744 REPORT — 1895. 



affecting a community at a given time may be resolved into dynamic and genetic. 

 Among the dynamic influences, geograpbical environment is admittedly important. 

 But the genetic influences are the momentum from the past, and the genetic in- 

 fluences acting on this generation may be resolved into the dynamic and genetic of 

 the last. If this process be repeated through many generations, it is clear that the 

 sum total of geographical influence is always accumulating. The Normans, for 

 instance, were exposed to successive environments in Norway and in Normandy, 

 and much that was out of place in Normandy was due to the earlier action of Norway. 

 The American, again, has characteristics and institutions which could hardly have 

 been cradled in the Mississippi plain, but are explainable by a reference to the 

 peninsulas and islands of Europe. A very striking instance of the errors involved 

 both in Ritter's methods and Peschel's criticismis to be found in the case of China. 

 Peschel assumes that the Chinese civilisation grew up in China, and asserts that a 

 land of so massive an outline was not fitted to stimulate such a growth. But the 

 most modern research tends to show that the Chinese were not thtis isolated in 

 early times, and that Chinese civilisation was of Western, not home origin. Ritter 

 erred in thinking the action simple and uniform, Peschel in underestimating its 

 cumulative infltieuce. 



Since the war of 1870, geographical chairs have been multiplied through- 

 out Europe, and especially in Germany, and at the present time German- 

 speaking geographers form a little public of themselves. Some of the Professors, 

 as Ton Richthofen of Berlin and Peuck of Vienna, have worked mainly at 

 geomorphology ; others, such as Kriimmel of Kiel, at oceanography ; others, again, 

 such as Ratzel of Leipzig, at anthropogeography ; wliile Wagner of Gottingen 

 has been conspicuous in cartography, and Kirchhott' of Halle and Lehmann 

 of Miinster in questions of method. Davis of flarvard and Woeikof of St. Peters- 

 burg may count as foreign adherents of the German school. There can be no doubt 

 that it is especially in geomorphology that the advance has been most rapid, and 

 here we may trace Peschel's impulse still nnexhatisted. In 1887 Gerland of 

 Strasburg went so far as wholly to exclude the human element from geography, 

 and to make it a purely physical science. He probably represents the extreme 

 swing of the pendulum. There is evidence now of a reaction towards Ritter, and 

 as Wagner has pointed out, we owe to Gerland himself the admirable series of 

 maps in the new edition of Berghaus's Atlas, which deals with man, and brings 

 out with startling clearness the interdependence of relief, climate, and population. 



Let us now sum up the problems and methods of modern geography as they 

 have resulted from the last five generations of work and criticism. Merely verbal 

 definitions may be left to the dialectician, but there are two diflerent modes of 

 giving practical definition to a department of knowledge. It may be considered 

 either as a discipline, or as a field of research. As a discipline, a subject 

 requires rough definition for the purposes of organisation. It should exhibit a 

 central idea or a consistent chain of argument. On the other hand, no theo- 

 retical considerations can hold the investigator within set bounds, though he is 

 none the less practically limited by the nature of the arts of investigation to 

 which he has served bis apprenticeship. The chemist should manipulate the blow- 

 pipe, the physicist should be an expert mathematician, the historian should 

 be skilful as a paleographer, and familiar with mediisval Latin. That subject 

 is most legitimate which admits of either definition, which exhibits both a con- 

 sistent argument and also characteristic arts. The researcher will then be the 

 writer of the text-book, and while research is fertilised by suggestions born of 

 teaching, teaching will be illuminated by the certainty within uncertainty which 

 comes of first hand touch with facts. Geography satisfies both requirements ; it 

 has arts and an argument. 



There are three correlated arts (all concerned chiefly with maps) which may be 

 said to characterise geography — observation, cartography, and teaching. The observer 

 obtains the material tor the maps, which are constructed by the cartographer 

 and interpreted by the teacher. It is almost needless to say that the map is here 

 thought of as a subtle instrument of expression applicable to many orders of facts, 

 and not the mere depository of names which still does duty in some of the most costly 



