First of all, let him imagine his world of man stationary.  Let him plot out in turn the distribution of heat, of moisture, of diseases, of vegetation, of food-animals, of the physical types of man, of density of population, of industries, of forms of government, of religions, of languages, and so on and so forth.  How far do these different distributions bear each other out?  He will find a number of things that go together in what will strike him as a natural way.  For instance, all along the equator, whether in Africa or South America or Borneo, he will find them knocking off work in the middle of the day in order to take a siesta.  On the other hand, other things will not agree so well.  Thus, though all will be dark-skinned, the South Americans will be coppery, the Africans black, and the men of Borneo yellow.

Led on by such discrepancies, perhaps, he will want next to set his world of man in movement.  He will thereupon perceive a circulation, so to speak, amongst the various peoples, suggestive of interrelations of a new type.  Now so long as he is dealing in descriptions of a detached kind, concerning not merely the physical environment, but likewise the social adjustments more immediately corresponding thereto, he will be working at the geographical level.  Directly it comes, however, to a generalized description or historical explanation, as when he seeks to show that here rather than there a civilization is likely to arise, geographical considerations proper will not suffice.  Distribution is merely one aspect of evolution.  Yet that it is a very important aspect will now be shown by a hasty survey of the world according to geographical regions.

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Let us begin with Europe, so as to proceed gradually from the more known to the less known.  Lecky has spoken of “the European epoch of the human mind.”  What is the geographical and physical theatre of that epoch?  We may distinguish—­I borrow the suggestion from Professor Myres—­three stages in its development.  Firstly, there was the river-phase; next, the Mediterranean phase; lastly, the present-day Atlantic phase.  Thus, to begin with, the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates were each the home of civilizations both magnificent and enduring.  They did not spring up spontaneously, however.  If the rivers helped man, man also helped the rivers by inventing systems of irrigation.  Next, from Minoan days right on to the end of the Middle Ages, the Mediterranean basin was the focus of all the higher life in the world, if we put out of sight the civilizations of India and China, together with the lesser cultures of Peru and Mexico.  I will consider this second phase especially, because it is particularly instructive from the geographical standpoint.  Finally, since the time of the discovery of America, the sea-trade, first called into existence as a civilizing agent by Mediterranean conditions, has shifted its base to the Atlantic coast, and especially to that land