most often along routes predestined by the configuration of the country. But on the other hand, a race that has developed a civilization in some well nourished and protected area falls into decline because the very conditions which gave safety in the earlier period, now isolate the people from the great currents of men and ideas that move along the more accessible river valleys and over the vast and fertile alluvial plains where great cities have arisen, causing exchange of commodities and the contact of minds. If the aspects of nature are terrifying and sublime, the explanations that men advance tend to be colored with superstitious fear. When the surroundings of the people are awe-inspiring the response to these manifestations of grandeur are fear and reverence. This continued response becomes habit in the individual and custom in the group. As the usage is integrated, all those who do not respond to the terrible manifestations of nature with the customary degree of fear and reverence are regarded with suspicion. That is, the confident and the skeptical are constrained. Any attitude of curiosity or criticism is discouraged as essentially unrighteous and endangering the safety of the group. For this reason the primitive man persecutes any member of his tribe who, because of a confident or critical turn of mind, deviates too far from the paths prescribed by the established usages of the group. Thus does physical environment set the limits to human habitation, guide the movements of aimless migrations, stimulate or retard the development of civilizations; sometimes facilitating the easy communication of ideas and the exchange of goods, and other times impressing the minds of a people with a sense of its grandeur which finds ultimate expression in rigid usages or grotesque. mythologies. One final influence of physical environment upon the mind of man is suggested by Oscar Peschel.53 The founders of the great monotheistic religions of the world, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed, belong to the subtropical zone. This zone is one which contains many vast desert. "Every traveler who has crossed the deserts of Arabia and Asia Minor speaks enthusiastically of their beauties; all praise their atmosphere and brightness, and tell of a feeling of invigoration and a perceptible increase of intellectual elasticity; hence between the arched heavens and the unbounded expanse of plain a monotheistic frame of mind necessarily steals upon the children of the desert." 54 Forest scenery distracts the attention to a thousand forms and sounds, the sunbeams play through the openings in the trees on the trembling and shining leaves, there are marvelous forms of gnarled roots and branches, there is the creaking and the sighing, the whispering and the rustling of the trees together with the sounds and voices of animals and insects. But in the desert one is impressed with only the vast expanse of plain and over all the constant dome of the heavens.55 Elijah retired into the desert. John the Baptist preached in the desert. Christ prepared himself for his career by passing forty days and forty nights in the desert. Mohammed lived for a long time as a shepherd and made frequent journeys across the desert.56 53 The Races of Man, from the German, New York, 1894, pp. 314-318. 54 Ibid. 55 See figures 60 and 61. 56 Ibid. |