1XX PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I903, 



and assurance of youth, and a bewildering absence of respect for 

 the settled conventionalities of opinion and tradition. This is no 

 excuse ; but it is in its way a reason why she is still supposed to be 

 somewhat of a parvenue among the sciences, and is often only 

 listened to with patience because of her powers and her genius. 



But there is also another reason for the reluctance with which 

 the conclusions of Geology are received by men in general, when 

 compared with the reception accorded to those of Astronomy : — 

 namely, the relative backwardness of the race in its appreciation 

 of the concept of the extension of time as compared with its 

 advanced appreciation of the concept of the extension of space. 

 Note the willingness, and even the welcome with which any 

 average audience of the present day accepts the statements and 

 sympathizes with the conclusions of an astronomical lecturer who 

 demands for his remoter starry distances, it may be, myriads of 

 millions of miles. Compare that reception with the coldness, or 

 at all events the smiling incredulity, of the same audience when 

 a geologist suggests for the development of all the geological 

 formations at the very most a hundred millions of years. But it 

 is not only the popular audience, but also the majority of the 

 men of education and experience, who still feel this curious hesi- 

 tation and difficulty. And nothing perhaps has so retarded the 

 reception of the higher conclusions of Geology among men in 

 general, as this instinctive parsimony of the human mind in matters 

 where time is concerned. 



Yet, after all, perhaps this is easily accounted for. It has been 

 well said that ' the intellectual advancement of men is due to the 

 relatively small effects of individual experiences added to the large 

 effects of the experiences of the antecedent individuals.' The 

 concept of the vastness of space has been familiar to mankind for 

 untold ages, and has grown and expanded with the growth of the 

 race. The concept of the immensity of time has entered so little 

 into the intellectual development of mankind as a whole, and in its 

 grander aspects so recently, that the race is as yet incapable of 

 adequately grasping it. 



The wanderings of early man from place to place and land to 

 land soon familiarized him with the idea of the extension of space. 

 He had learned by bitter experience times out of number that the 

 distant horizon which to the eye bounded the vast canopy of the 

 sky above him, was no boundary at all, but shaded away in all 

 directions into a limitless world beyond, whose practical infinity had 



