676 W. M. DAVIS 



ence of modern civilization on the occurrence of mineral deposits. 

 Like the quiescent crystalline forces in the rounded quartz grains 

 of ancient sandstones, still capable of determining the settlement 

 of new molecules around the old ones, the marvelous stores of dor- 

 mant energy and strength in beds of coal and iron ore have long 

 bided their time. After ages of neglect, they have become the centers 

 of great populations; and now that our princes of industry have 

 through countless difficulties touched and awakened them to life, we 

 find a new meaning in the old fairy story of the Sleeping Beauty. 



Even those broader considerations that we meet in philosophy 

 and religion have developed new phases as the schemes of earlier 

 times have been modified in view of the geological record: the place 

 of work in the world, not a curse, but a duty; the date of the golden 

 age, not behind us, but ahead; the view of death, not a punishment, 

 but a natural element in the progress of life; even the conception of 

 immortality has come to be — with some — directed less to speculations 

 about a continued life elsewhere than to the study of the continuity 

 of life here. 



Religious ideas themselves — at least when we examine them 

 objectively in the behefs of others than our own people — are seen as 

 if in a mirror held to nature ; and the very gods of the lower religions 

 are but reflections of the powers of earth. 



It is only when we consider these broad phases of earth science 

 that we gain our share of profit from the revolution that replaces 

 the teleological philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century 

 by the evolutionary philosophy of the latter half. Our conception 

 of the earth as well as of its inhabitants has been profoundly modified 

 by this revolution, and much of our progress has been conditioned 

 on the full acceptance of the newer view. 



Now, if apology is needed for introducing the preceding considera- 

 tions, which some might call irrelevant, let me urge that whatever 

 share they may make of other sciences, they are also so closely grafted 

 into one or another branch of earth science that we, as geologists or 

 geographers, cannot afford to neglect them. In so far as they are 

 related to elements of our science as consequences are to causes, as 

 responses are to environment, we must take at least some account 

 of them, even if their study in other relations is left to specialists in 



