present in the light of the past. When thus conceived it forms a fitting complement to geology, which, as defined by the same author, is the study of the past in the light of the present. The studies are inseparable and up to a certain point, their physical aspects may be well followed together, under such a name as physiography. Specialization may then lead the student more to one subject than to the other.
An illustration from human history, where the study of the past and present has a single name, may serve to make my meaning clear in regard to the relation of the two parts of terrestrial history, which have different names. A descriptive and statistical account of a people as at present existing, such as that which our statistical atlas of the last Census gives in outline, corresponds to geography in its ordinary limitation. A reasonable extension of such an account, introducing a consideration of antecedent conditions and events, for the purpose of throwing light on existing relations, represents an expanded conception of geography. The minute study of the rise and present condition of any single industry would correspond to the monographic account of the development of any simple group of geographic forms. On the other hand, history taken in its more general aspects, including an inquiry into the causes and processes of the rise and fall of ancient nations, answers to geology; and an account of some brief past stage of history is the equivalent of paleography, a subject at present very little studied and seemingly destined always to escape sharp determination. It is manifest that geology and geography thus defined are parts of a single great subject, and must not be considered independently.
History became a science when it outgrew mere narration and searched for the causes of the facts narrated; when it ceased to accept old narratives as absolute records and judged them by criteria derived from our knowledge of human nature as we see it at present, but modified to accord with past conditions.
Geology became a science when it adopted geographic methods. The interpretation of the past by means of a study of the present proves to be the only safe method of geologic investigation. Hutton and Lyell may be named as the prominent leaders of this school and if we admit a reasonable modification of their too pronounced uniformitarianism, all modern geologists are their followers. The discovery of the conservation and correlation of energy gives additional support to their thesis by ruling out the
