Further, our student must submit to a thorough grounding in
world-geography with its physical and human sides welded firmly
together. He must be able to pick out on the map the headquarters of
all the more notable peoples, not merely as they are now, but also
as they were at various outstanding moments of the past. His next
business is to master the main facts about the natural conditions to
which each people is subjected--the climate, the conformation of land
and sea, the animals and plants. From here it is but a step to the
economic life--the food-supply, the clothing, the dwelling-places,
the principal occupations, the implements of labour. A selected list
of books of travel must be consulted. No less important is it to work
steadily through the show-cases of a good ethnological museum. Nor
will it suffice to have surveyed the world by regions. The
communications between regions--the migrations and conquests, the
trading and the borrowing of customs--must be traced and accounted
for. Finally, on the basis of their distribution, which the learner
must chart out for himself on blank maps of the world, the chief
varieties of the useful arts and appliances of man can be followed
from stage to stage of their development.
Of the special studies concerned with man the next in order might seem
to be that which deals with the various forms of human society; since,
in a sense, social organization must depend directly on material
circumstances. In another and perhaps a deeper sense, however, the
prime condition of true sociality is something else, namely, the
exclusively human gift of articulate speech. To what extent, then,
must our novice pay attention to the history of language? Speculation
about its far-off origins is now-a-days rather out of fashion. Moreover,
language is no longer supposed to provide, by itself at any rate, and
apart from other clues, a key to the endless riddles of racial descent.
What is most needed, then, is rather some elementary instruction
concerning the organic connection between language and thought, and
concerning their joint development as viewed against the background
of the general development of society. And, just as words and thoughts
are essentially symbols, so there are also gesture-symbols and written
symbols, whilst again another set of symbols is in use for counting.
All these pre-requisites of human intercourse may be conveniently
taken together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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