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There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029977679 THE FOUNDATIONS of GEOGRAPHY In the Twentieth Century by FRANZ SCHRADER Herbertson Memorial Lecture 19 19 OXFORD AT THE, CLARENDON PRESS 1919 \. lUUAUY OXFOKD UNIVERSITY PRESS tONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YOEK TOEOHTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY HUMPHEEY MILPOED PUBLISHER TO THS VNlVBBetTT THE FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Being the First Herbertson Memorial Lecture on the Geographical Associations foundation ^ (Given at Oxford and repeated in the University of Liverpool, November 8, . 1918, by Monsieur le ^Professeur Franz Schrader of the i^cole d'Anthropologie at Paris.) So far as I am able to understand the main aim of Professor Herbertson when he organized the Geographical Association, he justly esteemed that our time has so widely developed all human con- nexions, so deeply enlarged the discoveries in physiography and the applications of human activity on the planet, that we must try to enlarge also our knowledge and our sense of the natural laws which rule material and spiritual exchanges of activity between Earth and Man ; inasmuch as the moment- ary result of the progress of our material civilization is an unprecedented state of struggle between the most prominent fractions of mankind. In a period of growing occasions of closer connexions and solidarity between the [greater part of the children of the Planet, I remember that some of these children have lost for a time the feeling and the possibility of fraternity. If so, it is a reason to seek what may be the deeper causes of that frightful misunderstanding. I have been struck by the thought that disturbed relations between ^ Offices : 1 Marine Terrace, Aberystwyth, Wales. 2254 A 2 4 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY men may correspond with unforeseen connexions between them and the conditioning environment of Nature, and so I have accepted your invitation, praying you to consider me a modest brother coming from France to examine some sides of the geographical problem with brothers and sisters in England. We have reached a crucial stage in the relations of Man to the Earth. Our planet, spherical by its nature, from the first condensation of its original vapours, has slowly evolved towards its present state. But, considered from the human point of view, our globe has been spherical only for a small number of centuries, for neither the Mediterranean nor the old Atlantic human world were able either to recognize its form or to realize that there was a unitary anthroposphere, an earth-cover forming a human commonwealth. Only four centuries ago, the first encircling voyage gave the material proof of the sphericity of our dwelling. And only the nineteenth century has acquired the necessary energies, with steam, electricity, chemical combina- tions, to invest with a complete sphere of humanity the triple medium of our atom of celestial dust, geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere. This precise moment, with its splendours and its hazards, is a solemn phase of history, and betrays its unrivalled importance precisely by the human agitation, without precedent in the past centuries, which invades the whole planet, ground, oceans, and even the long-desired expanse of the sky. So at this moment, and for the first time, we are in a position to try to compass synthetically and IJN TtiK TWJbJJNTlKi'H CENTUKY 5 scientifically the combination of the concentric manifestations of cosmic nature and terrestrial life. Earth, modelled by a complex of natural forces ; man, reacting on the exterior world, but limited in all his activities by the inflexible evolution of these forces ; such is the material ground of geographical science. Of the absolute situation of our Planet in space, we know little. Our knowledge teaches us only that this planet, originally incommensurable for man, and gradually contracted before our more complete investigation, is an approximate globe, depending with a number of similar units, greater or smaller, from a star, the Sun, around which they describe almost circular orbits, the principal of them drawing with them one or more satellites. As between Jupiter and the asteroids or meteorites, our globe is one of mean dimension, as well as its one moon, which accomplishes its revolution in about a month, while our Earth, accomplishing in a year about 365 rotations, moves with the whole solar system towards the constellation of Hercules, or rather towards the 'Unknown', with that con- stellation. If the terrestrial axis were perpendicular to the plane of the orbit, every point of the surface would receive an invariable proportion of the solar in- fluences. But the axis is inclined at some 23| degrees to the plane of the orbit, and every part of the planet is submitted by that inclination to periodical changes of light and temperature. The period of these variations, or seasons, is the year, during which every point describes two opposed 6 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY