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THE NATURE AND SCOPE


tutions are the outcome of the genius of peoples. Thus, for example, it appears that the Greeks were a people distinctly marked out by nature as freer than other mortals from all that hinders and oppresses the activities of the spirit; or, briefly, that Greek civilization was the creation of the inborn genius of the Greek race. Furthermore, the mode of determining the collective characteristics of groups leaves much room for debate, since while one authority may regard the Celt, as "a gentle obstinate," another thinks him "turbulent and vain," and a third declares him to be the embodiment of "an indomitable passion for danger and adventure."

When pressed, each of these theories, physical and psychological, tends mere and more to fall back upon the influence of habitat or climate in determining the character of groups, and we are thus led to consider the type of explanation offered by anthropogeography. It is argued, for instance, that all human varieties are the outcome of their several environments. Groups are what climate, soil, dict, pursuits, and inherited qualities have made them. What is true of man himself is no less true of his works, and so it follows that racial and cultural zones must coincide,

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