cause, as, for example, in the causes of the Revolution, chief of all is the assumption by Parliament of the right to tax the colonies. In the deliberations of the Federal Convention the absolute necessity for establishing a government with sovereign power is the preeminent cause.

Professor Mace illustrates this point, the unity of causes, in discussing the causes of the decline of the Confederation.1

"I. The Confederation had no executive or judicial department.

"2. Congress could not raise an army.

"3. No power of direct or indirect taxation was given to the Confederation.

"4. Congress had no control over domestic commerce. "5. Congress could not enforce treaties with other

nations.

"6. The Confederation operated on states and not on individuals.

"7. The Articles of Confederation recognized the

sovereignty of the state.

"8. Voting in Congress was by states.

"9. The people owed allegiance to the state only.

"The general or fundamental cause may be found, and the others may be interpreted with reference to it. The careful comparison and contrast of the causes listed above will show that the first eight are

1 "Method in History," Mace, p. 30.

closely related to the ninth cause. By common consent, when the colonists transferred their allegiance from England, they gave it on all domestic concerns primarily to their respective colonial governments. The Continental Congress recognized this relation in creating the Confederation by making the states, in the main, sovereign. Wherever primary allegiance is placed, there sovereignty will reside. This shows that allegiance conditions sovereignty, and that cause seven is the result of cause nine."

A further comparison of each of the causes assigned with cause nine, leads to the same result. A single cause is discovered, by reflection, to be at the bottom of what is usually described as a variety of

causes.

Not only does the effort to discover types and fundamental causes by comparing events greatly simplify the complex data of history, but this process disciplines the mind to self-activity and to inductive methods of reasoning.

To put these separate facts before the children and allow them to discover the fundamental unity in the type or in the deeper cause is a superior form of instruction. The two best results of education are thus achieved at the same time, a simple organization of knowledge and the best mental discipline.

It will doubtless be claimed by some that the course which we have here prescribed is wholly beyond the range of seventh-grade pupils. It should be remem

bered, however, that these very topics are usually handled now in the seventh and eighth grades in about one-quarter of the time which it is proposed in our plan to give to them. By dealing with all these subjects concretely, biographically, and by comparative review of similar facts previously studied, by illustrations from the present workings of our laws and Constitution, and by giving sufficient time in each large topic for suitable descriptive and illustrative detail, the more important phases of these great American topics can be well understood by grammar grades.

Children in the seventh grade are well able to get a full profit from the use of such source material as is furnished by Hart's "Source Book of American History." There is nothing difficult or complicated in the use of this source-book. The extracts are usually brief and simple, bearing directly on topics treated in the standard text-books, and neither teacher nor pupil need waste any time in finding the appropriate matter. The teacher should be definite and exact in assigning the references. Half a dozen or less copies of the source-book in the library will answer the needs of a dozen pupils.1

Hart says source materials " are to act as adjuncts to historical narrative, by illustrating it and making it vivid; as by analyzing a few flowers the young stu

1 Hart's "American History told by Contemporaries," in four volumes, is extremely valuable as reference material for the study of sources.

dent of botany learns some plant structure, and accepts the rest from the text-book, so the student of history, by intimate acquaintance with a few writers of contemporary books, finds his reading in secondary works easier to understand.

"The use of sources enforces on the mind what ought to be familiar to any pupil in history: that the text-book grows out of such material, directly or at second hand; and that the knowledge of the writer of history goes no farther than the sum of his sources. On the Revolution, for instance, the pupil must realize that the books quote only a few out of hundreds of sources, and that generalization from narrow bases is dangerous.

"Sources may very well furnish sufficient types of oft-repeated experience: for instance, from the textbook the pupil gets the impression of the number of voyages of discovery, and of the cross-relations of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, and Swedes in the New World during two centuries. But the general aim and results of those voyages are well enough set forth in the seventeen pages of Chapter I [of the Source Book'], which includes one Spanish voyage and one Spanish land exploration, two English sea-voyages and one land exploration, and one French exploration. Since it is a common experience that the illustration fixes the principle in mind, and not the principle the illustration, it is fair to expect that these illustrative voyages will serve to make

vivid the consecutive narrative of explorations in general."

Hinsdale illustrates well the value of such sources. "Some years ago I read with deep interest the section of an ill-put-together town history, entitled ‘The American Revolution.' The town was Torrington, Conn. Here were quotations from the town records, muster rolls of the militia companies, orders for drafts, requisitions for supplies, reports from the seat of war, lists of killed and wounded, etc., interspersed with some incident, anecdote, or personal characterization. Following the tax-gatherer on his rounds; reading the frequent calls for soldiers and orders for the militia to turn out; observing the women at their heavy tasks, spinning wool and weaving flax, making blankets and tents for the army, and often gathering the crops or making the maple sugar; scanning the hard bill of domestic fare, breakfast without tea and dinner without salt-I formed a more realistic view than before of the times that tried men's souls."1

Mace sums up this argument with illustrations as follows:

"The superiority of this sort of material in the process of interpretation may be understood from the following considerations: I. The facts thus presented are first-hand - unorganized, and the student is left to contend with a real problem with no ready

1"How to Study and Teach History," Hinsdale, p. 34.