196 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS [M ™ 0,M [vousx£ 



being under no necessity of becoming so I took my knitting with me and made nearly as good 

 progress as I should have here," in Washington. It ought to cause merited remorse to any of 

 the more liberal-minded future dwellers in Manhattan who cast a glance at that quotation to 

 think that in their grandfathers' time commercialism was so prevalent in the metropolitan city 

 that a man as distinguished in science and as agreeable in person as Gilbert remained unknown 

 and neglected in his room, occupying himself with his "knitting" evening after evening, when 

 he should have been invited to social gatherings. But those few New Yorkers of the nineties 

 whom Gilbert did know and who prized his company while he was in their city will remember 

 that what he called his "knitting" was the experimental part of his research on the origin of 

 Coon Butte; namely, the firing of pellets of clay and bullets of lead into surfaces of the same 

 material, in order to discover what sort of cavities would result. This research was performed 

 chiefly in a laboratory of Columbia University and not in the solitude of his room. All the 

 same, he did ply his needle there, as he confessed to an intimate correspondent: 



M3' overcoat sleeve lining misbehaved and I set it right. Then while I was about it I inserted various 

 other stitches in various garments, each time saving 800% profit. 



There is no reason to think that he was unduly lonely, but he did miss the opportunity for 

 congenial intercourse that Washington offered : 



I manage to enjoy myself pretty well, but I don't see how those Columbians get along without a Cosmos 

 Club. 



However, he seems to have found lecturing an agreeable task, for in January and February, 

 1895, he gave a course of 10 lectures on physiographic geology at Johns Hopkins University, 

 and with such acceptance that he treated the same subject in a course of doubled length during 

 the first three months of the following year. The payment for the doubled course was $400; 

 and by comparing this sum with that previously received from the School of Mines for 12 

 lectures, the value of lectures in Baltimore may be inferred, on the educational principle that 

 the lecturer is worthy of not mdre than his hire, to be only about a quarter as great as in New 

 York. 



The kind of teacher that Gilbert would have made had he accepted any one of the profes- 

 sorships offered to him may be inferred on reading the dissent he expressed from the opinion 

 of a reviewer of a geological textbook in 1896. The reviewer urged that "a textbook should 

 be the exposition of a doctrine," and that it should be so planned that the student, "in his 

 intellectual processes, acquires that habit of decision so essential to practical success." One 

 might know that Gilbert, with his habit of deliberation and his unusual capacity for maintaining 

 a suspended judgment, could not accept such a view. He wrote in reply : "It appears to me " — 

 and in thus unconsciously adopting the opening phrase with which so many professors preface 

 their" remarks in faculty meetings he showed himself to that extent at least qualified to join 

 their ranks — 



It appears to me that something is to be said in favor of occasionally submitting to students alternative 

 opinions regarding an unsettled question. The scientific text book which presents only facts and accepted 

 principles, or gives only the author 's opinion in open questions, must tend to leave the student with the impres- 

 sion that scientific knowledge is complete. The statement and discussion of rival hypotheses not only exhibits 

 the actual incompleteness of knowledge, but illustrates the method of progress, and it appears to me quite as 

 important to the world's future that the rising generation shall learn the method of research as that it become 

 acquainted with the results of research. It may also be questioned whether the habit of decision inspired by 

 the exclusive assimilation of positive ideas will usually lead to the best results when applied to the practical 

 affairs of life. Problems of affairs resemble, in the complexity of their factors, the problems of such a science 

 as geology; and the mind which habitually suspends judgments until various points of view have been considered 

 may gain, through the wisdom of its decisions, as much as it loses through delay. 1 



In so far as this passage reveals the method that Gilbert would have employed with college 

 classes, it indicates that his success would have been greater with advanced students than with 

 beginners; but if one considers the practical good sense that he showed in many relations 

 as well as the opinion that he here expressed, it can not be doubted that he could have soon 



1 Science, iv, 1896, 877. 



