50 Gttyot on Carl Bitter. 



that the great geographical arrangements of our planet are 

 foreshadowing the future destinies of mankind ? 



One feels that to treat Geography from such a point of 

 view and in such a spirit, is to begin a new science. It is the 

 science of the living globe, it is physiological Geography. The 

 old walks will not do any more. With a firm and trusting step 

 we must boldly enter the new path which has been opened by 

 the hand of genius, for that path alone will lead us to the tem- 

 ple of knowledge. 



This view was the normal synthesis required by the rapid 

 progress of physical, ethnological, and historical sciences, which, 

 since the beginning of this century, have shed so much light on 

 the deeper nature of the physical world and of human society. 

 It was that harmonic unity of elements, diverse and yet akin, 

 craved by every philosophic mind conversant with the results of 

 scientific inquiry. The philosophy of history, that science of 

 modern times, hails now, with joy, the birth of a still younger 

 sister, the Philosophy of Geography, the one a help to the oth- 

 er ; both forever as inseparable as man is from nature. 



Ritter not only laid down the principle of a new science, 

 but he attempted to carry it out. He succeeded beyond 

 expectation, for the task that he thus assumed was great, and 

 seemed to exceed the strength of one individual man. It 

 implied a careful and critical re-examination, under a new 

 light, of the original sources of our geographical knowledge, 

 and of the historical data connected with it, and a new method 

 of investigation, of combination, and of exposition of the re- 

 sults. His predecessors in Geography could be of little avail 

 to him. If Eratosthenes, says he, wrote the first astronomical 

 Geography, Herodotus and Strabo the first geographical his- 

 tory and historical Geography, Bergmann the first geographi- 

 cal physics, Buesching the first geographical statistics ; these 

 works, excellent though they were for their special purpose, 

 could do little more than prepare materials for the one contem- 

 plated. Each of them lacks the principle of unity, which alone 

 can place the geographical element in its proper light, and give 

 to it its full value. 



But among his distinguished contemporaries, none was to 

 him of so much help as Alexander von Humboldt, who summed 

 up in himself the progress of the age in the physical and natu- 

 ral sciences, as applied to the science of the globe. I have 

 said how gratefully Bitter acknowledged his indebtedness to 

 Humboldt's labors, which furnished him the indispensable 

 foundation for his own edifice. His investigations of the gen- 



