Fortunately for the progress of natural knowledge, Werner disliked the manual labour of penmanship. Consequently he wrote little. But his wide range of acquirement, not in mineralogy only, his precision of statement, his absolute certainty about the truth of his own opinions, and his hardly disguised contempt for opinions that differed from them, combined with his enthusiasm, eloquence and personal charm, fired his pupils with emulation of his zeal and turned them into veritable propagandists. Misled as to the structure of the country in which their master taught, and undisciplined to investigate nature with an impartial mind, they travelled into other lands for the purpose of applying there the artificial system which they had learnt at Freiberg. The methodical but cumbrous terminology in which Werner had trained them was translated by them into their own languages, where it looked still more uncouth than in its native German. Besides imbibing their teacher's system, they acquired and even improved upon his somewhat disdainful manner towards all conclusions different from those of the Saxon Mining School. Such was the spirit in which the pupils of Werner proceeded to set the "geognosy" of Europe to rights. The views, announced by Desmarest, that various rocks, far removed from any active volcano, were yet of volcanic origin, had been slowly gaining ground when the militant students from Saxony spread themselves over the Continent. These views, however, being irreconcilable with the tenets enunciated from the Freiberg Chair, were now either ignored or contemptuously rejected. Werner's disciples loved to call themselves by their teacher's term "geognosts," and claimed that they confined themselves to the strict investigation of fact with regard to the structure of the earth, in apparent unconsciousness that their terminology and methods were founded on baseless assumptions and almost puerile hypotheses. With such elements ready for controversy, it was no wonder that before long a battle arose over the origin of basalt and the part played by volcanoes in the past history of the globe. The disciples of Werner, champions of a universal ocean and the deposition of everything from water, were dubbed Neptunists, while their opponents, equally stubborn in defence of the potency of volcanic fire, were known as Vulcanists or Plutonists. For more than a generation this futile warfare was waged with extraordinary bitterness--dogmatism and authority doing their best to stop the progress of impartial observation and honest opinion.