MEMOIR OF GUYOT. 705 



the region in Pennsylvania to Bedford and Cumberland. On his re- 

 turn he stopped in Princeton to deliver a letter of introduction to Dr. 

 Charles Hodge, and found there friends who later welcomed him as a 

 colleague. 



Returning to Cambridge, he was soon afterward, invited by Mr. Low- 

 ell to deliver one of the winter courses of lectures at the Lowell Insti- 

 tute, and in January he resumed in Boston his academic work, taking 

 for his subject Comparative Physical Geography. He spoke in French, 

 almost without notes, to a large and appreciative audience, and from 

 that time the Swiss professor had an American reputation. These lect- 

 ures, written out after the delivery of each, were translated by Pro- 

 fessor Felton " with rare kindness and a disinterestedness still more 

 rare," says Guyot,* and published under the title — now familiar — of 

 t' Earth and Man." 



The views of Eitter, which had put life and humanity into geography, 

 are used by the author as tbe basis of still wider generalizations bearing 

 on the earth and human history. Guyot first draws out in admirable 

 style the distinctive physiographic features ot the continents and seas, 

 and then proceeds to consider the i)hysiology of the continental forms, 

 by which he meant the interactions of the continents in their own his- 

 tory, and in that of man as their tenant. Having finished the physio- 

 graphic portraiture in the first seventy pages, he says : " We must 

 now see these great organs in operation ; we must see them in life, 

 acting and reacting upon each other," that is, "their physiological 

 l)henoniena." 



In order to exhibit the "living" action between these "organs" in 

 its true relations, he first exi^lains the fundamental law of progress in 

 all growth or development; then exhibits the application of the law to 

 the earth in its genesis, and in its later progress through the ages, and 

 finally draws out and puts into order the grander facts in the conditions 

 of the earth connected with the development of man in his social, polit- 

 ical, and moral relations. 



Guyot makes all historical progress a development., carried forward 

 through the incessant action and reaction of differences or unlike con- 

 ditions; he speaks of it as a gradual specialization of parts and func- 

 tions, comparable to the progress in germ development and having the 

 same general formula; as beginning in a homogeneous unit, which has 

 real but unmarked differences of parts, advancing through various 

 changes and individualizations, and ending in the complex " harmonic 

 unit." He finds the law exemplified in the development of the earth 

 after the nebular theory of La Place; in the slow progress of the earth's 

 continents from the condition of scattered islands in a large, shallow 

 sea to that of united distinctively featured lands ; in the progress of 

 the earth's life, as made known by geology; the progress in tbe devel- 

 opment of the races of men, and in the origin of human societies. 



*Iii the dedication of " Earth aud Mau" to Professor Felton. 

 M. Mis. GOO 45 



