E.— GEOGRAPHY. 93 



The era of the great discoveries, coinciding with the effects of the 

 Renaissance in liberating human thought, revolutionised men's conceptions 

 of the Earth and was a tremendous stimulus to geographical enquiry, 

 but until the nineteenth century speculation about the significance of 

 geographical facts in relation to man remained abstract and doctrinaire. 

 It came, indeed, principally from philosophers such as Montesquieu rather 

 than from geographers themselves, who, handicapped by mediaeval 

 traditions, presented their material in arbitrary divisions, so that, as 

 Ritter puts it, ' the whole subject of relations was unstudied.' 



It is to Ritter and Humboldt that we owe the real beginnings of human 

 geography as an integral and, indeed, from Ritter's standpoint, the 

 crowning part of the subject-matter. To appreciate the greatness of 

 their work we must realise how critical for the whole future of geography 

 was the period in which they lived. It was a period in which great masses 

 of new geographical data were being accumulated, but so long as these 

 remained unsystematised and unrelated, they tended only to increase the 

 inchoate and amorphous character of a subject which was rather a torture 

 to the memory than a stimulus to the mind. It was a period, too, in which 

 many independent, specialised sciences dealing with particular aspects 

 of Earth Lore such as geology and meteorology were rapidly developing, 

 so that the domain left to geography itself, according to the prevailing 

 conception of its character, was increasingly uncertain. It was Ritter 

 and Humboldt who rescued what seemed indeed to be a moribund subject 

 and gave it coherence, individuality and an immensely enhanced 

 significance. This they did by claiming for it not a distinctive segment 

 in the circle of knowledge — which is to destroy its very essence — but a 

 distinctive method and objective in the handling of data common to other 

 subjects. Ritter gave the keynote to the whole modern development of 

 geography when he said (in his Comparative Geography) ' It is to use the 

 whole circle of sciences to illustrate its own individuality, not to exhibit 

 their peculiarities. It must make them all give a portion, not the whole, 

 and yet must keep itself single and clear.' The same note is struck by one 

 of the greatest of later builders in the same field, Vidal de la Blache, in 

 the notable summary of his conception of geography given at the end of 

 a long life mainly devoted to its advancement : ' Nous avons connu long- 

 temps la geographic incertaine de son objet et de ses methodes, oscillant 

 entre la geologic et I'histoire. Ces temps sont passes. Ce que la 

 geographic, en echange du secours qu'elle revolt des autres sciences pent 

 apporter au tresor commun, c'est I'aptitude a ne pas morceler ce que la 

 nature rassemble, a comprendre la correspondance et la correlation des 

 faits, soit dans le milieu terrestre qui les enveloppe tons, soit dans les 

 milieux regionaux oii ils se localisent.' Ritter, however, went further 

 than to assert the essential principles of co-ordination, relationship and 

 interdependence in the building up of the geographical synthesis. 

 Geography, he maintained, could only escape disintegration ' by holding 

 fast to some central principle ; and that principle is the relation of all 

 the phenomena and forms of nature to the human race.' The same 

 conception permeates his ErdJcunde, as for example in the passage : 

 ' Nature refuses to be studied except in the great mutual play of all 

 her powers, in the connection of all her manifestations. Only when thus 



