22 
‘* Hvery country,” says M. Ragozin, in his history of Chaldea, 
‘* makes its own people,” z.e., he goes on to say, ‘‘ the mode of life 
and the intellectual culture of a people are shaped by the character- 
istic features of the land in which it dwells.” One calls to mind 
at once, in illustration of this, the patriotic Swiss and Highlander, 
the ‘‘ hardy Norseman”’ of Scandinavia, and, generally, the per- 
severing people of the North temperate regions. And we contrast 
them with the more enervated ease-loving nations dwelling under 
a tropical sun, in a paradise of luxury, lotus-eaters, living in 
In which it seemed always ergy nec 
A land where all things always seemed the same.” 
Compare for a moment the native civilisations of india and 
Greece. In the former country the works of nature are of startling 
magnitude—sublimely and awfully grand, often terrible and 
threatening. The early peoples were intimidated by them, the 
huge snow-clad peaks, ranged in tiers rising one behind another, 
“ Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled, 
“The fragments of an earlier world” 
the flooded rivers, the impassable forests, the swamps and jungles, 
where it was death to tread, all awed them with their known 
and still more with their unknown terrors, and taught them their 
own feebleness. Hence the character of their religion, their im- 
possible and altogether unhuman gods, hundred-headed monsters— 
a religion altogether based on terror. 
In bright sunny Greece on the contrary, the varied and smiling 
aspect of natural phenomena, not too huge, the happy climate, the 
blue sea, and the variety in its coast line, inspired no terror, 
confidence rather than fear. Nature tempted them to examine, 
not to avoid. They studied under her, and physical science 
became possible. And so the Grecian mythology had nothing 
terrible about it; its gods are human, very human, with human 
attributes, tastes and pursuits, not always it is true of a very high 
order. We might also compare the architecture of the two 
countries, and note the effect of physical geography upon that ; 
producing the huge massive temples of early Indian times, and the 
light pleasing structures of ancient Greece. Art, too as you know, 
reached a perfection there, from which we are told, it has ever 
since been declining. 
Take another illustration. How shall we account for the roving 
disposition which has characterised the Bedouin Arabs from the 
time when ‘“‘ Ishmael became awild man” up to the present hour ? 
And along with it as a necessary consequence, all their well known 
bravery, hospitality, generosity, and love of plunder? Their 
country made them what they are ‘‘ They cannot,” says Ragozin, 
‘‘ build cities on the sand of the desert, and the small patches of 
