Are you not constrayned (my fellow Academicks) to subscribe to this my opinion that the knowledge of no nation is so necessary as the searching out of a man’s own Country and the manners thereof and the right understanding of that Commonweale whereof each one of us is a part and member. The Lamiæ that are a certaine kind of monsters are laughed at in the Poeticall Fables in that they were so blinde at home that they could not see their own affaires, could foresee nothing; but when they were once gone from home they were accounted the most sharpe-sighted and curious searchers of all others.... [Are not they] very ridiculous when as by taking long voyages unto farre remote people, after they have curiously sought out all matters amongst them are ignorant of the principall things at home and know not what is contayned within the precincts of their country, and are reckoned altogether strangers on their native soile?—Coryat’s Crudities.
THE remark that Boston is not so much a place as a state of mind is one of the highest compliments ever paid to that city. Places are common enough, the maps are dotted with them, but a state of mind is a mark of distinction. The Bostonian enjoys his state of mind none the less because he is aware that outsiders are not always able to enter into it.
Only those places which have become symbolic of mental or moral traits are remembered. Sodom and Gomorrah were once towns of some commercial importance. We think of them, however, not as trade centres, but as sins. Babylon, according to a doctrine of spiritual correspondences long since established, is another name for proud and cruel worldliness. It is likely so to remain, in spite of the discovery of clay tablets which show that many of its people were estimable citizens who practiced domestic economy and collected their debts by due process of law. All we have to say is that those who acted in this commonplace way were not typical,—in fact, they were quite un-Babylonian. In like manner, Zion represents no longer a hill whose altitude may be prosaically estimated according to the metric system. It is a highly exalted frame of pious joy.
It is strange that, with all the ingenuity that has been shown in inventing new text-books for the use of schools, no one has compiled a Psychological Geography. The materials are ample. It only needs some one with a scientific imagination, or, rather, with a capacity for writing imaginative science, to make it a success. Eliminating those communities whose states of mind are so mixed as to be unclassifiable, the way would be clear for a very pretty series of generalizations. There would be maps with isothermal lines uniting places of equal degrees of warmth of temperament or frigidity of manner. Weather charts would show the direction of the various winds of doctrine and the storm centres, religious and political. The theory of moral cyclones and anti-cyclones would be adequately explained. There would be maps in colors indicating the communities situated on the plateaus of conscious ethical and intellectual superiority. These often rise into the arid, or at least semi-arid, belt. In sharp contrast with these are the luxuriant bottom lands, where less favored peoples dwell in happy ignorance of their low estate. The “principal products” would be graphically illustrated. One section, being without natural resources, is given over to the manufacture of novelties, while another is rich in fossils. The distribution of fads may be shown to advantage. Some localities are almost barren, while others are naturally faddy.
When he comes to the Points of the Compass the most matter-of-fact psychological geographer will forget the cold mannerisms of his science and become poetical. North, South, East, West, these are vast symbols of psychic forces. He would not think of putting at the head of the chapter the picture, from the old Geography, of the disconsolate urchin with his face to the north and his arms extended in rigid but reluctant testimony to the fact that “East is East and West is West.” What does this featureless boy know of those tremendous forces whose age-long contests have made the history of the world? What does he know of the hardiness and the prowess that make the true North? If he were forcibly turned around, his face would be as expressionless as ever. Such a mannikin never felt a sudden longing for “a beaker full of the warm South.”
Art must be called to the aid of science. Each point of the compass has an expression of its own. One should be able by looking at the face of the man in the picture to know the direction. There is no mistaking the qualities which grow only where there is a northerly exposure. The Orient and the Occident are not to be confounded.
Were some affluent citizen to endow a chair of psycho-geographical science in one of our leading universities, especial attention should be paid to the teaching of Systematic Americanism. It is a branch now much neglected. The professor should take pains to instruct his “fellow Academicks” in the manners and customs of their own country, so that they should no longer be reckoned strangers on their native soil. They should be taught to avoid entangling analogies drawn from the experience of other lands, and to look directly at the subject-matter. When they see something going wrong, they should not jump at the conclusion that it is a repetition of the classic tragedy of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,—for it may be something quite different. When there is a popular movement on the prairies, they should not begin to talk of the French Revolution and of the excesses of the proletariat. Before they talk in European fashion of the “classes and the masses,” they should make certain that we have such things, and if we have, that there is a sure way of telling which is which. The Old-World generalizations about the upper and lower and middle classes should be well shaken before using.
Those who elect the course in Americanism should be taught to overcome the nervous fright to which bookish people are subject at the appearance of any man in public life who shows signs of unusual virility. It is a weakness of those who are more familiar with the careers of Cæsar and Napoleon than with the temper of their fellow-citizens. In the early seventies there were academic minds thoroughly convinced that they were watching the Republic in its death struggle with Cæsarism. Curiously enough, they fixed upon plain Ulysses Grant to act the part of Cæsar. It would have been hard to find one less fitted for the rôle. When we look back and contrast what really happened with what the well-read spectators thought was happening, we are reminded of the remark of the British matron to her husband as they left the theatre where they had been seeing the play of “Antony and Cleopatra,” “How unlike the home life of our dear Queen!”
The great thing, as President Roosevelt has often reminded us, is to “think nationally.” This is no small achievement. A nation is a psycho-geographical fact which it requires a very great effort of the imagination to conceive. The same word represents a land and the people who inhabit it. The physical features of the landscape have their spiritual counterparts. It may be that the landscape impresses itself on the imagination of the race, or, as may be maintained with equal plausibility, the imagination of a gifted race may interpret the landscape and impress itself upon it forever. In either case there is a recognizable harmony between the two elements. In reading the great literature of Israel we never forget that the nation was desert-born. “He found him in a desert place, he led him about, he instructed him.” In psalm and prophecy we are conscious of barren mountain ranges, of rocks in a weary land, of narrow valleys which laugh for very joy over the incongruity between themselves and the surrounding desolations. There is the passion of the desert, born of solitude and the stars. In the prophet of righteousness there is the same urgent note that Bayard Taylor catches in his “Bedouin Song:”—
From the Desert I come to thee