Lacking the ideal school, we must secure the nearest approach to it. Is there anarchy at home? There must be law here. Is obedience a matter of force there? It must become a matter of good will here. The child must find everything based on principle. Correction must appear not revenge but love. Are all the conditions of the school-room, all the associations of the school life, such that he may be able to bring himself into harmony with them? Do his tastes find a response? Does his particular genius find appreciation and encouragement? Or does he find himself irritated by checks and rigid rules, where he should expect helps? He must have room for the free expansion of his being. His association with his schoolmates must lead him to see how beautiful it is to be kindly affectioned one to another. This interaction of pupils with respect to each other should have serious consideration on the part of the teacher, and wise guidance. It will be for a time, and it may perhaps be for all time, her mightiest weapon for conquering this lawless subject. The school should be a little world, patterned to a good degree after the real. The children are living their life now and will be best developed if conditions are natural. Well-born and humble should freely intermingle. It is better that the child should face life's evil influences here than that he should meet them later on unprepared and unguided. he has as high a destiny. Let me not forget that I may become as a child again, when he, in the strength of a noble manhood, is wielding the scepter, and I shall be ashamed that I was unjust or unkind to him. How tender the little feet, and the way is so long. And how sensitive the gentle spirit to the undeserved rebuke, the undue disapproval. the unfeeling criticism, the half sneer at his poor efforts! Do we forget how real were the sorrows of our childhood, how alone and in silence we poured out bitter tears over cruel words we were compelled to endure without reply or explanation-how disappointments and troubles overwhelmed us, and only the ready reaction of childhood enabled us to live through it! We owe more of tender consideration to the children than we are likely to bestow. Some will come to us with all the tendencies of heredity-all the associations of the home and the companionships of life almost wholly against them in the attempt at the development of worthy character. We, and the children in the school, must present a new ideal; must supply so much of positive influence, so much of tender helpfulness as to neutralize the negative forces within them. How great may be the conflict of the double will, the lower and higher self, going on before us in many a child! Only sympathetic insight can divine it and by providing associations which shall appeal to the good will, so guide But what shall we say of the ruler of this it that impulse shall not rule the life. little kingdom-the teacher, who is to possess The teacher, who, by her natural and acherself of the forces latent in the school and quired instincts, feels and responds to every bringing them into harmony, converge them striving of good and show of generous feelupon character? It is a tremendous power ing will nurse these into life. But if she is entrusted to her, for her attitude will largely disposed to minify the good in her estimates determine what the school shall be to the of her pupils, she cannot truly succeed: child. Does she know his state, divine his for she will develop what she assumes as need, meet his demand for sympathetic in- planted in the life. The true wisdom is to terest and generous love? Is she patient treasure up the manifestations of worthiwith him, appreciating the good and mini-ness, to magnify these in her thinking of mizing the bad? Does she treat him with due honor, recognizing that she owes him just as much respect as he owes her? We are so prone to forget the true worth and dignity of the child! How often indignities are heaped upon him, because he is helpless! How great is the bitterness and resentment in the soul of many a child because he is treated as an underling, whose feelings and opinions are not entitled to any consideration! He is my equal. Our duties are reciprocal. He is not in a place of power now as I am, but the child till this becomes his real self to The But while children should be made conscious of their real value and true dignity, they must not be made unduly self-con scious. Only the teacher who is herself genuine and truly appreciative can do the one and avoid the other. The artificial teacher, the one who poses, who uses art to maintain her position, who seeks to be very popular with her pupils and secures good conduct by appealing to their pride in their room or their desire to please her, cannot do this. Personal power involves true devotion to their interests and leaves no time for her to spend considering how a right course of action toward them will affect her interests. Has she largeness enough of soul, personality strong enough to give to each one what he needs? A prominent lecturer has criticised the work of the public schools on the ground that forty or fifty children are entrusted to one teacher, whereas the trainer of colts will be allowed but one or two. The comparison is faulty in two particulars-children are not colts in intellect, being