Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/463

 STUDIES IN POLITICAL AREAS. II.'

INTELLECTUAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF LARGE

AREAS.

THE spaces into which we must fit our political ideas and plans are measured by the general space in which we live. Therefore we find special conceptions on a large scale and on a small ; and it is to be observed in the individual as in the nation that these ideas expand or contract with the environing space without regard to the general law of the growth of political areas with civilization. A great territory invites to bold expan- sion ; a small one engenders a faint-hearted huddling of the population. The range of the inward as of the outward vision is capable of being increased in every individual ; and while he gauges the extent of his geographical space by his freedom of movement and his right to enjoy it, he shapes accordingly his ideas and habits : and so as a whole does a people. We see the statesman who is animated in his transactions by the spirit of his nation, measuring all claims for territory by the same standard by which the farmer lays out his fields. The Dalrymple farm near Fargo, Dakota, is just as characteristically American as the three and a half million square miles area of the United States. The political territory which has thus been acquired can be broken up again, but the idea of its greatness endures, often to be brought down after centuries from the realm of political ideals and planted again in the awakened political consciousness as a new territorial conception, and so to bear fruit, as in the recent history of Germany and Italy.

Geographical space in general, not a particular region, is estimated according to the power which must be expended for its conquest; and this power, in turn, is measured in terms of

1 Translated by ELLEN C. SIMPLE.

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