CONTRIBUTION OF THE SCIENCES 241 



Throiiiili tlie evidence of areheolo^T, paleontolooy, and geology we se(3 

 liiiman liistorv extended back stage bv stage until we go from history to 

 prehistory, where in ages remote and in environments strange we find 

 man already widely distributed over tlie earth, varying as to kind and 

 culture and advancing as to ideas. With this view there seems no escape 

 from recognizing that not merely the foundations of history, but the 

 greater part of the human span, falls within a realm the approach to 

 which has been largely by inyestigators concerned with the problems of 

 earth science and using the methods developed for this field of study. 



The present paper is addressed to the relation between this material, 

 obtained from the earlier segment of history which has been briefly out- 

 lined, and that which comes within humanistic study based on modern 

 man. You may, perhaps, urge as in Huxley's remark concerning the 

 significance of information obtained through a "medium" : that, w^hether 

 or not we are truly dealing with "a message from beyond," there may 

 not be in what we learn anything worth attention. Tt may be thought 

 tliat remoteness means by definition diminution of value and interest, 

 and tliat events of ancient history diminisli in importance as the square 

 of the distance, or at a more rapid rate. At present my only answer 

 would be that Avhat is first is commonly, if not always, fundamental, 

 though fundamental characters may be oversliadowed by superficial. 



It is not my purpose to give detailed application of present and future 

 use, for the facts of history seen in the outlines of the longer span secured 

 by study of earth sciences. I may, however, illustrate by one or two 

 examples. 



Of the many elements in the problem of world government which now 

 confronts us, there seems to me every reason to believe that race as a 

 fundamental factor is inferior to no other involved in consideration of 

 unity in organization. Assuming that culture, speech, economic interest, 

 and political organization may temporarily overshadow it, in the last 

 analysis we may not avoid reckoning with this factor, not merely in con- 

 sideration of the organization of the greater groups of human beings, 

 l)ut also in the relations of slightly separated types. The fact that we 

 may refuse to consider it does not prevent its acting as a continuously 

 operating element, which remains while prices go up and down, political 

 parties come and ijo, and national units group themselves in this way 

 or that. 



Kace is the product of evolution in a changing environment, the 

 conditions of which have been determined by factors of geological signifi- 

 <'ance. As a relatively simple illustration, the history of the original 

 Americans is a tangled wcl) in vvhicli there is ine\tri('a])ly woven the story 



XVI— P.rr.L. Gkoi.. So*;. A.m.. Vor.. HI. IftlO 



