3<S2 THE RELATIONS OF OEOLOGY. 



causes, or how these causes (h'teruiitie tlie prothictiveness or the 

 healthfulness of a district, lint it is ini})ossil)le tor us, to whom tiiese 

 matters are as familiar as household words, to couccuve that the educa- 

 tion of the geographer, the traveler, the man of commerce, the student 

 of hygiene, the artist, the archaeologist, the historian, or even the 

 politician can possibly pretend to completeness uidess that education 

 has shown him something of the wealth of facts and ideas that flow 

 even from an elementary ac(iuaintance with a knowledge of these 

 things. 



Here perhaps we may call to mind the fact that what gives character 

 and especial color to the science of geology is that it is the exponent 

 of the idea of continuous evolution. I had almost said the discoverer; 

 foi- '' Iw discovei's who proves." Its wid(»st conclusions are based upon 

 the assumption and proof of the efficacy of small causes to bring al)Out 

 the greatest cumulati\(' effects. There is probably no educational 

 gynniastic more ca})tivating and invigorating than to work out and 

 fully ap})i-eciat(e the <|uietly cumulative^ etl'i^cts of present natural 

 causes the sea waves gnawing away the shore, the slow siidving of 

 nmd layei- by layer on the sea llooi'. the (juiet burying u[) of organisms; 

 next to ti'ace these ])henomena backward stage by stage through the rock 

 formations that mark tlu^ eons of tlu^ past, down to the very ))ase of 

 the g(H)logical scale; and, tluMice returning, to climb ))ack step by step 

 up the long laddei- of life, and note the successive* incoming of the 

 ascending types of the animate creation, rising higher and higher yet 

 in the scale of l)eing to the crown of all — man himself — '' the heir of 

 all the ages." 



The discoveries which geology, in company with archaeology and 

 anthropology, has made in aid of the solution of the great pro})lem of 

 the antiquity of man are so revolutionary and so recent that the}" are 

 practically familiar to all. 



To one who has gone through a geological training and appreciated 

 its meaning the idea of slow and continuous evolution becomes, as it 

 were, part and parcel of his mental constitution. He naturallv carries 

 the same geological methods into the stud}' of humanit}^ in general — 

 always from the developmental point of view, always on the watch for 

 those simple natural causes that may have been capable of bringing 

 about the present known effects, andalwa^-s in the hope of discovering 

 a slow and natural evolution. It is in this wa}" that he studies the 

 races of mankind, the growth and relations of languages, the forms 

 and distributions of beliefs, the trends of political practice and 

 opinion, the origin and expansion of commerce. He is watching and 

 indeed, as it were, assisting in the development of a living thing grow- 

 ing up before his mental eyes. His interest is excited, his curiosity 

 piqued, and his emotions stirred; and while his imagination is allowed 

 full play, it is always safely confined within the logical bounds of 

 induction, deduction, and veritication. 