far more capable of self-activity in response to stimuli, and forty may be directed. and strongly influenced by a teacher charged with personality. And secondly, we cannot, dare not, as with colts, give so much attention to a few promising ones leaving the great number untrained. That which seems unpromising may be capable of unfolding into a beautiful life. In winter the honey-locust with its armor of thorns is the most forbidding in appearance of all the trees of the forest, but when rain and sunshine have robed it in foliage, it may vie with the most delicate fern in beauty. In like manner the heir to the most unfavorable heredity may be so adorned with virtue and nobility as to grace any calling or circle. Our fine fruits are the result of generations of culture and intelligent crossing of varieties. But one of these may be grafted into the wild stock and retain all its beauty and delicate flavor. draws its nutriment from the old root, but there has been a transfusion of generous blood into its life. So may a human soul be transfused into one wild and bitter and unpromising, and result in a noble nature, entirely foreign to the parent life. It Nevertheless it is of the highest importance that the child should have the advantage of good ancestry, in order that heredity and the home may be in his favor. All possible forces of society and the state should be marshalled to aid in securing for every child the inalienable right to be wellborn. This is largely beyond present con trol. But much can be done to improve the home by leading parents to see the duty they owe, and to understand proper methods of child culture. By 'parents' meetings, by suitable books on child training placed in their hands and by other means, their eyes may be opened that they may see, and their hearts enlarged that they may feel, and the home be elevated. Give us teachers who can thus react upon the home and so skillful, devoted and inspiring that by their own inherent worthiness and by all the associations of the school, they may counteract the bad and foster the good. This requires one capable of loving so much that sacrifice is a misnomer, all done being a joy no matter how great the labor or loss. Only loving eyes can truly see. Human love is the univeral solvent of human nature and wins where duty fails. Mrs. Browning well expresses this where she makes Aurora Leigh say of her aunt : "She did her duty to me. Her duty in large measure well pressed out Alas! a mother never is afraid Of speaking angrily to any child Since love she knows is justified of love." Oliver Wendell Holmes has given us a study of hereditary influences on the life of offspring, in "The Guardian Angel," the guardian being assumed to be ancestral inheritance. Myrtle Hazard is cut off from the personal influence of her parents by their death in her infancy, and from any special family influence by being placed in charge of relatives who are cold and unsympathetic toward her. The contest is between heredity and the associations she may form in life. We follow her as she is dominated now by one ancestral disposition, now by another, and note how irregular and inconsistent her character is. The influence that finally prevails is that of Ann Holyoake who had suffered as a martyr for her religion, and who, according to a tradition in the family, exercised a special guardianship over her descendants. But when the heroine has married a noble-spirited man, an artist of ability and insight, capable of appreciating her true nature, and he has employed his art to reproduce in marble her guardian angel, the covering being remov d, she beholds, not the expected likeness of Ann Holvon instead the benignant featles Gridley, the old schoolIelighted in her from her Lacking the id nearest approa home? There ence a matter come a matter must find eve Correction must Are all the con the associations he may be able mony with the sponse? Does appreciation and he find himself. rules, where he must have roo his being. His mates must lea it is to be kindly This interaction. each other should on the part of th ance. It will be haps be for all ti for conquering school should 1. ed to a good de children are livi be best develope Well-born and hi mingle. It is bet face life's evil infl should meet then unguided. But what shall little kingdom-th herself of the forc bringing them int upon character? entrusted to her, fo determine what child. Does she k need, meet his der terest and genero with him, apprecia mizing the bad? Do honor, recognizing as much resp prone to f il GEOGRAPHY AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY. By CHARLES R. DRYER. [Paper read before the Indiana College Association.] | ica, where few schools or teachers have vet Al "THE HE foundation of geography," as Bain puts it, "is the conception of occupied space." Its beginnings are prehistoric and prehuman. Not only primitive men, but most animals have some consciousness that they occupy space, and that other objects have certain space relations to them and to each other. Both historically and genetically geography is the oldest of sciences, the mother of all. Its early stages were largely descriptive, consisting upon its practical side of travel and exploration, upon its scholastic side of the description and location of land and sea, shore lines