ce of
colonists. Thus in all of the great geographical areas the bull-roarer
is found, and that without reckoning in analogous implements like the
so-called "buzz," which cover further ground, for instance, the
eastern coastlands of Asia. Are we to postulate many independent
origins, or else far-reaching transportations by migratory peoples,
by the American Indians and the negroes, for example? No attempt can
be made here to answer these questions. It is enough to have shown
by the use of a single illustration how the study of the geographical
distribution of inventions raises as many difficulties as it solves.

Our conclusion, then, must be that the anthropologist, whilst
constantly consulting his physical map of the world, must not suppose
that by so doing he will be saved all further trouble. Geographical
facts represent a passive condition, which life, something by its very
nature active, obeys, yet in obeying conquers. We cannot get away from
the fact that we are physically determined. Yet, physical
determinations have been surmounted by human nature in a way to which
the rest of the animal world affords no parallel. Thus man, as the
old saying has it, makes love all the year round. Seasonal changes
of course affect him, yet he is no slave of the seasons. And so it
is with the many other elements involved in the "geographic control."
The "road," for instance--that is to say, any natural avenue of
migration or communication, whether by land over bridges and through
passes, or by sea between harbours and with trade-winds to swell the
sails--takes a hand in the game of life, and one that holds many trumps;
but so again does the non-geographical fact that your travelling-machine
may be your pair of legs, or a horse, or a boat, or a railway, or an
airship. Let us be moderate in all things, then, even in our references
to the force of circumstances. Circumstances can unmake; but of
themselves they never yet made man, nor any other form of life.

CHAPTER V
LANGUAGE

The differentia of man--the quality that marks him off from the other
animal kinds--is undoubtedly the power of articulate speech. Thereby
his mind itself becomes articulate. If language is ultimately a
creation of the intellect, yet hardly less fundamentally is the
intellect a creation of language. As flesh depends on bone, so does
the living tissue of our spiritual life depend on its supporting
framework of steadfast verbal forms. The genius, the