gations he establishes the last great subdivision-anthropogeography.

It is impossible in this short review to enter into more than the outlines of this vast program; but even these show that we have to deal here with the foundation of all geographic work of the last fifteen years. From this time we must reckon the wonderful development of recent geographic investigation in Germany, represented not only by the name of Richthofen, but by the names of Penck, Suess, Richter, Brückner, Supan, Günther, Gerland, Drygalsky, Hettner, Phillipson, and others.

It was natural that, Richthofen himself having entered the field of geography from the geologic side, those branches of geography which are most closely connected with geology should have been most cultivated by him and his followers. Thus it happened that those geographic questions which are related to natural science received most of the advantage of the new impulse, namely, the problems of physical geography. It even seemed for some time as if the idea of scientific geography would be only applied to this division, as if geography was nothing but a subdivision of natural science. This opinThis opinion was even held by a party of the geographers themselves; but now, with the exception of a very small minority, of which Professor Gerland, at Strassburg, is the most important representative, it may be looked upon as a past epoch in geographic evolution. Valuable as the study of physical geography is, it cannot be denied that it is only a part of geography, not geography itself, and that the topic most alive in public interest, the question of human life, work, and influence upon the earth's surface, the so-called political geography, is just as indispensable. The study of physical geography alone would deal with the earth as a dead planet, a planet without life or history.

This disproportion between the pro

gress of physical and the backwardness of political geography was naturally felt most sorely in schools, which would make the former a very interesting branch of teaching, while there was no way of learning the latter except by learning single facts by heart, since the knowledge of these facts was indispensable after all. For "no physical or geological wisdom," said then Professor Kirchhoff, of Halle, one of the foremost men in the progress of school methods, "will help him who does not know whether Madrid lies in Spain and Petersburg in Russia, or vice versa. Thus necessity led geographers back quite naturally from the overemphasis of physical geography to the further pursuit of Ritter's ways. It was recognized that such an important branch of instruction must needs have a scientific foundation, and that if this foundation had not yet been discovered, the reason might be that the right point of view had not yet been taken.

RATZEL

This point of view was found and Ritter's method taken up again with the improvements of modern science by Friedrich Ratzel, Richthofen's successor in the Leipzig chair of geography. We are reminded of Humboldt's remarks on the spirit of physical geography when we read Ratzel's words: The complaints of the dryness of political geography, as old as geographic instruction itself, are heard again and again in our times. They seem to be the result of lack in pedagogic skill; but the fault lies deeper, it lies in the scientific treatment of political geography. For this is the cause of all the difficulties in this branch of instruction, that the facts of political geography still lie much too rigidly beside each other and beside those of physical geography. The instruction in this important branch will never be rendered interesting unless the

material is cleared up by classification and refined by investigations, paying special attention to comparison and evolution." (Preface to the Political Geography.)

The first attempt in this direction was the Anthropogeography (Munich, 1882), or Outlines of the Application of Geography to History. Although the book was not spared opposition from the first, it started a new epoch in geographic research, and after various special works on the same subject, a second volume followed several years later. In 1896 a treatise, Der Staat und sein Boden, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Saxon Academy of Sciences, gave the problem a still closer connection with political questions, and in 1897 the author published a new standard work, containing the application of the scientific method to the very political geography which had so long been only a list of names and numbers, the Politische Geographie. The word political in this title stands for more than a mere nomination; the aim of the book is to define the close connection of politics and geography in a manner which makes it valuable equally for the statesman and for the geographer. The author hopes it may give the former a better understanding of geographical, the latter of political, influences in his sphere of interest, and thus awake, not only in teachers, but in all his readers, of whatever condition, what he calls "geo-. graphischen Sinn," geographical feeling, just as we speak of acquiring the feeling for a language in philological studies. To him, states are organisms in various stages of development, and they are made geographic organisms by being most closely bound to the soil on which they develop, penetrating deeper and deeper into its resources. As such geographic phenomena they can be observed, described, measured, drawn, compared like every other phenomenon of life on the earth. The mistake of

former political and sociological theories was that they dealt with a too theoretical conception of the state-a state, as it were, which stands in the air, and which owns the soil as a kind of large property. But we must put that airy state on the solid foundation of the earth, and then we shall get a living conception of the political side of geography. According to this programme, the author deals in nine chapters with the following topics: The State and its Soil the Historical Movement and the Growth of States; Fundamental Laws of the Increase of the Area of the State; Situation; Area; Boundaries; Land and Sea; the World of the Water; Mountains and Plains. He presented one year later the application of his principles in the little book entitled Deutschland, which every one who wishes to obtain an idea of modern German geography should read.

