CHAPTER VIII 



CULTURAL FACTORS: ENVIRONMENT 



AND TIME 



The Total Formula 



THE Race-Environment-Time formula is a highly abstract 

 over-simplification of many complex and interrelated 

 elements; quite naturally, therefore, it abounds in obscuri- 

 ties and ambiguities. The previous chapter has indicated how 

 Taine tends to merge Race with Land and Nation. Since the 

 formula is a unified whole, it seems possible to start with any one 

 of its three elements and expand that one out into the other two. 

 Thus, Land can be understood as the milieu of Race (in its geo- 

 graphical aspect); and Nation, as a moment of Race, since a nation 

 is after all a politico-cultural entity which comes into existence at 

 a particular stage in the development of a group of people. In 

 this chapter we shall be concerned with the cultural, rather 

 than the biological, elements in Taine's formula: the cultural 

 aspects of Environment, and their historical developments in 

 Time. 



The most concise definitions of these terms are found in the 

 'Introduction' to the History. 'Having thus outlined the interior 

 structure of a race, we must consider the surroundings in which it 

 exists. For man is not alone in the world; nature surrounds him, 

 and his fellow-men surround him; accidental and secondary 

 tendencies overlay his primitive tendencies, and physical or 

 social circumstances disturb or confirm the character committed 

 to their charge.' i Though Race is here treated, by implication, as 

 'essential' and 'primary' in Taine's order of exposition, he soon 

 passes, after mention of climate, from nature to man, from the 

 physical to the social. 

 Thus, if we compare the Italics of the Roman Empire and the 



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