reprinted from 
 
 “The Forum” 
 
 Lia;AH/ 
 
 FOR JANUARY, 1902 
 
 UNIVERSITY of ILLINOIS. 
 
 THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE ELEMENTARY 
 
 SCHOOLS. 
 
 The branches of study pursued in the elementary schools are chosen 
 for the purpose of securing two useful and reasonable ends. In the first 
 place, they are chosen to give the child an abiUty to understand his en- 
 vironment, and to come into a mastery of it so that he can make it use- 
 ful to himself. He is taught arithmetic in order that he may divide and 
 conquer; in order that he may measure the things and forces of his en- 
 vironment, and learn how to adapt one set of them to control and utilize 
 another. He is taught geography in order that he may understand the 
 causal relations existing between his habitat, or the place m which he 
 lives, and other places as well as other systems of things and events on the 
 
 earth. . i • 
 
 On the other hand, a second reason for adopting a branch in the 
 
 course of study is that it develops some faculty or power m the child, 
 and gives him possession of himself in that respect ; for one of the primary 
 objects is to develop the inteUect, the memory, the judgment, or the 
 heart. By the expression heart I mean the aggregate of affections and 
 inclinations of the soul. Some discipline in school, like writing, draw- 
 ing, calisthenics, or manual training, finds its place in the curriculum 
 because of its power to develop the will, the tenacity of purpose, the 
 ability to pay long and continuous attention to one thing, and to form 
 habits of industry, cleanliness, regularity, and punctuality, and tlius 
 acquire those virtues which make a man a better citizen than he could 
 possibly be without them — which make his service of more value to his 
 fellow-men and give him the ability to get a larger share of service from 
 them than he otherwise could. 
 
 Let any one take up the branches of the common school in the light 
 of these purposes, and he will find that those branches, as they are in 
 the schools, are all needed, and that it would not be possible to make 
 any one of them a substitute for any other. But I wish to call atten- 
 tion to the fact that the two principles or purposes which I have named 
 as the reasons which have determined the adoption of branches of study 
 
 Copyright, 1901, by The Forum Publishing Company. 
 
640 THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 
 
 in the schools not only are not antagonistic, but in many particulars 
 agree absolutely. The cultivation of the intellect, for instance, by such 
 studies as arithmetic, grammar, and literature, has for its result not only 
 the unfolding of the powers of the individual within himself, but the 
 enlargement of the individual’s sphere of influence among his fellow- 
 men, making him useful to them and making them useful to him. 
 The boy or girl who understands arithmetic is not only cultivated or 
 accomplished to that extent, but by so much the more useful. in the 
 family, in the industrial community, and in the nation, and by so much 
 the more able to conquer nature for his or her own benefit, and to make 
 useful combinations with his or her fellow-members of society through- 
 out the world. 
 
 So, too, in the matter of literature. The literature of the English 
 . language or of any other reveals human nature in one or more of its 
 national manifestations. Indeed, each literary work portrays some trait, 
 or, perhaps, several traits or phases, of human nature. The student of 
 literature comes to know the secrets of the human heart. He comes to 
 know how feelings and emotions may become clear ideas and convictions 
 of the intellect, and then how they become translated into deeds, habits, 
 and established forms of living such as appear in the network of man- 
 ners and customs which forms the substance of the daily life of each 
 man, woman, and child. Literature and mathematics — literature 
 the first and mathematics the second — form important branches of aU 
 school education. Literature is the first and most important, because, in 
 order to adjust himself to society, one must understand the motives, de- 
 sires, and views of the world which his fellow-men entertain. It is im- 
 possible for a man to live in a community where he has no insight into 
 or knowledge of the world-view of his fellow-men, and does not Imow 
 the things that make up their daily consciousness. In all nations, tribes, 
 and peoples, the man who is entirely ignorant of the prevailing code of 
 manners and ethics is not permitted to enjoy the freedom of civil society, 
 and, perhaps, is not even permitted to live. One must be heedful of the 
 fundamental requirements of society, such as the respect for life and 
 property and the respect for the sense of decency in one’s community, 
 or else he will be restrained in person and perhaps deprived of life. It 
 is well to remember that this is so not only in savage and half-civilized 
 peoples, but also in the highest and most refined and in the freest and 
 most liberty-loving communities in the world. 
 
