PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY. 7 1 



are not seen at all. Interpretations and correlations are not even 

 suspected. This is perfectly natural when it is remembered that 

 most college students have never been taught to observe closely 

 or to express themselves clearly in well chosen words. It is 

 still more natural when it is remembered that the little knowl- 

 edge of geography that they have brought from school is hardly 

 more than a confused memory of an unsystematic, empirical text 

 book. Whether their observation is directed to the semblance 

 of facts in maps, views, and models, or to the actual facts of out- 

 door nature, observation is attempted only with the outer eye ; 

 the inner eye has never been opened. The idea that all the 

 forms of the land are systematically developed has never been 

 implanted in their minds. They possess no general and well 

 tested deductive understanding of the development of land 

 forms, no system of terrestrial morphology. The facts of obser- 

 vation excite no harmonious response from the corresponding 

 members of a deductive geographical scheme. 



While the study of geography remains in this incomplete and 

 illogical condition, it is a blind study, although it is carried on 

 chiefly through the eye. While the life of the features of the 

 earth's surface is not perceived, geography is a dead study. The 

 features of the land that the outer eye sees will awaken no suf- 

 ficient sympathy in the understanding until the scientific imagi- 

 nation has deduced a whole system of geography, filled with 

 mental pictures of all kinds of forms in all stages of develop- 

 ment, among which the report from the outer eye may find its 

 fnate. However faithfully mere observation is carried on, the 

 impression on the retina might as well be the record on a photo- 

 graphic plate, as far as appreciative insight and understanding 

 are concerned. Let us therefore strive to complete a deductive 

 geographical scheme, even as we strive to complete our deduct- 

 ive tidal scheme, until it shall at last be ready to meet not 

 only all the actual variety of nature, but all the possible variety 

 of nature. Only when such a scheme as this is well advanced is 

 the student ready to appreciate the materials presented in the 

 laboratory work. The maps and models shown in the first week 



