Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/315

 STUDIES IN POLITICAL AREAS 301

in a truly cosmopolitan humanitarian feeling, peculiar to all civilized peoples of the present time. In this sense, we find Karl Peters speaking of a "common European conscience" which at the end of the nineteenth century demands on principle the recognition of the human rights of all belonging to the genus man. We find the expression quite apt, although we do not concede the justification of this particular verdict of the "com- mon conscience." As to its world-wide validity, no one can doubt ; even the adjective European is properly too restrictive. This, however, is only one drop from the stream of movements which are trying to sweep away the barriers to their universal acknowledgment, an acknowledgment that shall extend over the inhabited earth. Our civilization and Christianity are striving after the broadest expansion, and as usual, commerce has already outstripped them in attaining it. The most obvious cosmopolitism is to be found in the fact that there is today no corner of the earth to which the ideas and material products of occidental civilization do not penetrate. Political geography has its current set along a special course in this same direction. Every form of geographical consideration of a question tries to get an all- embracing survey. This is the chief purpose of geographical study. The advantage of laying a geographical foundation for political views and judgments lies to great extent in the multi- plicity of the phenomena which constitute its base. Just as there are principles of history which time imparts, so there are principles of geography which we seek and compare in space. In this way, there lies a corrective for the self-sufficient narrow- ness of the European point of view in a broad survey of the earth. With the whole world as a background, many things seem insignificant or accidental which, in the continent, appeared important. Economically, politically, and above all in point of civilization, Europe is not to be thought of apart from the other continents. The most flourishing communities in all other parts of the world are nothing more than offshoots of Europe. All the continents have long lain in the politico-geographical horizon of Europe, and now they are steadily rising higher.