THE SCIENCE OF DISTANCES. 527 



forget this curious fact, and to point out, as if it required emphasizing, 

 that there is nothing foreign to geographical thought in the association 

 of geography and patriotism, and that the home country is worthy of 

 careful study, particularly when, as with us, our home country is not 

 Yorkshire, nor England, nor the United Kingdom, but the whole Brit- 

 ish Empire. That is my justification and my apology for taking Politi- 

 cal Geography and the British Empire as my subject, if justification 

 and apology seem to any one to be necessary. To the generous hearts of 

 our distinguished foreign visitors who honor us quite as much as they 

 delight us by their presence, I am sure of my appeal. Every true man 

 loves his own country the best in the world. That beautifying love of 

 country does not require him to be ignorant of or hate other coun- 

 tries. The community of the civilized nations, no longer to be described 

 as Christendom even, for Japan has been received into it, is a mighty 

 fact in geography no less than in politics. To love mankind one must 

 begin by loving individuals; before attaining to true cosmopolitanism 

 one must first be patriotic. 



Now, besides dealing with the topography of the globe, geography 

 considers also the collective distribution of all animal, vegetable and 

 mineral productions which are found upon its surface. The aspect of 

 the science which deals with man's environment, and with those in- 

 fluences which mold his national character and compel his social as 

 well as his political organization, is profoundly interesting intrin- 

 sically and of enormous practical usefulness when rightly applied. Given 

 the minute topography of a country, a complete description of its sur- 

 face features, its rivers, mountains, plains and boundaries, a full account 

 of its vegetable and mineral resources, a knowledge of its climatic vari- 

 ations, we have at once disclosed to us the scene where we may study 

 with something like clearness man's procession through the ages. Many 

 of the secrets of human action in the past are explained by the land- 

 forms of the globe, while existing social conditions and social organiza- 

 tions can often thereby be intelligently examined and understood. Per- 

 sistent national characteristics are often easy to explain from such con- 

 siderations. For instance, the doggedness of the Dutch river-population, 

 caused very greatly by a perpetual struggle against the sea, or the com- 

 mercial carrier-instinct of the Norwegians, those northern folk born in 

 a country which is all sea-coast of countless indentations. Having few 

 products to barter, the Norwegians hire themselves to transport the 

 merchandise of other peoples. We British also were obviously pre- 

 destined to isolation and insularity, when perhaps in the human period 

 the Thames ceased to be a tributary of the Rhine. Our Irish fellow- 

 countrymen were similarly fated for all time to lead a separate, special 

 and national life apart from our own, when at a still earlier period, geo- 

 logically, the Irish channel was formed. 



