n and their freest application, the
advantage cannot be other than mutual.

It is perhaps not too much to say that studies in the physiological,
the psychological, the sociological, and the allied fields necessarily
lack completeness if they do not bring into their purview the data of
their common historical record traced as far back as it is found to
contain intimations of their actual extension.

It is customary to speak of the geologic ages as though they were
wholly past; they are, indeed, chiefly past as the record now stands,
but time runs on and earth history continues; the processes of the
past are still active, and they are likely to work on far into the
future. And so geologic study links itself fundamentally into all such
present terrestrial interests as take hold of the distant future. The
forecast of the earth's endurance, attended by conditions congenial to
life and to the mental and moral activities, hinges on a sound insight
into the great actuating forces inherent in the earth, together with
those likely to come into play from the celestial environment. All
human interests, in so far as they are dependent on a protracted
future, center in the prognosis of the earth based on its present and
its past. The latest phases of geologic doctrine prophesy a long
future habitability of the earth. They thus give meaning and emphasis
to the deeper purposes sought in all the higher endeavors, not the
least of which is education, particularly those phases of education
that lead to effects which may be handed down from age to age.

=Standard for selecting subject matter for the general college course:
select fundamentals or that which bears on fundamentals=

Out of all this vast physical, biological, and psychological history,
the things to be selected for substance of thought and for service in
mental training in a college course are, first of all, those that are
either fundamental in themselves, or that have vital bearings on what
is fundamental. These are chiefly the great dynamic factors, the
agencies that gave trend to the master events, the forces that
actuated the basal processes by which the vast results were attained.
The material formations and the surficial configurations that resulted
are to be duly considered, to be sure, for they form the basis of
interpretation and they are, besides, the repositories of economic
values of indispensable worth; but, as already urged, in a course of
intellectual traini