328 The Realm of Nature CHAP. 



accordingly pay great respect. More civilised peoples, 

 reasoning on the appearances of Nature, are Polytheists^i 

 believers in many separate gods, to whom the creation of 

 different parts of Nature is ascribed. Pantheism (illustrated 

 by Buddhism) is a development of Polytheism, from which 

 it differs in conceiving God to be present everywhere, and 

 all existing things, Man included, to form part of Him. 

 The highest and most civilised races are Monotheists, 

 v recognising one G6d, who created the World and directs its 

 'processes of endless evolution. Three forms of Monotheism 

 are prevalent the Jewish, in which the Old Testament is 

 held as a divine revelation ; the Christian, all sections of 

 which accept also the teachings of the New Testament ; and 

 the Mohammedan, following the Koran, a book compiled 

 from the Jewish and Christian Scriptures by Mohammed. 



421. Environment and Man. External conditions do 

 much to determine Man's position in the scale of civilisation. 

 It is matter of dispute whether the different races of man- 

 kind result merely from the different conditions in which 

 they have developed, or if changes consequent on moral 

 advancement or degradation have had a large share in pro- 

 ducing them. ^JThe races lowest in civilisation are most 

 completely slaves to their environmentj exercising only the 

 purely animal powersT) (Where the climate makes clothing 

 unnecessary, and abundant fruit-bearing plants supply the 

 means of life without labour or forethought, as in tropical 

 forests, mankind is found in the least developed or most 

 degraded form.) On the other hand, when natural condi- 

 tions are very nard, the climate severe, and the means of 

 life only to be obtained by chance success in hunting or 

 fishing, the development of intelligence appears to stop 

 short when the prime necessities food, clothing, and 

 shelter are secured. The fur-clad Eskimo, feeding on 

 blubber in his ingeniously- constructed house of ice, is 

 certainly an advance on the naked homeless savage of the 

 tropics, who satisfies his hunger with fruits and insects. 

 But both are so exclusively fitted to their environment that 

 the Eskimo pines by the Mediterranean, and the forest 

 Pygmy sickens and dies in the sunlit grass-lands, f Intel- 



