INTRODUCTION n 



but contact of mind and civilization, which produces 

 the best effects in a race or section of a nation well 

 prepared by unity of blood and ideals to apprehend 

 and fertilize any new conceptions. As long as the 

 political and economic conditions did not permit of 

 the constant free mixing and consequent degradation 

 of races or types, as long as ideas or the great teachers 

 who inculcated them were the only things to circulate 

 freely, the countries of the Mediterranean each 

 possessed a certain intellectual distinction, developing 

 one after the other on lines best suited to the dominant 

 national type. 



And so, at a later period, when the main stocks of 

 the Northern races had become civilized, the coasts 

 of northern France, of the Low Countries, Germany, 

 and the shores of the Baltic, with the peninsulas of 

 Denmark and Scandinavia, and the British Isles, 

 all abutting on the navigable waters of the North 

 Sea and English Channel, reproduced the condition 

 which had proved so fertile in earlier ages around the 

 Mediterranean. 



In order to understand our subject, we must try 

 to glean some idea of the differences between the 

 inhabitants of different parts of these two areas ; 

 and though some countries will be considered briefly 

 in turn, as we have occasion to deal with them later on, 

 we will here consider the most general propositions. 



In studying the ethnology of any continent, it is 

 important to distinguish clearly between race, language 

 and culture, which are not necessarily coterminous 

 in any direction. Culture may be indigenous or ac- 

 quired, the expression of an inborn need or the result 

 of an imitative and superficial disposition. Languages 



