8 
PHYSICAL RESTORATION-MAN AND NATURE. 
lias been half awakened to the necessity of restoring the dis¬ 
turbed harmonies of nature, whose well-balanced influences 
are so propitious to all her organic offspring, of repaying to 
our great mother the debt which the prodigality and the tlirift- 
lessness of former generations have imposed upon their succes¬ 
sors—thus fulfilling the command of religion and of practical 
wisdom, to use this world as not abusing it. 
New School of Geographers. 
The labors of Humboldt, of Hitter, of Guyot, and their 
followers have given to the science of geography a more 
philosophical, and, at the same time, a more imaginative char¬ 
acter than it had received from the hands of their predecessors. 
Perhaps the most interesting field of speculation, thrown open 
by the new school to the cultivators of this attractive study, is 
the inquiry: how far external physical conditions, and espe¬ 
cially the configuration of the earth’s surface, and the distribu¬ 
tion, outline, and relative position of land and water, have 
influenced the social life and social progress of man. 
Reaction of Man on Nature. 
But, as we have seen, man has reacted upon organized and 
inorganic nature, and thereby modified, if not determined, the 
material structure of his earthly home. The measure of that 
reaction manifestly constitutes a very important element in the 
appreciation of the relations between mind and matter, as well 
as in the discussion of many purely physical problems. But 
though the subject has been incidentally touched upon by 
many geographers, and treated with much fulness of detail in 
regard to certain limited fields of human effort, and to certain 
specific effects of human action, it has not, as a whole, so far 
as I know, been made matter of special observation, or of liis- 
worn-out fields were depopulated, in many parts of the Continent, by civil 
and ecclesiastical tyrannies, which insisted on the surrender of the half of 
a loaf already too small to sustain its producer. Thus abandoned, these 
lands often relapsed into the forest state, and, some centuries later, were 
again brought under cultivation with renovated fertility. 