spirals, inclined towards the sun or in the opposite direction. Every manifestation of the planetary life, from the motions of the sea and air to the evolutions of human societies, depends on that periodical alternation of the planet before the rays of the sun. We are still ignorant of the greatest part of the modifications revealed to us by the different con- stitutions of the old parts of the planetary crust. But we know that repeatedly, since the first apparition of hving cells, the conditions of life have been transformed. Plants or animals haye taken (or received) new forms, under new climates and variable skies, among changing continents or seas, alternately burnt by the sun, covered by ice, drowned by immense rains. And all these metamorphoses, successive manifestations of the continuous evolution still in process around us, led the globe to the temporary state of the actual period, which we characterize by the presence of Humanity. Since the beginning of that period, the globe has remained so unchanged on the whole that we are inclined to consider it as unchanging. Nevertheless, all is in perpetual motion and evolution on its surface. Water, air, ground, heat, light, electricity, gravitation, everything persists continually in variation, and even the mass of the planet shows perpetual motions, the study of which is still recent and incomplete. What we must retain from this description is the perpetual correspondence between the modifications of the planetary medium and the manifestations of IN TtiiH TWEJSTIETH CENTURY 7 the forms of life of which this medium envelops, and develops the successive alterations. Still, here we have to deal with recent ideas which (particularly under the influence of Lamarck, Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin) have taken the place of those of Cuvier and the old ' Catastrophic ' conception of successive creations. We must con- sequently not be surprised if these notions have not yet acquired their definite place in geography. Many geographers think, and in some sense with reason, that geology is at the basis of physical geography. But, for these, geology consists almost exclusively of the superficial distribution of the different formations, in their conjunction with the exterior agents and in the various effects of these conditions. But what we have mentioned of the concordance in evolution of earth and life forces us to see geology as the evolutive geography of former epochs, and geography as the geology of the present time ; but then we must give to these two ex- pressions a wider sense, and consider that, in every period, the actual and acting causes have had a geographical power far beyond the mere precipi- tation of obsolete formations, for these are but legacies of past manifestations, yet forming the substratum for the moving and fluid parts still in full activity as conditions of life and evolution. In that sense, atmosphere, winds, seasons, sunshine, rain, tides, monsoons, climates, electricity, &c., are geographical agents as much as or even more than the accumulations of past ages, concreted in almost inactive substances, after their active period. So geology and physical geography are mingled in all 3284 A O 8 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY manifestations through past, present, and future; but the geological part of geography now resides principally in the fluid and moving parts of the planet, under the action of cosmic energies, among which the solar influences are preponderant. Man, in such a conception of geography, takes his place as an actual living form succeeding to trilobite, pterodactyl, and megatherium, but with an immense increase of faculties, which themselves become as integrating parts of the earth. We find an illustration of that seriation in the oldest traces of marine invertebrates of the Cambrian period. They indicate already, by the perfection of their structure, the existence of former plants and animals, and are the successors of these older forms. Through aU epochs of terrestrial evolution, the parallel modifications of life appear to us, bound together as cause and effect. The gradual apparition of water, of the first elements of the solid crust, the mutual combination of gaseous elements into soUd material seem to coincide with the evolution of forms of life. But it is remarkable that this process of alteration often preserves in some way the old forms in the new ones. The trilobite, for instance, having ceased to exist as a complete form, still appears actually in the embryo of Limulus, just as the human foetus shows, in the first period of its development, old forms now abandoned or transformed by Nature. So, too, in civilization there occur survivals, often accompanied by retrogression, of forms elsewhere only surviving as fossils. We may add, I think, that in historical develop- IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 9 ment there sometimes occur regressions which have the effect of placing humanity under circumstances in which it had worked many centuries before. I have thought it necessary to insist upon this introduction, because considerations universally