Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/109

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 95

SECTION II. GEOGRAPHIC, OROGRAPHIC, AND HYDROGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.

Now that we have discussed the constant and necessary limits of all the abstract elementary forces which enter into the com- position of social tissue and contribute to its equilibration, we can look at these forces in their structure as a whole, as masses of territory and population, and see how the latter are composed in their natural distribution.

The two Americas are united by an isthmus, and continued toward the east by the archipelago of the Antilles, and toward the west by the peninsula of California. In like manner, Europe and Africa were united by an isthmus, now destroyed, but the apparent remains of which are the point of Italy, Sicily, the island of Malta, and the peninsula bounding Cape Bon. The archipelago here corresponds to that of the Antilles, and Spain and France correspond in their structure and peninsular situation to that of California.

For Asia and Australia the cataclysm has been more com- plete, the whole continent having been parceled out; Australia is the principal vestige. The archipelagos of the Philippines and of the Moluccas correspond to the Cyclades and the Antilles, and Arabia corresponds to the Spanish-French peninsula and to California.

To summarize, the earth has a geographical structure as a whole, an incontestable symmetry, the result of forces which have concurred in its formation. This symmetry has undergone and continues to undergo variations, not only local, but also gen- eral. Both have producd upon the animal populations corre- sponding variations. These variations are, however, dominated and limited by the constancy and regularity of the geographical structure as a whole, which itself is determined by the most gen- eral laws of universal mechanics.

The fact that the present continental masses were, at a certain period, attached to one another, and the existence, at present, of a submerged continent, renders possible the hypothesis of the appearance of a unique couple of beings, descended from the anthropoids, and which, being reproduced and ameliorated by