e exuberant forest gods of the early Germans.
Religious ideas travel far from their seedbeds along established lines
of communication. We have the almost amusing episode of the brawny
Burgundians of the fifth century, who received the Arian form of
Christianity by way of the Danube highway from the schools of Athens and
Alexandria, valiantly supporting the niceties of Greek religious thought
against the Roman version of the faith which came up the Rhone Valley.

If the sacred literature of Judaism and Christianity take weak hold upon
the western mind, this is largely because it is written in the symbolism
of the pastoral nomad. Its figures of speech reflect life in deserts and
grasslands. For these figures the western mind has few or vague
corresponding ideas. It loses, therefore, half the import, for instance,
of the Twenty-third Psalm, that picture of the nomad shepherd guiding
his flock across parched and trackless plains, to bring them at evening,
weary, hungry, thirsty, to the fresh pastures and waving palms of some
oasis, whose green tints stand out in vivid contrast to the tawny wastes
of the encompassing sands. "He leadeth me beside the still waters," not
the noisy rushing stream of the rainy lands, but the quiet desert pool
that reflects the stars. What real significance has the tropical
radiance of the lotus flower, the sacred symbol of Buddhism, for the
Mongolian lama in the cold and arid borders of Gobi or the wind-swept
highlands of sterile Tibet? And yet these exotic ideas live on, even if
they no longer bloom in the uncongenial soil. But to explain them in
terms of their present environment would be indeed impossible.

[Sidenote: Partial response to environment]

A people may present at any given time only a partial response to their
environment also for other reasons. This may be either because their
arrival has been too recent for the new habitat to make its influence
felt; or because, even after long residence, one overpowering
geographic factor has operated to the temporary exclusion of all others.
Under these circumstances, suddenly acquired geographic advantages of a
high order or such advantages, long possessed but tardily made available
by the release of national powers from more pressing tasks, may
institute a new trend of historical development, resulting more from
stimulating geographic conditions than from the natural capacities or
aptitudes of the people themselves. Such developments, though