accepted as regards the evolution of the sub-human world are still challenged when applied, as they should be, to man and society. For instance, the progress of the distillation and purification of the seas appears to us in strict and close co-ordination with the transformation of the first animals, with the evolution of such special organs as the eye, the motor members, &c. The successive uprisings of firm ground into contact with atmosphere mark the primordial difference between life contained in a liquid of a density almost equal to that of the living being, and the atmospheric life of animals or plants obliged by their differential weight, in conformity with Archi- medes' law, to continual efforts which may lead them from the rudimentary beginnings to in- tellectual and moral results. And we must remark that, while as regards primitive epochs these views do not encounter contradiction, yet as soon as we reach human geography objection is raised on this fundamental point that man must have been a planetary product, before becoming a social and moral being — born from dust, to rise to thought. The humility that we have learnt to feel about our planet, simple point lost in the universe, must also prevail as to the place of mankind in the immensity of Nature, and consequently must appear in the whole of geography. 10 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGKAPHY Geography, says the old and consecrated definition, is the description of the Earth. But that description must not remain only an exterior description, and in the body we must try to discern the future apparition of the soul. Only yesterday, the description was purely nominal or external. Geography was only the formal frame, history alone being the soul or the life. Such a limitation, in its full signification, would not now be accepted, I think, even for elementary teaching. We must now begin to follow the scientific path which perhaps shall lead the next generations to the great road of scientific harmony between Nature and Man, that still hypo- thetical harmony to which my friend Gabriel Seailles, of the Sorbonne, has given the anticipatory name of Morale Planetaire. Let us now rapidly consider, first of all, some purely material or topographical facts of the structure of our globe. First, the solid construction, formerly covered by water in its totality, heaves up its surface into immediate contact with the atmosphere ; but only for one quarter of the oceanic sphere. The most abundant fauna of the globe lives in the immensity of the seas, and the continents, deprived of the fluid cover of the waters, breed a much smaller popxila- tion, in number as well as in dimensions ; but the development of this population is much superior to that of the maritime fauna, as the phenomena produced by the triple contact of ground, water, and air are infinitely more complex than those of the oceanic water. IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 11 Of this emerged fourth part of the Earth a large fraction remains barren and lifeless. Deprived of marine vapours or mists, the surface of the ground, completely dry, would become similar to the dead face of the moon. Without rain, no vegetation grows, no animal life exists. Thus the alternate or simultanepus, presence of sun and clouds is a necessary condition for the production of terrestrial life. These clouds, raised by the action of the sun on the surface of the waters, are transported by the atmospheric motions across the continents, where, they fall in fog, rain, hail or snow. So the watering of emerged ground is dependent on the winds, and consequently on the. variable temperatures of the ever-moving atmosphere. The warmer and lighter air rises, the colder and heavier air descends. A corresponding circulation moving the mass of the seas, the contrasts of these two series of actions multiply beyond measure the variety of the aerial currents, deflecting them in varied fashion according to their density. Here periodical winds take their regular course. Else- where, variable currents agitate the atmosphere ; and by that universal agitation the greatest part of the solid ground receives the waters issued from the seas, absorbs them in part and in part returns them again by weUs, streams or rivers. But that watering takes innumerable forms. The cloudy ring of the Equator drowns alternately the coimtries north and south of the line, according to the apparent situation of the sun. On the contrary, Sahara or Gobi almost never receive the visit of JS94 A 4 12 FOUNDATIONS OF aEOGEAPHY clouds. North of the Pyrenees, rain and gi'ass ; south, dry rocks and cracked ground. On Ireland or Alaska, perpetual mist, on the Mediterranean, clear sky and short showers. Btit wherever water appears terrestrial life in some form follows it, in plants or animals. Now flora or fauna depend on the climate. Under the tropics, the damp warmth engenders the virgin forest. More north or south, where a long dry season alternates with heavy rains, forests give place to savannahs, with their periodical annual grass. In higher latitudes, the forest reappears, grading towards maples, birch and coniferous