progress. Nevertheless, for a theory of progress it offers a solid
basis. From the standpoint of the land social and political
organizations, in successive stages of development, embrace ever
increasing areas, and make them support ever denser populations; and in
this concentration of population and intensification of economic
development they assume ever higher forms. It does not suffice that a
people, in order to progress, should extend and multiply only its local
relations to its land. This would eventuate in arrested development,
such as Japan showed at the time of Perry's visit. The ideal basis of
progress is the expansion of the world relations of a people, the
extension of its field of activity and sphere of influence far beyond
the limits of its own territory, by which it exchanges commodities and
ideas with various countries of the world. Universal history shows us
that, as the geographical horizon of the known world has widened from
gray antiquity to the present, societies and states have expanded their
territorial and economic scope; that they have grown not only in the
number of their square miles and in the geographical range of their
international intercourse, but in national efficiency, power, and
permanence, and especially in that intellectual force which feeds upon
the nutritious food of wide comparisons. Every great movement which has
widened the geographical outlook of a people, such as the Crusades in
the Middle Ages, or the colonization of the Americas, has applied an
intellectual and economic stimulus. The expanding field of advancing
history has therefore been an essential concomitant and at the same time
a driving force in the progress of every people and of the world.

[Sidenote: Man's increasing dependence upon nature.]

Since progress in civilization involves an increasing exploitation of
natural advantages and the development of closer relations between a
land and its people, it is an erroneous idea that man tends to
emancipate himself more and more from the control of the natural
conditions forming at once the foundation and environment of his
activities. On the contrary, he multiplies his dependencies upon
nature;[124] but while increasing their sum total, he diminishes the
force of each. There lies the gist of the matter. As his bonds become
more numerous, they become also more elastic. Civilization has
lengthened his leash and padded his collar, so that it does not gall;
but the leash is