Inaugural Address by Professor Geikie, F.R.S. on ‘Earth sculpture and the Huttonian School of Geology’. [Fortieth Anniversary Meeting Thursday 6th November 1873

Abstract

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. Among the questions which may be treated as matters of strict science, and which yet cannot be wholly divested of the strong human, one might almost say personal, interest which belongs to them, is the birth of mountains and valleys. The familiar outlines of his dwelling-place have fixed the attention of man from the infancy of the race up to the present day. Long before science arose to deal with them they had become inwoven with his history, his habits, and his creed. The great mountains had been to him emblems of majesty and eternity, lifting up their fronts to heaven as they had done from the beginning, and would no doubt do to the end. They rose before him as monuments of the power of that great Being who had heaved them out of chaos. It was enough for him in that early time to feel their mighty influences; he had then no questions or doubts as to how or when they first appeared upon the earth. Happily, in spite of questioning, exacting science, these first natural and instinctive feelings are not yet dead within us. A knowledge even of all the laws of mountain-making cannot, if our minds are healthy and our hearts beat true, deprive us wholly of that first genuine child-like awe and wonder in presence of noble mountains. Crag and cliff sweeping in rugged and colossal massiveness above dark waves of pine far into the keen and clear blue air; the vast mantle