100 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
have arisen over the treatment of this human geography, mainly focus- 
ing, it would appear, on the order of precedence between environment 
and adaptation in time-space. It would be unbecoming, without know- 
ledge of the arguments, to enter this arena; but I submit that some of 
the disputants have been a little severe in pouring scorn on the early 
exponents of the theme. Old Jean Bodin, it may be, did not see much 
beyond his nose when he divided the world into the cold zone of the 
stupid but vigorous democrats, the hot zone of the intelligent but lazy 
victims of theocracy or any other despotism, and the temperate zone 
occupied by happy France and its ideal monarchy. But at least he did 
some mapping out in his own way, just as Strabo had done in his, and he 
set men thinking. Then Buckle, if I may miss all the great names in the 
interval, comes in for a good deal of mild sarcasm. It is true that his 
famous chapter upon the influence of nature on man is marred by 
curious lapses ; as, for example, when he professes ignorance of the cause 
why all the mighty rivers in the New World flow to its eastern coast, and 
none of them to the western; or again, when he lumps together the 
peoples of Sweden and Norway, and of Spain and Portugal, as being * all 
remarkable for a certain instability and fickleness of character.’ But, if 
occasional odd sayings like these are overlooked, there is much in his 
general argument with which at least one school of modern anthro- 
pologists must be in sympathy. That there is any radical or original 
difference between the various races of mankind, he regards as ‘ alto- 
gether hypothetical,’ and the existing discrepancies he endeavours to 
trace to the influences of climate, soil and food. It must be admitted 
that, as his analysis proceeds, the promised explanation of racial differences 
evaporates, but there survives a review of political and social tendencies, 
in which there is little to challenge, especially when we remember that 
he is dealing exclusively with early societies. In such societies, he argues, 
the accumulation of wealth is largely a matter of climate and soil; with 
wealth comes leisure, and with leisure comes civilisation. Hence civilisa- 
tion appeared first in those lands where nature unaided begat wealth— 
in India, Egypt, Peru and Mexico. But where food is abundant and 
cheap, population tends to increase unduly, and the standards of life 
deteriorate. ‘Thus, in countries where climate and soil are favourable 
and food is ‘ provided by nature gratuitously and without a struggle,’ 
wealth has always abounded, but it has been unequally distributed ; and 
consequently there has been no just division of political power, no 
democratic spirit, but only despotism in the upper, and ‘ contemptible 
subservience ’ among the lower orders. Progress accordingly has been 
insecure and society unstable ; natural decay has set in, and the invasions 
of sturdier races have completed the tale of doom. 
As a philosophic survey, there seems no patent absurdity in all this, 
though it sounds somewhat elementary now ; and the argument is relieved 
by telling patches of colour, as when Buckle describes how the alluvial 
wealth of Southern Asia transmuted the roving savages, the wandering 
shepherds of Arabia into the cultured monarchs of Cordova, Delhi and 
Baghdad. An even finer passage is that in which he distinguishes Brazil 
from other countries where nature is generous with her gifts. In the 
