Town Geology

Do you wish to be great?  Then be great with true greatness; which is,—knowing the facts of nature, and being able to use them.  Do you wish to be strong?  Then be strong with true strength; which is, knowing the facts of nature, and being able to use them.  Do you wish to be wise?  Then be wise with true wisdom; which is, knowing the facts of nature, and being able to use them.  Do you wish to be free?  Then be free with true freedom; which is again, knowing the facts of nature, and being able to use them.

I dare say some of my readers, especially the younger ones, will demur to that last speech of mine.  Well, I hope they will not be angry with me for saying it.  I, at least, shall certainly not he angry with them.  For when I was young I was very much of what I suspect is their opinion.  I used to think one could get perfect freedom, and social reform, and all that I wanted, by altering the arrangements of society and legislation; by constitutions, and Acts of Parliament; by putting society into some sort of freedom-mill, and grinding it all down, and regenerating it so.  And that something can be done by improved arrangements, something can be done by Acts of Parliament, I hold still, as every rational man must hold.

But as I grew older, I began to see that if things were to be got right, the freedom-mill would do very little towards grinding them right, however well and amazingly it was made.  I began to see that what sort of flour came out at one end of the mill, depended mainly on what sort of grain you had put in at the other; and I began to see that the problem was to get good grain, and then good flour would be turned out, even by a very clumsy old-fashioned sort of mill.  And what do I mean by good grain?  Good men, honest men, accurate men, righteous men, patient men, self-restraining men, fair men, modest men.  Men who are aware of their own vast ignorance compared with the vast amount that there is to be learned in such a universe as this.  Men who are accustomed to look at both sides of a question; who, instead of making up their minds in haste like bigots and fanatics, wait like wise men, for more facts, and more thought about the facts.  In one word, men who had acquired just the habit of mind which the study of Natural Science can give, and must give; for without it there is no use studying Natural Science; and the man who has not got that habit of mind, if he meddles with science, will merely become a quack and a charlatan, only fit to get his bread as a spirit-rapper, or an inventor of infallible pills.

And when I saw that, I said to myself—I will train myself, by Natural Science, to the truly rational, and therefore truly able and useful, habit of mind; and more, I will, for it is my duty as an Englishman, train every Englishman over whom I can get influence in the same scientific habit of mind, that I may, if possible, make him, too, a rational and an able man.

And, therefore, knowing that most of you, my readers—probably all of you, as you ought and must if you are Britons, think much of social and political questions–therefore, I say, I entreat you to cultivate the scientific spirit by which alone you can judge justly of those questions.  I ask you to learn how to “conquer nature by obeying her,” as the great Lord Bacon said two hundred and fifty years ago.  For so only will you in your theories and your movements, draw “bills which nature will honour”—to use Mr. Carlyle’s famous parable—because they are according to her unchanging laws, and not have them returned on your hands, as too many theorists’ are, with “no effects” written across their backs.

Take my advice for yourselves, dear readers, and for your children after you; for, believe me, I am showing you the way to true and useful, and, therefore, to just and deserved power.  I am showing you the way to become members of what I trust will be—what I am certain ought to be—the aristocracy of the future.

I say it deliberately, as a student of society and of history.  Power will pass more and more, if all goes healthily and well, into the hands of scientific men; into the hands of those who have made due use of that great heirloom which the philosophers of the seventeenth century left for the use of future generations, and specially of the Teutonic race.

For the rest, events seem but too likely to repeat themselves again and again all over the world, in the same hopeless circle.  Aristocracies of mere birth decay and die, and give place to aristocracies of mere wealth; and they again to “aristocracies of genius,” which are really aristocracies of the noisiest, of mere scribblers and spouters, such as France is writhing under at this moment.  And when these last have blown off their steam, with mighty roar, but without moving the engine a single yard, then they are but too likely to give place to the worst of all aristocracies, the aristocracy of mere “order,” which means organised brute force and military despotism.  And, after that, what can come, save anarchy, and decay, and social death?

What else?—unless there be left in the nation, in the society, as the salt of the land, to keep it all from rotting, a sufficient number of wise men to form a true working aristocracy, an aristocracy of sound and rational science?  If they be strong enough (and they are growing stronger day by day over the civilised world), on them will the future of that world mainly depend.  They will rule, and they will act—cautiously we may hope, and modestly and charitably, because in learning true knowledge they will have learnt also their own ignorance, and the vastness, the complexity, the mystery of nature.  But they will be able to rule, they will be able to act, because they have taken the trouble to learn the facts and the laws of nature.  They will rule; and their rule, if they are true to themselves, will be one of health and wealth, and peace, of prudence and of justice.  For they alone will be able to wield for the benefit of man the brute forces of nature; because they alone will have stooped, to “conquer nature by obeying her.”

