II. In certain places rather than in others this stimu lus, owing to geographical conditions, is able to have its full effect. When man has made energy his own, got it under control, whether in the primitive state by eating food, or in the twentieth-century manner by purchasing coal, he can use it in two sets of ways. He can use it in ways by which he controls more energy, or he may dissi pate his energy uselessly or even destroy means whereby it may be used. He may to a certain extent do both. He may use his own energy to take that of someone else. This is, of course, a way in which an individual is able to control more energy, but it is not a way by which more energy on the whole is controlled.
It is obvious that energy may be saved most effectively by communities living in peace, owing their cohesion to the increased power of saving energy brought about by their union. It is not to be expected that such com munities will appear for the first time in equatorial regions. Not only is there no stimulus to consider the future, but, owing to the consequent naturally low state of civilization, it is not likely that individual men or tribes will be allowed to remain in peace. Tribes may exist because their existence is due to controls other than geographical, but it is elsewhere than in equatorial regions that the tribe can expand iuto something with more complex organization.
Even in lands where stimulus is present, protection is necessary also that expansion may take place. Pro tection may take various forms. A man may protect himself, or a nation may protect itself, by using some of its energy in defence, but it is obviously an advantage if protection can be secured without the expenditure of this energy, i. e. if it can be secured by geographical conditions, and we should imagine that that community, tribe or race would soonest emerge from barbarism which was protected most completely.
Nations at different times and in different circum stances have been protected by different geographical conditions. What is protection in one age may not be protection in another, but at any time that will be a protection which prevents the interference of other tribes or races ; special defences will be those geographi cal features which men cannot cross easily, and the greater the difficulty man finds in crossing them, or the more energy he expends in so doing, the greater will be the protection.
Many geographical features have acted as defences : rivers, lakes, mountains, precipitous ascents and swamps have all had their effect in protecting small communities, but the great features whose power of protection has affected the history of the world have been stretches of plateau so high as to be too cold for vegetation to grow, stretches of desert too dry for vegetation to grow, and the sea which provides no foothold. Each of these requires
energy to cross it, and supplies no basis for human life. Before any of these could be crossed successfully a con siderable advance in civilization must have been made, so that in early times the protection they gave was very complete. They were unknown and therefore terrible things, and the most unknown and therefore the most terrible of the three was the sea.
III. The action of these geographical conditions as controls must be briefly referred to and explained. The whole course of history—including its beginnings—has been affected by the distinctive characters of individual men and races. Some of these characteristics can be traced to the action of geographical controls, others cannot be so traced and must just be taken for granted. On the one hand, events of history, with all the results which have followed from them, have occurred when they did, or indeed occurred at all, because of the power of man to will to act ; no events of history would have occurred at all if man had not the power to will to act. But, on the other hand, men's acts are conditioned by their surroundings as much as by the shape of their bodies, and the larger tendencies of history have not to any great extent been affected by the distinctive characters of individuals. In the long run the geo graphical conditions are more powerful than the genius of individuals, more powerful even than racial charac ters, unless these racial characters are due to geographical controls. History began where it did because of the geographical conditions.
Now, it is obvious that our knowledge of the earliest forms of civilization must be wanting or at the most very scanty. From the nature of the case, there can be no record through long ages of the gradual advance that must have taken place ere men emerged from the con dition of savages. The most that may be looked for is that we may find relics which, because they have survived long, must originally have been fairly strong; they must be relics of a fairly advanced civilization.