SOME FUNDAMENTAL CONCEFTS OF EARTH HISTORY 157 
tory regarding the origin of the earth and the operation of nat- 
ural phenomena. 
From the beginning of man’s history as a thinking being he 
has been impressed by the outstanding forces of Nature and the 
more obtrusive features of the earth’s surface. Storm and flood, 
thunder and lightning, 'volcano and earthquake inspired him 
with fear and led him to invest them with supernatural origin 
and power, while on the other hand the pleasant shady vale or 
the bubbling spring suggested to his facile imagination the pres- 
ence of harmless sprites and reveling nymphs. Monotheism has 
displaced these manifold and ill-assorted divinities by one Su- 
preme Ruler and an orderly and neverfailing body of law. But 
it has always been the curse of science, popular as well as tech- 
nical, that from the observed body of fact and experience un- 
warranted conclusions have been drawn and fantastic hypotheses 
have been formulated. There is always the tendency to devise 
the extraordinary, rather than the ordinary explanation for 
natural phenomena. On the other hand it must be recognized 
that this tendency to speculate when it has been backed up by 
solid fact and proven law, has been the source of all advanced 
ideas regarding the past history of our world and the method 
of operation of the forces which have been and are shaping it. 
While, then, the laity among the Greeks and Romans were con- 
tent to ascribe such forces to supernatural causes their philoso- 
phers, from Herodotus and Aristotle to Strabo and Pliny, were 
coming to appreciate the natural causes of physical phenomena. 
Thus Herodotus, 500 years before Christ, attributed the Yale of 
Tempe to an earthquake, rather than to the work of Hercules, 
and Strabo, about the beginning of the Christian era, never al- 
ludes to the legendary mode of its origin, as if there could be no 
reasonable doubt, Aristotle (384-322 R. C.), who wrote exten- 
sively on scientific subjects, discussed earthquakes and volcanoes 
as due to internal fire and wind, an explanation which was 
accepted for centuries. While some of the attempted explana- 
tions of these thinkers were crude and fantastic yet in many 
cases they show accurate observation and acute reasoning. Seneca 
(-65 A. D.) remarks that “ Though the processes below ground 
are more hidden from us than those on the surface of the earth, 
they are none the less equally governed by invariable laws.” 
The fact that fossil shells have been found far from the present 
