ENVIRONMENTAL SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGISTS 113 
directly certain economic and social results, which, in turn, 
become the causes of secondary intellectual and artistic effects.” ! 
She shows how this factor of geographical isolation produces 
social variations much as it does biological ? and how in the case of 
colonization, if the new center of social life affords abundant 
opportunity for production, the result is the rejuvenation of the 
race. 
“Environment influences the higher, mental life of a people,” 
says our author, “ chiefly through the medium of their economic 
and social life.” She shows how true this is concerning politics 
and even ethical ideas. ‘“‘ Political parties tend to follow geo- 
graphical lines of cleavage,” *— but this is due to the fact that 
these lines of cleavage mark lines of divergent interests, as in our 
own Civil War when the mountaineers of the South sided with 
the Union because they had no interest in slavery. 
Time is an element to be reckoned with for the influence of 
geographic environment takes time. ‘ A habitat leaves upon 
man no ephemeral impress; it affects him in one way at a low 
stage of his development, and differently at a later or higher stage, 
because the man himself and his relation to his environment have 
been modified in the earlier period; but traces of that earlier 
adaptation survive in his maturer life.” * These modifications 
are carried by a people in their migrations and determine their 
reactions to a new environment as in the case of the Moors of 
Spain; — “ They bore the impress of Asia, Africa and Europe, 
and on their expulsion from Spain, carried back with them to 
Morocco traces of their peninsula life.” ® 
In tracing the influence of environment, Miss Semple shows 
how complex is this factor, extending far beyond mere local con- 
ditions, including, in fact, the whole earth. 
The earth is an inseparable whole. Each country or sea is physically and 
historically intelligible only as a portion of that whole. Currents and wind- 
systems of the oceans modify the climate of the nearby continents, and direct 
the first daring navigations of their peoples. . . . Europe is a part of the 
Atlantic coast. This is a fact so significant that the North Atlantic has 
become a European sea. The United States also is a part of the Atlantic 
1 Influence of Geographic Environment, p. 20. 2 Tbid., p. 21. 
3 Tbid., p. 22. 4 Ibid., p. 23. 5 Ibid., p. 25. § Ibid., p. 25. 
