race. Nor is there an appreciable
infusion of Teutonism, physically speaking, herein, to account for the
change of heart. Of course, it might be urged that this merely shows
that the Mediterranean race of southern Italy is as much less inclined
to the phenomenon than the Alpine race in these respects, as it in turn
lags behind the Teuton. For it must be confessed that even in Italy
neither divorce nor suicide is so frequent anywhere as in Teutonic
northern France. Well, then, turn to Germany. Compare its two halves in
these respects again. The northern half of the empire is most purely
Teutonic by race; the southern is not distinguishable ethnically, as we
have sought to prove, from central France. Bavaria, Baden, and
Wuertemberg are scarcely more Teutonic by race than Auvergne. Do we find
differences in suicide, for example, following racial boundaries here?
Far from it; for Saxony is its culminating center; and Saxony, as we
know, is really half-Slavic at heart, as is also eastern Prussia.
Suicide should be most frequent in Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, if
racial causes were appreciably operative. The argument, in fact, falls
to pieces of its own weight, as Durkheim has shown. His conclusion is
thus stated:

"If the Germans are more addicted to suicide, it is not because of the
blood in their veins, but of the civilization in which they have been
raised."

A summary view of the class of social phenomena seemingly characteristic
of the distinct races in France, if we extend our field of vision to
cover all Europe, suggests an explanation for the curious coincidences
and parallelisms noted above, which is the exact opposite of the racial
one.

Our theory, then, is this: that most of the social phenomena we have
noted as peculiar to the areas occupied by the Alpine type are the
necessary outcome, not of racial proclivities but rather of the
geographical and social isolation characteristic of the habitat of this
race. The ethnic type is still pure for the very same reason that social
phenomena are primitive. Wooden ploughs pointed with stone, blood
revenge, an undiminished birth-rate, and relative purity of physical
type are all alike derivatives from a common cause, isolation, directly
physical and coincidently social. We discover, primarily, an influence
of environment where others perceive phenomena of ethnic inheritance.

4. Natural versus Vicinal Location in National Development[115]

In contradistinction