56 Guyot on Carl Bitter. 



by, keep their eyes turned towards that golden age from which 

 they derive their wisdom, leave them without the hope of ever 

 attaining a higher Messing, and thus stop their progress. In 

 Europe men look forward, their faces turned towards the ad- 

 vancing sun, following it in its march and longing to plunge 

 with it into the ocean of a mysterious future. Africa, the land 

 of the meridian sun, equally unmindful of the past and the fu- 

 ture, is sunk in an inactive, unmeaning present. These three 

 continents again are grouped into an Eastern Hemisphere, 

 which is to become the Orient for the new Occident, for the 

 New World of the Western Hemisphere, which, in its turn, 

 represents the land of future progress, contrasted with that of 

 the old traditions of the past. 



By the historical element in Geography, Eitter means not 

 a certain amount of historical facts connected with a geographi- 

 cal spot, but the variety of functions performed by the same 

 geographical elements, or the same natural regions, in the dif- 

 ferent ages of civilization. These functions are necessarily 

 variable, since they depend upon the power of the cultivated 

 nations to make use of these elements furnished by nature, as 

 instruments for the particular work which these nations are 

 called upon to perform in history. At the beginning of civili- 

 zation, when the first, the most urgent want, was the possi- 

 bility of gathering together, within a moderate compass, a 

 large number of men 3 and thus to establish the social and polit- 

 ical relations, without which human progress is impossible, the 

 large plains of culture fertilized by the main streams of the 

 continents were of paramount, of almost exclusive importance. 

 The rich valleys of the Nile, of the Euphrates, of the Ganges, 

 of the Chinese streams, are the prominent geographical centres 

 for mankind. The broad ocean, the Mediterranean even, lie 

 then forgotten and without use. When the great historical 

 work in progress was the education of the mental faculties of 

 man by Greek civilization, how prominent was the value of 

 every geographical feature of that little peninsula of Greece, of 

 its mountains and valleys, of its indented shores, of its genial 

 climate, of its situation between the lands of the old oriental 

 civilization, and the Western peninsulas which awaited culture 

 from her. How different again when Eome began the great 

 social work of the Eoman empire, which was to gather under 

 one powerful sceptre, the scattered civilizations of antiquity. 

 The land of Greece sunk into insignificance, but the central 

 position of Italy, in the midst of the Mediterranean world, 

 thus far without value, made Eome the natural heart of that 



