122 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



infinitely more numerous and complex than those of the 

 most highly organized plant or animal. So complex are 

 they that they constitute a legitimate and necessary ob- 

 ject of special study. . . . Man has been so noisy about 

 the way he has 'conquered Nature,' and Nature has been 

 so silent in her persistent influence over man, that the 

 geographic factor in the equation of human development 

 has been overlooked. . . . Now the geographic element 

 in the long history of human development has been opera- 

 ting strongly and operating persistently. Herein lies its 

 importance. It is a stable force. It never sleeps. This 

 natural environment, this physical basis of history, is, 

 for all intents and purposes immutable in comparison 

 with the other factor in the problem shifting, plastic, 

 progressive, retrogressive man." 1 



Miss Semple makes us see that in every problem of 

 history there are two main factors, commonly called 

 heredity and environment. Professor Cooley makes us 

 look upon mind and matter, soil, climate, flora, fauna, 

 thought, language, and institutions as aspects of a single 

 rounded whole, one of total growth. He presents the 

 organic view of history. He expressly denies that any 

 factor is more ultimate than others. If we concentrate 

 our attention upon one of these factors, we should never 

 go so far as to overlook the subordination of each to the 

 whole. "History is not like a tangled skein which you 

 may straighten out by getting hold of the right end and 

 following it with sufficient persistence . . . there is no 

 logical primacy, no independent variable, no place where 

 the thread begins." 2 Both Miss Semple and Professor 



1 Semple, E. C. The Influences of Geographic Environment, 1911, ch. i, p. 

 2. 



2 Cooley, C. H. Pub. Amer. Economic Association, 3rd Ser., vol. v, ff. 

 426, and Cooley, op. cit. ch. xxii. 



