98 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



already made some contribution, and at any rate it illustrates admirably 

 the practical implication of the doctrine : ' There are no necessities, but 

 everywhere possibilities ; and man, as master of the possibilities, is 

 the judge of their use.' 



With this indication of some dominant tendencies in the setting and 

 perspective of human geography, I pass to an attempt to define more 

 closely its subject-matter and its different aspects. I believe that in 

 essence human geography consists of the study of (a) the adjustment of 

 human groups to their physical environment, including the analysis of 

 their regional experience and of (6) inter-regional relations as conditioned 

 by the several adjustments and geographical orientation of the groups 

 living within the respective regions. The term ' adjustment ' I take to 

 cover not only the ' control ' which the physical environment exerts on 

 their actiAaties, but the use which they make or can make of it. Human 

 geography is the study of an interaction rather than of a control. The 

 adjustment has distinct but usually closely-related aspects which form 

 the main branches of human geography. The relationship between them 

 is from the geographer's standpoint as intimate as that between the 

 different branches of physical geography. The four principal aspects 

 may be distinguished as the racial, economic, social and political. 



The racial aspect implies an adjustment of a different character from 

 the others, one over which man has had little control but which he can 

 increasingly influence through his better imderstanding of the issues 

 involved. I am well aware that in touching on racial geography I am 

 treading on dangerous and controversial groimd. Yet I am convinced 

 that it is as necessary to find the right relationship between human 

 geography and anthropology as it is between physical geography and 

 geology, and that racial geography is as significant and essential a part 

 of the geographical synthesis as is geomorphology. I think it is true to 

 say that racial determinism, i.e. the explanation of characteristics in 

 terms of race alone, apart from environmental conditions, is becoming as 

 discredited as geographical determinism, the explanation of everything 

 in terms of physical environment. Few serious anthropologists to-day 

 uphold the conception of race put forward by Gobineau, the Demolins of 

 racial determinism : ' Le groupe blanc, residat-il au fond des glaces 

 polaires ou sous les rayons de feu de I'Equateur, c'est de ce cote que le 

 monde intellectuel inclinerait. C'est la que toutes les idees, toutes les 

 tendances, tons les efforts ne manqueraient pas de converger, et il n'y 

 aurait pas d'obstacles naturels qui pussent empecher les denrees, les 

 produits les plus lointains d'y arriver a traverser les mers, les fleuves et 

 les montagnes.' The tendency in anthropology is certainly not in the 

 direction of thus appraising racial types, so far as they can be definitely 

 distinguished, according to an absolute scale of value or efficiency, but 

 relatively to the geographical environments in which they are found. 

 Their somatic traits are discussed in terms of regional adaptations and 

 the fruitful hypothesis is put forward that so far from racial varieties being 

 unchanging and fixed for all time they are continually undergoing slow 

 modification and in process of becoming. Now the unit of the geographer's 

 study is not race as such any more than it is climate as such, or any other 



