E.—GEOGRAPHY. 97 
interested in the definition and delimitation of the Sciences. The most 
notable of recent advances have been made along their frontiers and, 
indeed, in the interstices between them. But a curriculum which is to 
guide the studies of Honour Students should be penetrated, although not 
defined, by some principle of unity. Such a thread of unity is, it seems to 
me, wanting in some of our existing curricula. 
The change which has come about in the higher study and teaching of 
geography is not wholly due to the initiative of learned societies and 
universities ; in no small degree it is in response to a public demand. 
Historical studies have, perhaps, unduly biased our tradition of a liberal 
education, with the result that the business world has doubted the executive 
value of University-trained men. The Universities are now sending some 
of their best students into general business, and not only as technical 
experts. Such men must be guided to philosophical powers of thought 
and expression without losing their grip on actuality. Prestige has long 
_ clung to the study of Humane Letters, to the detached exercise of the 
~ intellect on the languages, history, and thought of past centuries. No 
cultured Englishman will undervalue history. Have we not a law based 
on precedents and an unwritten constitution? Is not respect for 
tradition the very foundation of our national character? But it is the 
_ modern thesis that space and time are a continuum ; our ancestors said 
the same thing when they spoke of God as both Almighty and Everlasting. 
Who shall say which is the higher of the divine attributes—the Almighty 
or the Everlasting? To descend to the mundane—why should you not 
find philosophy in Geography as well as in History ? 
Dr. Mill has told us how that a Section of this Association was founded 
in the ’thirties of last century for geology and geography, how that its 
scope was subsequently narrowed to geology and physical geography, 
and how that in the “fifties a new Section had to be formed for what 
_ remained of geography. That is the terse history of a skilful feat of 
diplomacy, or in plainer language of a theft. It was not until the eighties 
that under the lead of such men as Francis Galton, James Bryce, and 
Douglas Freshfield our Alsace was reconquered, with what example and 
help from other countries I must not now stop to detail. The worst of 
it was that not a few geographers had become content with the limited 
_ boundaries within which they had been driven; I well remember the 
_ obbligato of seafaring language which came sotto voce from a worthy 
admiral, a member of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, who 
satin the front row of my audience when in 1887 as a young revolutionary 
_ I read my paper on the Scope and Methods of Geography. At Oxford, 
in the later ‘nineties, Herbertson and I pressed what we described as the 
- Tegional, the synthetic idea. Herbertson published his paper on the 
Major Natural Regions, and I edited my Regions of the World Series. In 
_ the first decade of the present century there was a reaction, and curricula 
_ were drafted which tended once more to break the subject up into a 
_ group of fragments from other sciences. Since the War, the earlier trend 
_ has happily, as I think, won a fresh impetus. 
_____Inasking for a principle which shall give unity of purpose to geographers, 
, let it not be thought that by special pleading I am seeking for some idea 
_ which shall suffice to justify the institution of a geographical discipline 
1931 H 
