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GEOLOGY AND HISTORY.

HE science of human life has been the last to recognise that minute interaction of all the sciences which every other department of knowledge now readily admits. We allow at once that no man can be a good physiologist unless he possesses a previous acquainttance with anatomy and chemistry. The chemist, in turn, must know something of physics, while the physicist cannot move a step until he calls in the mathematician to his aid. Astronomy long appeared to be an isolated study, requiring nothing more than geometrical and arithmetical skill; but spectrum analysis has lately shown us its intimate interdependence upon chemistry and experimental physics. Thus the whole circle of the sciences has become a continuous chain of cycles and epicycles, rather than a simple sequence of unconnected and independent principles.

History, however, still stands to a great extent outside the ever widening sphere of physical philosophy. It is comparatively seldom that we see an historian like Dr. Curtius acknowledging the interaction of land and people upon one another's character and destiny. More often we find even the modern annalist writing in the spirit of Mr. Freeman, as though men and women formed the only factors in the historical problem, and the great physical powers of nature counted for nothing in the game of human life. Yet a few simple instances will show at once the fallacy of such a view. If the ancestors of the Hellenic people had gone to the central plains of Russia instead of to the island-studded waters of the Ægæan, could they ever have produced the magnificent Hellenic nationality with which we are familiar? Was not their navigation the direct result of their geographical position on the shores of an inland sea, intersected by jutting peninsulas, and bridged over by a constant succession of islands, each within full sight of its nearest neighbours? Was not their polity predetermined in large measure by the shape of their little mountain valleys, each open to the seaward in front and closed by a natural barrier of hills in the rear? Could their plastic genius have risen to the height of the Olympian Zeus and the Athene of Pheidias if they had possessed no material for sculpture more tractable than the hard granite of Syene ? While we allow that the Aryan blood of the Hellenes had much to do with the differences which mark them off from the Negroid Egyptians, can we doubt that Hellenic civilisation would have been very different if the settlers of Attica had happened rather to occupy the valley of the Nile; and that the Egyptians would have become a race of enterprising sailors and foreign merchants if they had chanced to make their homes on the shores of the Cyclades and the Corinthian Gulf?

Or, again, let us look for a moment at Britain. Who can suppose that the destiny of our country has not been profoundly affected

his spirit went forth to God, whom he loved and had served with a true heart all his life.

We cannot better close this paper than in the closing words of as pathetic a narrative as we ever read :—

In the solemn hearts of that mournful chamber there was such grief as has rarely hallowed any deathbed. A great light which had blessed the world, and which the mourners had but yesterday hoped might long bless it, was waning fast away. A husband, a father, a friend, a master, endeared by every quality by which man in such relations can win the love of his fellow-man, was passing into the Silent Land, and his loving glance, his wise counsels, his firm manly thought, should be known among them no more. The Castle clock chimed the third quarter after ten. Calm and peaceful grew the beloved form; the features settled into the beauty of a perfectly serene repose; two or three long but gentle breaths were drawn, and that great soul had fled to seek a nobler scope for its aspirations in the world within the veil, for which it had often yearned, where there is rest for the weary, and where the spirits of the just are made perfect.'

Larger, because more powerful and spontaneous, natures have mingled in public affairs and left their impress upon human history. But no nature more pure than that of Prince Albert, more endowed at once with spiritual insight and clear practical purpose, has moved in our modern political life. We may disallow his judgments, or even distrust his tendencies on some points; but he lived steadfastly, with an ideal always before him. He was animated by a passion of duty, for which he counted not his life dear. It is impossible to read Sir Theodore Martin's volumes without being elevated by the contemplation of his example, as it is impossible to close them without being touched to the heart by the evidence of a self-sacrifice almost painful in its exaltation.

J. T.

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GEOLOGY AND HISTORY.

HE science of human life has been the last to recognise that

TH
Tinute interaction of all the sciences which every other depart-

ment of knowledge now readily admits. We allow at once that no man can be a good physiologist unless he possesses a previous acquainttance with anatomy and chemistry. The chemist, in turn, must know something of physics, while the physicist cannot move a step until he calls in the mathematician to his aid. Astronomy long appeared to be an isolated study, requiring nothing more than geometrical and arithmetical skill; but spectrum analysis has lately shown us its intimate interdependence upon chemistry and experimental physics. Thus the whole circle of the sciences has become a continuous chain of cycles and epicycles, rather than a simple sequence of unconnected and independent principles.

History, however, still stands to a great extent outside the ever widening sphere of physical philosophy. It is comparatively seldom that we see an historian like Dr. Curtius acknowledging the interaction of land and people upon one another's character and destiny. More often we find even the modern annalist writing in the spirit of Mr. Freeman, as though men and women formed the only factors in the historical problem, and the great physical powers of nature counted for nothing in the game of human life. Yet a few simple instances will show at once the fallacy of such a view. If the ancestors of the Hellenic people had gone to the central plains of Russia instead of to the island-studded waters of the Ægæan, could they ever have produced the magnificent Hellenic nationality with which we are familiar? Was not their navigation the direct result of their geographical position on the shores of an inland sea, intersected by jutting peninsulas, and bridged over by a constant succession of islands, each within full sight of its nearest neighbours? Was not their polity predetermined in large measure by the shape of their little mountain valleys, each open to the seaward in front and closed by a natural barrier of hills in the rear? Could their plastic genius have risen to the height of the Olympian Zeus and the Athene of Pheidias if they had possessed no material for sculpture more tractable than the hard granite of Syene? While we allow that the Aryan blood of the Hellenes had much to do with the differences which mark them off from the Negroid Egyptians, can we doubt that Hellenic civilisation would have been very different if the settlers of Attica had happened rather to occupy the valley of the Nile; and that the Egyptians would have become a race of enterprising sailors and foreign merchants if they had chanced to make their homes on the shores of the Cyclades and the Corinthian Gulf?

