OR some years past it has been assumed that geographical determinism is a discredited mode of thinking.' If a geographer believed in such a heresy he F was careful to maintain his respectability by hiding the fact. The majority, who could not in good faith dismiss it in its entirety, took refuge in "possibilism."2 At first glance possibilism seemed to give that scope for freedom in man's actions which had been denied in a strict environmentalism ; but although it spoke in terms of collaboration between man and nature, and even stressed that man exercised a choice and thereby brought in freedom of will, it was clear that the choice was one within limits, and that those limits were set by nature. Although man was not "fatally determined" he was, it seems, "circumscribed," and his freedom was more apparent than real. The famous words, "There are not necessities, but everywhere possibilities," lose something of their all-embracing freedom when we remember that to Febvre different regions offered possibilities differing sufficiently in number and quality to warrant a hierar~hy.~ The possibilities are in fact limited. Man chooses, but only from the range with which nature presents him. This, after all, is not very dissimilar from the modified determinism of Griffith Tay10r.~ I n the latter there is, it is true, a Master Plan, and on it a path which is indicated by nature and which man would do well to learn. But even if, as possibilists suggest, there are several paths-i.e., several possibilities-from which man can choose one, does not this also suggest a plan? Indeed, on closer examination, possibilism proves to be more a variant of determinism than of libertarianism: but SO innocuous a variant did it seem that geographers on the whole were content, happy in the thought that determinism as a doctrine belonged to the past.And then the skeleton in the cupboard stirred ! A hint was given here and there that it was time geographers found a "new determinism"-all that -was needed to restore the physical environment to its proper determining role in the scheme of things was a redefinition of the old categories. Professor Spate, for example, ad-
