[Sidenote:  Land and state.]

The superiority over this social type of the civilized state lies in the highly organized utilization of its whole geographic basis by the mature community, and in the development of government that has followed the increasing density of population and multiplication of activities growing out of this manifold use of the land.  Sedentary agriculture, which forms its initial economic basis, is followed by industrialism and commerce.  The migratory life presents only limited accumulation of capital, and restricts narrowly its forms.  Permanent settlement encourages accumulation in every form, and under growing pressure of population slowly reveals the possibilities of every foot of ground, of every geographic advantage.  These are the fibers of the land which become woven into the whole fabric of the nation’s life.  These are the geographic elements constituting the soil in which empires are rooted; they rise in the sap of the nation.

[Sidenote:  Strength of the land bond in the state.]

The geographic basis of a state embodies a whole complex of physical conditions which may influence its historical development.  The most potent of these are its size and zonal location; its situation, whether continental or insular, inland or maritime, on the open ocean or an enclosed sea; its boundaries, whether drawn by sea, mountain, desert or the faint demarking line of a river; its forested mountains, grassy plains, and arable lowlands; its climate and drainage system; finally its equipment with plant and animal life, whether indigenous or imported, and its mineral resources.  When a state has taken advantage of all its natural conditions, the land becomes a constituent part of the state,[105] modifying the people which inhabit it, modified by them in turn, till the connection between the two becomes so strong by reciprocal interaction, that the people cannot be understood apart from their land.  Any attempt to divide them theoretically reduces the social or political body to a cadaver, valuable for the study of structural anatomy after the method of Herbert Spencer, but throwing little light upon the vital processes.

[Sidenote:  Weak land tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes.]

A people who makes only a transitory or superficial use of its land has upon it no permanent or secure hold.  The power to hold is measured by the power to use; hence the weak tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes.  Between their scattered encampments at any given time are wide interstices, inviting occupation by any settlers who know how to make better use of the soil.  This explains the easy intrusion of the English colonists into the sparsely tenanted territory of the Indians, of the agricultural Chinese into the pasture lands of the Mongols beyond the Great Wall, of the American pioneers into the hunting grounds of the Hudson Bay Company in the disputed Oregon country.[106] The frail bonds which unite these lower societies