Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/46



BY M. A. CZAPLICKA.

(Read at Meeting, December 17th, 1913.)

term "environment" must be understood to cover not only strictly physical conditions, but also the botanical and zoological features of a given locality. Environment in this sense is bound to play a large part in determining the nature of the mentality of the inhabitants and in moulding the form of their political and religious institutions.

Of course a knowledge of the environment cannot give us an exact picture of the biological and psychological type of people who inhabit it. There is always something to be allowed for "variants" in describing the physical type of man or animal, even if we are perfectly conscious of all the features of a given environment. The same amount of the unexpected and accidental must be allowed for in describing the mental character of man and animal, even when we know all the psychological factors. Still, the "variants" form only "the last touch" of a mentality, and the environmental conditions form its main part.

This principle may be exemplified by a study of the social and religious life of the natives of Northern Asia or Siberia, together with the study of their environment.

Siberia stretches from the Ural mountains "eastwards across 130 degrees of the meridian to the Pacific Ocean. Its northern boundary is formed by the Arctic Ocean,