

i8 93 . GEOLOGY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 335 



But any natural science will similarly benefit and broaden our 

 egotistical souls ; the peculiar claim of Geology is its direct bearing 

 upon history. To the average schoolboy the Greeks and Romans 

 divide the honours of antiquity ; the classical models of heroic virtue 

 are so marked out and emphasised that it is often doubted, in serious 

 works and popular lectures, whether humanity has altered for the 

 better since the days of Horatius Codes. The gloomy remark that 

 human nature will always be human nature is continually regarded as 

 an argument in favour of repressing the species, rather than of pro- 

 viding loopholes for its development. To present the ordinary man 

 or woman with a picture of the Palaeolithic epoch, and at the same 

 time with a history of life in which, on any reasonable scale, the whole 

 of recorded human history, including the Chinese, is too short to be 

 taken as a unit — this surely is calculated to give one room for hope, 

 and to shake one's faith in the immutability of human nature. 



One more point of view. The enormous past, which we cannot 

 deny to have been progressive, tends to give a certain solidarity to 

 our conception of the human race. Man becomes a prominent feature 

 along a particular and limited horizon of the earth's history, just as 

 the Romans did in the recent history of Europe. The race acquires 

 an importance to the geologist, standing, as it does, at the end of so 

 vast a series of life-changes ; and he who learns to respect the race 

 may in time become less callous about the extinction of an individual- 

 I do not mean to assert that a diffused knowledge of, let us say, the 

 Eocene Period would have prevented the hecatombs of Waterloo or 

 Weissenburg ; but it would have gone far to make such tragedies 

 more generally regretted, and more generally hateful. The strati- 

 graphical position of man, when it is once realised, makes him 

 appreciate both his present possibilities and his dangers. If Geology 

 helps him to recognise the differences between groups of men, as, at 

 the most, specific rather than generic, the study will have done much 

 to promote the harmony of nations. 



I would ask, then, those interested in Geology to watch the 



progress of public education, and to endeavour to secure a place for 



this science side by side with the historic and human studies of later 



years of the curriculum. Personally, I have found it most interesting 



to note the intrusion of completely novel ideas — in my own case in 



Colleges for women — when such a subject is superposed on the 



ordinary courses for an Arts degree. Although the foundation of 



Chemistry and Physics is still in many cases slight or absent, the 



results, as far as I can observe them, are full of encouragement and 



hope. 



Grenville A. J. Cole. 