and coast waters, rivers and mountains, forests and deserts, roads and mines, peoples and cities. Of this in ancient times Herodotus was the greatest master. The exploratory phase of geography culminated in the great discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but has been prolonged to our own times in the brilliant achievements of exploration in Africa, Asia, and the Arctic regions. Geography reached a scientific phase of development first upon its astronomical and mathematical side. In the second century before Christ, Eratosthenes and Hipparchus had attained a fairly correct knowledge of the form and dimensions of the earth, and were able to determine latitude and longitude with some accuracy. The eighteenth century marks the period of the final transition of geography into a scientific stage. The change is marked by two simultaneous events: the voyages of Cook, which were the first exploring expeditions of a distinctively scientific character, and the appearance of Alexander Von Humbolt, the mastermind which could organize the vast accumulation of raw material into a true science of geography. Humbolt was ably seconded by the equally brilliant Karl Ritter, who did more than any other man to popularize and establish geography as a branch of learning in the schools, and to show its intimate relation to human history and institutions. It is probable that Ritter placed too much 2. Geomorphology treats of the lithosphere emphasis upon the human relation in geog- or solid crust of the earth, including the sea raphy, and thus became responsible for the bottom; the various forms of the land, the dry rot of commercialism which afflicts cycle of their development and their classigeographic teaching in England and Amer-fication according to structure and origin. Geography is now prepared to investigate and explain the mutual relations in space of all the features and phenomena upon the face of the earth. For the first time she presents a full and unbroken front all along the line which stretches from the position of a pebble to the seat of a Pope. Such a line cannot be held or advanced without efficient organization, and the scheme substantially agreed upon among modern geographers is about as follows: 1. Astronomical and mathematical geography discusses the earth as a planet, its relation to other heavenly bodies, its form, dimensions and motions. the scithe her human of physical orbitions social and polit Then do with the gen of na as they it is evident se and peculiar rstenes which needs Astron mical and mathe aply finds use for the highest matemati lan and takes cogmany facts which belong also to the astronomer, but the geographer uses not to study the heavenly bodies but to understand this earth. That the sun its radiant energy is a fact of astronomy as far as it concerns the sun, but a fact of ography as far as it concerns the earth. to solve that most complex problem the Having done all these things the geog- It is evident that the distinctive unity of geography does not consist in its subjectmatter so much as in its method of dealing with all material. Its keynote is correlation in space. The geographer is indebted to his brother scientists for large contributions of facts, but the standpoint from which he views them and the consequent grouping which they assume under his hand bring out relations such as no other can show. His means for the expression of spacial distribution is the map, and everything that can be shown upon a map" would not be an inadequate definition of his domain. It is his business and ultimate aim to construct a map of the whole surface of the earth which shall exhibit at once its mathematical, topographical, climatalogical, biological, anthropological, sociological and political features, and the relations of these various groups to each other. This is the ideal map and practicIn geomorphology the geographer and the ally may be flat or spherical, in relief or geologist join hands in the occupation of a colors, in print or picture, in one sheet or in wide domain of subject-matter of vital im hundreds of sheets. It is not the function portance to both. One uses it as a means of of the astronomer to do this, or of the geolreading the past history of the earth, the ogist, or of the meteorologist, or of the biolother to throw light upon present conditions, ogist, or of the anthropologist, or of the soof soil, climate and occupation. Geology ciologist, or of the historian. The man who never became truly scientific and successful can do this, or is trying to do this, is a geoguntil it adopted geographic methods; that rapher, and can be classified with no other until it began to interpret the past in the label. General geography, then, is a synthelight of the present, and geography never sis of materials from many sciences to which knowledge of present forms and processes or distribution in space. until it began to study them in the light of their past history. In this field geography in geography, founded by Humboldt, sucand geology are mutually indispensable to cessfully built up by Ritter, and still grow of location There is another department and method ing in the hands of modern geographers. In dealing with the sea and the air the Ritter called it comparative geography. The German professors of to-day call it spe 1 |