WHAT IS GEOGRAPHY?

Geography, then, as carried on in Germany, is a field of manifold studies. It requires the knowledge of mathematical and physical geography, including mapdrawing and surveying, oceanography, climatology, geography of plants and animals, anthropogeography, political, and commercial geography, history of geography, together with a general acquaintance with the cognate sciences, such as geology, physics, ethnology, history, political economy, and philosophy, and also, if possible, with botany, zoology, and anthropology; but even this would not yet make a geographer. We must remember Humboldt's words, that geography is not a so-called cyclopedia of natural sciences," and that from the knowledge which the sciences impart we must always proceed to the consideration of the whole. The whole, as shown in Ratzel's Deutschland and a number of similar publications, consists in the application of this general knowl

edge to a certain region of the surface of the earth, the so-called “Länderkunde" of German geography, which is no longer a mere description of the different countries, but a scientific investigation of their characteristics. is quite significant that no other language has an exact synonym of this denomination, a fact which more than anything else shows that it is a German specialty of entirely German origin. The "Länderkunde," so often called very inadequately "descriptive geography," is represented at German universities, as well as general and systematic geography. Every professor will, beside these courses, devote a large part of his time to a single country or continent, which always is the most interesting part of the whole study.

ELEMENTARY TEACHING

In school geography "Länderkunde" is of course the dominant subject, to which all general geography has only a subordinate and tributary relation; for to children's eyes we must never present the dry and, to them, sterile facts of systematic knowledge. It is applied science which fits a child's understanding and rouses his interest. If we want children to pay attention to effects and causes we must let them see things and incidents in which they operate, give them a picture of concrete life, not abstract reflection. Now, in order to thus embody the principles of geography, no better means can be found than

Länderkunde." A course in geography that opens with a definition of geography and of the primary notions of the geographic vocabulary, and which gives an introductory course on the principal subjects of general physical geography before taking up the study of a definite part of the earth, would not only be very unpsychological, but do also the greatest harm to geography itself. For to the young learner who has to

put such ger eralizations into his brains without enough knowledge of details to make him feel their general truth geography will appear nothing but a complexity of phrases to be learned by heart, and this preconception will cause him to look at all the following geographic data from a wrong position; all the special facts will be received by him only as illustrations of the preceding principles, just as formerly in the teaching of languages the spoken language appeared only as a collection of examples to apply grammatical rules; but this was putting the cart before the horse. This same mistake has often made geography a very dull subject, while it can be one of the most interesting, even for young minds. The secret of a successful teacher of geography, as of languages, is to give the pupil a whole and living unit, of which his imagination may get hold, and to present the unit so that he will feel the leading principles before he has learned them separately. Thus their necessity impresses itself upon his mind. spontaneously, instead of being demonstrated to him as a scientific Credo.

In such a course it is then not permitted to treat a continent or a state or another district first physically and afterward, perhaps a year later, politically, or even, as I have seen in textbooks, first politically and then physically, or to treat the subject by classifying the details under special headings, as relief, watershed, productions, dwellingplaces, etc., through which the causal connections are inevitably torn asunder. Instead of this the teacher will, after a short general survey of the whole, divide it up into a number of smaller units or natural regions, within which he will treat the different topics and their mutual influences upon each other. He will make, as it were, a horizontal section through the vertical columns of the topics named above, and work out the picture given by each of these sections as an individual subject and in its rela

tions to its neighbors. After this a short historical sketch, with sufficient reference to the geographic conditions of the historical development, will furnish the basis for an examination of the political contours of the map, in which much repetition of the preceding lessons will come in. Reciting the geographic facts according to special topics may be used as a means of repetition, as a help to the pure memory of names, but even then must never be done without always pointing out on the map the location of the places mentioned. It is, however, absolutely to be condemned as a part of the lesson, because it kills the geographic feeling.

