Geology as a means of culture — A. Winchell. 105 
secondary annulation and spheration — on to such an outcome 
as we see exemplified in the assemblage of planets and satel- 
lites constituting our solar system. And this earth on which 
we dwell is a particular outcome of such an evolution — so 
grand, so vast, so ancient. And all that is now of the earth 
was involved in those teonic vicissitudes. The bone and flesh 
and nervous matter of our bodies existed in that primordial fire- 
mist — in those annulating spheres — in that fervid atmosphere 
— in those glowing rocks — in those ancient sediments — in the 
shells of primeval molluscs — in the framework of generations 
of reptiles — enduring as matter; and our plans of organization 
give expression to thoughts no less enduring. Such is the unity 
of the organism of the planetary system, and such the unity of 
man v/ith the organism of the worlds. 
In this regressus of thought, we rise to a still higher plane. 
The sun appears as the residuum of a prolonged process of plan- 
etation. By the aid of our instruments we learn that the stars 
are other suns. Imagination kindles and emotion warms at the 
suggestions of such a fact. The stars then, are so many centres 
of planetary systems completed. Yes, to the utmost limit of the 
visible universe, the same modes of world-life prevail as are ex- 
emplified in our own system — the same as are revealed in con- 
tinental masses and granite cliffs and ocean sediments on this 
orb to which we have been assigned as its inhabitants. There 
must be then, other planets. There must be other inhabitants. 
If other inhabitants, their intelligence is akin to ours; for other- 
wise, the imiverse around them, so interpretable to us, would 
be uninterpretable to them ; and the fitness of things which 
reigns everywhere within our cognizance, would be turned in- 
to contradiction of the testimony of the universe. Reason 
refuses to credit this. Other intelligences there are, to whom 
the universe has the same meaning as to us; who think as we 
think ; who are already familiar with our ideas, or are ready to 
receive them and to impart to us their own. 
Does not the reader find such ranges of thought expansive, 
ennobling, spiritualizing? Possibly he is saying this is not geol- 
ogy. No — not in the school-book sense. But geology in the 
stricter sense leads to the high-swung bridges over which 
thought passes by an uninterrupted continuity of path into the 
