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[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1051 



lower stages of culture and that ideas play 

 an increasing role," but we do not know 

 on what ground he makes the further claim 

 that the peculiar cultures of Japan, China 

 and India were in the first place the 

 results of psychic rather than geographic 

 factors. ^^ 



There is a beautiful passage in Ratzel 

 which I now commend to those historical 

 and sociological philosophers who think 

 that psychic qualities and powers are 

 released from environmental influence. If 

 ethnographers utter the view that the devel- 

 opment of culture consists in ever wider 

 release from nature, we may emphasize 

 that the difference between nature and cul- 

 ture folk is to be sought not in degree, but 

 in the kind of this connection (Zusam- 

 menhang) with nature. Culture is freedom 

 from nature not in the sense of complete 

 release, but in that of much wider union. 

 The farmer who gathers his corn in the 

 barn is really as dependent on his ground 

 as the Indian who harvests in swamps wild 

 rice which he did not sow. 



We do not on the whole become freer from na- 

 ture while we deeply exploit and study it, we only 

 make ouselves in single cases independent of it, 

 while we multiply the bonds. 



Not to do Ratzel injustice, it is he who 

 has also called "the spirit of man a com- 

 pletely new phenomenon upon our planet, ' ' 

 and has asserted that 



No other being (Wesen) has worked so perma- 

 nently and upon so many other existences as man, 

 who has profoundly changed the living face of 

 the earth. 



We are to interpret cautiously similar 

 human phenomena in different parts of the 

 world. We can not here follow the evolu- 

 tionary axiom that if a species of trilobite 

 is found in England and in New York, 

 there has been one point of origin and a 

 migration. The same things appear in 



57 W. I. Thomas, "Source Book for Social 

 Origins," 130-31. 



many places, either through the unity of 

 the human spirit or the likeness of environ- 

 ments, or from both causes. This is stated 

 by Fewkes, 



Identity in the working of the human mind is 

 lecognized by all anthropologists, and the tendency 

 to ascribe cultural identities ... to contact or 

 migration is much less prevalent now than for- 

 merly.58 



In like manner Boas shows that some 

 ideas are so general that they could not 

 have been diffused historically through 

 migration and contact, but must have arisen 

 independently in different places.°° 



Tylor is no less emphatic: 



Researches undertaken all over the globe have 

 shown the necessity of abandoning the old theory 

 that a similarity of customs and superstitions, of 

 arts and crafts, justifies the assumption of a re- 

 mote relationship if not an identity of origin be- 

 tween races . . . there has been an inherent tend- 

 ency in man, allowing for difference of climate 

 and natural surroundings, to develop culture by 

 the same stages and in the same way. 



Citing the pyramid-building of Aztec 

 and Egyptian, 



Each race developed the idea of a pyramid tomb 

 through that psychological similarity which is as 

 much a characteristic of the species man as his 

 physique.fio 



We leave this topic with the single sug- 

 gestion that in the psychic field, a useful 

 and difficult piece of research is open to the 

 student of comparative religions, who is at 

 the same time interested in anthropogeo- 

 graphie problems and has the needed geo- 

 graphic training. How far the essential 

 content of religious aspiration and thought, 

 as well as the ritual of worship has been in- 

 fluenced by environment, has, I think, 

 never been shown in any full synthetic 



«sj. W. Fewkes, "Climate and Cult," 8th 

 Inter. Geog. Cong., 670. 



B» F. Boas, ' ' The Mind of Primitive Man, ' ' 

 151-64. 



60 E. B. Tylor, Ency. Brit., Art. ' ' Anthro- 

 pology. ' ' 



