696 MEMOIR OF GUYOT. 



him making collections of tlie plants and shells of the country, and 

 otherwise following' his scientific leadings. Humboldt introduced him 

 to the Berlin Botanical Garden, where the plants of the tropics were 

 a source of special gratification and profit. Moreover, other courses of 

 lectures attracted him, as those of Hegel, of Steffens, on psychology and 

 the philosophy of nature, Mitscherlich on chemistry, Hofmann on geology, 

 Dove on physics and meteorology, and especially those of Carl Ritter, 

 the eminent geographer, whose philosophical views were full of delight 

 to his eager mind and touched a sympathetic cord. Under such influ- 

 ence he found his love for nature-science rapidly gaining possession of 

 him, and, yielding finally to his mental demands and to his conscience, 

 which would not permit him to enter the ministry with a divided pur- 

 pose, he determined to drop theology and make science his chief pursuit. 



Kitter, of all his Berlin teachers, made the profoundest impression on 

 his course of thought; and his biographical sketch of him, presented 

 to the American Geographical Society in 18G0, four years after his death, 

 exhibits the admiring affection of a pupil who was like Kitter in his 

 profounder sentiments. A paragraph from the memoir will show the 

 tenor of Bitter's geographical teaching and something of the mental 

 affiliation between them. Guyot says (p. 48): 



"Ritter, in the introduction to the 'Erdkunde,' declares that the 

 fundamental idea which underlies all his work, and furnishes him a new 

 principle for arranging the well digested materials of the science of the 

 globe, has its deep root in the domain of faith. This idea, he adds, 

 was derived from an inward intuition, which gradually grew out of his 

 life in nature and among men. It could not be, beforehand, sharply 

 defined and limited, but would become fully manifested in the comple- 

 tion of the edifice itself. That noble edifice is now before us, and, un- 

 finished though it be, it reveals the plan of the whole and allows us 

 clearly to perceive that fundamental idea on which it rests. It is a 

 strong faith that our globe, like the totality of creation, is a great or- 

 ganism, the work of an all wise Divine Intelligence, an admirable struct- 

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

 mutally dependent, and, like organs, fulfill, by the will of the Maker, 

 specific functions which combine themselves into a common life. But 

 for Ritter that organism of the globe compries not nature only ; it in- 

 cludes man, and, with man, the moral and intellectual life." "None be- 

 fore him perceived so clearly the hidden but strong ties which mutually 

 bind man to nature — those close and fruitful relations between man and 

 his dwelling place, between a continent and its inhabitants, between a 

 country and the people which hold it as its share of the continent — 

 those influences which stamp the races and nations each with a charac- 

 ter of their own, never to be effaced during the long period of their ex- 

 istence." We have here ideas that took, in Guyot, a still larger expan- 

 sion. 



Guyot derived great profit also from the works and the friendship of 