So runs my dream.  I ask my young readers to help towards making that dream a fact, by becoming (as many of them as feel the justice of my words) honest and earnest students of Natural Science.

But now: why should I, as a clergyman, interest myself specially in the spread of Natural Science?  Am I not going out of my proper sphere to meddle with secular matters?  Am I not, indeed, going into a sphere out of which I had better keep myself, and all over whom I may have influence?  For is not science antagonistic to religion? and, if so, what has a clergyman to do, save to warn the young against it, instead of attracting them towards it?

First, as to meddling with secular matters.  I grudge that epithet of “secular” to any matter whatsoever.  But I do more; I deny it to anything which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects, the most insignificant atom of dust.  To those who believe in God, and try to see all things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon cannot be secular.  It must be divine; I say, deliberately, divine; and I can use no less lofty word.  The grain of dust is a thought of God; God’s power made it; God’s wisdom gave it whatsoever properties or qualities it may possess; God’s providence has put it in the place where it is now, and has ordained that it should be in that place at that moment, by a train of causes and effects which reaches back to the very creation of the universe.  The grain of dust can no more go from God’s presence, or flee from God’s Spirit, than you or I can.  If it go up to the physical heaven, and float (as it actually often does) far above the clouds, in those higher strata of the atmosphere which the aeronaut has never visited, whither the Alpine snow-peaks do not rise, even there it will be obeying physical laws which we term hastily laws of Nature, but which are really the laws of God: and if it go down into the physical abyss; if it be buried fathoms, miles, below the surface, and become an atom of some rock still in the process of consolidation, has it escaped from God, even in the bowels of the earth?  Is it not there still obeying physical laws, of pressure, heat, crystallisation, and so forth, which are laws of God—the will and mind of God concerning particles of matter?  Only look at all created things in this light—look at them as what they are, the expressions of God’s mind and will concerning this universe in which we live—“the Word of God,” as Bacon says, “revealed in facts”—and then you will not fear physical science; for you will be sure that, the more you know of physical science, the more you will know of the works and of the will of God.  At least, you will be in harmony with the teaching of the Psalmist: “The heavens,” says he, “declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.  There is neither speech nor language where their voices are not heard among them.”  So held the Psalmist concerning astronomy, the knowledge of the heavenly bodies; and what he says of sun and stars is true likewise of the flowers around our feet, of which the greatest Christian poet of modern times has said—

To me the meanest flower that grows may giveThoughts that do lie too deep for tears.

So, again, you will be in harmony with the teaching of St. Paul, who told the Romans “that the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the creation of the-world, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead;” and who told the savages of Lycaonia that “God had not left Himself without witness, in that He did good and sent men rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling men’s hearts with food and gladness.”  Rain and fruitful seasons witnessed to all men of a Father in heaven.  And he who wishes to know how truly St. Paul spoke, let him study the laws which produce and regulate rain and fruitful seasons, what we now call climatology, meteorology, geography of land and water.  Let him read that truly noble Christian work, Maury’s “Physical Geography of the Sea;” and see, if he be a truly rational man, how advanced science, instead of disproving, has only corroborated St. Paul’s assertion, and how the ocean and the rain-cloud, like the sun and stars, declare the glory of God.  And if anyone undervalues the sciences which teach us concerning stones and plants and animals, or thinks that nothing can be learnt from them concerning God—allow one who has been from childhood only a humble, though he trusts a diligent student of these sciences—allow him, I say, to ask in all reverence, but in all frankness, who it was who said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”  “Consider the birds of the air—and how your Heavenly Father feedeth them.”

Consider them.  If He has bid you do so, can you do so too much?

I know, of course, the special application which our Lord made of these words.  But I know, too, from experience, that the more you study nature, in all her forms the more you will find that the special application itself is deeper, wider, more literally true, more wonderful, more tender, and if I dare use such a word, more poetic, than the unscientific man can guess.

But let me ask you further—do you think that our Lord in that instance, and in those many instances in which He drew his parables and lessons from natural objects, was leading men’s minds on to dangerous ground, and pointing out to them a subject of contemplation in the laws and processes of the natural world, and their analogy with those of the spiritual world, the kingdom of God—a subject of contemplation, I say, which it was not safe to contemplate too much?

I appeal to your common sense.  If He who spoke these words were (as I believe) none other than the Creator of the universe, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made that is made, do you suppose that He would have bid you to consider His universe, had it been dangerous for you to do so?

Do you suppose, moreover, that the universe, which He, the Truth, the Light, the Love, has made, can be otherwise then infinitely worthy to be considered? or that the careful, accurate, and patient consideration of it, even to its minutest details, can be otherwise than useful to man, and can bear witness of aught, save the mind and character of Him who made it?  And if so, can it be a work unfit for, unworthy of, a clergyman—whose duty is to preach Him to all, and in all ways,—to call on men to consider that physical world which, like the spiritual world, consists, holds together, by Him, and lives and moves and has its being in Him?

