E.—GEOGRAPHY 99 
of a surface for our globe on which life can exist. When we come nearer 
historic time, we think of geography in terms of a medium in which at 
least primates can multiply and move, and in which ultimately homo 
sapiens can establish abiding places for his different families. If we then 
turn to physical geography, we are thinking ‘mainly of how the forces of 
nature can be observed and calculated in their action upon the habitable 
globe ; in other words, in what measure they are tending to make it 
more endurable or less endurable for human beings. Lastly, when we 
come to political geography, we are concerned frankly with, and only 
with, the distribution of the habitable area of our planet among the 
various groups of men and women who call themselves nations. It is 
the human aspect of geography which is permanently in the background 
of all its sections; and the essential scientific value and interest of 
geography lies in the part which it plays in preparing and furnishing a 
home for mankind. Of what interest or value to us would be the geo- 
graphy of the Milky Way, or even of the Moon, so long as we know of no 
life which it would influence ? and is not our sporadic excitement about 
the geography of Mars aroused solely by our curiosity as to whether the 
changes observable on that planet are, or are not, the work of hands and 
intelligences somehow akin to ours ? 
LN, 
Thus we arrive at what seems the predestined centre of the field, at 
geography which has no adjectival label, and which one would hesitate 
even to call human geography, lest there should thus be conveyed some 
suggestion of implied antithesis. It is the study of geography as the 
science of man’s physical framework, his home, the material for his 
existence. Seeing that all life lives together, what we are really thinking 
of is not man alone, but animals and plants as well. By the inclusion of 
these, however, the area to be surveyed becomes so vast that I cannot 
touch to-day on those parts of the field which are of special interest to 
the zoologist and the botanist. They have their own entrée to our 
science, but in a sense so specialised that the ordinary amateur geographer 
has no qualifications for discussing it. Taking human geography 
therefore as exactly what its name indicates and no more, we find in its 
lay-out the whole study of the relations between man and inanimate 
nature. If this round globe had a voice which we could hear, and if it 
cared to use our language, it would probably describe our theme as the 
study of a tiny and prolific parasite upon its skin. We naturally think 
better of ourselves. Our study is one of actions and reactions; it in- 
vestigates the reasons why the multiplication and distribution of man is 
influenced by geographical features, and on the other hand the methods 
by which man, reacting to those features, endeavours to modify them. 
It is the whole problem of environment and adaptation. As that 
eccentric but stimulating writer, Hendrik Van Loon, expresses it, ‘ the 
roots of any given people are situated deep in the soil and in the soul. 
The soil has influenced the soul, and the soul has influenced the soil.’ 
As on all other subjects on which students feel deeply, sharp differences 
