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PROCESSES OF HISTORY


still unexplained. Knowledge is not really advanced by asserting that all human advancement has been due to the presence of some particular race. In point of method, the failure lies in the fact that the theory gives no insight into the processes through which the assumed physical superiority of the Aryan or Teuton has been transmuted into cultural advancement. But, taken on its own terms, and supposing, for the moment, that the beginnings of cultural development in China and India were associated with the intrusion of Aryans, the theory does not suggest how later advances have taken place in these lands, and it ignores the fact that there is ample evidence of notable advancement in Mesopotamia and in Egypt prior to any appearance of the Aryan race. Similarly, it throws no light upon the problem in hand to attribute the special cultural characteristics of a people to correspondingly particularized innate qualitics.

In regard to anthropogeography, it may be said more particularly that it represents not so much an explicit theory as an almost unlimited mass of correlations, some vague and unimportant, others penetrating and of the highest value. In some respects, indeed, this subject, at once new and of

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