RECORDS 35 



yet been reduced to simple laws. But, on the other hand, its 

 subject-matter is more obvious and tangible, and it appeals 

 therefore more forcibly and continuously to the average mind. 

 No science seems comparable with geology in the completeness 

 with which its history and its main processes are contained in 

 the subjects and objects of investigation. Whoso would read 

 the story of the earth's crust will find it written and illustrated 

 in infinite detail in the rocks themselves. No vivid or perfervad 

 imagination of the historian has concealed the facts or misin- 

 terpreted their sequence ; they are all recorded with a truthful- 

 ness that shames the straightest human testimony and with a 

 permanency which permits comparison and verification in end- 

 less repetition. 



Geology illustrates more clearly, perhaps, than any other 

 science the value of measurement and calculation when the 

 order only of the quantity sought can be attained. The deter- 

 mination of the fact, for example, that nothing short of a million 

 years is a suitable time unit for measuring the age of the earth, 

 was an achievement whose importance can hardly be overesti- 

 mated ; indeed, our race may yet require decades, if not cen- 

 turies, to appreciate its full significance, for in spite of the great 

 advances in our times it appears probable that not one in a 

 thousand of the good people with whom we live realizes how 

 profoundly definite acceptance of such a fact must modify 

 thought. 



A criticism which the devotees of the so-called humanistic 

 learning often apply to such matters of fact, and which is still 

 occasionally accepted by men of science, helps us to see the 

 absolute need of countless recurrences to the evidence so well 

 exhibited in the crust of the earth. "Ah !" says the humanist, 

 " I observe that the physicists and the geologists do not agree 

 on the age of the earth. Some say it is ten million years, 

 others that it cannot be more than two hundred million years, 

 and others that it cannot be less than a thousand million years. 

 I conclude, therefore, that so long as your doctors disagree in 

 this manner, we may continue to accept the age recorded in our 

 sacred books." Thus easy is it to mistake the order of a quan- 

 tity for the quantity itself. 



