THE NATURE AND SCOPE
of comradeship, and this, in turn, has held them together in their mir or village-community. The habitat, it also seems, provides the conditions which determine the progress or stagnation of the group, for agricultural tribes, being bound to the soil, are conservative, apathetic, and nonprogressive, while the nomadic or semi-nomadic life sharpens the wits and calls forth courage, self-reliance, and ingenuity. By others, again, it is argued that the birth and precocious growth of civilization are encouraged by a small, isolated, and protected habitat, though at a later stage this cramps progress, and lends the stamp of arrested development to a people like the Greeks.
The types of theory thus briefly indicated have this in common, that they attempt to describe factors which may be regarded as operative in all human groups, and are thus to be consideted as offering an explanation on a scientific basis. To all appearance, however, it has not seemed necessary to the exponents of these views to show how the factors described could have produced the differences which we see around us. Indeed, the mode of procedure adopted has been simply to explain evident differences by alleging the antecedence of other differences, less obvious, but
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