ABSTRACT
It has been remarked by many observers that for a young country America is already overcrowded with monuments. But monuments once erected are soon forgotten, and the overpopulation of stone and concrete applies only to limited sections. As the earliest historians were clergymen, or else absorbed in ecclesiastical struggles, it was natural for American philosophy of history to be at first theologic. A new form of Calvinistic predestinarianism and the notion of an elect or chosen people appears in the racial interpretation of history. In imitation of Gobineau and Chamberlain, men like Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard have tried to explain American history in terms of the inherent superiority of the Nordic stock. The geographic interpretation of history can be traced back to the Hippocratic treatises on Airs, Waters and Places and to some pregnant comments by Plato and Aristotle.
