Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/116

 102 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

gas and liquids a part of animal substance. The theater of humanity is inseparable from the actors who play the drama or the comedy of life ; as man carries in himself his aquatic envi- ronment, so the adaptation of society to the whole of nature is not solely figurative, but real, that is to say expressed by organic laws such that each society appears to us like a combination sublimated from all the organic and inorganic elements of the world, and sensitive even to the highest degree of conscious sensibility, and, indeed, methodical. 1

SECTION III. THE DISTRIBUTION OF MINERALS.

Although the term "mineral" may be independent of the notion of solid bodies, the water of the sea and the air containing minerals, yet in general minerals are dependent upon certain lands to which their distribution is intimately allied. Their zones of distribution, are, then, delimited by the geological strata. Nevertheless, as the latter vary with small distances, so the mineral aggregates seem to have a distribution as incoherent as the formations themselves. One does not observe, at first, these general laws, which are more striking in the distribution of the flora and fauna. Nevertheless, this relation between the nature of lands and the existence of different minerals is a con- stant law of inorganic nature, a law which is in turn in relation to the conditions of social existence and evolution.

The form of the minerals themselves is not essentially con- stant; it depends chiefly on the temperature. The most of them may pass from a solid to a liquid or gaseous condition. Yet with the temperature now existing at the surface of the earth, these inorganic bodies remain almost constantly in one or the other of these three conditions. Those which have the solid form are the most numerous.

The co-existence of the usage of certain minerals with certain stages of civilization gives to societies a special industrial struc- ture ; stone, iron, copper, gold, silver, and coal have played and still play a considerable role in the evolution of societies. From the point of view which we take, it is necessary to note that they

1 ELISEE RECLUS, Geographic universelle; HOUZEAU, Histoire du solde r Europe; A. MAURY, La terre tt Vhommc; METEKNIKOFF, La civilisation et Us grands fleuves.