Page:Science and Citizenship.djvu/31

Science and Citizenship and time. The geographer sees the land in its varying relief from sea-shore, over plain and plateau, valley and height, up to mountain summit He sees below the surface of the waters, noting the shape and level of river-bed, of lake and sea bottom. He sees the crust of the earth everywhere in section, from the lowest and oldest rocks up through the superimposed geological strata, to the superficial deposits which wind and rain, storm and sunshine, snow and frost, disintegrate for the making of soil, on which the flora of the world fix themselves and feed, region by region, and across which the fauna of the world move and make their tiny marks and scratches. He sees the surface of the globe changing from day to day, season to season, age to age, epoch to epoch. And these changes he sees to be brought about in part by the place of the globe in space, and its relation to other celestial bodies, and in part by the very shape, form, and character of the surface and configurations themselves. Thus to the geographer the phantasmagoria of visible things presents itself as a drama, a great cosmic drama in which the part allotted to the human species is both insignificant and predetermined in all essential respects. The operations of man on the planet are, from this point of view, limited and conditioned by inexorable cosmic forces. The roads and railways, by which man connects his cities, are seen to be the merest scratches on the surface of the globe, wholly comparable in their insignificance to the tracks which the elephants 26