Poverty and riches are what most influence the fate of men and nations.
Armuth ist die grösste Plage,
Reichthum ist das höchste Gut.
Goethe.
Life itself is a question not merely of means, but of ample means. In central England the rich have an average longevity of forty-nine years, the poor but twenty-five years; in Berlin the rich live fifty years, and the poor thirty-two years (Farr, Kolb).
The higher culture, anything above the mere fight for life, can find a place only when it is possible, through accumulated wealth, to call a truce in that fight. The leisure so obtained may not be, generally is not, employed to that higher end; but without it the effort remains impossible.
Anthropo-geography, therefore, is primarily a branch of economics, not of ethnology. It affects the ethnic mind only indirectly, and not at all through the action of any laws of its own. It is a vital factor in the production of tribal or national wealth, but in no way influences the use which the tribe or nation may make of that wealth; while this is the only question with which the ethnologist or the historian of human culture is primarily concerned.
With this perfectly clear understanding on the real bearings of the much-talked-of “geographic environment,” I shall proceed to review its leading divisions.
Such a conclusion will not be favoured by those writers who teach that the surroundings exert in some manner an inspiring or a depressing effect on the mind, and that this reflects itself in the ethnic character. What! they will exclaim; are we to count for nothing the sweet meads, the sparkling waters, the glory of the landscape, and the hues of the flowers? The grandeur of the forest, the sublimity of beetling crags, the solemn expanse of the ocean,—are these of no avail in impressing the souls that see them with exalted aspirations and fervently stimulating the imagination?—
Alas! “The hand of little use has the daintier touch,” and lifelong familiarity with the most beautiful scenes of nature reduces to zero the stimulus which they are capable of yielding to others.