102 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



to others rather remote speculation, my reason is that, as long as such 

 differences of opinion about it are possible, the subject is not exhausted, 

 perhaps not even defined ; though I have no expectation of doing more 

 than to make my own point of view intelligible. 



The Place of Geography among Aspects of Learning. 



Geography, as its name indicates, is the systematic description of this 

 earth of ours. But description is not an end in itself. The end, to which 

 it is the means, is a science of the earth, an understanding and interpreta- 

 tion of its meaning. Like all other departments of science, it presumes 

 two things : an intelligence to which this significance is interpreted, 

 and what I will only describe now as intelligibility of the facts of observa- 

 tion in relation with each other. In geographical science the relation of 

 these facts with each other is their relation in space ; the geographer 

 ascertains, records, compares and interprets distributions, the arrange- 

 ment of things on or in relation to the surface of the earth. Geography, 

 that is to say, asks two questions in respect of each geographical fact : 

 where is it observed? and why just there? 



Obviously, in this general sense, geography is the coequal sister- 

 science of history, which studies and interprets the relations of events in 

 time. History originally meant (as its name also indicates) the process 

 of following or tracking something which has gone before, and left trace 

 or trail ; and is applied, like the name geography, to the recorded result 

 of such ' following-up.' Like geography, it begins with description and 

 proceeds to interpret. But whereas the geographer's observations are 

 for the most part verifiable at will— for he can go back to a place and see 

 it again — ^the historian is always to this extent behind the times, that he 

 can never catch up historical events at all, still less can he have them 

 repeated, however closely the new devices of phonograph and photograph 

 may simulate such repetition. It is a notable accident of speech that 

 ' history ' should thus disclaim what ' geography ' achieves, namely, 

 direct transcription of the facts which it studies. History is always 

 looking for something that is no longer there ; geography has the earth 

 ever present, in all its ' young significance.' 



But the philosopher is aware — and the geologist and the meteorologist 

 confirm him — that ' you cannot cross the same river twice.' Every 

 relation between objects in space is bound up with a relation between 

 events in time. Consequently every geographical fact has its historical 

 aspect, and every historical fact its geographical aspect. What we group 

 together as the ' historical ' sciences, from the most specialised histories 

 of human achievements — mathematics or music or morals — ^to the most 

 general study of sequences among events — in astronomy or geology — are 

 inevitably also ' distributional ' sciences, because all the facts and events 

 which they study happen somewhere as well as somewhen. 



All human history, then, is' regional history, and loses value and 

 meaning when its geographical aspect is overlooked ; all geography, on 

 the other hand, and (most obviously) all human geography, depends 

 for its significance on the consideration that it is contemplating, not 

 facts only, but events with causes and effects ; processes, of which our 



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