176 THE EFFECTS OF GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT 



geographic environment caused the creation of many small states; 

 then a city became a state, frequently at war with its neighbors. 



Literature, arts, and sciences, enriched with personal liberty 

 and freedom of action, were added to the civilization of the 

 Orient. In Greece all nature Avas on a small scale. Civilization 

 needed a broader field, and from Greece it moved westward to 

 Rome, where it acquired the principles of order and stable gov- 

 ernment and established its rule over man}'- nations and peoples — 

 savage, barbarian, and civilized. But personal freedom was, after 

 the second century A. D., lost. The Roman tribune became an 

 imperial Augustus, the world subject again to a single will. 

 The Dark Ages followed, wherein the foundations of the states 

 of modern Europe were laid. These ages of darkness must pre- 

 cede the Renaissance, and then for a short time the march of civ- 

 ilization was turned back toward the land of its birth. Constan- 

 tinople was founded — that great and wonderful city, beautiful 

 in situation, overlooking the Eastern and Western worlds ; where 

 continuous imperial power has existed longer than in any other 

 city ; where the literature, art, and science of the Old World were 

 preserved that they might be handed down to Italy again when 

 the Dark Ages were past. With the Renaissance, civilization 

 finally turned westward and wended its way from Constanti- 

 nople to Venice and Genoa. From Italy the culture of the Old 

 World was carried on the great lines of travel to central and 

 northern Europe. 



With the Renaissance the lethargy of the Dark Ages was 

 broken. Printing was invented, America was discovered, and 

 civilization started on its westward course across the Atlantic to 

 its home in a new world, where public schools, science, art, mo- 

 rality, and religion, with equality and freedom, are working out 

 the civilization of the future. 



We have seen that in the early life of our race man was not 

 only dependent on his environment, but a slave to it. As he 

 passed from savage to civilized life, he gradually threw off the 

 yoke, relying more and more upon himself and becoming less 

 and less dependent on his surroundings. Cold and heat, snow 

 and rain, storm and sunshine, time and space, no longer control 

 him. He not only rises superior to their power, but uses them 

 for his own pleasure and purposes. In the infancy of his race 

 the feeblest and most helpless of animals, the slave of his en- 

 vironment, he has in his manhood claimed and exercised the 

 right to rule and become its master. 



