WORLD- MAKING 



gave me a hint as to a subject, and I determined to devote 

 my address to a consideration of questions which geology has 

 not solved, or has only imperfectly and hypothetically dis- 

 cussed. 



Such unsolved or partially solved questions must necessarily 

 exist in a science which covers the whole history of the earth 

 in time. At the beginning it allies itself with astronomy and 

 physics and celestial chemistry. At the end it runs into 

 human history, and is mixed up with archaeology and anthro- 

 pology. Throughout its whole course it has to deal with 

 questions of meteorology, geography and biology. In short, 

 there is no department of physical or biological science, with 

 which this many-sided study is not allied, or at least on which 

 the geologist may not presume to trespass. When, therefore, 

 it is proposed to discuss in the present chapter some of the 

 unsolved problems and disputed questions of this universal 

 science, the reader need not be surprised if it should be some- 

 what discursive. 



Perhaps we may begin at the utmost limits of the subject by 

 remarking that in matters of natural and physical science we 

 are met at the outset with the scarcely solved question as to 

 our own place in the nature which we study, and the bearing 

 of this on the difficulties we encounter. The organism of man 

 is decidedly a part of nature. We place ourselves, in this 

 aspect, in the sub-kingdom vertebrata and class mammalia, 

 and recognise the fact that man is the terminal link in a chain 

 of being, extending throughout geological time. But the or- 

 ganism is not all that belongs to man, and when we regard him 

 as a scientific inquirer, we raise a new question. If the human 

 mind is a part of nature, then it is subject to natural law, 

 and nature includes mind as well as matter. Indeed, without 

 being absolute idealists we may hold that mind is more potent 

 than matter, and nearer to the real essence of things. Our 

 science is in any case necessarily dualistic, being the product 



