The theory of social environment, as we have seen, gradually rises, especially since the renaissance, parallel with the theory of physical milieu. The stream of thought commences to broaden on both sides as we approach the eighteenth century, and broadens still further, and deepens, in the nineteenth, when specialization occurs or continues in anthropo-geography, biology, jurisprudence and economics, anthropology, sociology, and literature, and latterly in physics. These furnish us the divisions for subsequent discussions.[83]
All antecedent thought on the subject converges in Herder and from this focal point, as a collecting and fructifying center, it emerges, branches out and radiates in a definite number of directions. This can only be indicated here.[84] One main ramification leads us to anthropo-geography. Consequently, we must now turn to a detailed consideration of the idea of milieu in anthropo-geography.[85]
Karl Ritter first in anthropo-geography elucidated Herder’s ideas on environment. “... KARL RITTER steht auf HERDERS Schultern, wenn er in seiner ‘Allgemeinen Erdkunde’ den Gedanken der tiefgehenden Beeinflussung der Völkergeschichte durch die äußeren Umgebungen entwickelt ...”[86] Ritter is said to be given too much credit for connecting scientifically geography and history: “C. Ritter führte, ... die Herder’schen Anschauungen deutlicher aus. Die wissenschaftliche, nicht bloß äußerliche Verbindung von Geographie und Geschichte kettet sich an seinen Namen. Nicht ganz mit Recht; ...”[87] Richthofen thinks that Ritter’s basic idea was almost without influence on geography; only the historians profited by it.[88] Alexander von Humboldt, on the other hand, declares in the first volume of his Cosmos that “The views of comparative geography have been specially enlarged by that admirable work, Erdkunde im Verhältnis zur Natur und zur Geschichte, in which Carl Ritter so ably delineates the physiognomy of our globe and shows the influence of its external configuration on the physical phenomena on its surface, on the migrations, laws, and manners of nations, and on all the principal historical events enacted upon the face of the earth.”[89]
In the Erdkunde,[90] Ritter propounds a program for anthropo-geographical investigation, i.e., for the investigation of the mutual relation between man and his environment. As every moral man should, so should also “jeder menschliche Verein, jedes Volk seiner eigenen inneren und äußeren Kräfte, wie derjenigen der Nachbarn und seiner Stellung zu allen von außen herein wirkenden Verhältnissen inne werden.”[91] Nature exercises greater influence over peoples than over individual men: “Die Eigentümlichkeit des Volkes kann nur aus seinem Wesen erkannt werden, aus seinem Verhältnis zu sich selbst, zu seinen Gliedern, zu seinen Umgebungen, und weil kein Volk ohne Staat und Vaterland gedacht werden kann, aus seinem Verhältnis zu beiden und aus dem Verhältnis von beiden zu Nachbarländern und Nachbarstaaten. Hier zeigt sich der Einfluß, den die Natur auf die Völker, und zwar in einem noch weit höheren Grade, als auf den einzelnen Menschen ausüben muß ...
“Denn durch eine höhere Ordnung bestimmt, treten die Völker wie die Menschen zugleich unter dem Einfluß einer Tätigkeit der Natur und der Vernunft hervor aus dem geistigen wie aus dem physischen Elemente in den Alles verschlingenden Kreis des Weltlebens. Gestaltet sich doch jeder Organismus dem inneren Zusammenhange und dem äußeren Umfange nach ... Sie (Völker und Staaten) stehen alle unter demselben Einflusse der Natur ...”[92] To the problem of the reciprocal relation between external and internal factors, Ritter devoted a special essay, entitled “Über das historische Element in der geographischen Wissenschaft,” which he read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin in 1833.[93]
In Alexander von Humboldt’s Ansichten der Natur,[94] “Everywhere the reader’s attention is directed to the perpetual influence which physical nature exercises on the moral condition and on the destiny of man.”[95] In passing, Humboldt also touches on environment in the first volume of his chef-d’oeuvre, Kosmos, assigning it, however, but a modest rôle: “Es würde das allgemeine Naturbild, das ich zu entwerfen strebe, unvollständig bleiben, wenn ich hier nicht auch den Mut hätte, das Menschengeschlecht in seinen physischen Abstufungen, in der geographischen Verbreitung seiner gleichzeitig vorhandenen Typen, in dem Einfluß, welchen es von den Kräften der Erde empfangen und wechselseitig, wenn auch schwächer, auf sie ausgeübt hat, mit wenigen Zügen zu schildern. Abhängig, wenn gleich in minderem Grade als Pflanzen und Tiere, von dem Boden und den meteorologischen Prozessen des Luftkreises, den Naturgewalten durch Geistestätigkeit und stufenweise erhöhte Intelligenz, wie durch eine wunderbare sich allen Klimaten aneignende Biegsamkeit des Organismus leichter entgehend, nimmt das Geschlecht wesentlich Teil an dem ganzen Erdenleben.”[96]
