106 International Geograjyhic Conference. 



habitation. Shakespeare has taught us that when the poet 

 would make real " Forms of things unknown," he gives 



To airy nothings 

 A local habitation and a name. 



Herein is recognized a law with which both the action of mind 

 and the logic of the subject of thought are in accord. This fact 

 is of supreme importance to the educator. He who has the 

 facts in human progress fixed in the place where they occurred 

 has a ready index to the history of mankind — to what man has 

 thought and done. He may at will call up any actor, event, 

 science, or philosophy. He has only to introduce the element 

 of time to unfold, in order and at will, the record man has made 

 for himself as he has ordered his ways under the hand of his 

 Creator. Naturally, as the oak springs from the acorn, the 

 human mind follows the tree from the seed to the fruitage, and 

 in obedience to this law we have, in teaching, the historical 

 method. Naturally, too, the mind looks on this and on that 

 and compares one with another, and in obedience to this law 

 we have, in teaching, the comparative method. 



Geography can furnish from its stores untold data adapted to 

 use in both of these methods most essential to successful instruc- 

 tion. Out of its data may be drawn in the greatest abundance 

 that Avhich is fitted to the attention and understanding and to 

 awaken the interest of beginners in school and of those of any 

 grade of progress. If this view is correct, it cannot be doubted 

 that schools among us have treated geography and related sub- 

 jects most unfitly. As a result, there has been inattention where 

 there should have been attention, dullness where there should 

 have been enthusiasm, waste where there should have been 

 gain. Let geography be put in its proper place and treated ac- - 

 cording to sound pedagogical principles, and all that pupils 

 acquire of what man is and what man has thought and done will 

 be gained, with less waste of time, energy and purpose and with 

 far more satisfactory results, in other subjects of instruction. 

 Geography, if rightly taught, will furnish the pupil what is 

 needed for nourishment of mind on the one hand, and for dis- 

 cipline on the other. It will not unbalance the faculties ; it will 

 not cultivate reason to the injury of memory, or reflection to the 

 destruction of expression, or vice versa. 



Here, therefore, in this Department of Education, there is most 

 ample scope for the efforts of the National Geographic Society, 



