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These general remarks will, I trust, give some notion of the evidence which is available for reconstructing the history of those remote periods with which geology deals, and of the kind of reasoning which the geologist employs for interpreting the records that are submitted to him.
"I say, let's get together and put Rolla wise to what Deltos and Sorplee are framing up! We can do it, if we concentrate upon the same thought at the right time!" Smith did not commit himself. "I don't care much either way," he decided. "Go ahead if you want to" meaning Van Emmon and the doctor "I don't want to butt in." "Don't need you," growled the geologist. "Two of us is enough."
But the moment the geologist has to deal with large areas, or with completely separated deposits, the mischief of confounding that "homotaxis" or "similarity of arrangement," which can be demonstrated, with "synchrony" or "identity of date," for which there is not a shadow of proof, under the one common term of "contemporaneity" becomes incalculable, and proves the constant source of gratuitous speculations.
But the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder. And after passion and prejudice have died away, the same result will attend the teachings of the naturalist respecting that great Alps and Andes of the living world Man.
"Now, are geologists prepared to admit that, at some time within the last 20,000 years, there has been all over the earth so high a temperature as that? I presume not; no geologist no modern geologist would for a moment admit the hypothesis that the present state of underground heat is due to a heating of the surface at so late a period as 20,000 years ago.
Henceforward the obscuring changes are so manifold that the original lake-meadow can be unveiled and seen only by the geologist.
"I ain't a geologist, but I am a criminologist, and just one more of your monkey tricks like that and I'll put you where you'll have time to study a lot of rocks and do a lot of thinkin' before bein' funny again. Now, you get out! Get into that car as quick as you can, if you know what's good for you!"
The Scriptorium had been degraded into a sickening school of journalism. Day after day, night after night, Queed sat at his tiny table poring over back files of the Post, examining Colonel Cowles's editorials as a geologist examines a Silurian deposit.
Wherever the geologist can explore the earth's surface, he can read much of its past history, and can determine approximately its latest movements above and below the sea-level; but wherever oceans and seas now extend, he can do nothing but speculate on the very limited data afforded by the depth of the waters.
I do but say that there will be this distinction as regards a Professor of Law, or of Medicine, or of Geology, or of Political Economy, in a University and out of it, that out of a University he is in danger of being absorbed and narrowed by his pursuit, and of giving Lectures which are the Lectures of nothing more than a lawyer, physician, geologist, or political economist; whereas in a University he will just know where he and his science stand, he has come to it, as it were, from a height, he has taken a survey of all knowledge, he is kept from extravagance by the very rivalry of other studies, he has gained from them a special illumination and largeness of mind and freedom and self-possession, and he treats his own in consequence with a philosophy and a resource, which belongs not to the study itself, but to his liberal education.
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