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The National Geographic Magazine 



thoughtful observation of natural phe- 

 nomena, as well as of historical facts, 

 must necessarily lead to the recognition 

 of an old inner law dominating under 

 the perpetual changes of material and 

 intellectual forces. The geography of 

 plants or of animals is then as different 

 from descriptive botany and zoology as 

 the geological knowledge of the earth 

 is from mineralogy. His physical de- 

 scription of the world is therefore ' ' not 

 to be confounded with a so-called cyclo- 

 pedia of natural sciences. ' ' In it details 

 are only studied in their relation to the 

 whole, as parts of the world's phe- 

 nomena, and the higher this point of 

 view the more this doctrine will become 

 capable of individual treatment and en- 

 livening report. 



RITTER 



B}^ the side of Humboldt we meet 

 with another man who, after Kant had 

 explained the genesis of the earth and 

 Humboldt had defined the basis of the 

 scientific examination of its physical 

 conditions, took up the question of 

 man's influence upon and^ relation to 

 geographical problems : it was Karl 

 Ritter, in his Erdkunde im Verhaltniss 

 ziir Natitr loid Geschichte des Mensche7i 

 (Geography in relation to the nature 

 and history of man). We notice at 

 once that a change in the meaning of 

 the word geography has here taken 

 place. Hitherto geography, according 

 to the composition of the Greek root, 

 had always been translated as ' ' Krd- 

 (or Welt-) beschreibung " (description 

 of the earth or world), but it is now 

 called ''' Erdkunde, ' ' a name which 

 may be rendered only approximately 

 by ' ' knowledge of the earth. ' ' What 

 Ritter wants to express by the choice 

 of the name is that geography, whether 

 ph^^sical or political, is not a descriptive 

 discipline, as thus it would not deserve 

 the name of a science, but a subject 

 full of problems worth)^ of the most 

 exact scientific and philosophic discrim- 



ination. It not only imposes on the 

 student a multitude of facts to be re- 

 membered, but introduces him into the 

 secret laws ruling the natural and polit- 

 ical history of the world, the precise 

 recognition of which, of their influence 

 on the development of nature and of 

 man, is the object of geographical 

 studies, without regard to practical 

 and commercial purposes. In the in- 

 troduction to his Allgemeine Erdkunde 

 Ritter says : ' ' This geography (Erd- 

 kunde) is called general, not because it 

 intends to give everything, but because 

 it investigates with equal attention and 

 tvifhout considtration of ajiy special ends 

 the characteristics of every part of the 

 earth and every one of its forms, whether 

 it lie in the ocean or on the land, on a 

 far-away continent or in our own coun- 

 try, or be the seat of a cultivated na- 

 tion or a desert." These words form a 

 milestone in the development of modern 

 geography. The)^ express for the first 

 time unmistakably the program of the 

 so-called comparative geography, which 

 would be sorely misunderstood if it was 

 thought a method consisting princi- 

 pally of questions like those found in 

 so many text-books, " Compare such 

 and such city, river, boundary," which 

 is only a more interesting wa}^ to better 

 remember certain facts. Such exer- 

 cises are only the rude framework of real 

 comparative geograph)-. We may say 

 that all comparative geography includes 

 a certain amount of comparison, but that 

 any geographical comparison does not 

 represent comparative geography. 



The results of such elementary com- 

 parison are the very beginning of copi- 

 parative geography. After having ob- 

 tained them, the real comparative work 

 only sets in with inquiring after the 

 different causes which produce them 

 and the different effects which they pro- 

 duce. Then only we shall be able to 

 actuall)^ compare the character of differ- 

 ent parts of the globe, and dare to say 

 that we know them. Of what value is 



