G. Gerland holds that man developed from and upon nature, on which he is very closely dependent and of which he is a small part, and that the higher he rises the more he frees himself from the compelling influence of the earth, which, however, he can never wholly escape.[[239]]
In the opinion of Herbert Spencer, the earlier stages of social evolution are far more dependent on local conditions than the later stages. They are more at the mercy of their surroundings.[[240]] Both Spencer and Benjamin Kidd believe that primitive man is at the mercy of the milieu.[[241]] The “remotely ancient representatives of the human species ... were in their then wild state much more plastic than now to external nature,” according to Wallace.[[242]] Historical and statistical geography show us “die Menschen, wie sie in ihre aktive Rolle eingetreten sind und durch Arbeit die Überlegenheit über das Milieu gewinnen, das sie umgibt ... Nachdem der Mensch ganz den Einfluß des Milieu über sich ergehen ließ, hat er denselben zu seinem Nutzen umgestaltet ...”[[243]] The intimate connection of first civilizations with physical environment slackens with subsequent advance.[[244]] This apparently deep-rooted view is controverted by Ratzel who flatly contradicts it. Distinguishing between the direct and the indirect effects of milieu, he argues in straight opposition that with progressing civilization we are increasingly dependent on environment, that the degree of such dependence has not lessened with advancement in civilization, and that only the manner of the relation has changed.[[245]] Environment affects even the highest civilization, says Ripley.[[246]] G. Elliot Smith maintains that “Environment, however it may act, whether directly or indirectly, is still helping to shape the human form, and is affecting the development of Man’s customs and achievements at least as powerfully as, if not more so than, ever before.”[[247]]
Society and Physical Milieu
The social evolution proceeds amidst the entire system of exterior conditions (chemical, physical, astronomical), by which its rate of progress is determined. Social phenomena can no more be understood apart from their environment than those of individual life.[[248]] The study of social evolution presupposes a relation to the physical milieu: “Das Studium der sozialen Entwicklung setzt eine Beziehung zwischen der Menschheit, welche den Vorgang vollführt, und der Gesamtheit der äußeren Einflüsse voraus, welche letztere man auch die sogenannte Umgebung heißen könnte.”[[249]]
John Stuart Mill asserts that “All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, generated by the action of outward circumstances upon masses of human beings.”[[250]]
To Schäffle, in the analysis of the structure and functions of human society there exist as influential factors the external surroundings, on the one hand, and the active elements of the social body (the individual and the population), on the other; for, as Schäffle emphasizes, not only economics, but all social science must take into consideration not only Society, but also Nature, i.e., the natural fund or stock, designated by soil and climate, of the immediate world-surroundings of the social body as the external sphere embracing societary life, and that, not only as a sum total of free possessions, but also as a multiplicity of free, i.e., unsubjugated resistances.[[251]]
As “the result of a survey of social organizations, considered as machinery in motion, [Hermann] Post[[252]] points out very justly that it is useless to attempt to explain social phenomena on the basis of the psychological activities of individuals, as is too commonly assumed, because all individuals whose conduct we can possibly observe have themselves been educated in some society or other, and presume in all their social acts the assumptions on which that society itself proceeds.... It [Post’s method] is the same method, of course, which had already yielded such remarkable results to Montesquieu, and even to Locke. The point of view is no longer that of a Maine or a McLennan.... It is that of a spectator of human society as a whole.... And its immediate outcome has been to throw into the strongest possible relief the dependence of the form and, still more, of the actual content of all human societies on something which is not in the human mind at all, but is the infinite variety of that external Nature which Society exists to fend off from Man, and also to let Man dominate if he can.”[[253]]
Government, War, Progress, and Climate
James Bryce “has recently clearly set forth the climatic control of government in an essay on ‘British Experience in the Government of Colonies’ (Century, March, 1899, 718–729).”[[254]] Vallaux, however, is sceptical as to the influence of physical environment upon the State.[[255]] William Ridgeway avers that political and legal institutions are the result of environment.[[256]]
Far-reaching and weighty historical consequences “have followed from special conditions of climate or weather. Maguire’s ‘Outlines of Military Geography’ (Cambridge, 1899) contains a chapter on the influence of climate on military operations, but this subject has hitherto received little attention. More recently, Bentley, in a presidential address before the Royal Meteorological Society, London, considered the matter.”[[257]] Still more recently, the relation of climate or weather to war has been scrutinized, among others, by F. Lampe in “Der erdkundliche Unterricht,”[[258]] by Otto Baschin in “Der Krieg und das Wetter,”[[259]] and by E. Alt in “Krieg und Witterung.”[[260]]