ENVIRONMENTAL SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGISTS 107 
of Europe than in the wildest region of a barbarous country.” ! 
He discredits all theories of hereditary transmission of virtues and 
vices, even madness, but fails to discriminate between acquired 
and inborn variations.2 ‘Here then,” he says, ‘is the gist 
of the whole matter. The progress is one, not of internal power, 
but of external advantage.” 3 
This does not mean that Buckle was not a believer in the 
general theory of evolution but biological evolution with him 
stopped with the physical basis of primitive man and all further 
development was the result of environment and education. 
With Buckle there are two separate realms, nature, with its 
laws of development, and the mind, with its laws. These two 
realms somehow interact but he makes no attempt to get at the 
realnexus. ‘‘ On the one hand we have the human mind obeying 
the laws of its own existence, and, when uncontrolled by external 
agents, developing itself according to the conditions of its organ- 
ization. On the other hand, we have what is called nature, 
obeying likewise its laws; but incessantly coming into contact 
with the minds of men, exciting their passions, stimulating their 
intellect, and therefore giving to their actions a direction which 
they would not have taken without such disturbance.”* “When 
we consider the incessant contact between man and the external 
world,” he says, “it is certain that there must be an intimate 
connection between human actions and physical laws,” — and he 
looks forward to a time when physical science shall show the 
connection.® 
His chief contribution to our subject is in his contrast between 
those sections of the earth where man is dominated by his environ- 
ment and where civilization is thus a product of the interplay of 
forces unguided by intelligence, as in Egypt and India, thus 
illustrating passive adaptation, and those sections of the earth 
where the environment has stimulated the development of the in- 
tellect until man controls nature in the interest of his highest well- 
being as in western Europe, thus illustrating active adaptation. 
1 In this he deserves great credit as being the forerunner of Ward, Kidd, Boas, 
Angell, and a host of other modern sociologists. 2 Op. cit., p. 161. 
3 Od. cit., p. 162. 4 Op. cit., p. 19. 5 Od. cit., p. 32. 