J. G. Kohl’s book, Der Verkehr und die Ansiedlungen der Menschheit in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der Gestaltung der Erdoberfläche,[97] occupies itself with the question of the dependence of human progress in general, and of density and concentration of population in particular, upon natural conditions. The causes of these phenomena are, to Kohl, partly moral or political, and partly physical. The physical causes of concentration are twofold: “Teils sind es solche, die von dem mehr oder minder großen Produktenreichtum des Bodens, teils solche, die von der Gestaltung der Erdoberfläche abhängen ... so zeigt sich dann, daß von allen verschiedenen Ursachen der Kondensierung der Bevölkerung die Bodengestaltung die allerwichtigste ist.”[98] Opposed to these natural conditions is a series of what Kohl styles political influences, such as national character, institutions created by the State, laws, etc.—“Die moralischen oder politischen Ursachen der verschiedenen Dichtigkeit der Bevölkerung sind in dem Kulturzustande und besonders in der politischen Verfassung der Bewohner der verschiedenen Erdstriche begründet ... Auch sind viele verschiedene Sitten der Völker als einflußreiche Ursachen der mehr oder minder großen Dichtigkeit der Bevölkerung zu betrachten.”[99] Not only national character, but also education is to be counted among the political influences: “Unter politischen und moralischen Einflüssen, die nicht von der Natur bedingt werden, verstehen wir solche Kräfte, solche Volkstalente und Eigentümlichkeiten des Charakters, die nicht der Boden, die Luft und das Klima dem Volke geben. So groß nämlich auch die Gewalt des Bodens, des Klimas und der Natur ist, so sehr die Zonen, die Gebirge, die Sümpfe, die Wälder, die Wüsten u.s.w. alle Bevölkerung, die in ihre Gebiete fällt, auf einerlei Weise zu bilden und zu modeln streben, so sehr behauptet doch immer noch nebenher der ursprüngliche Charakter des Stammes und die Erziehung, welche das Volk sich gibt, ihre eigenen Rechte. Es existieren beide Einflüsse neben einander, beschränken sich gegenseitig, aber sie heben sich nicht auf ... Das, was nun nicht vom Boden abhängt und was ein Volk auf jeden Boden, den es bezieht, mit hin bringt, ist wiederum Zweierlei, entweder etwas Angeborenes oder etwas Angenommenes.”[100] It is difficult to differentiate between what is due to original endowment and what to the milieu, yet natural influences can not be ignored: “Welcher Geist ... möchte den Versuch wagen, zu entscheiden, was im Charakter des Volkes ... Angenommenes und was Selbstgegebenes sei, was endlich in ihren Handlungen und Bewegungen von Klima und Landesbeschaffenheit bedingt werde. Die Charaktergepräge der Nationen, wie wir sie jetzt in diesen neuesten Momenten der weltgeschichtlichen Entwicklung sehen, sind Gebilde, welche unter der Einwirkung unerforschbar vielfacher Einflüsse entstanden sind.... Und doch stehen sie (die Natureinflüsse, die von den Historikern gewöhnlich unberücksichtigt geblieben sind) vielleicht auch bei allen jenen Dingen, die wir im Vordergrunde agieren sehen, im Hintergrunde und wirken als die Quellen der Erscheinungen mittelbar selbst da, wo wir dieselben anderen Ursachen zuschreiben. So mag jede Art der Staatsverfassung, der Gewerbzweige geschöpft und hervorgeblüht sein aus der Tiefe des Nationalgeistes, des Boden- und des Luftgeistes, während wir sie als Willkürliches und Selbstgegebenes auffassen.”[101]
The naturalist Karl Ernst von Baer discusses the influence of external nature upon the social relations of individual nations and upon the history of mankind in general,[102] while the geologist Bernhard Cotta attempts to show the effect of soil and geological structure on German life.[103] Accepting, in the main, Cotta as a basis, J. Kutzen, in Das deutsche Land, Seine Natur in ihren charakteristischen Zügen und sein Einfluß auf Geschichte und Leben der Menschen, Skizzen und Bilder,[104] the bulk of which book is physical geography, intersperses therewith anthropo-geographical statements that are in some cases interwoven in, and in others added to, the descriptive parts, pointing out the relation of environment to the life and history of the Germans.[105] Kutzen claims his work to be the first that treats the whole of Germany in the way just indicated.