 This is the ground on which I pronounce literatm-e the most impor- 
 tant of aU branches of school education, whether it be in China where 
 
THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 541 
 
 Confucius and Mencius form the matter of school education, or East In- 
 dia where the Vedas and the great heroic poems form the staple of the 
 com’se of study, or among Mohammedan nations where the Koran is 
 learned, or in Greece where Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were the school 
 ' - books, or in the schools of Boston, New York, St. Louis, and San Eran- 
 ^--cisco, where English literature in the school reading-books does its v/ork 
 ^ in enlightening the pupil as to the modes of thinking and the motives 
 • of his fellow-men. 
 
 J' After literature comes geography, meaning by the term what is usu- 
 ally understood by it in the elementary school. After geography comes 
 history, first, that of one’s native country, secondly, that of the civiliza- 
 tions of the world ; after history, grammar, as a special study of the 
 ^ forms of language. In the grammatical forms are revealed the methods 
 of the action of the intellect; for grammar is a sort of concrete logic, 
 revealing not only the methods of thinking, but also the methods of per- 
 ception, and the methods of recollection, which form the laws of memory. 
 
 These branches, which throw so much light upon the individuality 
 of the pupil — upon his own nature and upon the nature of the institu- 
 ' tions as well as upon the structure of the world in wliich he lives — 
 form the tools of thought and action ; they are the machines, the instru- 
 ments, by which he supplements his body ; they are the organs by which 
 he energizes upon the world outside of him and by which he makes with 
 his fellows combinations useful to them and doubly useful to himself. 
 
 When an attack is made upon any one of these branches of study, it 
 should cause us to reflect upon the individual and social necessity that 
 V has placed it in the curriculum. An attack upon geography, for instance, 
 ‘ should cause us to consider for a moment what one’s education would be 
 if the study of geography were entirely omitted in the elementary school. 
 Sufiicient reflection upon the inconveniences which would arise in one’s 
 practical life will enable us to form a list of the points of usefulness to 
 be found in geography. One will be able to draw up a sort of rough 
 inventory of what the child gets from the study of geography for a few 
 years in his early youth. 
 
 Let us for the moment make a list of the important items which the 
 child will get from a superflcial study of geography in the elementary 
 schools under what would be admitted to be a poor quality of instruc- 
 tion, namely the unaided study of the text-book, the text-book being of 
 an inadequate pattern, and the so-called teaching being confined chiefly 
 to hearing the words of the book repeated. The pupils of average intel- 
 lect will acquire some understanding of the main topics touched upon; 
 
 p'i'S^D 
 
 i 
 
542 THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 
 
 and they will have in memory, in a more or less digested form, some 
 facts connected with them which will be retained throughout their lives. 
 The constant use of certain typical facts, familiarity with which is de- 
 manded by the newspaper and magazine literature of the day, and which 
 is more or less required by the daily gossip over national and interna- 
 tional affairs, keeps the memory fresh in these matters. The average 
 child will carry off with him a pretty vivid idea that the shape of the 
 earth is round ‘‘like a ball or orange,” or like the moon and the sun 
 which he sees every day. He will also acquire the very important idea 
 that the earth is one of the bodies which move around the sun, although 
 he may not learn the technical term “planet.” These simple ideas carry 
 with them a correction of mere sensuous observation by an abstract and 
 deeply scientific train of thought. One’s sense-perception does not avail 
 to convince him that the earth is round. This can be reached only by 
 reasoning on the logical presuppositions which are implied to make the 
 fact before him possible. But once attained, a whole system of inferences 
 extending throughout the life of the individual, from the idea of the 
 earth’s rotundity and its revolutions, will be initiated, if nothing more is 
 learned from geography. 
 
