that the geographic
environment and the original nature of man _condition_ the culture and
conduct of groups and of persons. The explanations of isolation, so far
as it affects social life, which have gained currency in the writings of
anthropologists and geographers, are therefore too simple. Sociologists
are able to take into account forms of isolation not considered by the
students of the physical environment and of racial inheritance. Studies
of folkways, mores, culture, nationality, the products of a historical
or cultural process, disclose types of social contact which transcend
the barriers of geographical or racial separation, and reveal social
forms of isolation which prevent communication where there is close
geographical contact or common racial bonds.

The literature upon isolated peoples ranges from investigations of
arrest of cultural development as, for example, the natives of
Australia, the Mountain Whites of the southern states, or the
inhabitants of Pitcairn Island to studies of hermit nations, of caste
systems as in India, or of outcast groups such as feeble-minded "tribes"
or hamlets, fraternities of criminals, and the underworld of
commercialized prostitution. Special research in dialects, in folklore,
and in provincialism shows how spatial isolation fixes differences in
speech, attitudes, folkways, and mores which, in turn, enforce isolation
even when geographic separation has disappeared.

The most significant contribution to the study of isolation from the
sociological standpoint has undoubtedly been made by Fishberg in a work
entitled _The Jews, a Study of Race and Environment_. The author points
out that the isolation of the Jew has been the result of neither
physical environment nor of race, but of social barriers. "Judaism has
been preserved throughout the long years of Israel's dispersion by two
factors: its separative ritualism, which prevented close and intimate
contact with non-Jews, and the iron laws of the Christian theocracies of
Europe which encouraged and enforced 'isolation.'"[116]

3. Isolation and Personality

Philosophers, mystics, and religious enthusiasts have invariably
stressed privacy for meditation, retirement for ecstatic communion with
God, and withdrawal from the contamination of the world. In 1784-86
Zimmermann wrote an elaborate essay in which he dilates upon "the
question whether it is easier to live virtuously in society or in
solitude," considering in Part I "