THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY $17
or Spain or Germany or France or Russia or the United States, does not imagine that he has before him a simple case of economics or politics or ethics. He sees the resultant of numer- ous physical and spiritual antecedents, varied in each case by special combinations, and constituting in each case a peculiar organization of primary and secondary factors, the force of which has to be determined in each instance for itself.
Thus the development of thought about society has had the double result, on the one hand, of enlarging and clarifying technical social science, and, on the other hand, of forming the molds in which practical judgments of the world's present social problems must be cast.
All the one-sided views of history are, in the first place, exaggerations of ideas which may be detected very early, at least in germs or suggestions. Barth observes that something of this anthropo-geographical conception of history is to be found in Hippocrates, Herodotus, Thucydides, etc. Coming to more recent times, the idea was so prominent in Herder that many readers have hastily reduced his theory of history to terms of this notion alone. Ritter, professor in the university and military school at Berlin (1779-1859), systematically expanded the idea. His geographical studies have become the basis for school work in the subject in Germany, and his influence may be traced through- out the world. His ambition was to make geography an inter- preter of history. His purpose may be described as a wish to develop a dynamic geography. Yet it would be unfair to treat him as blind to all other influences affecting society. He distinctly recognized a certain diminuendo movement in history, so far as the influence of physical environment is concerned. The view to which Ritter gave such prominence has been exploited with less balance by Buckle ' and Draper.^ The essential thought which Ritter did so much to justify impressed President Gilman of Johns Hopkins University while he was still at Yale. He might have developed a sociology on the basis of geography, if he had not turned to administrative tasks. Professor Geddes, of
' History of Civilization in England,
- Intellectual Development of Europe.
