One of the “three most philosophical writers on climate,”[[136]] Charles Comte, not related by birth to the founder of Positivism, is, likewise, one of the earliest disciples of Herder in France. Herder “seems to have helped to inspire”[[137]] Charles Comte’s Traité de Législation.[[138]] Charles Comte’s “discussion of the questions which relate to the influence of physical nature on human development must have been the fruit of long and careful study. It was as great an advance on Montesquieu’s treatment of the subject as Montesquieu’s had been on that of Bodin. It disproved, corrected, or confirmed a host of Montesquieu’s observations and conclusions. It showed that he had ascribed too much to climate, and too little to the configuration of the earth’s surface, the distribution of mountains and rivers, &c.; and that he had conceived vaguely, and even to a large extent erroneously, of the modes in which climate and the fertility or sterility of soil affect human development. But while Comte thus justly criticised Montesquieu, he himself exaggerated the efficiency of physical agencies. Indeed, he virtually traced to their operation the whole development of history ... he has assumed that physical agencies ultimately account for historical change and movement, for public institutions and laws....

“Charles Comte fully recognises that the same physical medium has a very different influence on different generations; and that institutions and laws, education and manners, and, in a word, all the constituents of the social medium, have as real an influence on the development of history as those of the physical medium. Yet he assumes the latter to be the first, although to a large extent only indirect, causes of the whole amount of change effected.”[[139]]

Victor Cousin, another Frenchman, reconnects with Herder. Cousin had direct acquaintance with at least the principal work of Herder, for the rendering of whose “Ideen” into French by Quinet he seems responsible.[[140]] In the eighth lecture of his “admired”[[141]] Cours de 1828 sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire, he discourses on the rôle that geography plays in history.

F. Guizot, in the fifth lecture of The History of Civilization,[[142]] comments briefly on the influence of external circumstances upon liberty.

The romantic French historiographer, Jules Michelet, in his Histoire de France (second volume, 1833), and in his Histoire Romaine (1839), interlinks geography with history, and brilliantly describes the countries whose histories he is writing. Like some before him (such as Montesquieu), and many after him (such as Riehl, Curtius, and Gothein),[[143]] who traveled in the respective countries before describing them or composing their history, Michelet, as one preliminary measure toward equipping himself for such a task, visited Italy[[144]] and various parts of France, the latter repeatedly, in order to gain a first hand impression of the physical milieu and the people of those lands. He is said to be the first [sic!] in France who, under the influence of Herder, had the idea that geography was the foundation of history: “Sous l’influence de Herder, il [Michelet] eut, le premier en France, l’idée que la géographie était le fondement de l’histoire: ‘Le matériel, la race, le peuple qui la continue me paraissaient avoir besoin qu’on mît dessous une bonne et forte base, la terre, qui les portât et qui les nourrît. Et notez que ce sol n’est pas seulement le théâtre de l’action. Par la nourriture, le climat, etc., il y influe de cent manières. Tel le nid, tel l’oiseau. Telle la patrie, tel l’homme.’”[[145]] Without this basis, the actor in history, the people, would be treading on air like figures in some Chinese paintings. Says Jules Simon of the celebrated tableau in the second volume of the Histoire de France: “Son héros [Michelet’s] ... c’est la France. Il en fait une description qui remplit tout le troisième livre et qui est un chef-d’oeuvre. Chose nouvelle, cette géographie a autant de mouvement que l’histoire. Elle est animée, vivante, agissante. Il en montre à merveille l’utilité, la nécessité. Sans cette base géographique, le peuple, l’acteur historique, semblerait marcher en l’air, comme dans les peintures chinoises, où le sol manque.”[[146]] In the Introduction to Universal History (1831), Michelet says, “In Germany and Italy, fatality is still strong; moral freedom is still borne down by powerful influences of race, locality, and climate.”[[147]]

Ernst Kapp, in the Philosophische Erdkunde,[[148]] criticizes writers on the philosophy of history for their failure to give due attention to the geographical existence of the nations. Nor are geographical intermezzos alone sufficient: “Man [these writers] hat zwar eine Ahnung von dem geographischen Element in der Geschichte, nicht aber das deutliche Bewußtsein, daß die Menschheit an dem Planeten ihre physische Individualität besitzt, daß sie zu ihm sich verhält, wie die Seele zum Leib. Anstatt die geographische Betrachtung durch und durch mit der historischen verwachsen zu lassen [which he proposes to do], hat man teils geographische Intermezzos nach subjektivem Gutdünken ... eingestreut, teils auch sich mit einer dem Ganzen voraufgeschickten geographischen Grundlage ein für allemal begnügt. Man hat hierbei nicht bedacht, daß man die Geschichte, wenn man ihr den planetarischen Grund und Boden, auf den man sie von vornherein stellt, wegrückt, zwischen Himmel und Erde schweben läßt und ihre Behandlung dem veränderlichen Luftzuge des subjektiven Beliebens mehr oder minder preisgibt ... Darin ruht die Selbständigkeit der geographischen Wissenschaft, ..., daß ihr Objekt die Erde ist, ... die Erde, wie sie bestimmend auf die Entwicklung des Geistes einwirkt und hinwiederum vom Geist bestimmt und verändert wird. Dies Verhältnis des Planeten zum Geist ist ein wesentliches.”[[149]]

Arnold H. Guyot, “ce Suisse transplanté en Amérique,”[[150]] treats the same topic in the Géographie physique comparée, considérée dans ses rapports avec l’histoire de l’humanité.[[151]]

The frequently misquoted Henry Thomas Buckle, in the celebrated second chapter of the History of Civilization in England,[[152]] shows the largely indirect effects of climate, food, and soil, chiefly upon the civilizations—of India, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, etc.—anterior to those of Europe, and of a fourth class of physical agents, namely, of what he terms the general aspect of nature upon the imagination—religion, literature, art—of those peoples. Buckle does not maintain that these four classes of the Environment were the sole factors in producing civilization; in fact he makes it quite clear that they were not the only factors, that they affected the civilizations mentioned in an indirect way and he indicates how this has taken place. Buckle’s statements of his ideas had been misrepresented, twisted, and distorted to such a degree that John M. Robertson felt impelled to write a whole book[[153]] in rebuttal, in order to set Buckle’s detractors and controversial critics right and to refute their unfair imputations to Buckle’s intended meaning.

The romanticist Ernst Curtius is sometimes referred to as one of those historians who give adequate expression to the action of the physical milieu upon the course of history. But Vallaux declares that Curtius, like Michelet, has made of human geography and of political geography merely a preliminary and introductory science to history: “une science auxiliaire ou plutôt liminaire, sorte de portique d’entrée [the italics are ours] pour leurs brillantes constructions,”[[154]] lending thus support to Kapp’s contention.[[155]] Nor would Ratzel be content with a portrayal of the land as an introduction to the history of a country, even though it be as richly colored as that drawn by Curtius.[[156]] A description, in itself, fails to penetrate to the core of the relation. If we now turn to Curtius’ The History of Greece,[[157]] we find that the first chapter in the first book[[158]] considers Land and People, a part of which (pp. 9–18) gives a geographical description of Hellas, and another part of which (pp. 19–25, seven pages scant) points out the connection between the land and the people. Elsewhere,[[159]] Curtius shows the interaction between the physical environment of Athens and the Athenians.[[160]]

George Grote, whose account of the relation between the Greek land and the Greek people is held by some[[161]] to be excellent, in A History of Greece,[[162]] devotes four pages (227–30) of the chapter on General Geography and Limits of Greece to show the effects of the configuration of Greece upon the political relation of the inhabitants[[163]] and the effects upon their intellectual development,[[164]] the rest of the chapter being given over to a description of the geography of Greece.