Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/873

 A PROGRAMME FOR SOCIAL STUDY 857

more apparent perhaps if we take up now some of the chief divisions and consider the influence they exert upon each other. We will suppose that our object of study is a society.

"Every society," says Herbert Spencer, "displays phenom- ena that are ascribable to the character of its units and to the conditions under which they exist." Let us consider briefly the effect of these conditions.

That land, and by land I mean all natural resources, exerts a great influence upon the character and organization of a people, must be obvious to everyone who has the slightest knowledge of history and geography, for by land chiefly do we explain the difference between the inhabitants of the cold regions of the North, and those of the hot countries near the Equator. Both the physical and mental nature of men are affected by their natural environment. Criminologists have shown, for instance, that there is a close relation between crime and climate. The con- tour of the land affects the size and isolation of a social group, and determines the lines of its movements. Some writers go so far as to declare that physical conditions are the chief factors in social development. Buckle, for instance, lays great stress upon the effect which the general aspect of nature exerts upon the people. By the general aspect of nature, he means " those appearances which, though presented chiefly to the sight, have through the medium of that or the other senses directed the association of ideas, and hence on different occasions have given rise to different habits of national thought." Buckle enforces his proposition by great wealth of illustration. Ireland, Greece, India, Egypt, Central America, Mexico, Peru and Brazil are all cited to illustrate his principle. The aspect of nature in India, for instance, he says, stimulated the imagination of the people, which found expression in their forms of religion. "To them every object of nature was a source of awe .... They never dared to assimilate their own actions with the actions of their deities." It is thus, he thinks, that the hideous nature of the Hindoo gods may be explained. With Europe, however, he maintains, the case is very different. All the conditions of