 In the next place, there will be acquired the ideas of latitude and 
 longitude, which determine with mathematical exactness the location of 
 any place with reference to base lines, like the equator or the first merid- 
 ian. The pupil will certainly learn something regarding latitude and 
 longitude, and he will learn a method, the only method by which geo- 
 graphical descriptions may be made accurate. Ho matter how superfi- 
 cial his study of geography may be, he will also form some approximate 
 ideas of the latitude and longitude of many given places. He wiH re- 
 member, for instance, that the United States in which he lives is in 
 North latitude, and that most of his country is in West longitude as 
 compared with the meridian of Washington. He will learn that nearly 
 all of Europe is in East longitude as compared with the meridian of 
 Greenwich. 
 
 We must remember that these general superficial notions are more 
 important than any more specific notions which follow later. It is of 
 more importance to the individual to know that Brazil is in South lati- 
 tude while we are in North latitude, than to know that the mouth of 
 the Amazon is on the equator, and that the capital of Brazil is about 
 twenty -three degrees South. For ordinary practical thinking the gen- 
 eralities of geograpliy are exceedingly important. 
 
 Next the pupil will come to form mental images of the terri- 
 
THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 643 
 
 tones that are occupied by states and nations. First, however, he will 
 form an idea of the contours of the several continents and of the great 
 oceans which separate those continents. Then he will seek to learn the 
 location on those continents of each of its several states and nations. 
 He cannot help acquiring at the same time some historic adjuncts to his 
 geographical knowledge. The map of Great Britain will call up in his 
 mind much that he has heard with regard to the relations of the United 
 States to that country. France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Eussia will 
 each suggest certain unclassified and ill-digested items of knowledge 
 which he has collected from hearsay or general experience regarding 
 those countries ; and it will give him pleasure to be able to reduce to 
 consistency and order some portion of the chaotic information which he 
 already possesses. It will be of value to him every day of his life to 
 have some notions of the shapes, boundaries, and general positions of 
 the States of his own country. 
 
 Besides these there is another class of geographical categories which 
 relates to the formation and modification of the features of land and 
 water. Even the poorest geography yet made deals with rivers, and 
 gives information regarding their sources and their outlets, as well as 
 their navigability and their usefulness in furnishing motive power for 
 manufactures. It gives information regarding lakes, highlands, low- 
 lands, and the trend of mountain chains. 
 
 Two objects on the earth especially arouse man’s wonder and excite 
 him to reflection, namely, the monster elevations of the surface of the 
 land, which we call mountains, and the vast, seemingly unlimited, ex- 
 tension of the surface of the ocean. It has been the habit of geogra- 
 phies for two or three generations to explain the elevation of mountain 
 chains by the molten condition of the elements in the interior of the 
 earth. Once the elevations were supposed to be caused by volcanic 
 agencies ; but now, perhaps, the general opinion is that the gradual cool- 
 ing with the consequent contraction of the earth’s crust produces wrinkles 
 on a large scale, wrinkles large enough to form the mountain systems of 
 the Alps or of the Himalayas. No pupil of average intelligence who has 
 studied geography in school at any time during the last sixty or seventy 
 years has escaped forming some idea regarding the prodigious forces of 
 nature which lift up the mountains. Nor has any one within the last 
 fifty years or more escaped the important geological idea of the wearing 
 down of the mountains and hills by the constant effect of rain and the 
 escape of water carrying a load of solid matter to the sea by brooks 
 and rivers. In other words, the average pupil has formed some idea of 
 
144 THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 
 
 IX 
 
 the meteorological process by which water evaporates and the air, filled 
 with moisture, is submitted to the chilling effect of high altitudes, which 
 condenses the water again either into fogs or rain clouds, so that it comes 
 down to the ocean again, bearing with it on its way the detritus of the 
 rocks and soil. 
 
