elements of knowledge. It is for us, therefore, to enter upon our
inquiries with investigation rather than theory, to test the knowledge of
which tradition has put us in possession, and to advance, as we may, to
the new and the unexplored.
Man is the first token that we meet, that our study of the earth must
contemplate it as an organized whole, its unity consummating in him. As
every individual must, in his own career, epitomize the history of the
race, childhood, youth, manhood, and decrepitude, so each man mirrors in
his own life the locality where he lives. Whether dwelling in the North
or in the South, in the East or in the West, whether the shepherd of the
Tyrolese Highlands, or the Hollander of the plains, every man is, in a
manner, the representative of the home that gave him birth. In the people
the country finds its reflection. The effect of the district upon the
nature of its inhabitants in size and figure, in color and temperament,
in speech and mental characteristics, is unmistakable. Hence the almost
infinite diversity in the peculiarities of culture and attainment, as
well as of tendency in different nations. Anthropology and Ethnography,
the science of man and of race, are the running commentaries of Geography
and Topography. The historian and the geographer work toward each
other,—the historian going back from the acts of men to study the scenes
which have conditioned their life, the geographer going forward from
the study of the habitat of men to that of their deeds. The fundamental
question of history is, in fact, What relation does the country bear to
the national life? What relation to the civil structure, the state?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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