e industrialism of Japan, with its artistic and
literary concomitants, to the savage economy and retarded intellectual
life of the Chukches fisher tribes or the Giljak hunters of Sakhalin.
The white race, identified primarily with Europe, that choice and
diversified continent, comprised also a large area of southwestern Asia
and the northern third of Africa. It thus extended from the Arctic
Circle well within the Tropics. Its area included every variety of
geographic condition and originally every degree of cultural
development; but the rapid expansion in recent centuries of the most
advanced peoples of this race has made them the apostles of civilization
to the whole world. It has also given them, through the occupation of
Australia and the Americas, the widest distribution and the most varied
habitats. As agents of the modern historical movement, however, they are
subjected to all its assimilating effects, which tend to counteract the
diversities born of geographic segregation, and to raise all branches of
the white race to one superior cosmopolitan type. On the other hand, the
vast international division of labor and specialization of production,
geographically based and entailed by advancing economic development,
besides the differences of traditions and ideals reaching far back into
an historic past and rooted in the land, will serve to maintain many
subtle inner differences between even the most progressive nations.

[Sidenote: Area and language.]

Hence the wide area which Darwin found to be most favorable to
improved variation and rapid evolution in animals, operates to the
same end in human development, and its influence becomes a law of
anthropo-geography. It permeates the higher aspects of life. The wide,
varied area occupied by the Germanic tribes of Europe permitted the
evolution of the many dialects which finally made the richness of
modern German speech. English has gained in vocabulary and idiom with
every expansion of its area. New territories mean to a people new
pursuits, new relations, new wants; and all these become reflected in
their speech. Languages, like peoples, cease to grow with national
stagnation.[302] To such stagnation movement or expansion is the
surest antidote. America will in time make its contribution to the
English tongue. The rich crop of slang that springs up on the frontier
is not wholly to be deplored. The crudeness and vigor of cowboy speech
are marks of youth: they are also p