Apbil 24, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



613 



other ways enlarging the spirit of all edu- 

 cated people. 



It is evident that the main contribution 

 which geology has to make to those concep- 

 tions which may enter into the spirit of our 

 society relates to the position of man ; the 

 abstract learning, that which is in and for 

 itself, is for those who have the professional 

 interest. These public values of the science 

 are of two diverse kinds — on the one hand, 

 those which pertain to intellectual enlarge- 

 ment ; on the other, to economic develop- 

 ment. Therefore in considering our dutj' 

 by the educational side of our work we 

 should see what the contributions can be to 

 . these two modes of endeavor and how they 

 should be presented. First, I shall consider 

 the limitations of that work which may be 

 regarded as distinctly pedagogic. 



Divisions of the Science. 

 It seems to me necessary distinctly to 

 separate the body of the instruction which 

 is to be given in geology into two parts — 

 that which is appropriate to the general 

 public ; and that which, though ' caviare to 

 the general,' fits the appetite of the profes- 

 sional-minded. We are indebted to the 

 philosophical pedagogue Herbert for a state- 

 ment of the self-evident proposition that in- 

 terest in a matter must exist before infor- 

 mation concerning it can be profitably com- 

 municated ; therefore in our teaching we 

 must take no end of care to provide this 

 foundation for the attention. This care is 

 particularly necessarj^ in the matters of 

 geology, for, as before remarked, the facts 

 cannot often be exhibited in the experi- 

 mental way, as in the laboratories of chem- 

 istry and physics, where the touch of hand 

 or the sight of controlled actions establishes 

 a personal relation with the problems. The 

 teacher of our science has to avail himself 

 of certain antecedent motives which he can 

 presume to exist in any normal j'outh which 

 may provide the required foundation of in- 



terest. What I have to say on this point 

 is the result of nearly a third of a century 

 of experience in teaching geology, and is 

 based on work which has been done with 

 more than 4,000 students. The basis for 

 the induction is suiificiently great to make 

 the conclusions of value. These are in brief 

 as follows : That instruction in geology 

 which is meant for those who have not ac- 

 quired the professional motive, must find 

 its basis of interest on either of two founda- 

 tions — on the element of sympathy with all 

 which relates to the fate of man which is na- 

 tive in all of us, or on the love of the open 

 fields, which every youth who is not utterly 

 supercivilized has as a birthright. Each of 

 those intei-ests is in a way primal ; both may 

 be separately reckoned on as strong in 

 nearly all youths who are fitted for the 

 higher education. 



Class-Boom hist ruction . 



To make use of the motives which may 

 interest the beginner in geology my ex- 

 perience has shown that the first thing to 

 do is to give by means of familiar lectures 

 a general acquaintance with those series of 

 actions which show the long continuous 

 operations of energy in the orderlj^ march 

 of events, taking pains at each convenient 

 opportunity — there are many such— to note 

 how these processes have served to bring- 

 about the conditions on which the develop- 

 ment of peoples or of states depends. Thus, 

 in treating of volcanoes, the very human- 

 ized story of Vesuvius or of ^tna, especi- 

 ally the dramatic episode of the death of 

 Pliny the Elder, is worth much to the teach- 

 ers for the reason that it serves to bring a 

 sense of human affairs into a subject which 

 for lack of illustration is apt to remain re- 

 mote and therefore uninteresting. The fact 

 that the story of these volcanoes, especially 

 that of Vesuvius, is inwoven with that of 

 men forms a bond between the mind of the 

 novice and an order of nature which would 



