E.— GEOGRAPHY 109 



likely to be in the days of hunting when accidental coincidences loomed 

 larger. In fact a growth of rationality must have been a feature, and with 

 it came increased power of choice that is described in the account in 

 Genesis as the knowledge of good and evil. The habit of prevision 

 extended itself through calculations of the coming of the floods and 

 correlated study of the heavenly bodies to the framing of a calendar. So 

 society acquired a learned tradition and lifted itself some way above the 

 old level of dependence on the personal power of medicine-men and the like . 

 There was a further extension of prevision beyond that to a succession 

 of years — namely, to a succession of generations specially associated with 

 the domestication of animals and with the family, and with this came 

 the growth of the idea of a mother-goddess or goddess of fertility which 

 has so widely influenced society. Thought, drawn out towards the future, 

 seems just as naturally to have run back into the past, giving rise to gene- 

 alogies which are one of the germs of history and also to rites of reverence 

 paid to ancestors. These rites, not unnaturally, are specially marked in 

 regions such as China which owe so much of their civilisation to early 

 interactions of herdsmen and cultivators on the ways from central Asia. 

 It is of interest to note that the large household, linked by real or some- 

 times assumed blood relationship, seems a social feature of basic character 

 among the cultivators of northern China, and in other forms is notable 

 among other cultivators around the edges of the great steppe, the famous 

 Zadruga of parts of the Balkan peninsula being a case in point in a region 

 in which interactions between herdsmen and cultivators have been and 

 still remain most important features of life. The Russian Mir sometimes 

 had a like origin. It is naturally a social development in large measure 

 antagonistic to the growth of nationalism. 



Along with the primarily psychical development accompanying the rise 

 of cultivation went the linking of society with a definite piece of land 

 through the establishment of the settled life. This association is one of 

 the most important features of settled society, and, occurring more or less 

 in the same phase of development as the mental changes just named, it 

 seems to have led to what has become a most widespread characteristic : 

 this is the idea that the living hold a trust from their forefathers and 

 will pass it on to future generations. This trust includes both the land to 

 which the society is linked, and the customs, traditions and rites of the 

 group. It must defend these when necessary, and it is likely to resist 

 violent and deliberate change in them, though change of the ' common 

 stock of ideas ' of the society is always going on. The old local unit, 

 large household or village, worked rather by ' declaring the custom ' of 

 the people than by debating projects of change. 



There was, in the same phase of development, a marked growth of 

 specialisation as between individuals in some, at any rate, of the settled 

 societies. Marked advances of the potter's art, of the arts of stone grinding 

 and metallurgy, apparently of carpentry, weaving and so on, all belong to 

 early stages of cultivation. There appears also to have been, even in 

 early stages, some exchange between different groups and a good deal of 

 fusion, as well as division, of groups. But in spite of these last two 

 considerations, the early cultivator-society seems to have been primarily 



