Science in Public Affairs 



make through the forest, or the buffalo across the 

 prairie. The cities themselves are but temporary 

 encampments of herding groups of animals, de- 

 termined or conditioned by such natural features 

 as a river or a plain, an estuary or a mountain, 

 a coal-bed or a forest. How relatively slight a 

 geographical disturbance is made by the building 

 of a city even a modern capital city may be 

 realised by recalling, that practically the whole of 

 the new town of Edinburgh is built out of a local 

 sandstone quarry, so small that its floor would 

 not afford camping space to a travelling circus. 



XII 



The foregoing account is intended to suggest 

 the geographer's vision as it is in his naturalist 

 or cosmic mood. But the geographer is him- 

 self a man and a citizen, and as geographer he 

 still has his humanist or idealist mood. Viewed 

 in his humanist or idealist mood, the world drama 

 undergoes for the geographer a profound change. 

 The perspective changes from the cosmic to the 

 human focus. The typical river valley, which is 

 the essential regional unit of the geographer, is 

 no longer a mere fold of the earth's crust in its 

 endless and aimless cycle of changes, but is con- 

 ceived as the realisation of a great purpose. The 

 long geological history of the river valley is seen as 

 the preliminary preparation to fit it to be the scene 

 of the exploits and aspirations of a godlike race 

 of beings, such as is suggested and foreshadowed 



246 



