This section is suggestive of the old geography of the last half century,--location, names, maps, the barren details of the science. Geography is something richer than all this. The old geography was political in the foregoing sense. The first break was in making it physiographical, the last in making it social. Names as such are nothing, and physical facts little more, but both become of value as soon as they are brought into relation to man,--his life, his work, his recreation. Geography is not essentially the location of places, nor is it physiography, but it is a study of the essential facts concerning the surface of the earth as they are related to man himself; it is, in short, _human_ in the fullest sense. It gives a concrete explanation of civilization; it explains the production, the exchange, and, to some extent, the consumption of goods. It contrasts countries, not so much by square miles, as by the number of miles of railroads they possess. (The most momentous fact of modern civilization is the railroad. Twelve billions of dollars are invested in it in the United States alone. In view of these facts, what shall be said of those recent geographies that keep the children poring over primitive maps for years--maps without a suggestion of a railroad in them? This is an illustration of how prone education is to lag behind the progress of society.) 267. The reviews, which should be frequent, must steadily work toward a growing firmness of association between names and places. Each name is to be referred to the place it designates; hence the sequence of names must often be reversed, and the map looked over in all directions and from all points of view. How far to go is determined in accordance with individual capacity. From some, only what is absolutely essential can be demanded; from others, much more, in order that they may exert themselves properly. 268. In the midst of other studies on which greater stress is laid, geography is as a rule slighted by pupils and sometimes even by teachers. This attitude merits severe criticism. Instruction in geography may be reduced to a minimum, the first course even requires this, but it should not be disparaged. With many pupils, geography is the first study which gives them the consciousness that they can learn as they are expected to learn. With all pupils, geography must connect the remaining studies and must keep them connected. Without it everything remains unstable. Historical events lack places and distances; products of nature are without the regions where they are found; popular astronomy, which is called upon so often to prevent and dispel erroneous notions, is deprived of its very basis, and the geometrical imagination of one of its most important incentives. If the facts of knowledge are allowed to fall asunder in this way, instruction endangers the whole of education. CHAPTER V =The Mother-tongue=