 This thought of the formation of elements of difference in the land 
 surface — that is to say, the formation of the varieties of high and low, 
 warm and cold, wet and dry, elements — and of the process by which 
 these differences are gradually removed or eliminated is a most impor- 
 tant idea, and is likely to be required for use by the average individual 
 many times in the course of a year, or perhaps in a single week. This 
 geographical fact or principle is a tool of thought, an instrument with 
 which we scientifically understand and explain thousands and thousands 
 of phenomena which come under observation. 
 
 Climate and the dependence upon it of the fertility of the soil can- 
 not escape the attention of the superficial student of geography. He 
 gets typical facts, also, in regard to heat and cold. He comes to under- 
 stand the reason for the distribution of heat as found in the continually 
 varying inclination of the surface of the earth toward the sun at different 
 times of the year and at different latitudes. He understands also how 
 altitude above sea-level affects the temperature. Let an explanation be 
 given in any particular case and it is in the nature of the human mind to 
 generalize it, if occasion offers. Occasion is constantly offering in a coun- 
 try where the people as a people are eye-minded and read the daily news- 
 papers, as well as ear-minded and listen to the gossip of their fellows. 
 
 A more important series of observations is initiated by the superficial 
 study of geography of which we are speaking. For the average pupil 
 notes with interest the fact that there is diversity of labor over the sur- 
 face of the earth ; that the people of one section produce one series of 
 agricultural or mineral products, and those of another a different series. 
 He learns, too, that commerce can equalize these productions, taking the 
 surplus of production from one place to the other place that needs it. 
 He learns that the division of labor, therefore, assisted by commerce, 
 enables each person to enjoy the productions of all his fellow-men. He 
 learns how the raw materials produced by agriculture and mining are 
 changed by manufactures into goods which are of far more value than the 
 raw materials. He notes with some wonder and perhaps some incredulity 
 the fact that commerce creates values by converting natural productions 
 which were of no use or value where they were, into articles of very great 
 use and value to the people of another country. The surplus vegetable 
 
THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 545 
 
 productions of most of the tropical regions are of no use or value where 
 they are. Commerce, therefore, performs a miracle by turning things 
 into 'property \ carrying them from where they are worthless to where 
 they are valuable. This is the alchemy of the social combination of 
 , man with men — the social whole — and it is exceedingly important 
 that the child shall get into his mind quite early in his life some typi- 
 cal facts in regard to this matter, and that he shall apply the typical 
 facts in explaining the phenomena of his experience. 
 
 Geography is not only a science of the formation and modification 
 of dififerent forms or features of land and water, but it is more especially 
 an introduction to the elements of sociology. All the text-books of 
 geography speak about the occupations of man, and they show more or 
 less clearly the reasons for the diversity of human industry. Moreover, 
 all geographies treat of certain elementary ideas of anthropology. They 
 treat of the different races of men and of their physical and mental 
 characteristics. It is of still greater interest that these geographical 
 treatises describe important facts regarding the different stages of civili- 
 zation — savage, barbarous, civilized, and enlightened — treat of the 
 costumes worn, and give a few glimpses at social habits; pictorial illus- 
 trations of the architecture of the cities and villages, or of typical speci- 
 mens of the vehicles for travel ; facts regarding the agricultural products 
 raised ; cuts showing the appearance of plants and animals and natural 
 cmiosities, such as waterfalls, ravines, canons, glaciers, etc. 
 
