GEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE HAWKINS 255 



omniscience. This phase can also be modified by experience. After 

 the disappointment and humiliation have subsided, the adolescent is 

 in a position to find his place in the scheme of things, and to adapt 

 himself to it. The clever animal may become transmuted into a man. 

 His success in that sphere may be measured in direct proportion to 

 the reversal of his childish instincts. 



It is not surprising that the earliest philosophers, the first thinkers 

 in the childhood of the race, should have fallen into childish errors. 

 Scarcely removed from the supreme egotism of animals, but capable 

 of correlation and imagination, they saw themselves as the ultimate 

 climax of creation, for whose especial accommodation the whole uni- 

 verse was designed. They could not conceive of any reason for the 

 existence of the world apart from themselves; so that, for them, the 

 world and the universe were made expressly for their habitation, 

 scarcely antedating their arrival. By precisely similar reasoning, the 

 only habitable part of the world, perhaps all the world there was, 

 centered around their homes and extended not many days' journey 

 beyond their horizon. Early voyagers must have experienced excep- 

 tional thrills from excursions into regions that did not even exist; 

 doubtless their tales were given no more credence than the reports of 

 geologists who described terrestrial events that preceded the creation 

 of the world. 



It is surprising to realize that less than 2,000 years ago our pred- 

 ecessors had scarcely any reliable knowledge of world geography, 

 and less of the configuration of the globe. An interesting study could 

 be made of the influence on philosophical ideas of the vast increase 

 in the conception of space that resulted from medieval exploration. 

 Our modern ideas of cosmic space, whether curved or infinite, are in 

 some sense but a sequel to the revolutionary discovery that there was 

 anything of the sort to discover. 



Realization of the immensity of geological time is relatively recent, 

 and it is far from universal even today. Whereas a conception of the 

 size, and even of the cosmic relations, of the world is subject to daily 

 experience and confirmation, that of past time is more subtle to obtain. 

 Modern transport and other inventions enable us to span in a day 

 distances greater than early conceptions of the size of the universe ; 

 but we are still time-bound by the three score years and ten of our 

 earthly experience. It may be doubted if anyone, even a geologist 

 or a historian, can form a clear idea of the significance of a thousand 

 years of time; while it is probable that the four or five thousand 

 years canonically ascribed to the earth's existence seemed an almost 

 infinite period to those who decided upon it. And yet today we know 

 that an interval of, say, 100,000 years represents an infinitesimal part 

 of world history, and does not cover even the duration of mankind. 



