In temperate climates man has reached the highest state of progress. In this zone the combination of a moderately cheap food supply and the necessity of excessive energy to supply food, clothing, and protection has been most conducive to the highest forms of progress. While, therefore, the civilization of warm climates has led to despotism, inertia, and the degradation of the masses, the civilization of temperate climates has led to freedom, elevation of humanity, and progress in the arts. This illustrates how essential is individual energy in taking advantage of what nature has provided.
_The General Aspects of Nature Determine the Type of Civilization_.--While the general characteristics of nature have much to do with the development of the races of the earth, it is only a single factor in the great complex of influences. People living in the mountain fastnesses, those living at the ocean side, and those living on great interior plains vary considerably as to mental characteristics and views of life in general. Buckle has expanded this idea at some length in his comparison of India and Greece. He has endeavored to show that "the history of the human mind can only be understood by connecting with it the history and aspects of the material universe." He holds that everything in India tended to depress the { 148} dignity of man, while everything in Greece tended to exalt it. After comparing these two countries of ancient civilization in respect to the development of the imagination, he says: "To sum up the whole, it may be said that the Greeks had more respect for human powers; the Hindus for superhuman. The first dealt with the known and available, the second with the unknown and mysterious." He attributes this difference largely to the fact that the imagination was excessively developed in India, while the reason predominated in Greece. The cause attributed to the development of the imagination in India is the aspect of nature.
Everything in India is overshadowed with the immensity of nature. Vast plains, lofty mountains, mighty, turbulent rivers, terrible storms, and demonstrations of natural forces abound to awe and terrify. The causes of all are so far beyond the conception of man that his imagination is brought into play to furnish images for his excited and terrified mind. Hence religion is extravagant, abstract, terrible. Literature is full of extravagant poetic images. The individual is lost in the system of religion, figures but little in literature, and is swallowed up in the immensity of the universe. While, on the other hand, the fact that Greece had no lofty mountains, no great plains; had small rivulets in the place of rivers, and few destructive storms, was conducive to the development of calm reflection and reason. Hence, in Greece man predominated over nature; in India, nature overpowered man.[1]