 The average child gets some notion of the government of the several / 
 countries, and makes some comparison between the freedom of individ- 
 uality encouraged under one and another of the different forms of gov- 
 ernment. He loves to hear of countries which allow the citizen an op- 
 portunity for initiative just as his own country does. Each new item 
 regarding government, style of clothing, or peculiarities of products, 
 helps the pupil to remember the other items with which it is connected. 
 Particularly interesting to the child are the pictures of the wild animals 
 — the carnivorous beasts, the reptiles, and the birds — and these items 
 especially assist his memory of the drier, but more essential, facts of 
 geography. Even the old-fashioned geography gives items regarding 
 the religious beliefs of the peoples of the different countries. Eeligion 
 is the underlying principle of civilization. Thus we have a repertoire 
 of the main points of sociology, namely, religious beliefs, forms of gov- 
 ernment, industrial occupations, races, costumes, and, finally, what each 
 nation puts into the market of the world from its surplus for exchange 
 with other peoples, and wliat it receives in return. 
 
 35 
 
54:6 THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 
 
 There certainly is nothing of more importance that the school gives 
 the child — next to literature with its revelation of the feelings and 
 thoughts of his fellows — than this matter of the division of labor and 
 the need of each population on the face of the earth for the other popu- 
 lations who contribute to it certain necessaries of life. Is there any- 
 thing more productive of kindly and hopeful feelings toward one’s fel- 
 low-men, living under different governments and separated by vast 
 distances, than this study, which finds each useful to the industrial 
 whole? 
 
 II. In geography the pupil comes into contact with these substantial 
 facts that lie outside of his daily experience and yet are necessary to 
 him for explanation of it. Good instruction in the school will, of 
 course, draw constantly on the daily experience of the pupil in order to 
 explain the colossal facts which are not to be found in his neighborhood. 
 The small things and phenomena which he sees every day about his 
 habitat enable him to learn to understand the greater phenomena which 
 are of historical importance. He sees, for example, every day the effect 
 of the last rain-freshet in wearing away the soil of the road on the hill- 
 side, and it furnishes the small fact by which he interprets the large 
 fact of the wearing away of the Niagara gorge. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that it is a mistake to send the child 
 to the geographical investigation of his neighborhood before he has heard 
 anything about the great facts of the world. He should be put on the in- 
 vestigation of his habitat in connection with the gi'eat facts which are 
 mentioned in the geography. One approaches the explanation of great 
 facts through little facts, but he should learn as quickly as possible to 
 see the latter on the background of the former; hence, they should be 
 taught together. If this is so, it is certainly a mistake to keep pupils 
 for many weeks, or even many days, upon the study of their neighbor- 
 hoods before taking up the colossal facts which are of world-importance. 
 
 Above all I should wish to call to mind again, as the central reason 
 for its place in the curriculum, the general value of geography in giving 
 the pupil an insight into natural causes. In early periods of the history 
 of mankind, and among all savage peoples that are contemporary with 
 us, the facts of nature are explained by animism, that is to say, by the 
 interference of evil spirits. A vast network of superstition covers the 
 face of nature from the gaze of the savage. But the child who begins 
 to study geography begins to find one fact behind another fact. He 
 learns forces, and how forces make things, and how forces modify 
 things. His knowledge constantly grows from the symbolic, which 
 
THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 547 
 
 ignores the causal nexus, over to the scientific and prosaic view which 
 comprehends the rationale of phenomena. 
 
 A fact as regarded by the infantile mind is a small matter compared 
 with the same fact as thought by the scientific mind; for the fact is 
 at first a little fragment broken off from a long chain of causal action by 
 the feeble mind of infant or savage. But experience keeps making addi- 
 tions to the fact before and after it. It places links of causation before 
 it and links of effect after it, and thus it grows to be a big fact. 
 
 Now the child who can grasp only so small a piece of fact, or in 
 other words, whose facts are so small in compass, goes by external ap- 
 pearance and does not see the essential nature of the fact. The child 
 sees the gun with which his father shoots. He thinks that a stick cut 
 out in the external resemblance of a gun will do what the gim does. 
 The essential things about the gun are the steel tube, the powder and 
 shot, the method of exploding the powder, etc. The child’s fact con- 
 tains none of these items. His fact is a symbolic fact, rather than a 
 real fact. We see that to get at a reality we must have the chain of 
 causality. Play undertakes to reproduce the external semblance of the 
 fact without the causal chain that makes the essential element in it. 
 The farmer mows with a steel scythe and cuts grass. The child mows 
 with a wooden scythe and cuts no grass. He merely “ makes believe ” 
 to cut grass. 
 