In The Natural History of the German People,[106] W. H. Riehl studies the action of natural conditions on man. He is concerned with the connections between land and people: “Will man die naturgeschichtliche Methode der Wissenschaft vom Volke in ihrer ganzen Breite und Tiefe nachweisen, dann muß man auch in das Wesen dieser örtlichen Besonderungen des Volkstumes eindringen. In der Lehre von der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft ist das Verhältnis der großen natürlichen Volksgruppen zueinander nachgewiesen: hier sollen diese Gruppen nach den örtlichen Bedingungen des Landes, in welchem das Volksleben wurzelt, dargestellt werden. Erst aus den individuellen Bezügen von LAND UND LEUTEN entwickelt sich die kulturgeschichtliche Abstraktion der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft.”[107] And “Das vorliegende Buch hat sich das bescheidenere Ziel gesteckt, zusammenhängende Skizzen zu liefern zur Naturgeschichte des Volkes in seinem Zusammenhang mit dem Lande.”[108] His chief aim is to prove that the connection between land and people is the basis of all social development and of all social research: “Ich hatte mir von Anbeginn das Ziel gesteckt, den Zusammenhang von Land und Volk als Fundament aller sozialen und politischen Entwicklung, als Ausgangspunkt aller sozialen Forschung nachzuweisen, und dieses Hauptziel, die eigentliche Tendenz des Buches, hat heute noch denselben Wert, dieselbe fördernde Kraft wie vor einem Menschenalter.”[109] He wants to show how “Volksart” and “Landesart” hang together, how nationality grows organically out of the soil: “Ich nenne dieses Wanderbuch einen zweiten Band zu ‘Land und Leuten.’ In jener Schrift verarbeite ich zahlreiche Wanderskizzen, um den Zusammenhang von Volksart und Landesart, das organische Erwachsen des Volkstumes aus dem Boden nachzuweisen.”[110] Everywhere Riehl finds “an organic relation between nature and man,” according to Gooch.[111] Riehl recognizes “that man could only develop within the limits imposed by nature.”[112] The problem of how locality affects social groups has, of course, not originated with Riehl, but it received a reformulation at his hands. It must be added, however, that his bombastic assertions far outrun his data. His claims are disproportionate to his facts.[113]
Alfred Kirchhoff brilliantly sketches the reciprocal relations between land and people in Germany, in an essay entitled Die deutschen Landschaften und Stämme.[114]
Achelis[115] refers to Bastian’s doctrine of geographical provinces, “wo eine Reihe rein physikalischer Agentien: Temperatur, Boden, Flora, Fauna, etc. sich mit entsprechenden psychischen kombinieren, so daß man in konzentrischer Reihenfolge von botanischen, zoologischen und anthropologischen Kreisen reden könnte. Der leitende Grundsatz, sagt Bastian, für geographisch-typische Provinzen fällt in die Abhängigkeit des Organismus von seiner geographischen Umgebung (le Milieu oder Monde ambiant), in eine gegenseitig festgeschlossene Wechselwirkung und also in Naturgesetze, mit denen sich rechnen läßt (Zur Lehre von den geographischen Provinzen [Berlin, 1886], S. 6).”
The reciprocal influences of man and his environment are illustrated by Alfred Kirchhoff in Mensch und Erde, Skizzen von den Wechselbeziehungen zwischen beiden.[116]
Ferdinand von Richthofen[117] traces the gradual evolution of “Siedlung und Verkehr,” under which two concepts he subsumes all relations of man to the soil.[118]
It was Friedrich Ratzel, however, who “performed the great service of placing anthropo-geography on a secure scientific basis. He had his forerunners in Montesquieu,[119] Alexander von Humboldt, Buckle, Ritter, Kohl, Peschel and others; but he first investigated the subject from the modern scientific point of view, ... and based his conclusions on world-wide inductions, for which his predecessors did not command the data.”[120] He “has written the standard work on Anthropogeographie.”[121] Employing the analytical method, Ratzel was the first to divide the subject-matter into categories: “Ratzel hat das Verdienst, daß er zuerst den Stoff in Kategorien teilte. Er wendet die analytische Methode der allgemeinen Geographie an und betrachtet den Einfluß einzelner Naturgegebenheiten auf den Menschen, z.B. der Inseln, Halbinseln, Gebirge, Ebenen, Steppen, Wüsten, Küsten, Flußmündungen[122] usw. Die analytische Methode allein kann zum Ziele führen.”[123] The great and permanent merit of Ratzel’s Politische Geographie[124] is its setting forth how closely the State is bound to the physical milieu.[125] It treats partly of the effect of nature and soil on the formation of the State and on political boundaries.[126] Ratzel expounds environmental action also in his books Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika,[127] The History of Mankind,[128] and in his article on “The Principles of Anthropo-geography.”[129] Among his followers is to be counted Andrew R. Cowan, whose Master-Clues in World-History[130] is “deeply impregnated with Ratzel’s teachings.”[131] Camille Vallaux devotes the fifth chapter (pp. 145–73) of his Géographie Sociale, Le Sol et L’État,[132] to a criticism of the theories of Raum (space) and of Lage (situation) as developed by Ratzel in his Politische Geographie. And, in general, Ratzel’s “published work had been open to the just criticism of inadequate citation of authorities.”[133] O. Schlüter in “Die leitenden Gesichtspunkte der Anthropogeographie, insbesondere der Lehre Friedrich Ratzels”[134] gives us the best single estimate of Ratzel, the best orientation—within the compass of an article well written, well poised, and illuminating—on Ratzel’s work, thought, method, and application.[135]
We shall now see, first, the stand taken by some French writers, and then that taken by German and English writers, on the question of how physical environment affects history.
One of the “three most philosophical writers on climate,”[136] Charles Comte, not related by birth to the founder of Positivism, is, likewise, one of the earliest disciples of Herder in France. Herder “seems to have helped to inspire”[137] Charles Comte’s Traité de Législation.[138] Charles Comte’s “discussion of the questions which relate to the influence of physical nature on human development must have been the fruit of long and careful study. It was as great an advance on Montesquieu’s treatment of the subject as Montesquieu’s had been on that of Bodin. It disproved, corrected, or confirmed a host of Montesquieu’s observations and conclusions. It showed that he had ascribed too much to climate, and too little to the configuration of the earth’s surface, the distribution of mountains and rivers, &c.; and that he had conceived vaguely, and even to a large extent erroneously, of the modes in which climate and the fertility or sterility of soil affect human development. But while Comte thus justly criticised Montesquieu, he himself exaggerated the efficiency of physical agencies. Indeed, he virtually traced to their operation the whole development of history ... he has assumed that physical agencies ultimately account for historical change and movement, for public institutions and laws....
