264. Geography is an associating science, and use must be made of the opportunities it offers for binding together a variety of facts, none of which should be allowed to remain isolated in the mind of the learner. It is not the mathematical portion, supplemented and made interesting by popular astronomy, that serves as the first connecting link between mathematics and history (second course); even the rudiments of geography may, on the basis of observation exercises, furnish practice in the determination of triangles which occur on the first maps used, although this step is not always necessary when once some skill has been acquired in singling out features worthy of note. (The determination of position by latitude and longitude is, for the first course, as irrational as the action of a traveller in Germany or France would be if he set about to put together the picture of the places where he expects to remain, with the aid of their relation to the equator and the first meridian.) Physical geography presupposes some knowledge of nature, and furnishes the occasion for enriching that knowledge. Political geography designates the manner in which man inhabits and uses the earth’s surface. It is the pedagogical aim of instruction in geography to associate all this. 265. The teacher must cultivate the art of narration; his accounts must resemble those of a traveller. But the narrative should conflict with the determination of the relative position of places (by grouping them about one principal place, and in the case of more than one by the use of triangles) as little as, in teaching history, the story of events should conflict with the scheme of chronology. The two go together. The narrative is to present a clear picture, and to this end requires the support of a few fixed points in space. On the other hand, these points should not remain isolated; they are to be connected by the lines of the picture. 266. It is not a matter of indifference how many unfamiliar names are mentioned in one minute or hour. Nor is it immaterial whether they are uttered before or after perception of the picture which the map presents. The first requisite is that every map placed before the pupils be conceived of as a country; three, at most four, names of rivers, and the names of a few mountains are sufficient; completeness is out of place here. The few names given provide ample opportunity for fixing the position of notable points, both with reference to one another and to the boundary lines of the country.