XIII 



SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF GEOLOGY AND THE ORDER OF 



THE STATE 



President's address before the Geological Society of America, 

 Albany, December 28, 1916 



BY JOHN M. CLARKE 



Once each year we come together to renew our strength in unison, 

 like Antaeus, by touching the earth. 



I am conscious of taking some degree of liberty in departing from 

 the usual form of this established function — the annual address. 

 It would gratify me and might in some measure have diverted or 

 persuaded you, if this occasion were given to the illumination of 

 some specific technical theme. But the spirit of the hour seems to 

 impel me rather to read from my experience and observation, or 

 at least to portray as I see it, some part of the obligation of the 

 state to our science and the responsibility of this science to the state. 



The occasion is perhaps opportune, not so much in this place of 

 meeting which happens to be the seat of government of but one of 

 the many states here represented, and in the presence of members 

 from two great federated governments ; but essentially because, for 

 the sake of all parties of interest, we must recognize more clearly 

 the civic element in geological science and insist more pertinaciously 

 on the immediate as well as the ultimate dependence of a state, if 

 organized .to endure, upon the demonstrated laws of this science. 



I wish I might extend to my colleagues among the official geol- 

 ogists of many states an assurance that this address is to be devoted 

 to some added demonstration of the obligation of the state to ex- 

 ploit to the utmost its geological resources, for the sake of the com- 

 mercial interests of its community, but such public arguments are 

 now superfluous. It is a primary impulse and an almost elemental 

 instinct in the state to develop the commercial assets of its rocks. 

 The appeal is so direct, so simple, so imperative that no state can 

 afford to ignore a well-directed official effort to increase thus the 

 general well-being and comfort of the commonwealth. The broad 

 proposition is not debatable ; the proposition in detail has always 



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