“Charles Comte fully recognises that the same physical medium has a very different influence on different generations; and that institutions and laws, education and manners, and, in a word, all the constituents of the social medium, have as real an influence on the development of history as those of the physical medium. Yet he assumes the latter to be the first, although to a large extent only indirect, causes of the whole amount of change effected.”[139]
Victor Cousin, another Frenchman, reconnects with Herder. Cousin had direct acquaintance with at least the principal work of Herder, for the rendering of whose “Ideen” into French by Quinet he seems responsible.[140] In the eighth lecture of his “admired”[141] Cours de 1828 sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire, he discourses on the rôle that geography plays in history.
F. Guizot, in the fifth lecture of The History of Civilization,[142] comments briefly on the influence of external circumstances upon liberty.
The romantic French historiographer, Jules Michelet, in his Histoire de France (second volume, 1833), and in his Histoire Romaine (1839), interlinks geography with history, and brilliantly describes the countries whose histories he is writing. Like some before him (such as Montesquieu), and many after him (such as Riehl, Curtius, and Gothein),[143] who traveled in the respective countries before describing them or composing their history, Michelet, as one preliminary measure toward equipping himself for such a task, visited Italy[144] and various parts of France, the latter repeatedly, in order to gain a first hand impression of the physical milieu and the people of those lands. He is said to be the first [sic!] in France who, under the influence of Herder, had the idea that geography was the foundation of history: “Sous l’influence de Herder, il [Michelet] eut, le premier en France, l’idée que la géographie était le fondement de l’histoire: ‘Le matériel, la race, le peuple qui la continue me paraissaient avoir besoin qu’on mît dessous une bonne et forte base, la terre, qui les portât et qui les nourrît. Et notez que ce sol n’est pas seulement le théâtre de l’action. Par la nourriture, le climat, etc., il y influe de cent manières. Tel le nid, tel l’oiseau. Telle la patrie, tel l’homme.’”[145] Without this basis, the actor in history, the people, would be treading on air like figures in some Chinese paintings. Says Jules Simon of the celebrated tableau in the second volume of the Histoire de France: “Son héros [Michelet’s] ... c’est la France. Il en fait une description qui remplit tout le troisième livre et qui est un chef-d’oeuvre. Chose nouvelle, cette géographie a autant de mouvement que l’histoire. Elle est animée, vivante, agissante. Il en montre à merveille l’utilité, la nécessité. Sans cette base géographique, le peuple, l’acteur historique, semblerait marcher en l’air, comme dans les peintures chinoises, où le sol manque.”[146] In the Introduction to Universal History (1831), Michelet says, “In Germany and Italy, fatality is still strong; moral freedom is still borne down by powerful influences of race, locality, and climate.”[147]
Ernst Kapp, in the Philosophische Erdkunde,[148] criticizes writers on the philosophy of history for their failure to give due attention to the geographical existence of the nations. Nor are geographical intermezzos alone sufficient: “Man [these writers] hat zwar eine Ahnung von dem geographischen Element in der Geschichte, nicht aber das deutliche Bewußtsein, daß die Menschheit an dem Planeten ihre physische Individualität besitzt, daß sie zu ihm sich verhält, wie die Seele zum Leib. Anstatt die geographische Betrachtung durch und durch mit der historischen verwachsen zu lassen [which he proposes to do], hat man teils geographische Intermezzos nach subjektivem Gutdünken ... eingestreut, teils auch sich mit einer dem Ganzen voraufgeschickten geographischen Grundlage ein für allemal begnügt. Man hat hierbei nicht bedacht, daß man die Geschichte, wenn man ihr den planetarischen Grund und Boden, auf den man sie von vornherein stellt, wegrückt, zwischen Himmel und Erde schweben läßt und ihre Behandlung dem veränderlichen Luftzuge des subjektiven Beliebens mehr oder minder preisgibt ... Darin ruht die Selbständigkeit der geographischen Wissenschaft, ..., daß ihr Objekt die Erde ist, ... die Erde, wie sie bestimmend auf die Entwicklung des Geistes einwirkt und hinwiederum vom Geist bestimmt und verändert wird. Dies Verhältnis des Planeten zum Geist ist ein wesentliches.”[149]
Arnold H. Guyot, “ce Suisse transplanté en Amérique,”[150] treats the same topic in the Géographie physique comparée, considérée dans ses rapports avec l’histoire de l’humanité.[151]
The frequently misquoted Henry Thomas Buckle, in the celebrated second chapter of the History of Civilization in England,[152] shows the largely indirect effects of climate, food, and soil, chiefly upon the civilizations—of India, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, etc.—anterior to those of Europe, and of a fourth class of physical agents, namely, of what he terms the general aspect of nature upon the imagination—religion, literature, art—of those peoples. Buckle does not maintain that these four classes of the Environment were the sole factors in producing civilization; in fact he makes it quite clear that they were not the only factors, that they affected the civilizations mentioned in an indirect way and he indicates how this has taken place. Buckle’s statements of his ideas had been misrepresented, twisted, and distorted to such a degree that John M. Robertson felt impelled to write a whole book[153] in rebuttal, in order to set Buckle’s detractors and controversial critics right and to refute their unfair imputations to Buckle’s intended meaning.
