February 19, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



271 



"a very mixed people," Mongolian, Cau- 

 casian, Malay, and some say an infiltration 

 of Negrito. If insularity breeds alertness, 

 what other factors have apparently 

 swamped this tendency in Madagascar, 

 Iceland, Sicily, Cuba and Hawaii? 



Nor can we be sure of the effect of small 

 areas of rich cultivation and certain re- 

 ward. Industry we can predict and a de- 

 gree of comfort, but can we say more? 

 Why not as well expect the Belgian farmer 

 or the farmer of the Paris basin, or of the 

 county of Norfolk to be mentally alert? 

 Moreover, most Japanese are in a low state. 

 "We imagine them" (the Japanese) "as 

 intellectually homogeneous," but there are 

 "five million highly cultivated people and 

 nine times as many of lower type . . . the 

 mighty mass still pagan, stolid, low in the 

 scale of evolution. " ^^ 



This little empire is indeed a good place 

 in the temperate zone, and so are China, 

 Switzerland, Spain, Austria-Hungary, Ger- 

 many, France, and too many others to 

 make the criterion of distinctive value. 

 The inference for precise, detailed and 

 prolonged research need not be elaborated. 



We have already spoken of certain re- 

 lated sciences as supplying motives to the 

 human geographer. We turn now to ex- 

 amine the geographer's proper sphere of 

 activity in relation to these sciences. 



Our references to the race problem might 

 seem superfluous, for if this field belongs 

 essentially to the anthropologists, what 

 right has the geographer there? Here we 

 seem at once to need a definition of geog- 

 raphy. But the present writer wiU not try 

 to go where angels have trod with devious 

 and faltering steps. Some time we shall 

 have a definition of geography, but not now. 

 Meanwhile we have enough to do, and if we 

 are reviled as devotees of patchwork, as 



36 W. E. Griffis, ' ' The Japanese Nation in Evo- 

 lution," 271, 386, 389-90. 



having no real science, we bear it with 

 serenity. 



I do not know of any one who proposes 

 to rule us out of the human sphere and 

 shut us up to the physical. If I can get 

 my foot on what Brunhes calls the "Hu- 

 manized surface"'^ of our planet, I am 

 content. I shall have enough to do without 

 quarreling with my neighbor, or resenting 

 anything he may say to me. Brunhes also 

 says that we are where roads meet, with 

 facts from many sources, that we must not 

 be a bazaar for retailing everything, but 

 have our own domain and commit no tres- 

 passes. What the limits of this field are is 

 not so clear, but why trouble about it, when 

 no science has a fenced domain ? 



Ratzel makes a sweeping criticism of 

 Buckle when he says that evolution is un- 

 spoken by him.'* The great geographical 

 philosopher of Leipzig made it forever im- 

 perative for us to " go back into the past. ' ' 

 He speaks of differentiation, of bequeathed 

 influences, of the migration of developed 

 traits — he never lets you doubt that he is 

 moving into the realm of Darwin. So the 

 geographer, if he touches man at all, and 

 the more if he opens the question of geo- 

 graphic influence, must be in daily contact 

 with the principles of biological evolution, 

 so far as the specialists have mastered them. 

 I will not try to say how far he may supply 

 useful data to the biologist; sure it is that 

 human anatomy, physiology and psychol- 

 ogy must be relied upon for light on the 

 early (as well as late) stages of mankind. 

 Should not this fleld be turned over to the 

 anthropologist ? 



The first answer is that so far as environ- 

 mental factors are concerned, the geog- 

 rapher alone is responsible for the knowl- 

 edge of the total physical complex which 

 the earth affords. But when this compre- 

 ss j. Brunhes, Scot. Geog. Mag., 29, 313. 

 38 " Anthropogeographie," I., 97-98. 



