Union of the Disciplinary and the Useful. 155 



more immediately he deals with the phenomena themselves, the 

 more clear and definite will be his basal conce]3ts, and the more 

 solid and tangible his fundamental ideas. The basal factors of 

 thought in any department should be vivid, and in the study 

 of earth-forms and earth-structure this vividness may be best 

 derived by work on the part with which the students are in 

 immediate contact. 



The selection should be such as to call forth not simply ob- 

 servation a-nd acquisition through memory, but the higher 

 mental processes, analysis, induction, imagination, interpreta- 

 tion, and so forth. The selection will fall short of the highest 

 merit if it does not invite and promote a constant inquiry into 

 the causes that lie back of the phenomena, the history through 

 which they have passed, their significance, and the extension 

 and application of the results of the study to remote phenomena 

 and to broader fields. 



The selection should embrace matter that has inherent and 

 stimulating significance, that will lead students to read similar 

 significances in like phenomena whenever and wherever pre- 

 sented. 



The value of the selection will be enhanced if it has immediate 

 and evident relationship to human affairs. However beautiful 

 the purely idealistic conception of mental activity and mental 

 acquisition for its own sake may be, the fact remains that we are 

 human beings and more easily and efiectively interested in 

 human affairs than in that which is remote from man's interests. 

 K the selection shall have an evident relationship to economical 

 and industrial interests, its effectiveness will be promoted ; but 

 if it does not also bear upon man's sociological, intellectual, 

 esthetical. and ethical interests, it will fall short of the full 

 measure of merit. It should make its contribution to these not 

 only by helpful knowledge, but by the culture that accompanies 

 its acquisition, by the suggestiveness of its laws, its modes of 

 action, and its analogies. 



In addition to these qualities, which may be common to other 

 subjects, the selection in each field should be so made as to open 

 to the student a special realm of culture, and to familiarize him 

 with some great factor of thought not equally well developed by 

 any other subject of study. Each great field may be assumed 

 to possess a richness of its own and to be competent to yield a 

 fruitage Avhich has its own peculiar and incomparable qualities. 



