rom the ground which he
tills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which he
trades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart from
its habitat. Man's relations to his environment are infinitely more
numerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant or
animal. So complex are they that they constitute a legitimate and
necessary object of special study. The investigation which they receive
in anthropology, ethnology, sociology and history is piecemeal and
partial, limited as to the race, cultural development, epoch, country or
variety of geographic conditions taken into account. Hence all these
sciences, together with history so far as history undertakes to explain
the causes of events, fail to reach a satisfactory solution of their
problems largely because the geographic factor which enters into them
all has not been thoroughly analyzed. Man has been so noisy about the
way he has "conquered Nature," and Nature has been so silent in her
persistent influence over man, that the geographic factor in the
equation of human development has been overlooked.

[Sidenote: Stability of geographic factors in history.]

In every problem of history there are two main factors, variously stated
as heredity and environment, man and his geographic conditions, the
internal forces of race and the external forces of habitat. Now the
geographic element in the long history of human development has been
operating strongly and operating persistently. Herein lies its
importance. It is a stable force. It never sleeps. This natural
environment, this physical basis of history, is for all intents and
purposes immutable in comparison with the other factor in the
problem--shifting, plastic, progressive, retrogressive man.

[Sidenote: Persistent effect of remoteness.]

History tends to repeat itself largely owing to this steady, unchanging
geographic element. If the ancient Roman consul in far-away Britain
often assumed an independence of action and initiative unknown in the
provincial governors of Gaul, and if, centuries later, Roman Catholicism
in England maintained a similar independence towards the Holy See, both
facts have their cause in the remoteness of Britain from the center of
political or ecclesiastical power in Rome. If the independence of the
Roman consul in Britain was duplicated later by the attitude of the
Thirteen Colonies toward England, and again within the young Republic by
the heads