658 GEOGRAPHY 



the areas of human settlement, and the lines of human communica- 

 tions. The complication arises partly from the fact that each of the 

 successive earlier environments acts both independently and concur- 

 rently; but the difficulty is in greater degree due to the circumstance 

 that man alone among animals is capable of reacting on his environ- 

 ment and deliberately modifying the conditions which control him. 



I have said before, and I repeat now, that the glory of geography as 

 a science, the fascination of geography as a study, and the value of 

 geography in practical affairs, arise from the recognition of this uni- 

 fying influence of surface relief in controlling, though in the higher 

 developments rather by suggestion than dictation, the incidence of 

 every mobile distribution on the Earth's surface. I am inclined, in the 

 light of these views, to put forward a definition of geography which 

 I think may be accepted in principle, if not in phrase, by most of the 

 class called by Professor Davis "mature geographers." 



It runs, Geography is the science which deals with the forms of relief of 

 the Earth's crust, and with the influence which these forms exercise on the 

 distribution of all other phenomena. 



The old pigeon-hole view of human knowledge is now happily 

 discredited and recognized as useless, save perhaps by some Rip Van 

 Winkles of science, who concern themselves more with names than 

 things, and would cheerfully misconceive the facts of nature to fit the 

 framework of their accepted theories. High specialization is necessary 

 to progress, but only as a phase of a working life, not as the whole 

 purpose of a whole man. 



It is convenient and often profitable for a man of science to have a 

 recognized label, but it seems to me that important advances are to be 

 made by cultivating those corners of the field of knowledge which lie 

 between the patches where the labeled specialists toil hi recognized 

 and respected supremacy. It has been so habitual to classify the man 

 of science by what he works in that it requires something of an effort 

 to see that the way in which he works is of greater determinative im- 

 portance. Thus the scientific geographer is apt to find no place in the 

 stereotyped classification, and his work may be lost sight of on that 

 account. Should he dwell on latitude and longitude, the astronomer 

 smiles pityingly ; if he looks at rocks, the geologist claims that depart- 

 ment; if he turns to plants, the botanist, with the ecologist behind 

 him, is ready to warn him off; and so with other specialists. But the 

 mature geographer seeks none of the territory, and hankers after none 

 of the goldfields, belonging to other recognized investigators. He 

 works with the material they have already elaborated, and carries 

 the process a step farther, like the goldsmith handling the finished 

 products of the metallurgist and the miner. 



The present problems of geography seem to me to be of two kinds: 

 the first, minor and preliminary, the completion of the unsolved and 



