DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS IN THE OLD WORLD 513
DENSITY OF POPULATION IN ITALY 559
MEAN ANNUAL ISOTHERMS AND HEAT BELTS 612





CHAPTER I

THE OPERATION OF GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS IN HISTORY


[Sidenote: Man a product of the earth's surface.]

Man is a product of the earth's surface. This means not merely that he
is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has
mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted
him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his
wits, given him his problems of navigation or irrigation, and at the
same time whispered hints for their solution. She has entered into his
bone and tissue, into his mind and soul. On the mountains she has given
him leg muscles of iron to climb the slope; along the coast she has left
these weak and flabby, but given him instead vigorous development of
chest and arm to handle his paddle or oar. In the river valley she
attaches him to the fertile soil, circumscribes his ideas and ambitions
by a dull round of calm, exacting duties, narrows his outlook to the
cramped horizon of his farm. Up on the wind-swept plateaus, in the
boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the
desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis