belong only to it, a situation relatively to the rays of the sun, and with respect to the seas or the neighboring masses, not found identically repeated in any other.

All these various causes excite and combine, in a manner infinitely varied, the play of the physical forces inherent in the matter composing them, and secure to each a climate, a vegetation, and animal life; in a word, an assemblage of physical characters and functions peculiar to it, and really giving it something of individuality.

It is in this sense that we shall speak of the great geographical individuals, that we shall be able to define them, to indicate their characters, to mark their differences; in a word, to apply to them that comparative study, without which there is no true science. But let us not forget that these individuals have the cause of their existence, not within, like organized beings, but without, in the very circumstances of their aggregation. Hence, gentlemen, the great importance of external form; the importance of the geographical forms of contour, of relief of the terrestrial surface; of the relations of size, of extent, of relative position. In considering them simply in a geological point of view, it may appear quite accidental that such a plain should or should not have risen from the bosom of the waters; that such a mountain rises at this place or that; that such a continent should be cut up into peninsulas, or piled into a compact mass, accompanied by, or deprived of, islands. When, finally, we reflect that a depression of a few hundred feet, which would make no change in the essential forms of the solid mass of the globe, would

cause a great part of Asia and of Europe to disappear beneath the water of the oceans, and would reduce America to a few large islands, we might be led to the conclusion that the external shape of the continents has but an inconsiderable importance.

But, in physics, neither of these circumstances is unimportant. Simple examples, without further demonstration, will be sufficient to set this in a clear light.

Is the question of the forms of contour? Nothing characterizes Europe better than the variety of its indentations, of its peninsulas, of its islands. Suppose, for a moment, that beautiful Italy, Greece with its entire Archipelago, were added to the central mass of the continent, and augmented Germany or Russia by the number of square miles they contain; this change of form would not give us another Germany, but we should have an Italy and a Greece the less. Unite with the body of Europe all its islands and peninsulas into one compact mass, and instead of this continent, so rich in various elements, you will have a New Holland with all its uniformity.

Do we look to the forms of relief, of height? Is it a matter of indifference whether an entire country is lifted into the dry and cold regions of the atmosphere, like the central table land of Asia, or is placed on the level of the ocean? See, under the same sky, the warm and fertile plains of Hindoostan, adorned with the brilliant vegetation of the tropics, and the cold and desert plateaus of Upper Tubet; compare the burning region of Vera Cruz and its fevers, with the lofty plains of Mexico and its perpetual spring; the immense forests of the Amazon,

where vegetation puts forth all its splendors, and the desolate paramos of the summits of the Andes, and you have the answer.

And the relative position? Do not the three peninsulas of the south of Europe owe to their position their mild and soft climate, their lovely landscape, their numerous relations, and their common life? Is it not to their situation that the two great peninsulas of India are indebted for their rich nature, and the conspicuous part one of them, at least, has played in all ages? Place them on the north of their continents, Italy and Greece become Scandinavia, and India a Kamtschatka.

All Europe is indebted for its temperate atmosphere to its position relatively to the great marine and atmospheric currents, and to the vicinity of the burning regions of Africa. Place it at the east of Asia, it will be only a frozen peninsula.

Suppose the Andes, transferred to the eastern coast of South America, hindered the trade wind from bearing the vapors of the ocean into the interior of the continent, and the plains of the Amazon and of Paraguay would be nothing but a desert.

In the same manner, if the Rocky Mountains bordered the eastern coast of North America, and closed against the nations of the East and of Europe the entrance to the rich valley of the Mississippi; or if this immense chain extended from east to west across the northern part of this continent, and barred the passage of the polar winds, which now rush unobstructed over these vast plains; let us say even less: if, preserving all the great present features of this continent, we suppose only that

the interior plains were slightly inclined towards the north, and that the Mississippi emptied into the Frozen. Ocean, who does not see that, in these various cases, the relations of warmth and moisture, the climate, in a word, and with it the vegetation and the animal world, would undergo the most important modifications, and that these changes of form and of relative position would have an influence greater still upon the destinies of human societies, both in the present and in the future?

It would be easy to multiply examples; but I do not wish to anticipate the results that will be brought out by the more exact study of these phenomena, which we are about to undertake. It is enough for me to have opened a view of the important part performed by all these physical circumstances, and the necessity of studying them with the most scrupulous care.

Let us not, then, despise the study of these outward forms, the influence of which is so evident. They are everything in this class of things.

We shall see all the great phenomena of the physical and individual life of the continents, and their functions in the great whole, flowing from the forms and the relative situation of the great terrestrial masses, placed under the influence of the general forces of nature.

But, gentlemen, it is not enough to have seized, in this point of view, entirely physical as yet, the functions of the great masses of the continents. They have others, still more important, which, if rightly understood, ought to be considered as the final end for which they have received their existence. To understand and appreciate them at their full value, to study them in their true print

of view, we must rise to a higher position. We must elevate ourselves to the moral world to understand the physical world; the physical world has no meaning except by and for the moral world.

It is, in fact, the universal law of all that exists in finite nature, not to have, in itself, either the reason or the entire aim of its own existence. Every being exists, not only for itself, but forms necessarily a portion of a great whole, of which the plan and the idea go infinitely beyond it, and in which it is destined to play a part. Thus inorganic nature exists, not only for itself, but to serve as a basis for the life of the plant and the animal; and in their service it performs functions of a kind greatly superior to those assigned to it by the laws which are purely physical and chemical. In the same manner, all nature, our globe, admirable as is its arrangement, is not the final end of creation; but it is the condition of the existence of man. It answers as an instrument by which his education is accomplished, and performs, in his service, functions more exalted and more noble than its own nature, and for which it was made. The superior being then solicits, so to speak, the creation of the inferior being, and associates it to his own functions; and it is correct to say that inorganic nature is made for organized nature, and the whole globe for man, as both are made for God, the origin and end of all things.

Science thus comprehends the whole of created things, as a vast harmony, all the parts of which are closely connected together, and presuppose each other.

Considered in this point of view, the earth, and all it