man’s social characteristics more fully and elaborately into play.  The nature of these influences has forced him to cooperate more or less closely with his fellows; while each step in the path of cooperation has involved him in another of a more complex kind.  The growth of social cooperation is not necessarily accompanied by a corresponding development of the moral sentiments; increased cooperation in some cases involving a distinct ethical loss.  In many directions, however, highly organised societies tend to evolve loftier types of morality; and it is in harmony with the facts to say that the highest moral types are not to be found where nature does most or where it does least in the way of providing food and shelter for man.

    [12] Ratzel. Voelkerkunde, i. 20.

It is also interesting to observe the effect which climate, through the agency of religion, has had upon human conduct.  One of the main factors in the origin of religion is the feeling of dependence upon nature so strongly manifested in all primitive forms of faith.  The outcome of this feeling of dependence was to exalt the forces of nature into divinities, and man’s conception of these divinities, shaped as it was by the attitude of nature around him, had an incalculable influence on his life and actions.  The remains of this influence are still visible in the aesthetic effects which the forces and operations of nature produce on civilised man; in all other respects it has to a large extent passed away.[13]

    [13] Darwin says that in elaborating his theory of Natural
    Selection he attributed too little to external surroundings.
    Life and Letters.

We have now touched upon most of the ways in which external surroundings have had a hand in shaping the course of human life in the past; it will be our next business to inquire whether these surroundings have any effect upon human conduct at the present day, and especially upon those manifestations of conduct which are known as crimes.  That they still have an effect is an opinion which has long been entertained.

Going back to the ancient Greeks, we find Hippocrates holding that all regions liable to violent changes of climate produced men of fierce, impetuous and stubborn disposition.  “In approaching southern countries,” says Montesquieu, “one would believe that morality was being left behind; more ardent passions multiply crimes; each tries to gain from others all the advantages which can minister to these passions.”  Buckle believes that the interruption of work caused by instability of climate leads to instability of character.  In analysing the contents of French statistics, Quetelet,[14] while admitting that other causes may neutralise the action of climate, proceeds to say that the “number of crimes against property relatively to the number of crimes against the person increases considerably as we advance towards the north.”  Another eminent student of French criminal statistics,