The romanticist Ernst Curtius is sometimes referred to as one of those historians who give adequate expression to the action of the physical milieu upon the course of history. But Vallaux declares that Curtius, like Michelet, has made of human geography and of political geography merely a preliminary and introductory science to history: “une science auxiliaire ou plutôt liminaire, sorte de portique d’entrée [the italics are ours] pour leurs brillantes constructions,”[154] lending thus support to Kapp’s contention.[155] Nor would Ratzel be content with a portrayal of the land as an introduction to the history of a country, even though it be as richly colored as that drawn by Curtius.[156] A description, in itself, fails to penetrate to the core of the relation. If we now turn to Curtius’ The History of Greece,[157] we find that the first chapter in the first book[158] considers Land and People, a part of which (pp. 9–18) gives a geographical description of Hellas, and another part of which (pp. 19–25, seven pages scant) points out the connection between the land and the people. Elsewhere,[159] Curtius shows the interaction between the physical environment of Athens and the Athenians.[160]
George Grote, whose account of the relation between the Greek land and the Greek people is held by some[161] to be excellent, in A History of Greece,[162] devotes four pages (227–30) of the chapter on General Geography and Limits of Greece to show the effects of the configuration of Greece upon the political relation of the inhabitants[163] and the effects upon their intellectual development,[164] the rest of the chapter being given over to a description of the geography of Greece.
Alfred E. Zimmern, in The Greek Commonwealth, Politics and Economics in Fifth-Century Athens,[165] deals very cleverly with the main features of the material environment of Greek civilization: The Mediterranean Area; The Sea; The Climate; The Soil; Fellowship, or the Rule of Public Opinion, under which headings he discusses the influence of environment upon Greek institutions.[166]
As early as 1864, G. P. Marsh investigates the subject of man’s reaction on his milieu in Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (London).
John William Draper, in his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,[167] in the composition of which Herderian ideas were the guides,[168] first attempts to show (vol. I, pp. 6–17) that individual man, as well as communities, nations, and universal humanity, are under the control of physical conditions; then (pp. 23–35) he points out how the topography, meteorology, and secular geological movements of Europe affected its inhabitants. On the whole, he overstates the force of environment and neglects the human factor; nevertheless his uncompromising affirmations bring out strikingly some of the environmental effects on man.
The uncritical Max Duncker, in the nine volume Geschichte des Altertums,[169] not only has chapters on Land und Volk, or Land und Stämme at the beginning of the history of a given nation, but he also dwells elsewhere in his text on the sway of geography in history.
Élisée Réclus, in the magistral Nouvelle Géographie Universelle (1879 ff.), speaking of the difficulties encountered by research, queries: “... Was verdanken die Nationen dem Einfluß der Natur, die sie umgibt? Was verdanken sie dem Milieu, das ihre Vorfahren bewohnten, ihren Rasseinstinkten, ihren verschiedenartigen Mischungen, den von Außen eingeführten Überlieferungen? Man weiß es nicht, kaum daß einige Lichtstrahlen in jene Finsternis dringen.”[170] The preponderance of European nations is by no means attributable, as some arrogantly and self-conceitedly fancied, to any racial endowment; on the contrary, it is due to the favoring conditions of the physical environment prevailing in Europe: “Man weiß, wie mächtig der Einfluß des geographischen Milieu auf die Fortschritte der europäischen Nationen gewesen ist. Ihre Überlegenheit ist keineswegs, wie einige sich dünkelhafter Weise eingebildet haben, der eigentümlichen Anlage der Rassen zuzuschreiben, denn in anderen Gegenden der alten Welt haben sich eben dieselben Rassen weniger schöpferisch erwiesen. Es sind die glücklichen Bedingungen der Wärme, des Klimas, der Gestalt und Lage des Festlandes, welche den Europäern die Ehre verschafft haben, die ersten gewesen zu sein in der Kenntnis der Erde in ihrem ganzen Umfange und lange Zeit an der Spitze der Zivilisation geblieben zu sein.”[171] These conditions help to explain, in part, the character of the nations: “Mit vollem Recht lieben es also die historischen Geographen bei der Gestalt der verschiedenen Erdteile und bei den Folgen zu verweilen, welche sich daraus für die Bestimmung der Völker ergeben. Die Gestalt der Hochebenen, die Höhe der Berge, der Lauf und der Reichtum der Flüsse, die Nachbarschaft des Ozeans, die Gliederung der Küsten, die Temperatur der Atmosphäre, die Häufigkeit oder Seltenheit des Regens, die unzähligen wechselseitigen Einflüsse der Sonne, der Luft und der Gewässer, alle Erscheinungen des Pflanzenlebens habe eine Bedeutung in ihren Augen und dienen ihnen (wenigstens zum Teil), den Charakter und das erste Leben der Nationen zu erklären ...”[172] Continental and oceanic forms and other features of the globe vary in their value for man in accordance with the stage of civilization to which he attained.[173] Notwithstanding this separation, in principle, of natural and national influences upon social evolution, its application to concrete cases Réclus finds arduous: “Durch das Studium der Sonne und durch die unablässige Beobachtung der klimatischen Erscheinungen können wir ganz allgemein verstehen, welches der Einfluß der Natur auf die Entwicklung der Völker gewesen ist; aber es ist schwieriger, das auf jede Rasse, auf jede Nation zu verteilen....”[174]