 To illustrate this process of growth from symbolic to prosaic reality, 
 consider the chain of causality involved in thinking the familiar object 
 bread. This illustration is used by Professor Noir^. Going backward 
 toward the origin of bread, we have the successive steps of baking; 
 kneading the dough ; mixing the meal or flour with yeast, lard, butter, 
 and other ingredients ; the grinding of the grain and sifting of the meal ; 
 the harvesting of the grain, with all its details of cutting, binding 
 sheaves, threshing, etc. ; the earlier processes of ploughing, harrowing, 
 sowing the grain; and its growth dependent on rain and sunshine. 
 Each of these links in the chain has side relations to other chains of 
 causality. For example, the yeast put into the bread connects it with 
 hops or some other ferment or effervescent ; the lard connects bread with 
 the series of ideas involved in pork raising ; the salt, with salt manufac- 
 ture ; the baking, with the structure of the oven and the fuel. So long 
 as anything is not yet understood, the word expressing it is a partially 
 blind symbol. 
 
 The retrograde series toward the origin is matched by a progressive 
 series toward the future use of the bread. There are the preparation for 
 
548 THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 
 
 the table, the set meals, the eating and digestion, the sustenance of life, 
 the strength acquired, the work accomplished by means of it, etc. Th© 
 omission of the causal nexus characterizes symbolic thinking in the 
 sense of that word as I employ it here. It is true that we commonly 
 use the word ‘‘ symbolic ” in a more restricted sense, namely, the use of 
 the material object to represent the invisible spiritual object. 
 
 The child begins by perceiving sense objects and mimics them in 
 play. Gradually he discovers their chains of causality. Each object 
 is in a chain of causality ; it is derived from something else, and, when 
 it changes, it passes on into something else. The child learns to think 
 more and more adequately the object which he sees. He learns to add 
 to it a larger and larger extent of the chain of causality that belongs to it. 
 
 III. Geography, as it is understood by the geographical societies, has 
 a narrower signification than geography as introduced into the elementary 
 school. It is used by the former to indicate primarily the production 
 of the elements of difference on the earth’s surface — differences of land, 
 water, and climate — the differences that arise from the upheaval of land 
 and from the erosion of land and its transference to the ocean, and also 
 the differences that arise by the interaction of land and water, such as 
 rivers, lakes, bays, straits, seas, and oceans. Besides the production of 
 such elements of difference, geography includes for the scientific geog- 
 rapher the effects or influences that the peculiarities of the earth’s surface 
 have upon the life of man; such, for example, as relate to food and 
 clothing, their need and their supply, and such as are calculated in the 
 course of ages to affect his physique and produce a distinct race of men, 
 black, yellow, red, or white. In other words, the scientiflc geographer, 
 as a specialist, includes anthropology with his study of the earth-surface 
 and of its plants and animals. 
 
 But geography in the elementary school flnds it necessary to go far- 
 ther and include a study of the elements of civilization in so far as they 
 are matters that characterize localities. The geographical distribution 
 of civilization is, in fact, of the first importance to the child, the youth 
 and the man, and hence has come to the front in all teaching of geog- 
 raphy, from that of the early Greeks, who taught the second book of 
 Homer’s Iliad and made the children learn the localities of the Grecian 
 tribes, down to the latest teaching of geography, which spends most of its 
 time on the habitats of three or four leading nations. 
 
