Geographical Horizons Research Articles

The Aztec Image in Western Thought.

The great inquiry into the nature of Aztec civilization began at the very moment of its destruction in the name of the Spanish Crown and Church. The overwhelming discovery of a vast, luxurious overseas empire offering fresh evidence of the enormous diversity of customs and opinions among the nations of the earth expanded the imaginative as well as the geographic horizons of Renaissance Europe. In The Aztec Image, Benjamin Keen explores the shifting attitudes and focus of the scores of historians, philosophers, scientists, and men of letters and the arts who dealt with the Aztec theme in the four and a half centuries after the conquest of Mexico. From that time to the present, the world of the ancient Aztecs has been a subject of compelling interest and controversy in the West. Keen explains how each new view continuously corrected and developed, the Western conception of Aztec civilization. He relates prevailing ideas about the Aztecs to the broad socioeconomic, political, and ideological patterns of the age, as well as to the contemporary state of knowledge about ancient Mexico. A comprehensive work of historiography, Keen's book is the first to encompass the sweep of Western thought on the Aztecs from Cortes to the present.

Old Readings in 1 Esdras: The List of Returnees From Babylon (Ezra 2 // Nehemiah 7)

In a recent study of the Greek text of 1 Esdras we argued that it frequently reflected an old, often nonexpanded Semitic Vorlage despite the many corruptions and secondary expansions peculiar to the “apocryphal” text. Esdras B [hereafter: G], on the other hand, was also found to differ from the received Hebrew text, but its variants were small enough that its underlying text-type could be called Proto-Massoretic. This analysis conflicts with that of Bernhard Walde, Wilhelm Rudolph, and others, who would assign the same geographical and chronological horizons and nearly identical Vorlagen to 1 Esdras and G. We shall test our interpretation, therefore, by studying the differences in the Hebrew texts of Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 on the basis of the translation of Ezra 2 in 1 Esdras 5. Although the latter has many omissions and doublets —in fact, it is in relatively poor shape —not enough attention has been paid to its alternation between Ezra-type and Nehemiah-type texts.

Technology and the Spirit of Man

Men have invariably gone forward in history with the assumption that violent shifts in their relation to the world, or in their relations to other men, were subject to a limiting principle: to critique, to reason, to the review of memory. Barely during the event, more frequently after violence has spent itself, revolutions in the physical and moral order were understood to be subject to the judgment of the community that has brought them to pass, or of the civilized community as a whole. Revolutions brought new freedom in their wake, or they suppressed freedom; thev opened new geographical and spiritual horizons, or they cut them down. Sometimes the revolutions were predictable, often they were contained.

The Vita Apostolica: Diversity or Dissent

The concept vita apostolica embraced three basic principles: imitation of the primitive church, poor, simple, and penitential, with interests and activities restricted to the spiritual domain; a passionate love for souls at home and far afield; and evangelical poverty in common, either predicated on mendicancy or mitigated by the work of one's own hands. It became, during the age of Gregorian reform and after, a compelling program instinct with the fervor, spontaneity, and humanity of the first community at Jerusalem (Acts, iv, 32; cf. Luke, x, 1–12). It postulated reform and criticism in a restless age of expanding economic and geographical horizons, a more rational political system, an increasingly complex social organization, a multiplicity of divergent intellectual currents, and corresponding new spiritual needs. Such a momentous evolution of society, challenging the status quo in all its parts, demanded a reappraisal of the resources and ends of the church, the most powerful and tenacious defender of tradition.

THE KUMAN PEOPLE: A STUDY OF CULTURAL CHANGE IN A PRIMITIVE SOCIETY IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF NEW GUINEA

Changes in Education. Knowledge concerning personal adjustment to daily life and its problems was given to the people through direct instruction and more so through example. This knowledge had a limited geographical and traditional horizon ; but it was compact and rich in content, and was bestowed on the younger generation as a possession of great value and as knowledge necessary for one's own very existence and therefore to be received without criticism. There was also sufficient scope for developing one's individual qualities, according to a traditional pattern. Special occasions on which direct instruction was given, with particular reference to the social life of the community, were for boys during the time of initiation, and for girls on the occasion of their first menstruation and when they were given in marriage. Together with the European invasion there was brought to the people an entirely new system of education, the school system. The missions began their activities with schools, first on the main stations, with the purpose of training young boys as helpers in mission work. The boys remained on the station as boarders, and were occupied partly in school and partly in the garden. However, a great deal of suspicion and prejudice had to be overcome till they settled down on these stations. In the schools instruction was given mainly in Christian doctrine, but the three R's were not neglected. There was, however, the difficulty of the native language. The missionaries and their coastal teachers began to learn the Kuman tongue, but sometimes pupils managed to acquire the language of the coast even sooner than the Kuman language was acquired. The Roman Catholic missions introduced pidgin English as the lingua franga of New Guinea. The young people on the station managed to speak that language in an amazingly short time. As soon as the missionary himself had a fair knowledge of Kuman, the prayers and Christian doctrine were translated from pidgin into the native tongue, which was to be used in the schools. At the same time, besides learning to read and write in pidgin, the pupils were taught how to reduce their own language to Western characters.

The Value of Books Recommended for High-School Students in Widening the Geographical Horizon

In discussing the purposes of literature teaching, the Committee on the Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools mentions the value of taking the pupil out of his own local group, out of his small environment limited as to time and place, and showing to him the world with its actors both past and present. In short, one purpose, as discussed there, is to widen the geographical and historical horizon. As stated in the report of this committee, the following is one of the special purposes of literature: To broaden the mental experience by supplying a sympathetic acquaintance with scenes in various geographical sections, and with historical periods of the world. This has two distinct values: (i) Psychologically it forms centers of apperception about which fresh facts will tend to gather in the future, the process being vitalized by the human interest attaching to the central historical or fictional figures; and (2) by the presentation of persons acting in accordance with the demands of conditions new to the pupil, an attack is made early in the educative process upon the tendency toward a merely local or provincial outlook upon life.