Parallel (geography)

“ Geography sees various forms of the historical movement as the struggle for space in which humanity has forever been engaged. In this struggle the stronger peoples have absorbed ever larger portions of the earth's surface. Hence, through continual subjection to new conditions here or there and to a greater sum total of various conditions, they gain in power by improved variation, as well as numerically by the enlargement of their geographic base. ”

“ In view of the countless springs and tributaries that combine to swell the current of every historical movement, anthropo-geography looks for the origin of a people not in a narrowly defined area, but in a broad, ill-defined center of dispersion, from which many streams simultaneously and successively flow out as from a low-rimmed basin, and which has been filled from many remoter sources. ”

“ THE doctrine that land forms have had a history chiefly distinguishes the new geography from the old. Geography, indeed, takes account of sea as well as land, of the phenomena of the atmosphere, the distribution of organisms, including man, of economic products and political divisions. But the new phase of geography, which is sometimes known as physiography, and later, as geomorphology, is not an isolated and formal element of the science; it rather underlies the whole, modifying or, more truly, controlling climate, organic distribution, and the history of man. ”

“ Ge-ography confines our attention to the Earth, and concentrates it upon the globe, regarded per se, rather than in its relations to the Universe. Taken, therefore, strictly, as already hinted at in the foregoing remark, Geography is the department of science that deals with the globe in all its features, phenomena, and relations, as an independent unit, and shows the connection of this unified whole with man and with man’s Creator. ”

“ History takes for its field of investigation human events in various periods of time; anthropo-geography studies existence in various regions of terrestrial space. But all historical development takes place on the earth's surface, and therefore is more or less molded by its geographic setting. Geography, to reach accurate conclusions, must compare the operation of its factors in different historical periods and at different stages of cultural development. ”

“ In all these questions of former land connection, anthropo-geography follows the lead of bio-geography, whose deductions, based upon the dispersal of countless plant and animal forms, point to the paths of human distribution. ”

“ Thus, as we see the popular survey of regions, geography in its literal and initial sense, deepening into the various analyses of this and that aspect or element of the environment which we call the natural sciences—but which we might with advantage also recognise as what they really are, each a geolysis—so these sciences or geolyses, again, are tending to reunite into a higher geography considered as an account of the evolution of the cosmos. ”

“ In the first two of these arbitrary divisions into which Geography was severed, the relations of astronomy, mathematics, and physics were studied, and their applications to the confused phenomena of the globe investigated. Yet the most important thing of all escaped notice; students overlooked their chief task, the tracing of causation and interdependence in the phenomena, and the relation of every one to the country which supplies its conditions of being. It was not suspected that each phenomenon was one link of a great chain of phenomena, the whole revealing a comprehensive law. ”

“ On the other hand, geography has to deal not only with the land-surface and the waters, but also with climate, the flora and fauna, and human inhabitants, both of the earth as a whole and of each separate country, confining its view to the present only—that is to say, to the Quaternary period. ”

“ But if it be impossible to ignore History in the teaching of Political Geography, it is just as impossible to exclude from our attention great physical features and characteristics. Surface-configuration, climate, and natural products all claim our attention. It is obvious, in fact, that the proper study of Political Geography must give us at least a general notion of the configuration, the river-systems, and climatic conditions of many different lands. ”

“ Moreover, the water causes different degrees of separation between the land-masses, according as it appears as inlet, strait, sea, an island-strewn or islandless ocean; it determines the grouping of the habitable areas and consequently the geographic basis of the various degrees of ethnic and cultural kinship between the divisions of land. Finally, since the sea is for man only a highway to some ulterior shore, this geography of the land-masses in relation to the encompassing waters points the routes and goals of human wanderings. ”

“ In history, the question of territory,—by which is meant mere area in contrast to specific geographic conditions—has constantly come to the front, because a state obviously involved land and boundaries, and assumed as its chief function the defence and extension of these. Therefore political geography developed early as an offshoot of history. Political science has often formulated its principles without regard to the geographic conditions of states, but as a matter of fact, the most fruitful political policies of nations have almost invariably had a geographic core. ”

“ More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated them in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution of navigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population, can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data for the conclusions are drawn from every part of the world, and each fact interpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang. Therefore anthropology, sociology and history should be permeated by geography. ”

“ Zoogeography and plant geography are concerned with the division of the earth’s surface into regions possessing individual characteristics in regard to their fauna or flora. The principle of regional division, indeed, has become a leading principle of geographical research, in regard not only to fauna and flora, but to man as well ”

“ As is only natural with a developing subject, much discussion has taken place as to the exact limits of its field of action, and many definitions have been proposed with the object of setting forth these limits as clearly as possible. But it is sufficient for our purpose to note that geography deals with the surface-relief of the earth, and with the influence which that relief exercises upon the distribution of other phenomena, and especially upon the life of man. ”

“ The sciences of geonomy are divided usually into two correlative groups, called geography, in which five departments are pretty well recognized, namely, ethereal geography, stellar geography, aerial geography, hydrographic geography, and land geography ”

