There was a total failure to understand the great variety of kinds of work that could be done by naturalists, including what could be done by outdoor naturalists--the kind of work which Hart Merriam and his assistants in the Biological Survey have carried to such a high degree of perfection as regards North American mammals.

In the entirely proper desire to be thorough and to avoid slipshod methods, the tendency was to treat as not serious, as unscientific, any kind of work that was not carried on with laborious minuteness in the laboratory.

My taste was specialized in a totally different direction, and I had no more desire or ability to be a microscopist and section-cutter than to be a mathematician.

Accordingly I abandoned all thought of becoming a scientist.

Doubtless this meant that I really did not have the intense devotion to science which I thought I had; for, if I had possessed such devotion, I would have carved out a career for myself somehow without regard to discouragements.
As regards political economy, I was of course while in college taught the _laissez-faire_ doctrines--one of them being free trade--then accepted as canonical.