Page:Christianity and Greek Philosophy.djvu/19

Rh raphy of Athens. The people of the entire province of Attica were called Athenians in their relation to the state, and Attics  in regard to their manners, customs, and dialect. The climate and the scenery, the forms of contour and relief, the geographical position and relations of Attica, and, indeed, of the whole peninsula of Greece, must be taken into our account if we would form a comprehensive judgment of the character of the Athenian people.

The soil on which a people dwell, the air they breathe, the mountains and seas by which they are surrounded, the skies that overshadow them,—all these exert a powerful influence on their pursuits, their habits, their institutions, their sentiments, and their ideas. So that could we clearly group, and fully grasp all the characteristics of a region—its position, configuration, climate, scenery, and natural products, we could, with tolerable accuracy, determine what are the characteristics of the people who inhabit it. A comprehensive knowledge of the physical geography of any country will therefore aid us materially in elucidating the natural history, and, to some extent, the moral history of its population. "History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only grasps a people's character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences which its surroundings have wrought upon it."

It is, however, of the utmost consequence the reader should understand that there are two widely different methods of treating this deeply interesting subject—methods which proceed on fundamentally opposite views of man and of nature. One method is that pursued by Buckle in his "History of Civilization in England." The tendency of his work is the assertion of the supremacy of material conditions over the development of human history, and indeed of every individual mind. Here man is purely passive in the hands of riature. Exterior conditions are the chief, if not the only causes of man's intellectual