io SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



science, it is permissible to leave out of account the 

 achievements of the venerable Chinese empire as 

 having little influence, and to dwell but briefly on the 

 results in mathematics and philosophy due to the 

 dominant nations in India. We are then concerned 

 chiefly with the populations of Europe, and only to 

 a very small extent with those of the basin of the 

 Eastern Mediterranean, of Assyria and Egypt, and 

 with the Semitic races. 



And here it might be worth while to recall to mind 

 the unique feature in continental topography pre- 

 sented by the great European inland sea. The lands 

 that approach these waters from the northern side are 

 remarkable for their detached and indented character. 

 Peninsula and island mark the coast-line, and we are 

 able to attach a definite history and record of separate 

 achievement to such small portions of the earth's 

 surface as Greece, Italy, and Spain ; while the islands 

 of the ^Egean Sea, Cyprus, Crete, Sardinia, Sicily, and 

 many others, have all been called upon to play a 

 distinct part in the pageant of civilization. Yet these 

 places are not so far from each other and from the sur- 

 rounding land but that, to a certain extent, communi- 

 cation must always have been open between them. 

 We have therefore a condition in which isolation after 

 invasion or conquest has produced the biological 

 potentialities and eventually the definite racial 

 qualities which become moulded into a clear-cut type, 

 either of the population as a whole or, as in ancient 

 Greece, of the conquering and governing class. But 

 at the same time the people have been subject to the 

 intellectual stimulus introduced by contact, not 

 necessarily biological in the sense of cross-breeding, 



