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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



bor, as we know that every village does to the 

 present day in the level agricultural reaches of 

 Upper India. 1 The crops that grow in the one 

 grow equally well in the other. The organiza- 

 tion, the habits of life, the external appearance, 

 differ but little from place to place. There may 

 be some slight internal differentiation between the 

 members of each community: the village weaver 

 may provide coarse homespun cloth, the village 

 potter may mould rude earthen vessels, the vil- 

 lage priest may appease the angry gods ; but lit- 

 tle intercourse need exist between the larger units, 

 whose productions so exactly repeat each other ; 

 and, even if such intercourse should happen to be 

 set up, it could result in no enlargement of ideas, 

 no growth of new mental connections, no fruit- 

 ful struggle to effect fresh coordinations of means 

 to end, of abstract knowledge to practical action. 

 If the race inhabiting such a district be one whose 

 previous conditions have forced it to acquire the 

 arts of cultivation and of building, as we know to 

 have been the case with the Aryan colonists of 

 India, then it will go on to develop a consider- 

 able material civilization of the objective type, 

 with just such internal differentiations between 

 its members as we find in the Egyptian, Assyrian, 

 Babylonian, Indian, and Chinese systems ; but it 

 cannot reach that higher stage of free mental 

 activity which arises only from the constant sub- 

 jection of many separate individuals to new and 

 ever-changing external combinations, requiring to 

 be met from time to time by equally new and ap- 

 propriate internal coordinations. 



Even supposing the descendants of a race 

 which possesses the higher form of civilization, 

 here designated as Hellenic, to be placed in simi- 

 lar conditions to those above described, it must 

 follow that their superior culture will tend to be- 

 come degraded, or at least will not tend to attain 

 any further development. The European colo- 

 nist, transplanted to the vast prairies of the West- 



1 Those who know India from personal experience 

 may perhaps object to this statement — the existence 

 of castes inhabiting separate villages. But it must be 

 remembered that the distinction of caste was origi- 

 nally one of race, and has been perpetuated by minor 

 differences of function or position. Thus the Khatris, 

 Baniyas, and Aroras, are trading tribes, distributed 

 among villages of other caste ; the Jats, on the con- 

 trary, are cultivators who live together on arable soil; 

 while the Giijars are semi-nomad pastoral people, in- 

 habiting the wilder, uncultivable spots. Yet these 

 differences do not seriously interfere with the general 

 similarity of village-life throughout the Punjaub and 

 the Northwest ; from which I have selected the above 

 examples, because there alone, in India, have great 

 plain-country kingdoms ever been evolved. 



ern American States, finds himself in a boundless 

 plain, whose productions are everywhere the 

 same, and whose physical capabilities present 

 throughout a singularly even range. The whole 

 level tract around him lies parceled out into 

 farms, each farmhouse built of wood, painted 

 with the self-same colors, and surrounded by its 

 fields, which stretch away unhedged and often 

 unfenced to the limits of contiguous and exactly 

 similar homesteads. Every inhabitant alike is a 

 producer of raw material. When the farmer and 

 his family meet their neighbors in social inter- 

 course, the conversation can only turn on grain 

 and pork. The collecting and distributing towns, 

 where country produce is dispatched toward the 

 seaboard, while European or New England man- 

 ufactures are purveyed to the raw-producing pub- 

 lic, have a singular likeness one to the other. 

 The internal differentiations of lawyer, surgeon, 

 clergyman, merchant, and banker, exist here in- 

 deed, as the corresponding though more simple 

 differentiations exist in the villages of India ; but 

 every town is as like its neighbor as an egg to an 

 egg, and for the same sufficient reason, because 

 there is no differentiating cause to originate a dis- 

 tinction between them. Now, in such circum- 

 stances, it is clear that the general tendency of 

 intelligence will move in the direction of a nar- 

 rowing down, a planing away, a gradual monoto- 

 nizing of the diversified European mind. Thought 

 will constantly circle more and more in the pre- 

 scribed groove of simple raw production. Gen- 

 eration after generation will find itself involved in 

 the same habits, the old routine, the changeless 

 monotony of seed-time and harvest ; and unless 

 the enlarged means of communication which mod- 

 ern times afford us succeed in breaking in upon 

 their unceasing round, the Western States must 

 inevitably become at last an Aryan China, uniting 

 the material civilization of Europe with the im- 

 movable mental fixity of the Asiatic Turanian. 



In order to develop a state of society diamet- 

 rically opposite to that which we see in these 

 level inland expanses, we must have a country 

 which differs diametrically from them in physi- 

 cal features and geographical position. The coun- 

 try in question must be one that presents great 

 variety of surface, much interlocking of land and 

 water, considerable diversity of climate or pro- 

 ductions, and a varied environment of surround- 

 ing tribes. Hill and valley, lake and mountain, 

 bay and island, must combine to give a first tinge 

 of plasticity to the national intelligence. The 

 conditions of every village, instead of being ab- 

 solute and uniform, must be as diverse as pos- 



