INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 407 



them." On a strip of land averaging seven miles in width, and a 

 few hundred miles long, there once lived seven millions of human 

 beings. They subsisted without the aid of any foreign commerce, 

 as the outside world was more ridgidly excluded than it has ever 

 been from China or Japan. The Nile was the one source whence 

 these swarming millions had their bread. That mysterious river, 

 mysterious now no longer, ensured their harvests by its annual 

 overflow, and as these supplied all their wants, they were not com- 

 pelled to give attention to any other pursuits, hence they were 

 strictly an agricultural people. Improving upon the natural con- 

 ditions of the soil and the river, by a system of dykes and flood- 

 gates, canals and other hydraulic apparatus, they easily controlled 

 the volume of water, retaining and dispensing it v.diere most 

 needed. The Nileometer gave the rise of the river, and the hus- 

 bandman could j)redict with unerring certainty the amount of the 

 coming harvest. For once in the history of the world, agriculture 

 became a reliable art. The results of each year could be calcula- 

 ted with mathematical certainty. That they should meet the wants 

 of the next year, this people had only to do what they did the last, 

 and the desired end would be accomplished. As a natural conse- 

 quence, as soon as the first inhabitants of this valley came into 

 full harmony with these physical environments, there resulted of 

 necessity a common bond of interest, a uniformity of thought, 

 wishes, plans and purposes, and coincidently, a sameness of intel- 

 lectual pursuits. The civil and ecclesiastical powers were united 

 in one head, and thence followed a political system precluding the 

 very idea of change, and a consolidated form of government which 

 laid a strong hand upon the onl}^ treasure-house, the Nile, from 

 whence the millions could be fed. The priest stood with his hand 

 on the lever of the flood-gate, and the fate of millions hung upon 

 its movement. Their monotony of social life, their stereotyped 

 political and ecclesiastical condition, which knew no change for 

 many centuries, was as legitimately a product of their all-bounti- 

 ful river, with its concomitant climate influences, as were the 

 harvests which annually waved upon its banks. Under such cir- 

 cumstances, what possibility could there be for a change ? What 

 could stimulate thought, or what disturb the unbroken repose of 

 centuries ? Under this uniform climate, with this sameness of 

 employments, with the coincident and consequent result, of like 

 modes of thought, the Egyptian generations followed each other 

 for more than forty centuries, each one as much like its predeces- 



