Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/755

 SCIENCE AND CITIZENSHIP 739

the truths revealed to us by social geography is that every city is engaged from moment to moment, from day to day, in determin- ing for itself how far and to what extent, here and now, it is, and will become the city of God, and how far it is, here and now, and will become, a city of Satan. In other words, predestination is a recurring, and not a stationary phenomenon.

XIV. It may be objected by some traitorous professors of the science that the humanist note has extremely little part and place in geography, and the idealist one none at all. But it is always open to us to choose our standards of geography from the great founders of the science, rather than from the bookworms parasitic on Petermanris Mitteilungen. And, in any case, to the de- terminist geographer, whose skepticism refuses to see the idealist side of the shield, we may reply in the words of Turner to the critic who protested that he could see nothing in nature like one of the artist's pictures : "Don't you wish you could ?" The father of history, Herodotus himself, in passing to humanist studies by way of geography, made a step which, in the normal growth of the geographical mind, does not stop short of the loftiest social and civic idealism. This tendency is abundantly illustrated in the lives of the great founders of modern geog- raphy. It is seen in Alexander von Humboldt, who continued and completed his geographical career as counselor of state, and coadjutor, with his more humanist brother, Wilhelm, in the organization of educational institutions. It is seen in Karl Ritter, who, as he progressed in writing his great work, was driven more and more to an emphasis of the historical factor. But it is seen most of all in the life and work of Elisee Reclus, whose recent loss we deplore, and whose place in the history of the science it is too soon to estimate ; but there are those who believe it will be a culminating one. The eighteen massive volumes of his Geograpie universelle were but the preliminary training and preparation for his magnum opus, his Social Geography, happily completed before his death, though as yet unpublished. But the general character of the work may be foretold by those who were familiar with his riper thoughts. It is safe to assert that his