ENVIRONMENTAL SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGISTS II3 



directly certain economic and social results, which, in turn, 

 become the causes of secondary intellectual and artistic effects." ^ 



She shows how this factor of geographical isolation produces 

 social variations much as it does biological ^ and how in the case of 

 colonization, if the new center of social life affords abundant 

 opportimity for production, the result is the rejuvenation of the 

 race.^ 



" Environment influences the higher, mental life of a people," 

 says our author, " chiefly through the medium of their economic 

 and social life." She shows how true this is concerning politics 

 and even ethical ideas. " Political parties tend to follow geo- 

 graphical lines of cleavage," ^ — but this is due to the fact that 

 these lines of cleavage mark lines of divergent interests, as in our 

 own Civil War when the mountaineers of the South sided with 

 the Union because they had no interest in slavery. 



Time is an element to be reckoned with for the influence of 

 geographic environment takes time. " A habitat leaves upon 

 man no ephemeral impress; it affects him in one way at a low 

 stage of his development, and differently at a later or higher stage, 

 because the man himself and his relation to his environment have 

 been modified in the earlier period; but traces of that earlier 

 adaptation survive in his maturer life." ^ These modifications 

 are carried by a people in their migrations and determine their 

 reactions to a new environment as in the case of the Moors of 

 Spain; — " They bore the impress of Asia, Africa and Europe, 

 and on their expulsion from Spain, carried back with them to 

 Morocco traces of their peninsula life." ^ 



In tracing the influence of environment. Miss Semple shows 

 how complex is this factor, extending far beyond mere local con- 

 ditions, including, in fact, the whole earth. 



The earth is an inseparable whole. Each country or sea is physically and 

 historically intelligible only as a portion of that whole. Currents and wind- 

 systems of the oceans modify the climate of the nearby continents, and direct 

 the first daring navigations of their peoples. . . . Europe is a part of the 

 Atlantic coast. This is a fact so significant that the North Atlantic has 

 become a European sea. The United States also is a part of the Atlantic 



1 Influence of Geographic Environment, p. 20. 2 jj)id.^ p. 21. 



' Ihid., p. 22. * Ihid., p. 23. ^ Ihid., p. 25. ^ Ibid., p. 25. 



