574 



NATURE 



TDecember 29, 192 1 



under the political conditions of the centuries since 

 the rise of the organised nation-State. 



The fear of war between sovereign nation-States 

 encourages schemes for reducing diversities within 

 a State in the interests of that unity necessary for 

 military efficiency and governmental discipline. If 

 we were secure from fear of even European war 

 our Irish problem would be transformed and re- 

 duced. The enforced administrative unity of 

 France is admittedly a Ineavy burden imposed by 

 military fears. The ideal of government is to 

 allow scope for the expression of the social herit- 

 age of biological units, and it has become evident 

 that the European system must be progressively 

 modified to lessen the influences that inhibit that 

 expression, as well as to promote toleration and 

 understanding between diverse forms of that ex- 

 pression. We must therefore study biological 

 social units to discover those which have special 

 importance, as well as to emphasise the contribu- 

 tions they can make under improved conditions to 

 the common stock of civilisation. It is unrestricted 

 State-sovereignty and the armaments-fever thereby 

 promoted that give rise to these dangerous inhibi- 

 tions of biological units of mankind whereby civil- 

 isation is imperilled. 



To ascertain what are effective biological units 

 and what their characteristics and possibilities we 

 need co-operation between anthropologists, his- 

 torians, geographers, and economists at the very 

 least, and anthropology must be broadly defined 

 to include physiology and psychology too. The 

 development of this co-operation is one of the most 

 important tasks facing the branches of science 

 dealing with man, and It Is greatly to be hoped 

 that it may break down artificial barriers such as 

 those between the faculties of arts and of science 

 In universities. 



The geographer studies environmental con- 

 ditions, past and present, and tries to follow the 

 subtleties of the interaction on both sides between 

 them and mankind. Russia, with its hundred mil- 

 lions of men of European stock, is too often 

 crudely contrasted with the sixty millions of 

 Germany and the thirty-nine millions of French- 

 men, and so on without due regard to the diversity 

 of mankind. On the Russian plain for months in 

 the winter the temperatures are too extreme nearly 

 everywhere for the maintenance of mental effici- 

 ency among the generality of the people. People 

 thus cut off from effective criticism for a part of 

 the year must rely on routine, and a traditional 

 rule of life will suit them best. These difficulties 

 of life on the Russian plain are well brought out 

 by Tolstoi in " Anna Karenina," but are too little 

 considered in political arguments. Again, the long 

 rainless periods In Russia, apparently the chief 

 factor in limiting the beech tree to Europe west of 

 the Pripet Marshes, Implv hindrances to western- 

 ising agriculture there. The reactions differ In the 

 various latitudinal zones of the pine forest, the oak 

 forest, the forest and grass regions, the steppe and 

 waste regions, and thus, by adding differentia, we 

 NO. 2722, VOL. 108] 



get to biological units within the inchoate mass of 

 Russia, and it is these units that are the geographi- 

 cal personalities rather than Russia as a whole. 



Studying orography in place of climate, we find 

 the regions of high relief with deep valleys 

 sharply cut off from one another giving rise to 

 small units that preserve and accentuate differ- 

 ences of ancient origin. We find, too, that among 

 them that process of linking man with the soil 

 which has done so much to make Europe what it 

 is has been delayed, and traces persist of seasonal 

 movements up and down hill, of social organisa- 

 tion on a basis of kinship not yet superseded by 

 that basis of neighbourhood on which modern 

 European administration is built. The Scottish 

 Highlands of the eighteenth century and Albania 

 in the twentieth century may be quoted here. 



Again, studying relations of position, we are led 

 to see how remarkably communications affect geo- 

 graphical personality. Islands adjacent to larger 

 land masses show different, frequently conflicting, 

 developments of geographical personality within 

 them, and these are related to differences of out- 

 look towards adjacent shores. Guernsey has 

 37,000 people on 25 square miles and a uniquely In- 

 tensive system of cultivation largely in the hands 

 of families long settled In the island. Yet one can 

 distinguish about three regional dialect differences, 

 and there are also regional differences of family 

 names and of physical type all of very old stand- 

 ing. " Lewis and Harris " in the Hebrides shows 

 this remarkably, with dark, long heads in Harris, 

 Nords near the Ness, and people with broad heads 

 and dark colouring in the Barvas district. Anthro- 

 pologists know that these differences are of very 

 old standing indeed. Ireland is a tragic instance 

 of diversity of outlook within an island, and 

 Ceylon, Java, Madagascar, and many more also 

 Illustrate this point. Britain Itself is less unified 

 than the Paris Basin, and it may well be the hope 

 of its citizens that its efforts for promoting " unity 

 In diversity " may contribute very much to the 

 solution of the problem of the world's peace — 

 the provision of a world order which shall not 

 create Irritation by repression of biological units, 

 thwarting geographical personality. 



It is, however, not only environment that con- 

 tributes to geographical personality ; the work of 

 man Is so important in its cumulative effect that 

 one can scarcely think of a real development of 

 geographical personality without it. In Neolithic 

 times the lowlands of Europe north of the Alps 

 became forest-covered, where they were not too 

 swampy, and the sparse population, ill-armed to 

 cope with the forest, lived mainly on any patches 

 kept open by looseness or dryness or special ex- 

 posure of the surface. The forest was the dark 

 abode of wild beasts that made the whole region 

 unfriendly and full of obstacles to intercourse and 

 growth of Ideas. In the last phase of the Bronze 

 age the cutting of forests seems to have begun 

 seriously, and this period and the Early Iron age 

 witnessed efforts to spread dominion over the 



