332 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLYII. No. 1214 



with tlie plains longer than with poetry — 

 even of the best. 



The sea has a charm for almost every 

 soul, but he who gets only what the eye 

 records of color and movement, fails of the 

 larger meaning, which, to beauty, adds 

 grandeur. "What does the salt of the sea 

 mean? What is the period of time of its 

 accumulation? What volumes of rock — 

 many times all that is now above its sur- 

 face — have been destroyed in its produc- 

 tion? What range and volume of life, of 

 which the voyager has but a glimpse, does 

 it harbor now ? What of the life of which 

 it has been the home in the time which has 

 passed since life was, and what of the great 

 evolutions that have taken place within it? 

 And what is yet to come? The great 

 panorama of events, of processes, of 

 changes, all of which are involved in the 

 history of the sea, add a meaning larger 

 than the eye, unaided, sees. To see the 

 ocean merely as it is is like seeing the 

 social fabric of to-day, without reference 

 to what has been in the past, or what is to 

 be in the future. 



Our period of schooling is all too short to 

 give us an intelligent look into all the fields 

 with which it would 'be profitaible to have 

 acquaintance ; but is this field on which we 

 live and move and have our being, one we 

 can afford to neglect? 



From a wholly different point of view, 

 geology is a valuable study. There is no 

 subject in the curriculum which, rightly 

 developed, can be made to lead more surely 

 to correct methods and processes of rea- 

 soning. I remember that a former presi- 

 dent of the Geological Society of America 

 said, in his annual address, that the first 

 courses in geology must be pouring-in 

 processes, and that only later can anything 

 be drawn out. In a sense this is of course 

 true; but in another sense this doctrine 

 is at the root of all that is worst in educa- 



tion. Geology, better than most subjects, 

 can be taught from the ibeginning by the 

 problem method. Given certain specific 

 data — and the data may be in strict con- 

 formity to the facts of geology — the stu- 

 dent can work out for himself the results 

 which must follow. By this method, skill- 

 fully carried out, any man with ordinary 

 intelligence for the comprehension of cause 

 and effect can be let into the heart of the 

 science with a minimum of information 

 poured in, and that minimum bit by bit 

 for use in the solution of problems. This 

 method of instruction educates, but does 

 not stuff him. The lecture method of in- 

 struction in the elements of geology, when 

 well done, is hardly more than a stuffing 

 process; when badly done, it is much less. 

 In any case, it leaves the student relatively 

 helpless in dealing independently with the 

 reasons which give facts this meaning. 



No subject within my ken lends itself 

 better to this method of problem study 

 than geology. In its simpler aspects, it 

 deals with facts with which the student 

 has some familiarity, and he can be led to 

 reason from the known to that of which 

 he has not thought, so that the work is, for 

 him, original research from the oiitset. 

 This is ideal education, and for this sort 

 of education, geology is almost an ideal 

 subject. We have heard much of dis- 

 cipline in education. This is the sort of 

 discipline which counts. 



There is much in the history of the sci- 

 ence which is illustrative of the history of 

 intellectual progress. It is not so long ago 

 that one man's guess was about as good as 

 another's, concerning anything that had to 

 do with earth phenomena, and it was long 

 years after facts began to be observed, be- 

 fore the convincing worth of facts was 

 generally recognized. The history of the 

 attitude of men toward fossils is typical 

 of their attitude toward the science as a 



