i 9 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Europe, or Greece, and Asia, and accounting for the differences he 

 has determined, he says : " You will find as a rule that the form 

 of the body and the disposition of the mind correspond to the 

 nature of the country. . . . All that the earth produces is con- 

 formed to the earth itself," understanding the term earth in its 

 most comprehensive sense, and regarding in its definition less the 

 configuration and qualities of the surface than those of the cli- 

 mates that prevail and modify the fauna and flora. " If Asiatics/' 

 he affirms, " are of a more gentle and less warlike nature than 

 Europeans, the cause lies chiefly in the equability of their sea- 

 sons." And further, " A perpetual uniformity fosters indolence ; 

 a variable climate gives activity to the body and the soul." 



We shall therefore only be following the counsel and the ex- 

 ample of the great minds of Greece if we seek, in studying its 

 history, to ascertain how and how far the character of its people 

 has been affected by the action of " the air, the water, and the 

 place." In our inquiry into the character of the medium in which 

 the tribes called Hellenes in the eighth century before the Chris- 

 tian era were developed, we have enjoyed the advantage of a long 

 residence in Greece, during which we have observed the people in 

 their struggles with a Nature which gives nothing without being 

 paid down, in labor of mind and muscle. 



The peoples who figured in history before the Greeks, occupied 

 territories clearly defined by Nature. Egypt was the lower part 

 of the valley of the Nile, and did not extend materially beyond it. 

 Chaldeo- Assyrian civilization was developed in the spacious basin 

 of the Euphrates and Tigris ; a much larger field, but still one 

 that had definite boundaries — in the Taurus Mountains on the 

 north, the rampart of the Zagros on the east, the Persian Gulf 

 on the south, and the Arabian and Syrian Deserts on the west. 

 The Phoenicians, indeed, had more than one capital, and carried 

 their trade through all the then known world, but their capitals 

 succeeding one another, each received its knowledge and art from 

 the one that preceded it, and gave them to the one that followed 

 it, and their intercourse with the world was animated by the 

 commercial spirit only. Their industry never drew its inspira- 

 tion from an intense and vigorous living art ; and all that was 

 essential in them was the product of the narrow strip of land 

 between the sea and Mount Lebanon. All Hebrew art was re- 

 stricted to a still narrower area in the circuit of Jerusalem and 

 the little kingdom that depended upon it. There were other 

 peoples in western Asia and Asia Minor who made their influence 

 felt abroad : but within themselves each formed a compact mass, 

 inhabiting a concrete portion of the continent, and it is within 

 that limited territory that we have to look for evidences of their 

 genius and work. 



