and social development. So that, such a climate and soil, such aspects of nature and local circumstances being given, such a nation necessarily follows.[1] The other method is that of Carl Ritter, Arnold Guyot, and Cousin.[2] These take account of the freedom of the human will, and the power of man to control and modify the forces of nature. They also take account of the original constitution of man, and the primitive type of nations; and they allow for results arising from the mutual conflict of geographical conditions. And they, especially, recognize the agency of a Divine Providence controlling those forces in nature by which the configuration of the earth's surface is determined, and the distribution of its oceans, continents, and islands is secured; and a providence, also, directing the dispersions and migrations of nations—determining the times of each nation's existence, and fixing the geographical bounds of their habitation, all in view of the moral history and spiritual development of the race,—"that they may feel after, and find the living God." The relation of man and nature is not, in their estimation, a relation of cause and effect. It is a relation of adjustment, of harmony, and of reciprocal action and reaction. "Man is not"—says Cousin—"an effect, and nature the cause, but there is between man and nature a manifest harmony of general laws.". . . ."Man and nature are two great effects which, coming from the same cause, bear the same characteristics; so that the earth, and he who inhabits it, man and nature, are in perfect harmony."[3] God has created both man and the universe, and he has established between them a striking harmony. The earth was made for man; not simply to supply his physical wants, but also to minister to his intellectual and moral development. The earth is not a mere dwelling-place of nations, but a school-house, in which God himself is superintending the education of the race. Hence
- ↑ See chap. ii. "History of Civilization."
- ↑ Ritter's "Geographical Studies;" Guyot's "Earth and Man;" Cousin's "History of Philosophy," lec. vii., viii., ix.
- ↑ Lectures, vol. i. pp. 162, 169.