trees around the cold environment of the poles. All this, diversified by the altitude or by the exposure, offers to life and to man particularly numberless opportunities mingled with obstacles. In the midst of such contrasts, animals and men utilize, influence, assist or oppose the planetary energies. Worms collaborate with rain to produce soil ; corals construct islands ; beavers deflect rivers ; sheep and goats help water, ice, and sun to destroy mountains ; man pretends to general domination and direction of the natural forces, and contends with his mother planet, guided more by immediate avidity than by respect of natural laws, of which he is still partly conscious, partly ignorant. Here we shall encounter the principal differenti- ation between animal and human action on the natural forces or forms. An animal, though it may modify environment, utilizes the neighbouring medium without any hint of a transformation of IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 13 general conditions aroun^ him, or to draw from natural functioning increasing series of advantages. The case of man is different. His sense of observation and his social adaptability enable him to profit by many natural circumstances. An early and fundamental differentiation based on these conditions has probably been the separation of nomad and sedentary societies. Traditional history divides humanity into nomad and sedentary peoples. It seems that these two principal modes of understanding and expressing life are rooted in the bones and nerves of v&rious fractions of humanity. But if we consider the geographical conditions, particularly to the north and south of the long diaphragma of moimtains that goes from the Pyrenees to the eastern extremity of Asia, we notice that Nature has given to the different slopes of these chains two classes of different climates, indicative of various sorts of life. What are the principal among these differences ? The nomad is anxious to preserve the same con- ditions of life, even by changes of residence. The sedentary, reacting differently, maintains his habitat by the organization of complicated variable occupa- tions. So the first one is more attached to his customs than to the spot where he lives ; the other, more attached to the local conditions, and less to the continuity of customs. We are thus induced to ask, what is the cause of that difference ? Is it a social or natural cause ? What we said a moment ago tends to show that we encounter here the results of elemental necessities, 14 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY which, gradually, have modified the whole course of life according to different circumstances. Where one season of the year is able to produce enough to sustain life on the same spot during the other seasons there wUl generally grow a regular and rhythmic organization. That organization may take many various forms, but its ideal wiU always be to obtain a stable social establishment preserving the rhythm and the residence once adopted, and trying to accumulate as much as possible from the gifts of Nature. Where, under different conditions, the produce of one season is inadequate to maintain life through the year, there will dominate the customs of nomadism. The chief difficulty will be to ensure a sufficient continuity of vital conditions, and all will be subordinate to that necessity. So the social organisms will grow differently with one or the other of these adaptations. With the life of herding or hunting, the frame of life will keep a greater simpHcity, though not always from a natm-al disposition of the mind ; that disposition, on the contrary, will arise from the fact that all the objects needed by the personal, family or social life must be easily transportable; even the spiritual life will receive from that fact its particular features. On the contrary, with sedentary life, in the great fluvial valleys, for instance, thoughts will prefer- ably be drawn to physical problems, relative to natural forces, in connexion with the conservation or development of the natural products which man may wish to secure, or to propitiate by rites of IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 16 worship of greater or less complexity. At the same time, personal and social life, arts, habitation, abundance of familiar objects, disposition to im- provement and invention will characterize that sort of social organization. The dwelhng, that supplementary climate, becomes stable, and acquires a particular importance, instead of being dependent on genealogy. So from the first annals of humanity, the pastor and the cultivator, Cain and Abel, are in natural hostility. Precisely from this fact, that man possesses a natural disposition to utilize in the formation of a social system the pecuharities of his native country, resulted the great importance given in our old geography to the local nomenclature of places or forms of the surface : of the rivers, plains, islands? capes, bays, ports, seas, towns, &c., that formed the whole of geographical nomenclature while geography was still barely the aid and servant of history- Around these fundamental