Or, again, let us look for a moment at Britain. Who can suppose that the destiny of our country has not been profoundly affected

by the existence of great coal-fields beneath its surface? Even if we possessed no mineral wealth, it is probable that our geographical position would still have ensured us a considerable commercial importance as the carriers of the civilised world. Britain happens to occupy the central point in the hemisphere of greatest land, and this fact, aided by its insular nature, could not fail to make it a great mercan tile country as soon as navigation, nursed in the Mediterranean, had advanced sufficiently to embrace the whole ocean coasts of Asia, Africa, and America. But without coal and iron we should have been mere merchants, not manufacturers. London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Southampton might possibly have been not inconsiderable marts for exchanging the products of other countries, and for balancing the trade in raw cotton or sugar from India and America against the textile fabrics and the hardware of France and Belgium. But we should have had no Birmingham, no Manchester, no Sheffield, no Leeds, no Bradford, no Paisley, no Belfast. Our population would not have reached one-half its present size. Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the busy mining district of South Wales would be as thinly inhabited as Merionethshire and Connemara. The Black Country would be a quiet pastoral and agricultural region like the remainder of Warwick and Stafford. We should have no great towns except on the seaboard and the navigable rivers, and even these would only attain a fraction of their existing dimensions. Most of our people would be engaged in farming, and there would be no great wealthy class to crowd into Brighton, Scarborough, Cheltenham, Torquay, and the Scottish Highlands.

But this is not all: the difference in our national character would no doubt be very great. Coal has stimulated our inventive faculties and our enterprise, and has given an indirect impetus to science and

Without it we should have had fewer mechanical improvements, fewer scientific discoveries, fewer railways, fewer colleges and schools. All these things have reacted upon our general level of intelligence and taste, and have enabled us to hold our own amongst the most advanced European nations. But without coal and iron we should have fallen back to somewhat the same position as that now held by Holland or Scandinavia, allowance being made for a larger territory in the first case, and a thicker population in the second. Our comparatively insignificant numbers would reduce us from the rank of a firstclass European Power to that of a nation existing on sufferance. Our army and navy would be smaller; our Parliament less important and less stimulating to high ambitions; our churches, our bar, our medical faculty less advanced in the forefront of thought. Thus we should probably suffer in every respect, producing both absolutely and relatively fewer great men, either as thinkers, administrators, discoverers, inventors, or artists. For when once a nation has fallen behind in the race, the audience addressed becomes smaller, the competition less keen as an incentive to effort, the rewards of success decrease in value,

power. Where few books are written, few investigations undertaken, few works of art produced, few and still fewer care to aspire toward a forgotten ideal. Thus, without coal, Britain might have declined from the England of Shakespeare, Milton, and Newton, just as other countries have declined from the Hellas of Pericles and Plato, and the Spain of Cervantes and Velasquez.

The relation between physical conditions and history in its wider acceptation being thus fundamental, it may be well to consider in somewhat greater detail the special reactions of a single tolerably definite portion of the natural environment upon human development. For this purpose we may choose the science of geology. It might seem at first sight that geological facts had very little to do with the course of history. Rocks and clays, lying often far beneath the surface, and comparatively disregarded till a late stage of civilisation, would appear far less important in the evolution of mankind than plants and animals, geographical situation and meteorological conditions. But though doubtless of inferior practical interest to these superficial phenomena, the geological constitution of the soil is yet pregnant with innumerable reactions upon the life of human beings who dwell upon its surface. I hope to show in the sequel that the rocks or minerals which lie beneath the thin coating of earth and vegetation have always exerted an immense, though often unsuspected influence upon the history of man. And I shall choose most of my examples from well-known facts of the British Isles, only diverging elsewhere very occasionally for the sake of more striking or more conclusive instances.

To begin with, it must be premised that geological conditions were of comparatively less importance in very primitive times, and have increased in their practical relation to humanity with every additional step in general culture. This is only what we must expect from the nature of the case. Man's connection with his environment has necessarily grown more and more complex as his evolution proceeded. Soil becomes a matter of interest sooner than building stone; potter's clay precedes copper or iron ore as a valuable object; metals of every kind are earlier required than coal. The mere savage needs nothing more from the mineral world than flint for his arrowhead, and ochre for his personal adornment. A little later he requires bronze for his hatchet, gold and amber for his rude jewellery, clay for his hand-moulded earthenware. A still more advanced race will learn to prize silver for coins, lapis lazuli for gems, brick-earth for Assyrian temples, granite for Egyptian colossi, marble for Hellenic sculpture, and iron for Roman swords. Only at a very late period of development will man begin to be largely affected by the neighbourhood of zinc, lead, and mercury, of rock-salt, kaolin, and plumbago, of slatequarries, marl pits, and pipe-clay beds. Last of all will come the economic employment of coal, which in our own island has caused the aggregation of densely massed populations around the great centres of Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Birmingham.

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