386 THE RELATIONS OF GEOLOGY. 



both nietliods are corrcM-t, eacli for itsi^lf, and should both b«' utilized. 

 There are uii({uesti()nal)ly souie thiiios which are best tauoht by 

 experiment, and by that demonstration in which the pupil takes the 

 whole or the largest share. But, on the other hand, the facts of 

 science are so overwhelming in nund^er, and some of its grandest 

 conclusions are so dependent on the highest extremes of knowledge, 

 that they must be communicated didacticall}" and must be accepted by 

 the scholar more or less as an article of faith. Indeed, the younger 

 the scholar and the less his experience, the more certain is he to accept 

 as unquestionabl(> truths the assertions of his instructors. It would 

 be tlie height of folly to neglect the advantages of all this side of a 

 3"Outirs education in those years of his life when he is most ([ualitied 

 to profit by it. 



The fac^t is that in the imparting of (^arth knowledge, as in any other 

 kind of instruction, both educational methods didactic and experi- 

 mental, authoritative and original — should he utilized together. It is 

 a matter for the educationalist to hnd out what sections of a subject 

 and what stages of a subject are best im])arted by one method and 

 what by anotlun'. The only rule which can be laid down is that the 

 didactic and authoritative method is certain to have h^ss and l(\ss effect 

 as the scholar grows older and his experience broadens, and the 

 ex])erimentai and original more and more. But there is no escape 

 from the conclusion that it is the common interest of the teacher and 

 the scholar to make use of both methods; for the knowledge of every 

 man — the genius, the scholar, thc^ wise man, and the fool — is alike in 

 this, that it is the sum of that knowledge which is due to his own 

 individual experience and that portion of the collective knowledge of 

 humanit}' which is due to the antecedent experiences of his fore- 

 fathers and which he has received at second hand. It is not that the 

 present educational systems are wrong in laying stress on the memo- 

 rizing and the applying of what is already known, l)ut that they are 

 defective in neglecting the individual and original half of a libei-al 

 education. 



As 1 have already pointed out, the central plane of geonomy is the 

 knowledge of the surface of the earth, whose present conditions 

 belong to geograph}^, and whose past and evolution belong to geolog}^ 

 But in the earlier phases of the education of the scholar there can and 

 need be no distinction in his mind between these two sciences; they 

 are rather combined in a geonomic stage — in a generalized organism, 

 so to speak — destined to evolve and diti'erentiate later on. Yet in this 

 earl}' stage the dominating section of the subject is essentialh^ geog- 

 raphy. As such it presents two very ditierent aspects— the general 

 geography, namely, that of the world and its surface as a whole; and 

 the local geography, namely, the geography of the home and the sur- 

 roundings of the scholar. The general geograph}" must be taught di- 