notions, which I must do no more than mention, grow adequate institutions, preferably, for instance, patriarchal life in the deserts, where nomadism does not permit numerous gatherings of large crowds ; more complicated forms of societies in the fertile and cultivated countries, where the habits of agriculture and urban life allow or even necessitate more stable and complicated forms of civil and rehgious government. Every one of these peculiarities would require volumes, but I can only mention here their existence, and the planetary reasons of that existence. And after that, it will probably be sufficient to pro- nounce the names of Egypt and the Nile, Babylon OF 16 FOUNDATIONS 0;P GEOGRAPHY or Nineveh, with their couple of rivers, India and the monsoon, Russia and the snow, Mediter- ranean sea and the Greek or Roman civilizations, England and its insular situation, France in the isthmus between the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic, Araby with its nomads, Gobi and the caravans, China with patriarchate and irrigation, to evoke comprehensive illustrations of the connexions virhich we have just encountered between Nature and Humanity. None of these natural conditions may or must be studied separately or considered in isolation. A special atmosphere, a particular vegetation, a network of local conditions have enveloped each of us from the maternal womb, and have influenced the great characteristic lines of our lives. It is the Home-land, so dear to the heart of every human creature. But the sky of this land is formed by the aerial waves which incessantly roll around the globe ; the rain that moistens our soil has been prepared among the tropical forests, or around the polar floating ice. The circumstances under which we receive the planetary influences are not the same to-day as yesterday or to-morrow, inasmuch as man- kind every day — and every day more — is reacting upon the functions of the Earth. So these influences, which inspire in us a love for our mother country, are at once the result and the necessary cause of an inevitable solidarity between the whole Earth and the great family of Man. When human religions were principally Chthonic , when every phenomenon of Nature was reputed the result of a supernatural wiU, when (during so many IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 17 centuries or millenaries) nature-cults considered every manifestation of nature as the result of a mysterious willj and sent to their hypothetical gods the incense of fear and supplication, then was the submission to Nature (I do not say of natural laws, but of natural m/?s) universal ; save for efforts made by magic practices, equally mysterious. So the notion of reverence existed, but not generally corresponding notions of morality or of law, save in rare and exceptional philosophical doctrines, and in application to rare cases based on insufficient in- formation. We must, however, recognize in Hesiod, Homer, Lucretius, oi* in the exclamation of Marcus Aurelius, ' This says : O dear city of Cecrops ; may I not say, O dear city of God ! ' a noble feeling of the dignity of Nature. But when the decay of mythology gave place to a purely moral rehgion, Nature became a name for evil, at least among the ignorant mass. When the sense of antiquity reappeared with renaissance of Arts and Sciences, these were not at first able to impose their incomplete solutions, or at least the first results of scientific progress remained the privilege of a minority, contradicted by official opinions. Let us remember Galileo. Even now high and eminent philosophers profess doctrines opposed to the primordial action of natural laws, and consider them as contingent and of an inferior importance compared with the human intelligence. The result of that mode of thinking has been a nar- rowing of the notion of Nature, at least for a time. Therefore the general progress of discoveries of methods, of inventions, has been applied more to 18 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY human facilities of life than to the enlightening of the spirit or the exaltation of an ideal. For the great majority of men, Nature and man are antagonists ; every progress in Science or its application is considered as a victory against Nature. Instead of being respected like a mother, Earth is considered as a sort of servant, charged with the duty of rewarding with material welfare the exertions of its masters. Vainly your great thinker, Sir Francis Bacon, or our Montesquieu, have proclaimed the obligations of man and of the human reason towards Nature and the natural laws ; they have not succeeded in persuading the whole of humanity of the moral necessity to respect the high dignity of natural order. Every progress in mechanical, chemical or physical applications has been first utilized not as a possible gift of Nature, imposing before all a duty, the duty of investigating the connexions of the new particular fact with general order, but, at least commonly, as a new source of material satisfactions and benefits. In this way, at the same time that man discovered new countries and new mysteries, their relative place in