If we look out over the earth, we see that the limbs of the continents, so to speak, the coasts, the peninsulas, and the adjacent islands, are the most favored places of all for civilization to find its true home upon. With the degree of diversity in the structure of a country, the value of its organisms advances. In this respect, Europe may be considered as the branches and foliage of a great tree, whose trunk and root are to be traced to Central Asia, Africa being a stunted side-shoot. Or, to compare the continents to a still higher class of forms, Europe may be called the Face of the Old World, out of which the soul of humanity could look more clearly into the great and promising future. We repeat it—it is not absolute size, it is not the mass nor the weight of the material, it is the form, in its greater complexity, which determines the fate of nations and decrees the advancement of man. This gift, in its full measure, has been conferred on Europe. In its complex articulation lies still another characteristic of Europe in contradistinction to the other continents. If in Africa the coast offers no contrast to the interior, and both remain on the same low plane of development, Asia, on the contrary, displays a perfect antagonism between its central regions and its sea-board. The territory of the Mongolians, the Tartars, and Toorkomans has always remained at the very lowest stage of civilization. The sea-board, on the other hand, has witnessed the growth of a number of isolated nations, who, without the help of mutual dependence, have arrived at a considerably high degree of culture—the Chinese, Malays, Hindoos, Persians, Arabians, Syrians, and Armenians. But their influence could not penetrate to the compact interior, to transform its nature, nor modify its nationalities. Individual progress in nations, however high it may be carried, can never contribute much toward any real penetration of the interior of so vast a region as Central Asia. Europe shows in its construction and the relations to which it gives rise characteristics exactly opposite. Being far less massive, the proportion of its extremities to the undeveloped interior is much less great than in Asia. From this, it results that the central part does not prove a hinderance to civilization, viewed physically, hydrographically, or historically; it nowhere serves as a barrier, but rather as a mediator, and a means of communication between the extremities. This has given Europe a character exactly opposite to that of Asia: its North and its South are united, its East and its West; they are not like antagonistic poles, but extend to each other friendly hands. In Africa, the greater part of the interior lies absolutely without contact with and relations to the coast. In Asia, there is a much larger portion of the interior equally without connection with the sea-board, and remaining up to this day in its primitive barbarism.