Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/73

Rh are to-day the most fruitful of all lands in industrial discoveries and intellectual activities, but in the polar regions, as in the equatorial, the highest development never can be reached.

The conditions which encourage indigenous civilization are not always those that encourage permanent development, and vice versa. Thus, Great Britain in her insulation, remained barbarous long after Greece and Italy had attained a high degree of cultivation; yet when once the seed took root, that very insulation acted as a wall of defense, within which a mighty power germinated and with its influence overspread the whole earth.

Thus we have seen that a combination of physical conditions is essential to intellectual development. Without leisure, there can be no culture, without wealth no leisure, without labor no wealth, and without a suitable soil and climate no remunerative labor.

Now, throughout the material universe, there is no object or element which holds its place, whether at rest or in motion, except under fixed laws; no atom of matter nor subtle mysterious force, no breath of air, nor cloudy vapor nor streak of light, but in existing obeys a law. The Almighty fiat, Be fruitful and multiply, fruitful in increase, intellectual as well as physical, was given alike to all mankind; seeds of progress were sown broadcast throughout all the races human; some fell on stony places, others were choked with weeds, others found good soil. When we see a people in the full enjoyment of all these physical essentials to progress yet in a state of savagism, we may be sure that elements detrimental to progress have, at some period of their history, interposed to prevent natural growth. War, famine, pestilence, convulsions of nature, have nipped in the bud many an incipient civilization, whose history lies deep buried in the unrecorded past.

The obvious necessity of association as a primary condition of development leaves little to be said on