12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



volumes more, or one volume every other year, tell of his ceaseless . 

 activity, notwithstanding his advancing age. The first volume was 

 devoted to Africa ; the nineteenth, which nearly finishes Asia, was 

 published only a few weeks before his death. 



Ritter's personal qualities and character — as one of our colleagues, 

 once his favorite pupil, informs us — were exceedingly attractive and 

 admirable. The same competent judge, himself a distinguished culti- 

 vator of geographical science, pronounces that " the peculiar turn of 

 Ritter's mind was more intuitive than logical, more synthetical than 



analytical, more objective than subjective "NAHiile, therefore, 



his views and his method are entirely original, we seek in vain in his 

 w^orks for a formal system, an absolute idea rigorously carried out. 

 His unflinching loyalty to the truth, as he sees it, not as he infers it 

 may be, seems to render such systematization uncongenial to his mind. 

 He shrinks, indeed, from all cold and formal definitions. Even his 

 most characteristic conceptions, those which constitute the spirit of his 

 method, preserve much of the nature of deep intuitions, — the expres- 

 sion of which is always highly suggestive, but often lacks the clear, 

 logical shape which make them easy to define, and would give them 

 immediate currency. "With a mind essentially constructive, he de- 

 scends, nevertheless, with the most scrupulous care into the study of 

 details ; and it is upon the well-secured basis of facts alone, and with a 

 sense of the true sometimes almost amounting to divination, that he 

 builds up his broadest generalizations. It may be inferred, accordingly, 

 that Hitter possessed in a high degree that noble endowment of the 

 greatest students of nature, that plastic imagination which gives the 

 power to l^eep before the mind true and vivid conceptions of natural 

 objects, whether in their isolation or in combination, as in one great 

 picture, — so obtaining deeper insight into their whole relations than 

 any mere analytical process could ever afford." 



The fundamental idea of Ritter's whole geographical writings — still 

 to use the language of our colleague, with some condensation — is 

 "a strong belief that our globe, like the totality of creation, is a great 

 organism, the work of an All- wise IntelHgence, — an admirable struc- 

 ture, all the parts of which are purposely shaped and arranged, 

 and mutually dependent, and by the will of the Maker fulfil, like 

 organs, specific functions, w^hich combine themselves into a common 

 life. But with Ritter this organism of the globe comprises not only 

 nature, but man, and with man, the moral and intellectual life. Old 



