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21 
In some parts of the earth nature is kind and bountiful; often 
too much so. Life is easy and simple; there are few wants, and 
these are easily supplied; no exertion is necessary, and so no 
exertion ever developes itself. No high civilisation has ever arisen 
in a tropical region. Referring to this, Mr. Buckle says :—* In 
Asia, civilisation has always been confined to that vast tract where 
a rich and alluvial soil has secured to man that wealth, without 
some share of which no intellectual progress can begin. This — 
great region extends with a few interruptions from the East of 
South China to the West Coasts of Asia Minor, Phenicia, and 
Palestine. To the North of this immense telt there is a long line 
of barren country, which has invariably been peopled by rude and 
wandering tribes who are kept in poverty by the ungenial nature 
_ of the soil, and who, as long as they remained on it, have never 
emerged from their uncivilised state. Yet those same hordes have 
at different times founded great monarchies by invasion. e. g. 
China, India, and Persia. There they found the materials of 
wealth, and there consequently they acquired some degree of 
refinement, produced a national literature, and organised a 
national poliey, none of which things they, in their native land, 
had been able to effect.” (‘‘ Hist. Civilisation). 
In other parts nature is so harsh and unkind that she yields 
nothing to labour. Man gives it up, makes no more attempts to 
conquer her, and hence we find thousands of square miles in such 
districts as waste and barren as they were 10,000 years ago. But 
where she is bountiful in her returns to labour and perseverance, 
and only to them, there she developes peoples of steady, determined, 
and untiring energy, persevering and selfreliant. In such localities 
have arisen the nations that have conquered the world. 
Slowly and gradually has man emancipated himself from the 
overwhelming difficulties of his surroundings ; not even yet has he 
become completely independent of them, and certainly, I may 
venture to say, he never will, so long as diversity of surface, 
climate, and soil shall exist—so long, that is to say, as the geo- 
logical agencies of past and present times shall continue to act. 
And this brings me to the more immediate point of this lecture. 
What are these ‘‘ circumstances” which produce such diversity of 
character among nations, such variety of pursuits even among the 
inhabitants of the same country? Already I have referred them 
to physical surroundings, i.e., 1o the geography of the country. 
This physical geography is dependent on, and only to be explained 
' by, geological action. The two are most intimately connected, so 
much so that it is impossible to draw a dividing line; they are in 
fact, two aspects of one science, and so, throughout what I have to 
say, I shall be alternating between the two, though I trust, without 
any resulting confusion. 
