178 AN ENGLISH SHIR&. 



accordingly here to take the single county of Sussex in 

 detail, in order to show that when the geological and 

 geographical factors of the problem are given, all the 

 rest follows as a matter of course. By such detailed 

 treatment alone can one hope to establish the truth of 

 the general principle that human history is at bottom a 

 result of geographical conditions, acting upon the funda- 

 mentally identical constitution of man. 



In a certain sense, it is quite clear that human life 

 depends mainly upon soil and conformation, to an extent 

 that nobody denies. You cannot have a dense population 

 in Sahara ; and you can hardly fail to have one in the 

 fruitful valley of the Nile. The growth of towns in one 

 district rather than another must be governed largely 

 by the existence of rivers or harbours, of coal or metals, 

 of agricultural lowlands or defensible heights. Glasgow 

 could not spring up in inland Leicestershire, nor 

 Manchester in coalless Norfolk. Insular England must 

 naturally be the greatest shipping country in Europe ; 

 while no large foreign trade is possible in any Bohemia 

 except Shakespeare's. So much everbody admits. But 

 it seems to me that these underlying causes have coloured 

 the entire local history of every district to an extent 

 which few people adequately recognise, and that until 

 such recognition becomes more general, our views of 

 history must necessarily be very narrow. We must see 

 not only that something depends upon geographical con- 

 figuration, not even merely that a great deal depends upon 

 it, but that everything depends upon it. We must un- 

 learn our purely human history, and learn a history of 

 interaction between nature and man instead. 



