ficulty
peculiar to this science has also served to hinder its development.
All the other branches of learning deal mainly, if not altogether,
with the conditions of Nature as they now exist. In this alone is it
necessary at every step to take account of actions which have been
performed in the remote past.

It is an easy matter for the students of to-day to imagine that the
earth has long endured; but to our forefathers, who were educated in
the view that it had been brought from nothingness into existence
about seven thousand years ago, it was most difficult and for a time
impossible to believe in its real antiquity. Endeavouring, as they
naturally did, to account for all the wonderful revolutions, the
history of which is written in the pages of the great stone book, the
early geologists supposed this planet to have been the seat of
frequent and violent changes, each of which revolutionized its shape
and destroyed its living tenants. It was only very gradually that
they became convinced that a hundred million years or more have
elapsed since the dawn of life on the earth, and that in this vast
period the march of events has been steadfast, the changes taking
place at about the same rate in which they are now going on. As yet
this conception as to the history of our sphere has not become the
general property of the people, but the fact of it is recognised by
all those who have attentively studied the matter. It is now as well
ascertained as any of the other truths which science has disclosed to
us.

It is instructive to note the historic outlines of scientific
development. The most conspicuous truth which this history discloses
is that all science has had its origin and almost all its development
among the peoples belonging to the Aryan race. This body of folk
appears to have taken on its race characteristics, acquired its
original language, its modes of action, and the foundations of its
religion in that part of northern Europe which is about the Baltic
Sea. Thence the body of this people appear to have wandered toward
central Asia, where after ages of pastoral life in the high table
lands and mountains of their country it sent forth branches to India,
Asia Minor and Greece, to Persia, and to western Europe. It seems ever
to have been a characteristic of these Aryan peoples that they had an
extreme love for Nature; moreover, they clearly perceived the need of
accounting for the things that happened in the world abo