94 TRANSPORTATION 



reaches beyond their economic effects. This influence is, in the end, 

 the most important; it is, at the same time, least open to the regulating 

 invasions of the states. " There is, in communication, a greater 

 necessity tha"n the political or purely economical, namely, the cul- 

 tural. Communication survives political changes; not only the states, 

 but also the nations which would separate themselves, are joined 

 against their will, by communication. 1 What will be the last and 

 most powerful effects we cannot yet see to-day; for we do not stand 

 at the end of the development of transportation, but at its beginning. 

 Antiquity and Middle Ages, up to 1500, are considered one epoch 

 from the point of view of transportation. The sea voyages and 

 great discoveries in the space of the globe from 1500 to 1900 fill the 

 second great period, and the third, the period of increased intensity 

 of all means of and relations of transportation begins at the end of 

 the nineteenth century. We are overwhelmed by the progress 

 which the decades have matured; we feel how much they concern 

 not only the life of the nations, but the life of every one of us. And 

 yet we must confess, if we behold the image of the earth and of the 

 lines of communication drawn thereon by man, that the deeds of 

 the future will be infinitely greater than that which we see nowa- 

 days and which we may foresee for the next days. For wide regions 

 of the earth still belong, as to their w r ays and means of transporta- 

 tion and forms of communication, to that period which is for us 

 a matter of the past of five centuries. It is still the smaller part of 

 the earth that has progressed to more intense communication. 



The different effects of the attained progress of transportation 

 which we have shown or indicated are only a small part of that 

 which mankind may still expect, when the whole globe will be drawn 

 into the circle of culture of the nations of European origin, in the 

 same way as this is now the case between Europe and North America. 

 Whether then the results will turn out, as heretofore, as a blessing 

 for the peoples of European culture, this cannot be predicted by any 

 science. We must rather confess that science has, till now, pursued 

 facts only hesitatingly and recording what it has experienced; it 

 did not foresee nor determine facts of the future; thus it will prob- 

 ably also be in the future. For a science which would dominate 

 extent of men in space would, in reality, determine the whole life 

 of mankind. So high our fancy and ambition shall not soar! 

 We acquiesce in the hope that our review of the sciences whose 

 object is transportation has at least shown that social science, 

 and especially its most developed branch, political economy, finds 

 important reasons for investigating, with greater attention than 

 before, the influence of space upon the formation and development 

 of the human society. 



1 Ratzel, Politifche Geographic, S. 529. 



