TIME AND CHANGE 



What an astonishing revelation, for instance, that 

 the soil was born of the rocks, and is still born of the 

 rocks; that every particle of it was once locked up 

 in the primitive granite and was unlocked by the 

 slow action of the rain and the dews and the snows; 

 that the rocky ribs of the earth were clothed with 

 this fertile soil out of which we came and to which 

 we return by their own decay; that the pulling-down 

 of the inorganic meant the building-up of the organic; 

 that the death of the crystal meant the birth of the 

 cell, and indirectly of you and me and of all that 

 lives upon the earth. 



Had there been no soil, had the rocks not decayed, 

 there had been no you and me. Such considerations 

 have long made me feel a keen interest in geology, 

 and especially of late years have stimulated my 

 desire to try to see the earth as the geologist sees it. 

 I have always had a good opinion of the ground 

 underfoot, out of which we all come, and to which 

 we all return; and the story the geologists tell us 

 about it is calculated to enhance greatly that good 

 opinion. 



I think that if I could be persuaded, as my fathers 

 were, that the world was made in six days, by the 

 fiat of a supernatural power, I should soon lose my 

 interest in it. Such an account of it takes it out of 

 the realm of human interest, because it takes it out 

 of the realm of natural causation, and places it in the 

 realm of the arbitrary, and non-natural. But to 

 86 



