INFLUENCES OF ENVIRONMENT 157 



tion of history, Montesquieu 43 and Buckle, 44 attributed 

 the immutability of religion, usages, manners and laws 

 in India and other Oriental countries to their warm 

 climate, vast plains and great mountains, the grandeur 

 of whose scenery excites the fancy and paralyzes the 

 reason. The modern scientific geographer "finds that 

 geographic conditions have condemned India to isolation. 

 On the land side, a great sweep of high mountains has 

 restricted intercourse with the interior; on the sea side, 

 the deltaic swamps of the Indus and the Ganges rivers 

 and an unbroken shoreline, backed by mountains on the 

 west of the peninsula and by coastal marshes and lagoons 

 on the east, have combined to reduce its accessibility from 

 the ocean. The effect of such isolation is ignorance, 

 superstition, and the early crystallization of thought and 

 custom. Ignorance involves the lack of material for 

 comparison; hence a restriction of the higher reasoning 

 processes, and an unscientific attitude of mind which 

 gives imagination free play. In contrast, the accessi- 

 bility of Greece and its focal location in the ancient 

 world made it an intellectual clearing-house for the east- 

 ern Mediterranean. The general information gathered 

 there afforded material for wide comparison. It fed 

 the brilliant reason of the Athenian philosopher and the 

 trained imagination which produced the masterpieces 

 of Greek art and literature." 45 



Buckle's theory was that the awe-inspiring aspects 

 of nature in India, enormous mountain masses, vast 

 heated plains, ravages of hurricanes, tempests, earth- 

 quakes, and devastation by animals hostile to man, con- 



43 Spirit of the Laics, bk. xiv, ch. iv. 



44 History of Civilization in England, ch. ii. 



45 Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment, pp. 18-19. 