the world of phenoniena remained without moral influence. The immediate utilization of the material gain made possible by the new acquisitions was pursued, without reference to the general in- convenience that might result from a deliberate exploitation. Numerous races of animals and even fractions of humanity have perished, victims of that fever whereby countries once fertile have been devastated and mountains ravaged. Eegions naturally prosperous have been ruined by absurd IJN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 19 exploitation, large surfaces of forests ia the tem- perate zone have been suppressed ; extensive parts of Asia or Africa have returned to a desert state, after having been prosperous in antiquity, or have been cultivated against the natural indications. Even lately, many valleys of the Pyrenees or the southern Alps were in danger of complete ruin and in course of total depopulation. North America proceeded, business-like, to the destruction of its forests and to the deterioration of its climate, till recent legal measures partly stopped the disaster. Animal species, like whales or seals, are threatened with destruction ; hunting of small birds in Europe has opened the way to disastrous invasions of plant and animal scourges. And if we enumerated for comparison with the progress of civilization in certain fractions of mankind, the barbarous sup- pressions of primitive populations whose crime was to represent, as compared with us, what we our- selves might once have represented, for instance, in comparison with the Egyptians of the great epochs, we should go the inevitable way of destruction and of despair. Love of possession is the great sinner against love of humanity, cult of Science, reverence for Nature. Now let us be just. It is not possible to conceive a rapid transformation of the world without dis- turbance of equilibrium, and the transformation during the short space of the last three or four centuries has proved overwhelming by its magnitude and rapidity. All nations have been constrained to enter into the human collectivity, without regard to relative powers or natural dispositions. 20 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOaEAPHY The disappearance of the curse of slavery has marked an overturning in the management of the world. But we know now that the victory of civilization against barbarism was even then not yet definitive, and that the greatest struggle of history on the way to justice and liberty was not yet over. The immense change of which we have now to speak has become most intense about the beginning of the preceding (the nineteenth) century. Humanity, having transformed the relations of Man and Earth, has made of the human being in some sort a new creature, and has overthrown the conditions of the old traditional life by a revolution which is still far from having yielded its final results. Onwards from the invention of fire and of the first primitive tools, man ceased to be completely submitted to the natural necessities of the moment. Powers of intellectual selection, variously employed, were bred in the mass of men, training or over- powering that mass in its various states of cohesion, with results tending towards education or towards slavery. The utilized forces of Nature helping human work were during hundreds of centuries borrowed from natural activities, as wind or flowing water or domestication of animals. Suddenly, a fraction of humanity imagines it finds in Nature not only aid but substitution of forces. From inert substances (coal, metals, acids, warmed water, chemical combinations) Science learns to extract and to discipline latent energies, and in that way the active or mechanical organs of man are brought to an unforeseen power. His legs IN THE TWENTIETH OBNTURY 21 grow to the transatlantic steamers or to the trans- continental railways. His voice sounds in a fraction of time around the world. His arm becomes the steam engine or the explosive forces. He is no longer the old man, but a new being, who does not admit any impossibility or any Hmits to his power. Railways, telegraphs, steamboats shorten or suppress distances. Immediate contacts take the place of the former far-distant relations. No people can remain outside the general shaking, no resistance is admitted, and primitive peoples or old traditional civilizations feel with terror the invasion of that new humanity of Europe, greedy, violent, inexor- able, panting like her engines. Here we have two points to remark. First, that the expansion of European (and, of course, American) influence on the world creates a double economic motion, that dominates every day more imperiously the geographic synthesis and the prodigious course of present history. European influence begins by creating new centres of popula- tion, of activity, of production ; these groups borrow from their metropoles the first instruments of their growth. But soon afterwards they feel able to live by themselves. So alternately new markets enrich the metropoles, and then, with a short delay, become competitors. By that sort of alternating development, the closer contacts of various nations, of