38 IOWA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



facts, how different is the picture which the human mind draws 

 of nature under the influence of eighteenth-century philosophy ! 

 How greatly has the point of view shifted, and how shrunken and 

 inadequate is the older world-conception! The change is strik- 

 ingly shown towards the middle of the century, when we find a 

 naturalist of great ability like Buff on proclaiming, in his Theorie 

 de la Terre (1749), the vast antiquity of life, the slow formation 

 of stratified deposits and exceedingly gradual transformation of 

 the earth's surface. We owe to this author a truly grand picture 

 of cosmic history. His writings describe for us, as a later com- 

 patriot has said, "in approximate features the entire history 

 of our globe, from the moment it formed a mass of glowing lava 

 down to the time when our species, after so many lost or sur- 

 viving species, was able to inhabit it." As opposed to the tradi- 

 tional view that in man's destiny lies the central and most sig- 

 nificant fact of the universe, that this is in verity the 



"Far-off, divine event, 

 Towards which the whole creation moves," 

 we find a man of Buff on 's genius rebuking such self-conceit. To 

 his way of thinking, "a mite that would consider itself as the 

 center of all things would be grotesque, and therefore it is essen- 

 tial that an insect almost infinitely small should not show conceit 

 almost infinitely great." 



The same thought is amplified in interesting fashion by the 

 philosopher-historian Taine, whose attitude is identical with that 

 of the palaeontologist. He bids us consider the spectacle of na- 

 ture as if we were removed in imagination to another planet. 

 This is the outlook that presents itself: 



"Amidst this vast and overwhelming space and in these bound- 

 less solar archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the 

 earth, what a grain of sand ! What multitudes of worlds beyond 

 our own, and, if life exists in them, what combinations are pos- 

 sible other than those of which we are the result ! What is life, 

 what is organic substance in this monstrous universe but au in- 

 different mass, a passing accident, the corruption of a few epi- 

 dermic particles? And if this be life, what is that humanity 

 which is so small a fragment of it? Such is man in nature, an 

 atom, an ephemeral particle; let this not be lost sight of in our 

 theories concerning his origin, his importance, and his destiny. . . 

 How slow has been the evolution of the globe itself! What 