 Geogmphy in the elementary school, therefore, deals much with the 
 location and gi’owth of cities — the transformations of natm'e by man for 
 his purposes. Fust he transforms nature for dwelling purposes, by the 
 
THE PLACE OP GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 549 
 
 building of cities, villages, and farm houses ; secondly, he transforms it 
 for the purpose of intercommunication by making roads, bridges, tun- 
 nels, viaducts, railways, and canals; and, thiixily, he transforms land by 
 adapting it to crops, by fencing, by draining, by cultivation, by irriga- 
 tion, and by connecting it with the world market by internal and for- 
 eign commerce. In other words, school geography deals not only with 
 the geographical features in which natural conditions are seen to affect 
 “the physical character of man,” but also with the transformations which 
 man makes upon nature with his cities, railways, canals, and agriculture. 
 
 By reason of this difference in definitions, the school geography is 
 likely to be hindered if it adopts the literatme of the geographical society 
 without some modification. The region of the North Pole is of as much 
 interest geographically as the region about New York, or London, or 
 Paris, or any great centre of civilization. But the child in the school 
 ought to be interested chiefly in the geographical centres of population. 
 The centres that are connected with the history of great events are also, 
 other things being equal, of more importance than the territory that has 
 not yet been made the theatre of civilization. 
 
 The emphasis which school geography lays upon the connection of 
 places with human history suggests an educational heresy that infects 
 to some extent the pedagogy of this branch of study. The votaries of 
 geography sometimes become so much interested in the physical process 
 of action and reaction in earth, air, fire, and water, that they turn away 
 in disgust from the transformation which man has made upon the earth’s 
 surface, and especially from that part of geography which relates to the 
 lines and boundaries of political divisions. They get so much respect 
 for the inanimate forces of nature that to them the rational forces of 
 man seem arbitrary and unworthy of serious attention. This gives rise 
 to the literature of geography for geography’s sake that reminds one of 
 those writings that are said to belong to poetry for poetry’s sake. 
 
 Moreover, there is a tendency on the part even of those who have 
 given most attention to the physical elements and forces to overrate 
 their influence upon civilization. They seek to explain, as did Mr. 
 Buckle, the development of the institutions of society by climate, fer- 
 tility of sod, picturesque scenery, earthquakes, and such matters which 
 are thought to have a controlling effect in determining the character of 
 the populations of countries. 
 
 This view makes geography in some sense a substitute for history. 
 If historic development is an effect of geographic conditions and forces, 
 it is, of course, a mist^e to consider history an evolution proceeding 
 
550 THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 
 
 through a growing sense of the ideal of freedom, and its realization in 
 theory and practice. The great German, who said that the world-history 
 is the progress of man into consciousness of freedom, must have been 
 mistaken. The evolution of national ideas, begiuning with Eastern 
 Asia, where the state is everything and the individual next to nothing, 
 moving westward to the nations of Europe and America, where the state 
 is great in proportion to the greatness of its individuals — this progress 
 certainly must be an illusion because it cannot be explained from geog- 
 raphy. This houleversement of ideas on the part of enthusiasts in the 
 study of physical processes is enough to prove that geography is not a 
 good substitute for history. 
 
 History shows the inward development of social and political ideas 
 and their realization in institutions. The geographical conditions fur- 
 nish no more than the mode of manifestation. Man reacts against nature 
 and transforms it into an instrument of expression and a means of real- 
 izing his rational self. Geography does not deal with the evolution of 
 human freedom, except in so far as it shows the results of that freedom 
 in the modifications which man has made to adapt nature to his pm'- 
 poses. The cold freezes the water into snow, but it does not make the 
 Eskimo’s snow hut. The river divides the populations of a country, but 
 it does not make the bridge, the ferry, and the tunnel that unite them. 
 
 Specialization in science leads to the division of aggregates of knowl- 
 edge into narrow fields for closer observation. This is aU right. But 
 in the course of study for the common school it is proper and necessary 
 that the human interest should always be kept somewhat in ^advance of 
 the physical. W. T. Harris.