TEE DISCIPLINARY VALUE OF GEOGRAPHY 107 



quently change as his collection of facts and his invention of expla- 

 nations advance; new facts and new ideas may frequently call for the 

 revision of earlier facts and ideas, and for the change of first-formed 

 opinions ; all such revision and change are best accomplished when the 

 student is alone with his problem. At the end of his study, the net 

 results gained may appear to be of small volume, in view of the time 

 and labor spent in reaching them; but if they include a matured and 

 well-balanced judgment on the problem under discussion, as well as an 

 intimate acquaintance with its sources of material, a comprehensive 

 knowledge of its historical development, and a close familiarity with all 

 the factors involved in its investigation, the time and labor will have 

 been well expended. 



Presentation. — Occasion then arises for the oral or printed presen- 

 tation of the results of all this independent work, in form for their best 

 understanding by others. The student must then emerge from his 

 isolation, in which the world may have seemed to him to be occupied 

 chiefly by his problem and himself; he must recognize that the real 

 world is crowded with other problems and other workers, among which 

 he and his interests may be rudely jostled in course of finding the place 

 that they deserve. He must now awake to a realization of his sur- 

 roundings, and consider particularly what sort of presentation will 

 place his results most effectively and favorably before the public. He 

 no longer has to consider the nature of his own work ; that he has done 

 sufficiently already. He has now to consider the nature of other per- 

 sons whose interests are more or less akin to his own, in order to dis- 

 cover how he can best bring his work before them. When his presenta- 

 tion has been made, he will learn that those of his hearers or readers 

 who meet him with unselfish sympathy and just appreciation become 

 his most helpful and encouraging friends; and he ought at the same 

 time to learn what his own bearing should be when it is his turn to 

 listen to reports by his colleagues on their work. We will here ex- 

 amine briefly the requirements of an oral presentation, postponing the 

 discussion of a printed report to a later page. 



When a student rises to make an oral report in the presence of his 

 teachers and his comrades, he is no longer an investigator alone with his 

 problem; he takes his place as a speaker, between his problem and his 

 hearers. There may be cases in which his personal experience deserves 

 narration; but in scientific communications, personal items should, as 

 a general rule, be relegated to the background; the speaker had best 

 try to obliterate personal matters, which always give a more or less 

 subjective flavor to a report, and strive to make himself simply the 

 conduit through which the essence of his subject, in the most objective 

 form, shall flow to the minds of his hearers. He has no longer abun- 

 dant time, but is limited to half an hour, or an hour at the most; at 