P. Mougeoulle’s theory in Les problèmes de l’histoire,[175] is an altogether one-sided geographical theory of history.[176] The sole cause of the external as well as the internal history of peoples, is, in his opinion, the geographical Milieu.[177] To Mougeoulle, the Milieu is the author, whereas man is the actor of the Drama of history.[178]
Léon Metchnikoff, in La Civilisation et Les Grands Fleuves Historiques,[179] pays some attention to the influences (astronomic, physical—the geosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere—, vegetal, animal, anthropological) of the milieu on man and society; yet his main care is with the action of parts of the hydrosphere on human progress. Following C. Böttiger (Das Mittelmeer, Leipzig, 1859), Metchnikoff distinguishes the three milieus: fluvial or potamic, mediterranean or thalassic, and oceanic or universal.[180] On this basis he divides universal history into three periods: 1) the period of the fluvial civilizations (temps anciens), furnishing the principal theme of his argument (discussed in the last four chapters of his book); 2) that of the mediterranean civilizations (temps moyens); 3) and that of the oceanic civilizations. The fluvial or ancient period, from the beginnings to circa 800 B.C., comprises the history of the four great civilizations of antiquity, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, “qui ont eu pour milieu géographique des régions arrosées par certains fleuves ou couples de fleuves célèbres.” The mediterranean or middle period extends from the seventh century B.C.—the foundation of Carthage—to Charles the Fifth. The modern or oceanic period has two epochs: a) the atlantic epoch, from the discovery of America to about the middle of the nineteenth century; and b) the universal epoch, just beginning.[181] In the main, Metchnikoff limits the scope of his work to the compass of fluvial civilizations. He studies in detail the four great historical rivers or pairs of rivers (the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Indus and the Ganges, and the Hoangho and the Yangtze-Kiang, those great educators of mankind) in their bearing upon the four grand civilizations—Chinese, Hindu, Assyro-Babylonian, and Egyptian—of remote antiquity, all of which expanded in fluvial regions.[182] The River, in all countries, presents itself to Metchnikoff as the living synthesis of all the complex conditions of the climate, of the soil, of the configuration of the earth, and of the geologic formation. In Egypt and in China, in India and in Mesopotamia, the River has been “comme une synthèse vivante des conditions géographiques les plus multiples.”[183] He finds that each of the four great monarchies of antiquity had been a natural consequence or result of the hydrological system of the country that served as its cradle, and that history, in the entire ancient world, had been a toil, a forced labor (“une corvée”), imposed on a part of mankind by certain orographic peculiarities of the Milieu. Metchnikoff concludes that in these empires “le Milieu s’est trouvé être invariablement le vrai créateur de l’histoire.” The eloquent example of these four grand ancient civilizations sufficiently proves to him that no important historical expansion could ever occur in any country of the world, unless the milieu condemned its inhabitants to that excessive solidarity which he shows to have been brutally imposed everywhere at the shores of these great historical rivers; a milieu is conceivable, however, where this condition, rigorously required by history, may be fulfilled by an environmental factor other than a river or a system of rivers.[184] Metchnikoff protests that he is far from advocating potamic[185] or geographical[186] fatalism.[187]
Babington’s study of the power of environment over history points out the fallacy of the race theory in the history of the Roman empire, of Germany, and of China.[188]
N. S. Shaler, in Nature and Man in America,[189] traces, on the one hand, the action of environment on organic life, and, on the other, the effect of geographic conditions on the development of peoples, more especially on that of man in North America.[190]
Since about the middle of the eighties, under the leadership of the late historian E. A. Freeman and of the illustrious statesman and scholar, Lord James Bryce, “a marked revival of interest” has been exhibited in England in studying the physical milieu as it relates to man and human society, institutions and history.[191]
The leading point of view in H. F. Helmolt’s The History of the World, a Survey of Man’s Record,[192] is the treatment of man’s relation to his physical environment, the relation of geography to history, the dependence of man on his geographical surroundings. “It [Helmolt’s History] deals with history in the light of physical environment.... Its ground plan, so to speak, is primarily geographical....”[193] It was conceived in the spirit of Ratzel;[194] it is said to have brought for the first time “die Länder- und Völkerkunde in den Dienst der Weltgeschichtsdarstellung.”[195] Helmolt’s “great co-operative History of Mankind ... emphasizes the sovereign influences of nature and geography,” says Gooch.[196]
Rev. H. B. George, in The Relations of Geography and History,[197] attempts to “point out systematically how these [geographical] causes work [all history through], first in general, and then in reference to the various countries of Europe,”[198] although “This work does not pretend to attempt the impossible task of describing all the influence exerted by geographical conditions on human history. All that it professes to do is to indicate the modes in which that influence works, with sufficient illustrations from actual history.”[199]
