September 22, 192 1] 



NATURE 



121 



In educational practice this bias does good, 

 rather than harm, if the geographer bears in mind 

 that geography proper has only one function to 

 perform in regard to man — namely, to investigate, 

 account for, and state his distribution over 

 terrestrial space — and that this function cannot be 

 performed to any good purpose except upon a 

 basis of physical geography- — that is, on know- 

 ledge of the disposition and relation of the earth's 

 physical features so ^ar as ascertained to date. 

 To deal with the effect of man's distribution on his 

 mental processes or political and economic action 

 is to deal with him geographically, indeed, but by 

 applications of geography to psychology, to his- 

 tory, to sociology, to ethnology, and to economics, 

 for the ends of these sciences ; though the interests 

 of geography may be, and often are, well served 

 in the process by reflection of light on its own 

 problems of distribution. If in instruction, as 

 distinct from research, the geographer, realising 

 that, when he introduces these subjects to his 

 pupils, he will be teaching them not geography, 

 but another science with the help of geography, 

 insists orf their having- been grounded previously 

 or elsewhere in what he is to apply — namely, the 

 facts of physical distribution— all will be well. 

 The application will be a sound step forward in 

 education, more potent perhaps for training 

 general intelligence than the teaching of pure 

 g"eography at the earlier stage, because making a 

 wider and more compelling appeal to imaginative 

 interest and pointing the adolescent mind to a 

 more complicated field of thought. But if geo- 

 graphy is applied to instruction in other sciences 

 without the recipients having learned what it is in 

 itself, then all will be wrong. The teacher will 

 talk a language not understood, and the value of 

 what he is applying cannot be appreciated by the 

 pupils. 



It will be patent enough by now that I am 

 maintaining geography proper to be the study of 

 the spatial distribution of all features on the sur- 

 face of the earth. My view is, of course, neither 

 novel nor rare. Almost all who of late years have 

 discussed the scope of geography have agreed 

 that distribution is of its essence. Among the 

 most recent exponents of that view have been two 

 directors of the Oxford school, Sir Halford 

 Mackinder and Prof. Herbertson. When, how- 

 ever, I add that the study of distribution, rightly 

 understood, is the whole essential function of 

 geography, I part company with the theory of 

 some of my predecessors and contemporaries, and 

 the practice of more. But our divergence will be 

 found to be not serious ; for not onlv do I mean a 

 great deal by the study of distribution — quite 

 enough for the function of any one science ! — but 

 also I claim for geography to the exclusion of any 

 other science all study of spatial distribution on 

 the earth's surface. This study has been its well 

 recognised function ever since a science of that 

 name has come to be restricted to the features of 

 the terrestrial surface — that is. ever since " geo- 

 graphy " in the eighteenth century had to aban- 

 don to its child geology the study of what lies 

 NO. 2708, VOL. 108] 



below that surface even as earlier it had aban- 

 doned the study of the firmament to an elder child, 

 astronomy. Though geography has borne other 

 children since, who have grown to independent 

 scientific life, none of these has robbed her of that 

 one immemorial function. On the contrary, they 

 call upon her to exercise it still on their behalf. 



Let no one suppose that I mean by this study 

 and this function merely what Prof. Herbertson 

 so indignantly repudiated for an adequate content 

 of his science- — physiography plus descriptive 

 topography. Geography includes these things, of 

 course, but she embraces also all investigation 

 both of the actual distribution of the earth's super- 

 ficial features and of the causes of the distribu- 

 tion, the last a profound and intricate subject 

 towards the solution of which she has to summon 

 assistance from many other sciences and studies. 

 She includes, further, in her field, for the accurate 

 statement of actual distribution, all the processes 

 of survey — a highly specialised function to the due 

 performance of which other sciences again lend 

 indispensable aid; and, also, for the diagrammatic 

 presentation of synthetised results for practical 

 use, the equally highly specialised processes of 

 cartography. That seems to me an ample field, 

 with more than sufficient variety of expert func- 

 tions, for any one science. 



I have claimed for the geographer's proper field 

 the study of the causation of distribution. I am 

 aware that this claim has been, and is, denied to 

 geography by some students of the sciences which 

 he necessarily calls to his help. But if a science 

 is to be denied access to the fields of other sciences 

 unless it take service under them, what science 

 shall be saved? I admit, however, that some dis- 

 putes can scarcely be avoided, where respective 

 boundaries are not yet well delimited. Better 

 delimitation is called for in the interest of geo- 

 graphy, because lack of definition, causing doubts 

 and questions about her scope, confuses the dis- 

 tinction between the science and its application. 

 The doubts are not really symptoms of anything 

 wrong with geography, but, since they mav sug- 

 gest to the popular mind that in fact something 

 is wTong, they can be causes of disease. Their 

 constant genesis is to be found in the history of a 

 science the scope of which has not always been the 

 same, but has contracted during the course of 

 ages in certain directions while expanding in 

 others. If, in the third century B.C., Eratosthenes 

 had been asked what he meant by geography, he 

 would have replied, the science of all the phvsical 

 environment of man whether above, upon, or 

 below the surface of the earth, as well as of man 

 himself as a physical entity. He would have 

 claimed for its field what lies between the farthest 

 star and the heart of our globe, and the nature 

 and relation of everything composing the universe. 

 Geography, in fact, was then not only the whole 

 of natural science, as we understand the term, but 

 also everything to which another term, ethnology, 

 might now be stretched at its verv widest. 



Look forward now across two thousand years 

 to the end of the eighteenth centurv a.d. Geo- 



