GEOLOGY AND HISTORY. 497 



case, and a thicker population in the second. Our comparatively 

 insignificant numbers would reduce us from the rank of a first-class 

 European power to that of a nation existing on sufferance. Our army 

 and navy would be smaller ; our Parliament less important and less 

 stimulating to high ambitions ; our churches, our bar, our medical 

 faculty less advanced in the fore-front of thought. Thus we should 

 probably suffer in every respect, producing both absolutely and rela- 

 tively fewer great men, either as thinkers, administrators, discoverers, 

 inventors, or artists. For, when once a nation has fallen behind in the 

 race, the audience addressed becomes smaller, the competition less 

 keen as an incentive to effort, the rewards of success decrease in value, 

 and the general atmosphere of example and rivalry deteriorates in 

 power. "Where few books are written, few investigations undertaken, 

 few works of art produced, few and still fewer care to aspire toward a 

 forgotten ideal. Thus, without coal, Britain might have declined from 

 the England of Shakespeare, Milton, and Newton, just as other coun- 

 tries have ^declined from the Hellas of Pericles and Plato, and the 

 Spain of Cervantes and Velasquez. 



The relation between physical conditions and history in its wider 

 acceptation being thus fundamental, it may be well to consider in 

 somewhat greater detail the special reactions of a single tolerably 

 definite portion of the natural environment upon human development. 

 For this purpose we may choose the science of geology. It might 

 seem at first sight that geological facts had very little to do with the 

 course of history. Rocks and clays, lying often far beneath the sur- 

 face, and comparatively disregarded till a late stage of civilization, 

 would appear far less important in the evolution of mankind than 

 plants and animals, geographical situation and meteorological condi- 

 tions. But, though doubtless of inferior practical interest to these 

 superficial phenomena, the geological constitution of the soil is yet 

 pregnant with innumerable reactions upon the life of human beings 

 who dwell upon its surface. I hope to show in the sequel that the 

 rocks or minerals which lie beneath the thin coating of earth and 

 vegetation have always exerted an immense though often unsuspected 

 influence upon the history of man. And I shall choose most of my 

 examples from well-known facts of the British Isles, only diverging 

 elsewhere very occasionally for the sake of more striking or more con- 

 clusive instances. 



To begin with, it must be premised that geological conditions were 

 of comparatively less importance in very primitive times, and have 

 increased in their practical relation to humanity with every additional 

 step in general culture. This is only what we must expect from the 

 nature of the case. Man's connection with his environment has ne- 

 cessarily grown more and more complex as his evolution proceeded. 

 Soil becomes a matter of interest sooner than building-stone ; potter's 

 clay precedes copper or iron ore as a valuable object ; metals of every 

 vol. xvn. 32 