Professor Geddes, of Edinburgh, is the most energetic expounder of this idea—the anthropo-geographical conception of history—in the English-speaking world, says Small.[200]
Throughout the entire treatment of Guglielmo Ferrero’s[201] History of Rome (one of the most original and important historical works of recent years), geography thoroughly permeates history.[202]
Robert Sieger[203] attempts to explain the history and policies of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy “aus ihren geographischen Grundlagen.”[204]
Ellsworth Huntington, in The Pulse of Asia,[205] illustrates the geographic basis of history.[206]
The Columbia School of sociological historians, and others, interpret history partly in terms of the milieu: physical (economic and geographic) and social.[207]
Human geography, and political geography, have long been divided into fragmentary parts, contended for by economics, history, and sociology.[208] Yet the discipline of anthropo-geography has now become “eine mächtige Hilfswissenschaft der geschichtlichen Auffassung.”[209] So that, today, it has become a custom to include in textbooks of history one or more chapters on the relation of geography to history, to show the dependence of history on environment.[210] The study of the latter is a part of Kulturgeschichte or History of Civilization which is defined as embracing the non-political aspects of civilization such as the influence of nature, the pressure of economic factors, the origin and transformation of ideas, the contribution of science and art, religion and philosophy, literature and law, the material conditions of life, the fortunes of the masses.[211] Likewise, only on a broader scale, the milieu is being examined in a new branch of study, which is one resultant of anthropo-geographical research. This new branch of study is economic geography, which, according to John McFarlane,[212] “may be defined as the study of the influence exerted upon the economic activities of man by his physical environment, and more especially by the form and structure of the surface of the land, the climatic conditions which prevail upon it, and the place relations in which its different regions stand to one another.” Seligman says that the modern study of economic geography is but an expansion of the study of the influence of milieu.[213]
Indeed, geography itself, i.e., the new geography, is conceived of as the science or study of the responses of organisms to inorganic, and to a certain extent organic, environmental control.[214] Professor William Morris Davis, of Harvard University, is one of the chief exponents of this theory in the United States. Very recently, Rollin D. Salisbury said:[215] “By common consent, Geography (as distinct from physical geography) is the science which deals with the relations of physical environment to life and its activities. In this sense, geography is a connecting link between geology, physiography, and climatology, on the one hand, and zoölogy, botany, sociology, economics, and history on the other. Its subject-matter is in process of formulation....”[216]
James Bryce offers the most excellent general survey of man’s relation to his physical environment.[217]
Herbertson’s very useful and readable introductory book gives “concrete pictures of human life under these very different conditions [typical environments]. They show, in the first place, how the occupation of different groups of mankind depends on their geographical surroundings, and how these occupations in turn affect not only the material life, the houses, food, clothing, etc., but also family life, notions of property, progress in trade and manufactures, power of expansion, and ideals of government. All these are classified, not according to race, which is often an accident, but according to those permanent influences by which all races are affected.”[218]
Robert DeCourcy Ward, in his standard work on Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man,[219] presents “typical illustrations” of environmental action on the life of man in the tropics (Ch. 8, pp. 220–71), in the temperate zones (Ch. 9 pp. 272–321), and in the polar zones (Ch. 10, pp. 322–37).[220] In a chapter on the hygiene of the zones (Ch. 7, pp. 178–219), Ward also surveys “some of the relations between weather and climate and a few of the more important diseases.”[221]
R. R. Marett’s chapter on “Environment” in his Anthropology[222] presents, beside a number of valuable general and critical remarks, chiefly a regional survey of the world showing the general effect of geographical environment on man.
Camille Vallaux, in Géographie Sociale, Le Sol et L’État,[223] beginning with the sixth chapter, also discusses some phases of what would in E. C. Hayes’ classification[224] be called the technical milieu.
The most recent German essay, Willy Hellpach’s[225] Die Geopsychischen Erscheinungen: Wetter, Klima und Landschaft in ihrem Einfluß auf das Seelenleben,[226] deals with the direct effects of the surrounding atmosphere and soil on the human psyche.[227] Hellpach seems primarily interested in “Psycho-Pathologie”;[228] he lays most stress on das Pathologische, particularly in the main—first two—parts of his essay: “Wetter und Seelenleben,” and “Klima und Seelenleben,” where the pathological effect is strongly emphasized. Hellpach’s valuable summary of what we know today of this phase of the milieu,[229] revealing as it does by the meager number of the facts assembled the crying need for many more such facts, may be, in its results, somewhat disappointing[230] for the present day, but it augurs well for future investigation.
