t any rate, their unfixed land-tenure, very different from the
peasant's, but their slow and skilful [Page: 65] diplomacy (till the
pasture is bared or grown again, as the negotiator's interests incline).
The patriarch in his venerable age, the caravaneer in his nomadic and
exploring youth, his disciplined maturity, thus naturally develop as
different types of chief and leader; and it is therefore not until this
stage, when all is ready for the entry of Abraham or Job, of Mohammed
the camel-driver, or Paul the tent-maker, that any real controversy can
arise between the determinist and his opponent, between the democratic
and the great-man theories of history, towards which these respectively
incline.[6] And at that stage, may not the controversy stimulate a
fruitful analysis? After all, what is the claim of free-will but to
select among the factors afforded by a given set of circumstances? And
the utmost stretch of determinism to which geography and civics may lead
us obviously cannot prove the negative of this. But whether the
psychologic origins of new ideals be internal to the mind of genius, or
imparted by some external source, is a matter obviously beyond the scope
of either the geographer or the historian of civics to settle. Enough
surely for both controversialists if we use such a means of tabulating
facts as to beg the question for neither view; and still better if we
can present the case of each without injustice to either, nay, to each
with its clearness increased by the sharp edge of contrast. If the
geographical determinist thesis on one hand, and its ethical and
psychological antithesis on the other, can thus clearly be defined and
balanced, their working equilibrium is at hand, even should their
complete synthesis remain beyond us.

[6] A fuller study, upon this method, of the essential origins of
pastoral evolution, and of its characteristic modern developments, will
be found in the writer's "Flower of the Grass," in _The Evergreen_,
Edinburgh and Westminster, 1896. See also "La Science Sociale,"
_passim_, especially in its earlier vols. or its number for Jan. 1905.

D--NEED OF ABSTRACT METHOD FOR NOTATION AND FOR INTERPRETATION

Not only such general geographical studies, but such social
interpretations as those above indicated have long been in progress:
witness the labours of whole schools of historians and critics, among
whom Montsquieu and his immediate following, or in more recent times
Buckle