The Earth, if discussed exhaustorily, must be spoken of in its relations to Time as well as to Space. The word by which we characterize it, in this regard, is History. The duration of the Earth outruns all measurement. By thinking of its beginning, is the only way we have of gaining a conception of Time. We cannot conceive of the universe as antedating the creation of our earth. By this indefinite, not to say infinite, duration of time, the Earth is discriminated from all that it contains; it is older than any of its parts; it antedates all its kingdoms. The nature of the whole is, therefore, radically different from that of any of its divisions. The Earth has had a development of its own; hence the too common error of treating it as passive and inorganic. The history of the Earth displays, in all the monuments of the past, that it has been subjected in every feature, in every division of itself, to ceaseless transformation, in order to show that, as a whole, it is capable of that organic development on which I lay so much stress. The natural powers which the earth includes are constantly obedient to the mechanical laws of chemistry and physics. The animate creation, plants, animals, man, come and go, in accordance with the laws of their being, and as subordinate dependents on the great forces which the earth holds locked up within her bosom. The earth, the mother of them all, has her own special advance, her own development, to use that overburdened German word. She has relations to herself alone; not simply to organized forms, plants, and animals; just as little to organic things; not simply to her own countries, her rocks, and her crystals. These are but isolated parts; or, if not isolated, yet bound _together_ by a common tie. There is another tie above this; it is that which binds the earth to itself alone; that subordinates its parts to such an extent that they almost disappear. There is, above all this thought of parts, of features, of phenomena, the conception of the Earth as a whole, existing in itself, and for itself, an organic thing, advancing by growth, and becoming more and more perfect and beautiful. Without trying to impose on you anything vague and transcendental, I wish to lead you to view the globe as almost a living thing,—not a crystal, assuming new grace by virtue of an external law,—but a world, taking on grandeur and worth, by virtue of an inward necessity. The individuality of the earth must be the watchword of re-created Geography. To think of the Earth, as a seed sown from the hand of God himself on the great fields of space, and filled with a germinant power of life, which will transform it more and more, and make it more and more worthy of its noblest inhabitant, is the first, as it is the last, idea which we must take and keep in these inquiries.