The latest extensive presentation of general anthropo-geography,[231] Jean Brunhes’ La géographie humaine,[232] pays more attention to present than to historical conditions,[233] and thus fittingly complements Ellen C. Semple’s Influences of Geographic Environment,[234] which “may be regarded as superseding Ratzel’s great work on Anthropo-geography.”[235]
Karl Ritter, in the essay “Über das historische Element in der geographischen Wissenschaft” (1833), declares that the forces of nature which at the commencement of human history exerted a very decisive influence were bound to recede more and more, and their action had to diminish, in proportion to man’s progress. Civilized mankind extricates itself gradually, like single man, from the immediately conditioning fetters of nature and of its place of abode.[236] This opinion of Ritter’s was adopted by many.[237]
Theodor Waitz regards primitive man both as purely a product of, and as being completely at the mercy of, circumambient nature: “Denken wir uns vom Menschen Alles hinweg, was an ihm Wirkung der Kultur ist, so steht er da als bloßes Produkt der Macht, die ihn in’s Leben rief, ... Das Erste, was an ihm charakteristisch für uns hervorträte, würde die sehr vollständige Abhängigkeit sein, in der er sich von seiner Naturumgebung befände: der gesammte Inhalt, den sein inneres Leben zunächst gewönne, würde ein ziemlich reines Produkt dieser letzteren sein. Der Naturmensch wird zunächst nur das, wozu die Naturverhältnisse ihn machen, unter die er sich gestellt findet; wovon er sich nährt, das werden diese ihm darbieten, auf welche Weise und durch welche Mittel er seine Nahrung gewinnt, dazu werden diese ihm Anleitung geben müssen; ob er Kleidung und sonstigen Schutz gegen äußere Schädlichkeiten bedarf, und wie er diesem Bedürfnis abzuhelfen strebt, werden sie ihn lehren und die Erfindungen, die hierzu nötig sind, ihm an die Hand geben müssen; sie werden mit einem Wort seine ganze Lebenseinrichtung bestimmen ...”[238]
G. Gerland holds that man developed from and upon nature, on which he is very closely dependent and of which he is a small part, and that the higher he rises the more he frees himself from the compelling influence of the earth, which, however, he can never wholly escape.[239]
In the opinion of Herbert Spencer, the earlier stages of social evolution are far more dependent on local conditions than the later stages. They are more at the mercy of their surroundings.[240] Both Spencer and Benjamin Kidd believe that primitive man is at the mercy of the milieu.[241] The “remotely ancient representatives of the human species ... were in their then wild state much more plastic than now to external nature,” according to Wallace.[242] Historical and statistical geography show us “die Menschen, wie sie in ihre aktive Rolle eingetreten sind und durch Arbeit die Überlegenheit über das Milieu gewinnen, das sie umgibt ... Nachdem der Mensch ganz den Einfluß des Milieu über sich ergehen ließ, hat er denselben zu seinem Nutzen umgestaltet ...”[243] The intimate connection of first civilizations with physical environment slackens with subsequent advance.[244] This apparently deep-rooted view is controverted by Ratzel who flatly contradicts it. Distinguishing between the direct and the indirect effects of milieu, he argues in straight opposition that with progressing civilization we are increasingly dependent on environment, that the degree of such dependence has not lessened with advancement in civilization, and that only the manner of the relation has changed.[245] Environment affects even the highest civilization, says Ripley.[246] G. Elliot Smith maintains that “Environment, however it may act, whether directly or indirectly, is still helping to shape the human form, and is affecting the development of Man’s customs and achievements at least as powerfully as, if not more so than, ever before.”[247]
The social evolution proceeds amidst the entire system of exterior conditions (chemical, physical, astronomical), by which its rate of progress is determined. Social phenomena can no more be understood apart from their environment than those of individual life.[248] The study of social evolution presupposes a relation to the physical milieu: “Das Studium der sozialen Entwicklung setzt eine Beziehung zwischen der Menschheit, welche den Vorgang vollführt, und der Gesamtheit der äußeren Einflüsse voraus, welche letztere man auch die sogenannte Umgebung heißen könnte.”[249]
John Stuart Mill asserts that “All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, generated by the action of outward circumstances upon masses of human beings.”[250]
To Schäffle, in the analysis of the structure and functions of human society there exist as influential factors the external surroundings, on the one hand, and the active elements of the social body (the individual and the population), on the other; for, as Schäffle emphasizes, not only economics, but all social science must take into consideration not only Society, but also Nature, i.e., the natural fund or stock, designated by soil and climate, of the immediate world-surroundings of the social body as the external sphere embracing societary life, and that, not only as a sum total of free possessions, but also as a multiplicity of free, i.e., unsubjugated resistances.[251]
As “the result of a survey of social organizations, considered as machinery in motion, [Hermann] Post[252] points out very justly that it is useless to attempt to explain social phenomena on the basis of the psychological activities of individuals, as is too commonly assumed, because all individuals whose conduct we can possibly observe have themselves been educated in some society or other, and presume in all their social acts the assumptions on which that society itself proceeds.... It [Post’s method] is the same method, of course, which had already yielded such remarkable results to Montesquieu, and even to Locke. The point of view is no longer that of a Maine or a McLennan.... It is that of a spectator of human society as a whole.... And its immediate outcome has been to throw into the strongest possible relief the dependence of the form and, still more, of the actual content of all human societies on something which is not in the human mind at all, but is the infinite variety of that external Nature which Society exists to fend off from Man, and also to let Man dominate if he can.”[253]