different influences, do not always engender an extension of fraternity. The common table becomes too narrow for the increasing number and increasing movements of the guests. Instead of hands mutually entwining, 22 FOUNDATIONS OP GEOGRAPHY elbows and feet often come too close. This is the material condition. The second observation is this: moral progress does not correspond to that incommensurable change. The old customs are required if we are to realize a new society ; and yet at the same time material progress overflows, and the springs of spiritual progress run dry. Or, rather, the scientific way is almost exclusively devoted to utilitarian ends and too little to the illumination of these material results. World and man are in a state of surprise or misunderstanding, and force becomes the criterion instead of justice and harmony. And now we must arrive at our conclusion, which will lead us to the events of these last and frightful years. We are here not only in order to inaugurate a new foundation in geographical studies, but also to try to bring our modest contribution to the preparation of the future, after the termination of the most terrible war of all the ages. The chief cause of that war has been an outburst of megalomaniac pride, or rather vanity, in the brains of a people which was once great, with philosophers, musicians, professors, and thinkers, but which has been misled by the inferior ideal of one of the nations that composed it. Precisely at the origin of that fatal error, that has turned into a universal catastrophe, we find some of the ideas alluded to in the first parts of this lecture. Predomi- nance over the facts of Nature was given to a human interpretation, the reality of which would not be IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 23 anterior to its appearance in man's thought. This was the research of principles in sich (in themselves) independently of any relations with the constitution of the universe. Ideals of force and quantitative values replaced the old ideals or morals, love, justice, or liberty to such an extent that for the Prussian authors of the war right does not exist, so long as relative reciprocal forces have not been ascertained by the test of struggle ; victory giving the supremacy with identification of force and right. Far from accepting the notion of the necessary connexions between living beings, who have been prepared in the multimillenary evolution of things, the actual successors of Kant and Herder profess a doctrine that, at least in economic, political or military consequences, almost reaches madness. It is this : Only one fraction of humanity has reached the full superiority of intelligence, the faculty of containing in sich all possibilities, all eventual progress, all future developments of force which will engender truth. That branch of mankind has received a mission. How ? From whom ? Never mind. That mission exists, since they affirm it. (Excuse me, please, if obliged to neglect many details; I speak in summary and harsh words of a people recently led astray from real civilization.) I must add another observation concerning the moral discipline which that military civilization has imposed on Germany (1864-1914). Instead of an education, which signifies an emancipation, a way to greater intellectual and moral liberty, it has become a cultur, completely different from education in meaning, methods, and results. 24 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGKAPHY Consequently, and without insisting any more on the parts of the present and future situation which are not in close contact with geography, we may say that German geographical discipline is exactly the contrary of what the civilized world of our century and coming centuries may and must desire. I say that instead of seeing in the State, with Katzel or Treitschke, exclusively macM or power, with subordination of the various civilized educations to the hard hand and death-dealing spirit of Prussia, we consider as our new imperious ideal the con- struction of a dominating Society of free nations. That society necessarily will be based on Justice and Liberty, and, we must add, on indispensable diversity as a condition of continual progress and fecundity. For we must accept that many still unexplained or unforeseen contrasts shall appear to our successors as normal results of the planetary life, as well as of the historical development of the human mind. Let us remember, before terminating, the power- ful thought of your great genius, Bacon, that man must first obey the natural laws before trying to deal with their effects ; and that of Montesquieu, whom you will permit me, I hope, to quote in French, ' Les his sent les rapports necessaires qui derivent de la nature des choses '. The study of the actual world, I think, leads us to the opinion that these rapports do not correspond to the indications which rule our actual world drunken with a self-intoxication and working to its own destruction. Still one word. This ideal of Science must not IJN TJlJjJ TW-fcJJNTlHiTH CENTUEY 25 he force, but harmony; and geography, if our hopes are not vain, will add