112 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



In the spirit of Ratzel and dependent on much of the data 

 collected by him, Miss Semple makes an elaborate analysis of the 

 potent influence of geographical factors on history. In the 

 factors of environment we have, according to this author, a stable 

 force yet unceasing in its operations on " shifting, plastic, pro- 

 gressive, retrogressive man." x 



Geographic remoteness from centers of authority, as the thir- 

 teen colonies from the mother country; geographical proximity 

 to centers of civilization, as Greece to the Orient; natural barriers 

 that protect from migrating hordes; natural highways and 

 waterways that serve as arteries for the flow of commerce and 

 culture between nations, all these, she shows, make history 

 dependent on geography. 2 Yet she grants that the analysis of 

 the interplay of physical with social forces is by no means easy. 

 " We see the result," she says, " but find it difficult to state the 

 equation producing the result." 3 Miss Semple points out how 

 the land and sea sometimes co-operate, sometimes are opposed 

 in influence, 4 and how, though each country is an independent 

 whole and its history determined in large part by local geographi- 

 cal conditions, it is also influenced by those as far remote as the 

 downfall of Rome in relation to the gradual desiccation of 

 western Asia and the Volkerwanderung. 5 



Our author wisely discriminates between the direct and indirect 

 influences of the geographical environment, and shows how the 

 latter are in many respects the more potent, criticizing Buckle for 

 over-emphasizing the importance of awe-inspiring natural 

 phenomena in their direct effect on the human mind. " Moun- 

 tain regions," she says, "discourage the budding of genius 

 because they are areas of isolation, confinement, remote from the 

 great currents of men and ideas that move along the river valleys. 

 They are regions of much labor and little leisure, of poverty today 

 and anxiety for the morrow, of toil-cramped hands and toil-dulled 

 brains. In the fertile alluvial plains are wealth, leisure, contact 

 with many minds, large urban centers where commodities and 

 ideas are exchanged. The two contrasted environments produce 



1 Influence of Geographic Environment, p. 2. 2 Ibid., pp. 3 f . 



3 Ibid., p. 14. 4 Ibid., p. 16. 5 Ibid., p. 17. 