The first country studied in this way is, of course, the native country, especially the home of the child and its environs. This home geography fills the first year and gives opportunity to make the child acquainted with the preliminaries of general geography, not in a systematic, but in an inductive way, and to introduce it to the thoughtful use of the map. Map-reading may be carried on to a very high degree of perfection, and even furnish positive knowledge of phenomena which cannot be studied in nature, if map-drawing for school purposes is done with such perfection as in Germany, where the principle that for children the best things are just good enough has exercised a wonderful influence also in this direction. The cartographic productions of Debes (Leipzig), Perthes (Gotha), and Reimer (Berlin) have no peer in any country. In a German geography class, therefore, you can observe that the teacher really gets his pupils to read the cartographic representations like letters in a book, to use the map as a directory in walking, to find their way easily in unknown places by the aid of the map, and perhaps we have here one of the reasons why Germany more than any other country is the home of pedestrian trips and of travelers' guide-books.

In the second year follows the study of Germany, after this a general survey of the globe and continents, then the special study of Europe and of the foreign continents. It is not until then that the systematic teaching of general physical geography begins, which is now indeed nothing but the repeating, putting together, completing, and systematizing of what the pupils have already learned in the former grades in an occasional and inductive way. Part of the schools make this the final course; others take after it a second and more advanced course of the geography of Germany, with special attention to political, social, economic, commercial, and colonial problems, for which mature pupils are better fitted than the children of the first German course. Thus on leaving school they have a clear idea of the actual state and conditions of the country in whose life they are to participate. On the whole, the average German who does not pursue higher studies will have from seven to nine years of geography, with generally two hours a week for 40 weeks each year. This makes about 550 to 700 lessons in the whole course, or 17 per cent of all the instruction imparted outside the university.

WHY STUDY GEOGRAPHY?

It seems proper to ask why German educators lay so much stress on geographic training. What is the value of a thorough study of geography for education and for life?

There are, of course, a number of practical reasons. The knowledge of many geographic facts is so necessary for everybody that even when no higher merit had yet been found in it, the study of geography was included at least in the schedule of primary schools.

As to scientific geography, the question has often seemed not very easy to answer. It has been objected that if

geography comprised all the various branches named above, it could hardly be called a science, but was rather an agglomeration of fragmentary knowledge borrowed from a dozen other sciences, the study of which was an impossibility even for a first-rate intelligence, and must needs lead to a kind of half knowledge of everything which was the very contrary of scientific work. It has been one of the most serious tasks of geographers to refute this objection which has been repeated most obstinately over and over again, as it arises from an entire misunderstanding of the geographical spirit. In the first place, there is no science now known in which one mind can have an equally complete command of all the subdivisions; even the greatest men in medicine, zoölogy, history, etc., are specialists in some definitely limited area, while they merely keep up with the scientific progress of the rest and leave other specialists to do other special work. Yet nobody will accuse them of superficiality. Why should not the geographer enjoy the same privilege? But even if it were possible for one man to have a perfect and up-to-date knowledge of all knowledge connected with geography, that would not make him a geographer. Geography is not a "cyclopedia" of all the enumerated sciences. That is the point where erroneous judgments on geography generally start. It is not the number and character of the facts which constitute geography, but the ways and methods in which they are studied. This is what makes the geographic spirit and what gives geography the character of a separate science apart from all the others, however closely connected with them in many points.

Thus, for example, the physicist may study, describe, and explain the deviation of the compass or the differences of temperature of the atmosphere; but the geographer (Humboldt) will locate on the map the points of observations and

connect equal observations by lines, and from the arrangement of these lines draw conclusions as to the influence of magnetism or temperature upon the surface of the earth; or the statesman will draw and claim boundaries for the state which he represents for such and such reasons ; the geographer will look at and compare the boundaries of the states in different parts of the world, find out the laws active in their formation, tell us why certain boundaries have always been objects of contention while others never were disputed, and explain the present bound aries, their origin, and their importance for the life of the nations (Ratzel); or the geologist will study and explain the different strata of the earth's crust; the geographer (Brückner) will examine their distribution over the surface of the globe, compare it with the present arrangement of mountain ranges, and explain out of the geologic past the features of the geographic present. whatever problem the geographer may be interested, the object of his investigation must be connected with the earth, the earth's surface as a whole and as the primary unit. However interesting may be the object of his special research, he cannot allow himself to be entirely confined to it without ceasing to be a geographer.

POINT OF VIEW

In

The poet Jean Paul says: "There are two ways of enjoying the world. One is to lie down in the grass, look at the green stalks and pretty flowers about you, watch the humming insects, and thus fondly take in all the wonderful revelations of life which present themselves in this seclusion. The other is to rise up high in the air like a bird, so high that all the little and mean things vanish from your view, and you only behold the whole of the great, wonderful creation beneath you.'

In geography both methods are combined. By the peculiar character of its