The Growth of a Crystal

When this date was fixed by your Secretary for the delivery of the Boyle Lecture, I discovered that it happened to be the fifteenth anniversary of the very day on which I was first called upon to address a general audience in Oxford. On May 20, 1896, I delivered an inaugural lecture as Waynflete Professor of Mineralogy; when I look back upon the happy years spent here in teaching and studying a science which is dear to me, I feel that the present lecture should be an opportunity for expressing gratitude for those peaceful years, not unmingled with regret that they led to no such worthy achievement on my part as might have brought great credit to the University and so have repaid something of the debt which I owe to her.

Looking back from the busier world of London, it is easy to see how ideal are the conditions under which an Oxford Professor conducts his work; especially if his subject be one which does not overwhelm him with students who pursue it only for the purpose of passing an examination. Those who are attracted to his Laboratory probably come because they have some natural taste for the subject; he finds it a pleasure to devote his time to them; while his vacations and the conditions of Oxford life give him unique opportunities for his own researches.

It is true that those who have most leisure not infrequently waste most time. It is true also that the custom of Oxford is to burden her students and scholars in addition to their teaching, with the conduct of affairs which could be managed as well by persons specially appointed for the purpose. Still it is also certain that to those who enter into the genius of the place, and are animated by the spirit of Learning, Oxford is prodigal of opportunity, and enables them to live the Academic Life in a way which is scarcely possible elsewhere.

I know that the doors of the University are being opened to all the newer studies, and that many a student spends most of his time in acquiring the useful knowledge that is to equip him for his profession and for the direct purpose of that profession; knowledge which is to fit him to become lawyer, doctor, minister, engineer, or teacher; yet an Oxford Professor may always maintain the pursuit of Learning for its own sake and keep this purpose before his students even in their most technical work.

Now Mineralogy is one of those sciences whose practical applications are clear; it is necessary to the miner and the engineer; indeed, it sprang from their needs; even Crystallography (that is, the study of Crystals), which has always hitherto, though with little reason, been treated for University purposes as a branch of Mineralogy, has also become part of the necessary equipment of the practical chemist and geologist; but both Sciences are, in their general aspects, very far removed from the turmoil of practical life; it is with these aspects that I would fain deal, and especially in relation to the study of crystals.

In this connexion, a passage which I quoted from Goethe fifteen years ago will bear repetition: ‘There is a flavour,’ he says, ‘of the Monk or of the old Bachelor about Crystallography and therefore it is self-sufficient. Practical application in life it has none; its rarest objects, the crystallized precious stones, have to be cut and polished before we can adorn our ladies with them.’

In fact, this lecture, which I was constrained to prepare during a brief holiday in Italy, was written in the midst of surroundings where it was easier to think of Science as cultivated in the quiet of the Laboratory, rather than in the restless scenes of its practical applications, although I am familiar with both. Writing at a window overlooking the mediaeval town and ancient walls of Perugia, with the view of peaceful Assisi and the snowy cap of Monte Subasio across the plain, it was easier to recall the hours of quiet toil and reflection spent in one’s Laboratory at Oxford than visits to Mining Camp, or Metallurgical Works.

Accordingly when, under these circumstances, I set about choosing a subject for the present occasion, it occurred to me that I might be allowed to take up my discourse where I laid it down in 1896 and in some sense to continue and conclude the remarks which I then made to the University; and, considering how recently I have left you, I might regard this as my farewell address corresponding to the opening lecture which I then delivered.

In that address, I recollect, I began with an inquiry into the resemblances and differences between minerals and other objects of nature in respect of their beauty, especially as regards the beauty of form which is so specially characteristic of minerals. Some minerals, indeed, are found in delicate fronds and leaflets, and in mossy tufts, which, in their form and texture, in their sheen and lustre, so closely resemble plants that they are often mistaken for them. [Those who heard Ruskin’s lectures will remember the delight with which he described these beauties of the mineral kingdom and the affection which he felt for them.] I pointed out, I remember, that these delicate forms are, like the frost patterns on a window-pane, really expressions of the crystalline shape and symmetry of the mineral; each mineral consists of crystals, and therefore has its own peculiar crystalline shape which is one of its inherent properties; moreover, this persists unchanging through the ages, and under all conditions, and is in no way dependent upon the environment in which the mineral is situated.

The shape of a crystal does not depend like that of the animal or the plant upon the life which its forefathers have led or the conditions under which they have grown.

There are indeed other features in which a mineral or any crystal may resemble a living thing in a way even more surprising than in its form. Two of the most remarkable are these: it grows out of a solution as though it were alive; and, if it is wounded or broken, it heals itself and replaces the missing part just as a living organism may do. But, as I pointed out, there is this radical difference. The crystal is not responsive to the change of its surroundings; its form is not the result of external forces; it does not adapt itself to its environment; it is not undergoing any progressive evolution; but remains fixed and unchanging.