And here I must pause to answer an objection which I have heard in my youth from many pious and virtuous people—better people in God’s sight, than I, I fear, can pretend to be.

They used to say, “This would be all very true if there were not a curse upon the earth.”  And then they seemed to deduce, from the fact of that curse, a vague notion (for it was little more) that this world was the devil’s world, and that therefore physical facts could not be trusted, because they were disordered, and deceptive, and what not.

Now, in justice to the Bible, and in justice to the Church of England, I am bound to say that such a statement, or anything like it, is contrary to the doctrines of both.  It is contrary to Scripture.  According to it, the earth is not cursed.  For it is said in Gen. viii. 21, “And the Lord said, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.  While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.”  According to Scripture, again, physical facts are not disordered.  The Psalmist says, “They continue this day according to their ordinance; for all things serve Thee.”  And again, “Thou hast made them fast for ever and ever.  Thou hast given them a law which cannot be broken.”

So does the Bible (not to quote over again the passages which I have already given you from St. Paul, and One greater than St. Paul) declare the permanence of natural laws, and the trustworthiness of natural phenomena as obedient to God.  And so does the Church of England.  For she has incorporated into her services that magnificent hymn, which our forefathers called the Song of the Three Children; which is, as it were, the very flower and crown of the Old Testament; the summing up of all that is true and eternal in the old Jewish faith; as true for us as for them: as true millions of years hence as it is now—which cries to all heaven and earth, from the skies above our heads to the green herb beneath our feet, “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever.”  On that one hymn I take my stand.  That is my charter as a student of Natural Science.  As long as that is sung in an English church, I have a right to investigate Nature boldly without stint or stay, and to call on all who have the will, to investigate her boldly likewise, and with Socrates of old, to follow the Logos whithersoever it leads.

The Logos.  I must pause on that word.  It meant at first, no doubt, simply speech, argument, reason.  In the mind of Socrates it had a deeper meaning, at which he only dimly guessed; which was seen more clearly by Philo and the Alexandrian Jews; which was revealed in all its fulness to the beloved Apostle St. John, till he gathered speech to tell men of a Logos, a Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God; by whom all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made; and how in Him was Life, and the Life was the light of men; and that He was none other than Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yes, that is the truth.  And to that truth no man can add, and from it no man can take away.  And as long as we believe that as long as we believe that in His light alone can we see light—as long as we believe that the light around us, whether physical or spiritual, is given by Him without whom nothing is made—so long we shall not fear to meet Light, so long we shall not fear to investigate Life; for we shall know, however strange or novel, beautiful or awful, the discoveries we make may be, we are only following the Word whithersoever He may lead us; and that He can never lead us amiss

I. THE SOIL OF THE FIELD 2

My dear readers, let me, before touching on the special subject of this paper, say a few words on that of the whole series.

It is geology: that is, the science which explains to us the rind of the earth; of what it is made; how it has been made.  It tells us nothing of the mass of the earth.  That is, properly speaking, an astronomical question.  If I may be allowed to liken this earth to a fruit, then astronomy will tell us—when it knows—how the fruit grew, and what is inside the fruit.  Geology can only tell us at most how its rind, its outer covering, grew, and of what it is composed; a very small part, doubtless, of all that is to be known about this planet.

But as it happens, the mere rind of this earth-fruit which has, countless ages since, dropped, as it were, from the Bosom of God, the Eternal Fount of Life—the mere rind of this earth-fruit, I say, is so beautiful and so complex, that it is well worth our awful and reverent study.  It has been well said, indeed, that the history of it, which we call geology, would be a magnificent epic poem, were there only any human interest in it; did it deal with creatures more like ourselves than stones, and bones, and the dead relics of plants and beasts.  Whether there be no human interest in geology; whether man did not exist on the earth during ages which have seen enormous geological changes, is becoming more and more an open question.

But meanwhile all must agree that there is matter enough for interest—nay, room enough for the free use of the imagination, in a science which tells of the growth and decay of whole mountain-ranges, continents, oceans, whole tribes and worlds of plants and animals.

And yet it is not so much for the vastness and grandeur of those scenes of the distant past, to which the science of geology introduces us, that I value it as a study, and wish earnestly to awaken you to its beauty and importance.  It is because it is the science from which you will learn most easily a sound scientific habit of thought.  I say most easily; and for these reasons.  The most important facts of geology do not require, to discover them, any knowledge of mathematics or of chemical analysis; they may be studied in every bank, every grot, every quarry, every railway-cutting, by anyone who has eyes and common sense, and who chooses to copy the late illustrious Hugh Miller, who made himself a great geologist out of a poor stonemason.  Next, its most important theories are not, or need not be, wrapped up in obscure Latin and Greek terms.  They may be expressed in the simplest English, because they are discovered by simple common sense.  And thus geology is (or ought to be), in popular parlance, the people’s science—the science by studying which, the man ignorant of Latin, Greek, mathematics, scientific chemistry, can yet become—as far as his brain enables him—a truly scientific man.

