Februaet 19, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



263 



sion. This is a call to every geographer. 

 The geographic atmosphere in Professor 

 Turner's story of our north central west is 

 known to us, and Professor J. L. Myres, 

 reaching at onee broadly into the fields of 

 classic lore, anthropology and geography, 

 is, in his person and work, living testimony 

 to the importance of our anthropogeo- 

 graphic task, and to the hopefulness that 

 lies in our attempting it. 



Some historical writers are influenced 

 little if at all by the study of the earth and 

 lower life as elements of human environ- 

 ment. Even volumes professing to deal 

 with the geographic foundation of history 

 sometimes fail of their goal, and one pre- 

 face affirms that — "the general physiog- 

 raphy of North America is familiar enough 

 to readers." 



This, I am sure, is quite too rosy a view 

 of the geographic situation. But I cite the 

 limitations of some histories in no mood of 

 criticism. Let every man build the wall 

 over against his own house. What of as- 

 sured fact or proven principle we put be- 

 fore the historian he has neither the will 

 nor the power to escape. Our light is in no 

 danger of being put under a bushel. But 

 we have good need to see that it is lighted. 

 Who can show me a good human geography 

 of Greece? Perhaps it is now in the mak- 

 ing by a member of this association. If 

 there be such a work, should it be possible 

 for a historian of Greece to liken Asia 

 Minor and Egypt to enormous jaws about 

 to swallow Cyprus, to describe the Egean 

 and Adriatic as fiords, to liken southern 

 Europe to a mastodon, Greece being a leg ; 

 to call Greece with its mountain spurs and 

 bays a skeletonized leaf, to fill the penin- 

 sula with tiers, storeys, waists, claws, 

 wheels, threads and tongues, and leave you 

 not knowing whether this poor little coun- 

 try is a house of many rooms or a spider 

 with sprawling limbs. But we are most 



gravely assured that the geography of 

 Greece had results upon its history, and 

 diversity of states formed by diversity of 

 surface is the lone geographic captive shut 

 up in this dark closet ! 



If we turn to sociology we meet the in- 

 sistence on the importance of environment. 

 Let us take Giddings's definition, that 



Sociology is an attempt to account for the 

 origin, growth, structure and activities of so- 

 ciety by the operation of physical, vital and psy- 

 chical causes, working .together in the processes 

 of evolution. 



Or we may cite the utterance of Small, 

 that ' ' this force is incessant, that it is pow- 

 erful, that it is a factor which may never 

 be ignored."' Yet Dr. Small in an ex- 

 tended chapter on environment mentions 

 geography but onee, and then not as a sci- 

 ence which might contribute to sociology. 

 Professor Ridgeway^ thinks that failure 

 fully to recognize man as controlled by the 

 laws of the animal kingdom leads to malad- 

 ministration of alien races and blunders in 

 social legislation. He says, further, "As 

 physical characteristics are in the main the 

 result of environment, social institutions 

 and religious ideas are no less the product 

 of environment," and again, any attempt 

 to eradicate political and legal institutions 

 of an equatorial race "will be but vain, for 

 these institutions are as much part of the 

 land as are its climate, its soil, its fauna 

 and its flora." Ripley, in reviewing the 

 second volume of Ratzel's anthropogeog- 

 raphy, criticizes the author for neglecting 

 acclimatization, considering its importance 

 in social theory, and in view of the fact that 

 theories of race dispersion turn upon our 

 judgment in this matter. Perhaps the real 

 state of the case is seen in the appearance 



7 "General Sociology," A. W. Small, 417. 



8 Wm. Eidgeway, ' ' The Applications of Zoolog- 

 ical Laws to Man," Brit. Assoc. Ad. Sei., Dub- 

 lin, 1908, 832-847. 



