THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 



ized by the introduction of inquiries concerning 

 the relations of many percipient and emotion- 

 ally incited minds to each other and to their 

 common environment. As in biogeny all at- 

 tempts to discover the law of organic develop- 

 ment failed utterly so long as the relations of 

 the organism to physical environing agencies 

 were alone studied, and succeeded only when 

 Mr. Darwin took into account the relations of 

 organisms to each other; so still more inevita- 

 bly in sociogeny must all our efforts fail so 

 long as we consider merely the physiologic re- 

 lations of a community to the country in which 

 it dwells, and refuse to recognize the extent 

 to which communities influence each other by 

 means that are purely intellectual or moral. 

 Doubtless the character of the physical environ- 

 ment is of importance, more especially, perhaps, 

 in the earlier stages of civilization. No doubt 

 civilization will first arise, other things equal, 

 in a locality where food and shelter can be 

 obtained with a medium amount of exertion ; 

 where nature is neither too niggard nor too lav- 

 ish in the bestowal of her favours. No doubt 

 there is a physical significance in the fact that 

 civilization began, not in barren Siberia, or in 

 luxuriant Brazil, but in countries like Egypt 

 and Mesopotamia, which were neither so barren 

 as to starve, nor so luxuriant as to spoil, the 

 labourer. No doubt the Greeks owed much to 

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