“ Into almost every anthropo-geographical problem the element of environment enters in different phases, with different modes of operation and varying degrees of importance. Since the causal conception of geography demands a detailed analysis of all the relations between environment and human development, it is advisable to distinguish the various classes of geographic influences. ”

“ The division of the earth's surface into 28 per cent. land and 72 per cent. water is an all important fact of physical geography and anthropo-geography. Owing to this proportion, the land-masses, which alone provide habitats for man, rise as islands out of the three-fold larger surface of the uninhabitable ocean. Consequently, the human species, like the other forms of terrestrial life, bears a deeply ingrained insular character. ”

“ But the progress in our knowledge of geography is, and has been, by no means confined to the improvement of our maps, or to the discovery and description of new regions of the earth, but has extended to the causes which have led to the present configuration of the surface. ”

“ The continents are never to be regarded as high, dead masses of land, but as vital and effective instruments, working upon each other ceaselessly, and helping each other to attain the consummation intended in the counsels of the Divine Mind. The unity of the earth, the unity of the continents, the unity of every physical feature of the continents, and the building all up together in a perfect symmetry and mutual adaptation of parts, is the crowning thought of Geographical Science. ”

“ When Geography ceases to be a lifeless aggregate of unorganized facts, and becomes the science which deals with the earth as a true organization, a world capable of constant development, carrying in its own bosom the seeds of the future, to germinate and unfold, age after age, it first attains the unity and wholeness of a science, and shows that it grows from a living root ”

“ The earth's superficial area is the primal and immutable condition of earth-born, earth-bound man; it is the common soil whence is sprung our common humanity. Nations belong to countries and races to continents, but humanity belongs to the whole world. Naught but the united forces of the whole earth could have produced this single species of a single genus which we call Man.
Relation of area to life.
The relation of life to the earth's area is a fundamental question of bio-geography. ”

“ The physical and natural sciences are concerned in geography only so far as they deal with the forms of the earth’s surface, or as regards the distribution of phenomena. The distinctive task of geography as a science is to investigate the control exercised by the crust-forms directly or indirectly upon the various mobile distributions. This gives to it unity and definiteness, and renders superfluous the attempts that have been made from time to time to define the limits which divide geography from geology on the one hand and from history on the other. ”

“ On account of the importance of thoroughly understanding the articulation of great districts, in contradistinction to a mere division, which implies no organic and living correlation of parts, and which gives over to mathematics, political history, and fortuitous circumstances the duty of explaining geographical phenomena, it is instructive to trace the footsteps of our science back to some of the earlier conceptions. ”

“ Plateaus and mountains, different as they are in appearance and characteristics, yet constitute, in their mutual action and reaction, and in their forms of transition from the one to the other, the highland system of the globe. Their relations are inexhaustible as Nature herself. We cannot study them without profit ”

“ The land has had a history, not less than the human races that inhabit it.
One can hardly consider attentively the future progress of geography without being convinced that, in the wide development yet in store for this branch of human inquiry, one of its main lines of advance must be in the direction of what may be termed geographical evolution. The geographer will no longer be content to take continents and islands, mountain-chains and river valleys, table-lands and plains, as initial or aboriginal outlines of the earth's surface. ”

“ We have now been tracing upon a spherical surface the region which we state to be occupied by the habitable earth; and whoever would represent the real earth as near as possible by artificial means, should make a globe like that of Crates, and upon this describe the quadrilateral within which his chart of geography is to be placed. ”

“ Thus, if Political Geography be closely connected and interwoven, as it were, with History, not less intimate are its relations to Physical Geography. It does not embrace all Physical Geography, but it introduces us to many facts and — 4 — phenomena, the causes and mutual relations of which we cannot understand without first mastering the teachings of Physical Geography. In the study of this latter science we come more closely into contact with Nature ”

“ In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location, anthropo-geography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term. The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet the frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or their specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of mountain, desert and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to displace, or more often by both. ”

“ Geography, Maps, &c. The knowledge of the regions and localities inhabited by mankind, or where colonies are sent, empires founded, is needful to history, in order to understand and treat the events and migrations. The physical configuration of the land, the climates, plains, mountains and streams, have a great influence on civilization and communications. Physical geography is constant and invariable: while civil or ethnographical geography is constantly fluctuating in limits and names. ”

“ The objects of the course were: To illustrate the value of systematic classification in the study of physical geography in order that forms of similar origin might be grouped together; to advocate the importance of studying the evolution of geographic forms in time, so that forms similar in origin but dissimilar in ace (and consequently in degree of development) might be regarded as their natural relations; to apply these principles to the physical geography of our own land; and, finally, to promote the use of models in geographic teaching. ”

“ This law is traced in the very geological qualities of the chain, not in the later form. The [96] outer form is often very deceptive, the very convulsions which indicate the surer signs having served to obliterate what we should suppose the most prominent marks. The present of mountains must often be studied in the light of their past. Orography must be interpreted by geology. But the geological surveys of the earth are as yet very imperfect; the outer form has often to be accepted as the only guide. ”