But how shall we learn science by mere common sense?

First.  Always try to explain the unknown by the known.  If you meet something which you have not seen before, then think of the thing most like it which you have seen before; and try if that which you know explains the one will not explain the other also.  Sometimes it will; sometimes it will not.  But if it will, no one has a right to ask you to try any other explanation.

Suppose, for instance, that you found a dead bird on the top of a cathedral tower, and were asked how you thought it had got there.  You would say, “Of course, it died up here.”  But if a friend said, “Not so; it dropped from a balloon, or from the clouds;” and told you the prettiest tale of how the bird came to so strange an end, you would answer, “No, no; I must reason from what I know.  I know that birds haunt the cathedral tower; I know that birds die; and therefore, let your story be as pretty as it may, my common sense bids me take the simplest explanation, and say—it died here.”  In saying that, you would be talking scientifically.  You would have made a fair and sufficient induction (as it is called) from the facts about birds’ habits and birds’ deaths which you know.

But suppose that when you took the bird up you found that it was neither a jackdaw, nor a sparrow nor a swallow, as you expected, but a humming-bird.  Then you would be adrift again.  The fact of it being a humming-bird would be a new fact which you had not taken into account, and for which your old explanation was not sufficient; and you would have to try a new induction—to use your common sense afresh—saying, “I have not to explain merely how a dead bird got here, but how a dead humming-bird.”

And now, if your imaginative friend chimed in triumphantly with: “Do you not see that I was right after all?  Do you not see that it fell from the clouds? that it was swept away hither, all the way from South America, by some south-westerly storm, and wearied out at last, dropped here to find rest, as in a sacred-place?” what would you answer?  “My friend, that is a beautiful imagination; but I must treat it only as such, as long as I can explain the mystery more simply by facts which I do know.  I do not know that humming-birds can be blown across the Atlantic alive.  I do know they are actually brought across the Atlantic dead; are stuck in ladies’ hats.  I know that ladies visit the cathedral; and odd as the accident is, I prefer to believe, till I get a better explanation, that the humming-bird has simply dropped out of a lady’s hat.”  There, again, you would be speaking common sense; and using, too, sound inductive method; trying to explain what you do not know from what you do know already.

Now, I ask of you to employ the same common sense when you read and think of Geology.

It is very necessary to do so.  For in past times men have tried to explain the making of the world around them, its oceans, rivers, mountains, and continents, by I know not what of fancied cataclysms and convulsions of nature; explaining the unknown by the still more unknown, till some of their geological theories were no more rational, because no more founded on known facts, than that of the New Zealand Maories, who hold that some god, when fishing, fished up their islands out of the bottom of the ocean.  But a sounder and wiser school of geologists now reigns; the father of whom, in England at least, is the venerable Sir Charles Lyell.  He was almost the first of Englishmen who taught us to see—what common sense tells us—that the laws which we see at work around us now have been most probably at work since the creation of the world; and that whatever changes may seem to have taken place in past ages, and in ancient rocks, should be explained, if possible, by the changes which are taking place now in the most recent deposits—in the soil of the field.

And in the last forty years—since that great and sound idea has become rooted in the minds of students, and especially of English students, geology has thriven and developed, perhaps more than any other science; and has led men on to discoveries far more really astonishing and awful than all fancied convulsions and cataclysms.

I have planned this series of papers, therefore, on Sir Charles Lyell’s method.  I have begun by trying to teach a little about the part of the earth’s crust which lies nearest us, which we see most often; namely, the soil; intending, if my readers do me the honour to read the papers which follow, to lead them downward, as it were, into the earth; deeper and deeper in each paper, to rocks and minerals which are probably less known to them than the soil in the fields.  Thus you will find I shall lead you, or try to lead you on, throughout the series, from the known to the unknown, and show you how to explain the latter by the former.  Sir Charles Lyell has, I see, in the new edition of his “Student’s Elements of Geology,” begun his book with the uppermost, that is, newest, strata, or layers; and has gone regularly downwards in the course of the book to the lowest or earliest strata; and I shall follow his plan.

I must ask you meanwhile to remember one law or rule, which seems to me founded on common sense; namely, that the uppermost strata are really almost always the newest; that when two or more layers, whether of rock or earth—or indeed two stones in the street, or two sheets on a bed, or two books on a table—any two or more lifeless things, in fact, lie one on the other, then the lower one was most probably put there first, and the upper one laid down on the lower.  Does that seem to you a truism?  Do I seem almost impertinent in asking you to remember it?  So much the better.  I shall be saved unnecessary trouble hereafter.