“The subject, my children, always bears the image of the law, the expression of custom, and customs are established by cunning for the rule of credulity. By custom, one is born the owner of many broad acres; and by custom, ten thousand toil without enjoying, that one may enjoy without toil. But Nature usually lends herself freely to man’s designs. In a vast monotonous country, despotism is a usual system of government, Nature suggesting no change; the leader becomes the chief, the chief becomes the monarch, the monarch becomes a despot, and the despot a god.
“On the contrary, in a smaller country with diversified aspects, indented shore-lines and water-front, scaleable mountains and erratic climate, Nature suggests—change. A holy discontent appears, the despot becomes a constitutional monarch, a parliament serves the people, a cabinet advises the king; and then, as mountains suggest liberty and seas adventure, distant colonies, in which custom and precedent are ignored, are established on lines in harmony with environing conditions.
“Human liberty, my children, rarely gains a victory in an old, wealthy, populous and well-established country or government. Society, under such conditions, becomes conservative; the rulers love power, the cunning want no change, the wealthy are satisfied, and the people, being adjusted to the changeless conditions, are ‘loyal’ and contented.
“Further, every defeat of despotism, every entrenchment upon the ‘divine’ territory, every victory of human liberty, has been due to the restless inhabitants of the water-front; and remember, for all the progressive movements of all the ages, and for what the centuries call modern civilisation, the world is indebted to colonial enterprise, conspicuously led by Phœnicia, Greece, and modern Britain.”
BACK TO ZELANIA.
“But let us, my children,” Oseba continued, “return to Zelania, Nature’s choicest, last, and most successful effort, and to where these principles apply. In her geographical situation, her configuration, her soil and climate, she offers man everything to toughen the fibre, to quicken the perception, and to strengthen the imagination.
“She has the climate, the fertility, the production, the picturesqueness of Greece, and all in greater variety.”
Oseba here led his audience into a most interesting inquiry regarding climatic influence in the development of a people. He said man was a part of, and strongly allied to, Nature, and that he could not escape the influence of his environment.
In interior tropical regions Nature puts a black skin and black hair on her people, and, as a joke, she usually flattens the nose. In vast interior and warm regions, the complexion are tawny, with black or tawny hair and oblique eyes, that shunt the direct rays of light.
“Then, too,” he says, “island or sea-shore people are lighter in color than those of the interior, and not only is the complexion of man, but his physical proportions, stature and temperament, modified by climatic conditions. In interior countries men gradually assume a type—they are lithe, and rather small of stature, and so alike that they seem cast in the same mould; while those living on islands along the water-front, or among the mountains, are more sturdy, they vary more in build, size and deftness, and they are mentally more inquisitive, venturesome, impetuous and brave.”