THROUGH THE GEOLOGIST'S EYES 



know that it was not made at all, in the mechanical 

 sense, but that it grew — that it is an evolution 

 as much as the life upon the surface, that it has 

 an almost infinite past, that it has been developing 

 and ripening for millions upon millions of years, a 

 veritable apple upon the great sidereal tree, amelio- 

 rating from cycle to cycle, mellowing, coloring, 

 sweetening — why, such a revelation adds im- 

 mensely to our interest in it. 



As with nearly everything else, the wonder of the 

 world grows the more we grasp its history. The 

 wonder of life grows the more we consider the chaos 

 of fire and death out of which it came; the wonder of 

 man grows the more we peer into the abyss of geo- 

 logic time and of low bestial life out of which he 

 came. 



Not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower, not a green 

 thing growing, not an insect of an hour, but has a 

 background of a vast aeon of geologic and astro- 

 nomic time, out of which the forces that shaped it 

 have emerged, and over which the powers of chaos 

 and darkness have failed to prevail. 



The modern geologist affords us one of the best 

 illustrations of the uses of the scientific imagina- 

 tion that we can turn to. The scientific imagination y 

 seems to be about the latest phase of the evolution 

 of the human mind. This power of interpretation 

 of concrete facts, this Miltonic flight into time and 

 space, into the heavens above, and into the bowels 



87 



