Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/39

 THE SWISS AND THEIR POLITICS. 1

I WAS in Switzerland about three months, and I was more than ever impressed with the importance of the position of that country in the making of Europe. The soil of Europe has in large part been ground out of the "raw material" of the moun- tains of Switzerland. The glaciers that remain are mere toys when compared with those which have been.

Before I left home I read in one of the essays of Emerson expressions on the folly of traveling to gain information, on the part of a man who was so fortunate as to possess a soul. I gathered from Emerson that he found in that transcendental soul of his all, and more than all, that he could gain by change of position. Such has not been my experience. I thought I understood glaciers and glacial action before I saw one, and when I first saw them I was quite ready to felicitate myself upon the accuracy of my mental picture. The first that we vis- ited we were expected to come within a stone's throw of, and pay our respects by looking down upon it from a cliff, and it seemed to me that this was all that was needed. Yet somehow I was seized with a desire to actually touch it. I disregarded the formal restraints and went to the point where the moving stone and ice are in contact with the immovable mountain. I fol- lowed along the morain to the end of the ice. I lay down upon the stones and looked under the ice. I got onto the ice and looked down to the bottom through holes that had been burnt through by bowlders. It was thus that I got an idea of the working of the glacier such as I suppose a mere transcendental soul never gets. He thinks he has it ; but the chances are he is mistaken. Since seeing the grist of the present little ice

1 This paper was written as a private letter to a member of the faculty of Iowa College. With the author's consent the letter is here reproduced without changes, except the omission of personal references.

25