E.—GEOGRAPHY. 91 
child, sharing its activities, loth to let go, perhaps even a little jealous of 
its growing independence. It has not been easy to say at any given 
- moment where Geography’s functions have ended and those of, say, 
4 
Geology or Ethnology have begun. Moreover, it is inevitably asked 
about this fissiparous science from which function after function has 
detached itself to lead life apart—what, if the process continues, as it 
shows every sign of doing, will be left to Geography later or sooner ? 
Will it not be split up among divers specialisms, and become in time 
a yenerable memory? It is a natural, perhaps a necessary, question. 
But what is wholly unnecessary is that any answer should be re- 
turned which implies a doubt that Geography has a field of research 
and study essentially hers yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow ; still less 
which implies any suspicion that, because of her constant parturition 
of specialisms Geography is, or is likely in any future that can be 
foreseen, to be moribund. 
Since Geography, as I understand it, is a necessary factor in the 
study of all sciences, and must be applied to all if their students are 
L~o = 2 
to apprehend rightly the distribution of their own material, it is a 
necessary element in all education. Unless, on the one hand, its 
proper study be supported by such means as the State, the Univer- 
sities, and the great scientific Societies control, and, on the other, its 
application to the instruction of youth be encouraged by the same 
bodies, the general scientific standard in these islands will suffer; our 
system of education will lack an instrument of the highest utility for 
both the inculcation of indispensable knowledge and the training of 
adolescent intelligence; and a vicious circle will be set up, trained 
teachers being lacking in quantity and quality to train pupils to a 
high enough standard to produce out of their number sufficient trained 
teachers to carry on the torch. 
The present policy of the English Board of Education, as 
expressed in its practice, encourages a four-years’ break in the geo- 
_ graphical training of the young, the break occurring between the ages 
et 
Ws 
of fourteen and eighteen, the best years of adolescent receptivity. If 
students are to be strangers to specifically geographical instruction 
during all that period, any geographical ‘bent given to their minds 
before the age of fourteen is more than likely to have disappeared 
by the time they come to eighteen years. The habit of thinking 
geographically—that is, of considering group Distribution—cannot 
have been formed; and the students, not having learned the real 
nature of the science applied, will not possess the groundwork 
necessary for the apprehension of the higher applications of Geo- 
graphy. Moreover, as Sir Halford Mackinder has rightly argued, an 
inevitable consequence of this policy is that the chief prizes and 
awards offered at the end of school-time are not to be gained by 
proficiency in Geography. Therefore, few students are likely to enter 
the University with direct encouragement to resume a subject dropped 
long before, at the end of the primary period of their education. 
It is not, of course, the business of schools, primary and 
secondary, to train specialists. Therefore one does not ask that pure 
12 
