And so--may I be pardoned for reëmphasizing?--the teacher of geology whose essential purpose is liberal training, leading to broad and firm knowledge and to sound processes of thought, will critically observe the distinction between geology taught appropriately from the collegiate point of view, and geology taught specifically from the professional and technical points of view. In these latter, specific details in specific lines are important, and may even be essential, but it is the function of the college teacher of geology _to select_ from the great mass of material of the science such factors as are basal, vital, and talismanic. He will give these emphasis, while he neglects the multitude of details that lack significance as working elements or as landmarks of progress, whatever their value in other relations. This selection is equally important, whether applied to the great physical processes that have shaped the earth into its present configuration, or to the great chemical and mineralogical processes that have determined its texture and its structure, or to the great biological and psychological processes that have given trend to the development of its inhabitants.
Even if the undergraduate course in geology is pursued less for the purpose of liberal culture than as a means of preparing for a professional career as an economic geologist, no essential departure from an effort to master first the basal features and the broader aspects of the science, especially the dynamic aspects, is to be advised. The shortest road to _declared success_ in professional and economic geology lies through the early mastery of its fundamentals. No doubt immediate and apparent success may often be sooner reached by a narrower and shallower study of such special phases of the subject as happen just now to be most obviously related to the existing state of the industries; but industrial demands are constantly changing--indeed, at present, rather rapidly--and new aspects follow one another in close succession. These new aspects almost inevitably spring from the more basal factors as these rise into function with the progress of experience or the stress of new demands. Those who have sought only the immediate and the superficial, at the expense of the basal, and especially those who have neglected to acquire _the power and the disposition to search out the fundamentals_, are quite sure to be left among the unfortunates who trail behind; they are little likely to be found among those who lead at the times when leadership counts. In the judgment of those master minds that lead in affairs and that take large and penetrating views, the lines along which the most vital contributions to economic interests are being made connect closely with basal studies of the actuating agencies that condition great enterprises. In the judgment of the writer, it is a false view to suppose that any short, superficial study of so vast a subject as the constitution and history of the earth can result in economic competency. In so far as time for study is limited, it should be concentrated on the great underlying factors that constitute the essentials of the science. It is here assumed that men who care to take a college course at all are seeking for a large success and are ambitious for a high personal career. If they look ultimately to professional work in economic lines, they may safely be advised that the straight road to declared success lies in a search for the vital forces, the critical agencies, and the profound principles that make for great results, not along the by-paths whose winding, superficial courses are turned hither and thither by adventitious conditions whose very nature invites distrust rather than confidence.