_The history of the earth should therefore be taught in college courses as a succession of complex dynamic events, great in the past and great in future potentialities._
The formations and configurations left by the successive phases of action are to be studied primarily as the vestiges of the processes that gave them birth, and hence as their historic credentials. They are to be looked upon less as the vital things in themselves, than as the _record_ of the events of the time and as the forerunners of the subsequent events that may be potential in them. And so, primarily, the geologic records are to be scrutinized to find _the deeper meanings which they embody_, whether such meanings lie in the physical, the biological, or the psychological world.
=Geology the means of developing scientific imagination of time and space=
Turning to specific phases of the subject, it may first be noted that geology is singularly suited to develop clear visions of vast stretches of time; it opens broad visions of the panorama of world events, a panorama still passing before us. While the celestial order of things no doubt involves greater lapses of time, these are not so easily realized, for they are not so well filled in with a succession of records of the passing stages that make up the whole. But even the lapses of geologic time are greater than immature minds can readily grasp; however, their _powers of realization_ are greatly strengthened by studying so protracted a record, built up stage upon stage. The very slowness with which the geologic record was made, as well as the evidences of slowness in each part of the record, help to draw out an appreciation of the immensity of the whole. The round period covered by the more legible range of the geologic record rises to the order of a hundred million years, perhaps to several hundred million years. The large view of history which this implies has already come to form the ample background on which are projected the concepts of the broader class of thinkers; such largeness of view will quite surely be held to be an indispensable prerequisite to the still broader thinking of the future for which the better order of students are now preparing.