of alumina; that it is the breaking up of granite rocks, but no one can tell you how all this came about, nor why it is so pasty. "It is not known" (says my Encyclopædia) "why certain specimens of granite are rapidly corroded and crumbled down, while others have resisted for ages the same causes of decay." No! No, by heaven! it is not known. And it is a great day in modern times when one can get one of the scientists to admit that he is not possessed of universal knowledge. No man living knows how clay came to be. I repeat it is a mystery and is crammed with the virtue of all mysterious things. And should it not be mysterious, seeing what are its powers?