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Pere Teilhard de Chardin – Phenomenon of Man

The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients.  Vaguely analogous to the metamorphosis of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.

Looking at them ‘biologically’ we may say it is the characteristic of minerals (as of so many other organisms that have become incurably fixed) to have chosen a road which closed them prematurely in upon themselves.  By their innate structure the molecules are unfitted for growth.  To develop beyond a certain size, they have, in a way, to get out of themselves, to have recourse to a trick of purely external association, whereby the atoms are linked together without true combination or union.  Sometimes we find them in strings, as in jade; sometimes in planes as in mica; and sometimes in a solid quincunxas in garnet.  In this way by simple juxtaposition of atoms or relatively simple atomic groups in geometrical patterns, regular aggregates may be produced.

Considered in the mass, the earth is veiled in geometry as far as we can see.  It crystallises.