lxXXviii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I903, 



the student of hygiene, the artist, the archaeologist, the historian, 

 or even the politician can possibly pretend to completeness unless 

 that education has shown him something of the wealth of facts 

 and ideas that flow even from an elementary acquaintance with 

 a knowledge of these things. 



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

 character and especial colour to the science of Geology, is that it 

 is the exponent of the idea of continuous evolution. I had almost 

 said the discoverer ; for ' he discovers who proves.' Its widest 

 conclusions are based upon the assumption and proof of the efficacy 

 of small causes to bring about the greatest cumulative effects. 

 There is probably no educational gymnastic more captivating and 

 invigorating than to work out and fully appreciate the quietly cumu- 

 lative effects of present natural causes — the sea-waves gnawing away 

 the shore, the sIoav sinking of mud layer by layer on the sea-floor, 

 the quiet burying-up of organisms ; next to trace these phenomena 

 backward stage by stage through the rock-formations that mark 

 the aeons of the past, down to the very base of the geological scale ; 

 and, thence returning, to climb back step by step up the long ladder 

 of life, and note the successive incoming of the ascending types of 

 the animate creation, rising higher and higher yet in the scale of 

 being 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 problem 

 of the Antiquity of Man, are so revolutionary and so recent that 

 they are practically familiar to all. 



To one who has gone through a geological training, and appre- 

 ciated its meaning, the idea of slow and continuous evolution 

 becomes as it were part and parcel of his mental constitution. He 

 naturally carries on the same geological methods into the study of 

 humanity 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, 

 and always in the hope of discovering a slow and natural evolution. 

 It is in this way 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 expan- 

 sion of commerce. He is watching, and indeed as it were assisting 

 in, the development of a living thing growing up before bis mental 

 ej r es. His interest is excited, his curiosity piqued, and his emotions 

 stirred ; and while his imagination is allowed full play, it is always 



