The History of Salt

With Observations on the Geographical Distribution, Geological Formation, Etc.

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How frequently it happens that those natural productions with which we are to a certain extent superficially familiar, are to a great many not only uninteresting, but are regarded as subjects more or less beneath their notice; and by others as deleterious to the human race, and therefore to be cautiously used or scrupulously avoided. Another peculiarity is, that the more we are accustomed to them, the more our interest wanes, and probably at last degenerates into apathetic indifference.
We can only attribute these ignorant conceits and apparently unaccountable obliquity of judgment to two causes: an assumption of wisdom, and an unenlightened mind, unwilling to learn and loath to improve. Another hindrance which to a considerable extent precludes the study of what one may truthfully designate every-day subjects, is the restless furor for artful counterfeits of science, which are nothing else than the emanations of vain and visionary minds mixing together, as it were, an amalgam of truth and error. The present age is wonderfully productive of these eccentric ideas, while at the same time it is unhappily pregnant with the most unnatural and anti-healthful habits. The mystified authors take good care to run into the wildest extremes, so that their marvellous schemes and quaint devices (fortunately for their fellow-creatures) cause them to be justly derided by the thoughtful and disregarded by the sensible, though not a few are caught by the tinsel.
The grotesque aberrations of thought which have so prolifically generated such an incongruous medley of medico-social phantasmagoria, though considered by their promoters as wonderful scientific projections, are rendered more ridiculous than they really are, by their wild and unreasonable denunciations of those who do not happen to coincide with their farcical puerilities and whimsical crudities; and their intolerant followers, with considerable more zeal than discretion, promulgate their doctrines with voluminous additions and preposterous assertions—mentis gratissimus error.
These parodies of science have exerted as yet no material influence on modern thought, though there is a visible impress observable here and there; and they doubtless will ultimately collapse, like alchemy and other illusions of a bygone age, and in due time will fall as ignominiously before the resistless onslaughts of true science and knowledge, as those deceptive will-o’-the-wisps were finally extinguished, after whisking about for some centuries, by the calm, dignified, and logical condemnation of philosophical and scientific investigation. Need I remind my reader that I am referring to spiritualism, homœopathy, vegetarianism, and various other bastard distortions of science, though their purblind believers may regard them as legitimate offspring, and therefore deserving of due respect and consideration. Such imaginative plerophory is invariably antagonistic to scientific conclusions and common-sense principles, beside being redundant of inane folly and trivial hyperbole.

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