MAN THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE. 195 



unhesitating assent of all whose opinion on the subject is entitled 

 to the least weight. 



We proceed upward, however, from such questions as the 

 common sense of mankind generally is competent to decide, to 

 those in which special knowledge is required to give value to the 

 judgment ; and thus the interpretation of Nature by the use of 

 that faculty comes to be more and more individual ; things 

 being perfectly " self-evident " to men of special culture, which 

 ordinary men, or men whose training has lain in a different 

 direction, do not apprehend as such. Of all departments of 

 science, geology seems to me to be the one that most depends on 

 this specially-trained " common sense ; " which brings as it were 

 into one focus the light afforded by a great variety of studies — 

 physical and chemical, geographical and biological ; and throws 

 it on the pages of that great stone book, on which the past history 

 of our globe is recorded. And whilst astronomy is of all sciences 

 that which may be considered as most nearly representing Nature 

 as she really is, geology is that which most completely represents 

 her as seen through the medium of the interpreting mind ; the 

 meaning of the phenomena that constitute its data being in almost 

 every instance open to question, and the judgments passed upon 

 the same facts being often different according to the qualifications 

 of the several judges. No one who has even a general acquaintance 

 with the history of this department of science can fail to see that 

 the geology of each epoch has been the reflection of the minds by 

 which its study was then directed ; and that its true progress dates 

 from the time when that " common sense " method of interpreta- 

 tion came to be generally adopted, which consists in seeking the 

 explanation of past changes in the forces at present in operation, 

 instead of invoking the aid of extraordinary and mysterious 

 agencies, as the older geologists were wont to do, whenever they 

 wanted— like the Ptolemaic astronomers — "to save appearances." 

 The whole tendency of the ever-widening range of modern geo- 

 logical inquiry has been to show how little reliance can be placed 

 upon the so-called " laws " of stratigraphical and palasontological 

 succession, and how much allowance has to be made for local 

 conditions. So that while the astronomer is constantly enabled 

 to point to the fulfilment of his predictions as an evidence of the 