to the whole of the sciences a large contribution to the natural and human harmonization. I dare say, a sort of Geosophy. It is not the first time that the spirit of self-over- estimation has tried to master Nature and Man. Very old and differing traditions have transmitted to us tales of several struggles between our Earth and the supernatural world. Men once tried, after the universal flood, to build a tower reaching to the blue sky above the clouds, and, consequently, above the rains. The result was a general confusion among them. But a great hope, that seems to be a ray of pre-science anticipating Science, then appeared to men, and the bow in the clouds became the sign of future universal peace. We must not forget that the same arch was the girdle of the charming messenger of the gods in the Greek mythology ; the bridge, after the battle, leading the warriors to the Walhalla. May we not suppose, in face of these complex origins, that the rainbow had from its origin a vague meaning, which Science makes clear. Unity without differences is not possible on a planet like ours. If we attain an understanding of the necessity of that principle in our future Society of Nations, then will the bow in the clouds become in reality the symbolic bridge, uniting the scientific reality to the moral ideal, the sign of harmony in diversity, as the different colours, instead of struggling for domina- tion one against other, realize by their conjunction the ideal light — the pure, white light of the sun. 26 FOUNDATIONS OF GEOGRAPHY But that ideal of harmony is not yet attained. We cannot seize the future like a ripe fruit ; we must make it, though we have scarcely escaped from the accumulated mountains of obstacles, of barbar- ism, of ignorance, and tyranny. The social atmo- sphere must be purified of old prejudices coming from the past, from hankering after lost privileges, from insane lust of power and influence, that (be sure of it) will not be abandoned all at once, but will persist for some generations at least. As your Prime Minister said in splendid words at the Guildhall, we enter a new period of History. But we have to find, amid the difficulties of every day, the right way, and not only the way but the necessary indications for following it. For this reason we must not forget that a moral and scientific problem lies at the base of every step in progress, and that the greater the progi'ess the greater the problem. Force is not the Ideal, but we want the possibility of immediate employment of universal force for the protection of ideals, as the necessary condition of their realization. But here I risk going beyond the limits of my subject, which I wish to treat in a way exclusively geographical and scientific. Let us be continually attentive to the vision for which the world has been fighting for nearly five years, and the spirit of the Society of Nations will spread around the globe to humanize Earth and Humanity. J PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE OXFORD UNIVEESITY PKESS THE OXFORD SURVEY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE Being a description of the Empire and its constituent territories in their geographical, economic, administrative and social aspects at the present time Edited by A. J. HERBERTSON, M.A., Ph.D. Sometime Professor of Geography in the University of Oxford and O. J. R. HOWARTH, M.A. Assistant Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science IN COLLABORATION WITH SEVENTY-THREE CONTRIBUTORS 'It is a necessary preliminary to imperial organization, in whatever department, that those on whom the task falls (and it may fall not on individuals only but on generations) should possess some organized knowledge of the Empire. To supply an outline of such knowledge has been the object of this Survey. In its volumes there are many sections in which neither the subjects nor even the basis of their treatment are to be termed geographical. Yet the basis of the whole work is geographical, not merely in the sense that an empire (or any of its component units) is a geographical expression, but on the wider consideration which dictates the study of a country first in its strictly physical aspects, next in those of its natural wealth, and then, and not until then, in regard to its inhabitants, whose function is to turn that wealth to use, and whose manner of life is constantly under the control of the natural conditions previously described.'' IN SIX VOLUMES I.— BRITISH ISLES, &c., pp. 608. IV.— AMERICA, pp. 521. II.— ASIA, pp. 515. v.— AUSTRALASIA, pp. 596. III.— AFRICA, pp. 564. VI.— GENERAL SURVEY, pp. 394. Provided with Gazetteer references, special sections giving Statistical Tables, full Indexes, and with 210 Photographs, 27 Coloured Maps, and 193 Figures in text. The Price of the ordinary edition in six volumes, cloth gilt, is £,S 10s. net; or separately, 14s. net per volume. The price of the India paper edition in three double volumes, cloth gilt, leather back, is £4> 10s. net; these volumes are not sold separately. Either edition can be obtained in leather bindings ; prices on application. Prospectuses of the separate volumes on application.