idual expression stand
for; Rome exhibits the elements and forces of political life on a
tremendous scale. Or, as these civilizations are themselves relatively
complex, a study of still simpler forms of hunting, nomadic, and
agricultural life in the beginnings of civilization, a study of the
effects of the introduction of iron, and iron tools, reduces the
complexity to simpler elements.

One reason historical teaching is usually not more effective is that the
student is set to acquire information in such a way that no epochs or
factors stand out in his mind as typical; everything is reduced to the
same dead level. The way to secure the necessary perspective is to treat
the past as if it were a projected present with some of its elements
enlarged.

The principle of contrast is as important as that of similarity. Because
the present life is so close to us, touching us at every point, we
cannot get away from it to see it as it really is. Nothing stands out
clearly or sharply as characteristic. In the study of past periods,
attention necessarily attaches itself to striking differences. Thus the
child gets a locus of imagination, through which he can remove himself
from the pressure of present surrounding circumstances and define them.

History is equally available in teaching the _methods_ of social
progress. It is commonly stated that history must be studied from the
standpoint of cause and effect. The truth of this statement depends upon
its interpretation. Social life is so complex and the various parts of
it are so organically related to one another and to the natural
environment, that it is impossible to say that this or that thing is the
cause of some other particular thing. But the study of history can
reveal the main instruments in the discoveries, inventions, new modes of
life, etc., which have initiated the great epochs of social advance; and
it can present to the child types of the main lines of social progress,
and can set before him what have been the chief difficulties and
obstructions in the way of progress. Once more this can be done only in
so far as it is recognized that social forces in themselves are always
the same,--that the same kind of influences were at work one hundred and
one thousand years ago that are now working,--and that particular
historical epochs afford illustration of the way in which the
fundamental forces work.

Everything depends, then, upon history being treated from a social
sta