332 The National Geographic Magazine 



material is cleared up by classification 

 and refined by investigations, paying 

 special attention to comparison and 

 evolution." (Preface to the Political 

 Geography . ) 



The first attempt in this direction was 

 Wy&'Anthropogeography (Munich, 1882), 

 or Outlines of the Application of Geogra- 

 phy to History. Although the book was 

 not spared opposition from the first, it 

 started a new epoch in geographic re- 

 search, and after various special works 

 on the same subject, a second volume 

 followed several years later. In 1896 a 

 treatise, Der Staat und sein Boden, pub- 

 lished in the Proceedings of the Royal 

 Saxon Academy of Sciences, gave the 

 problem a still closer connection with 

 political questions, and in 1897 the au- 

 thor published a new standard work, 

 containing the application of the scien- 

 tific method to the very political geog- 

 raphy which had so long been only a 

 list of names and numbers, the Politisrhe 

 Geographic. The word political in this 

 title stands for more than a mere nom- 

 ination ; the aim of the book is to de- 

 fine the close connection of politics and 

 geography in a manner which makes it 

 valuable equally for the statesman and 

 for the geographer. The author hopes 

 it may give the former a better under- 

 standing of geographical, the latter of 

 political, influences in his sphere of in- 

 terest, and thus awake, not only in 

 teachers, but in all his readers, of what- 

 ever condition, what he calls " geo- 

 graphischen Sinn," geographical feel- 

 ing, just as we speak of acquiring the 

 feeling for a language in philological 

 studies, To him, states are organisms 

 in various stages of development, and 

 they are made geographic organisms by 

 being most closely bound to the soil on 

 which they develop, penetrating deeper 

 and deeper into its resources. As such 

 geographic phenomena they can be 

 observed, described, measured, drawn, 

 compared like every other phenomenon 

 of life on the earth. The mistake of 



former political and sociological theories 

 was that they dealt with a too theoret- 

 ical conception of the state — a state, as 

 it were, which stands in the air, and 

 which owns the soil as a kind of large 

 property. But we must put that airj^ 

 state on the solid foundation of the 

 earth, and then we shall get a living 

 conception of the political side of geog- 

 raphy. According to this programme, 

 the author deals in nine chapters with 

 the following topics : The State and its 

 Soil ; the Historical Movement and the 

 Growth of States ; Fundamental lyaws 

 of the Increase of the Area of the State ; 

 Situation ; Area ; Boundaries ; lyand and 

 Sea ; the World of the Water ; Moun- 

 tains and Plains. He presented one 

 5^ear later the application of his princi- 

 ples in the little book entitled Deiitsch- 

 laiid, which every one who wishes to 

 obtain an idea of modern German geog- 

 raphy should read. 



WHAT IS GEOGRAPHY? 



Geography, then, as carried on in Ger- 

 many, is a field of manifold studies. It 

 requires the knowledge of mathematical 

 and phj^sical geography, including map- 

 drawing and surveying, oceanograph)^, 

 climatology, geography of plants and 

 animals, anthropogeography, political, 

 and commercial geography, history of 

 geography, together with a general ac- 

 quaintance with the cognate sciences, 

 such as geology, physics, ethnology, 

 history, political economy, and philoso- 

 phy, and also, if possible, with botany, 

 zoology, and anthropology ; but even 

 this would not yet make a geographer. 

 We must remember Humboldt's words, 

 that geography is not ' ' a so-called cy- 

 clopedia of natural sciences, ' ' and that 

 from the knowledge which the sciences 

 impart we must always proceed to the 

 consideration of the whole. The whole, 

 as shown in Ratzel's Deutschland and a 

 number of similar publications, consists 

 in the application of this general knowl- 



