We turn away from these glances into the future to look upon the past, the long ages when men lived in rudeness and ignorance, having no art, and knowing nothing beyond the little tract where they were born, and to which they remained chained. There was no binding of shore to shore, and of continent to continent, through the mediatorial agency of seas and oceans. And this gave to the continents a far greater individuality than they have now, and a much higher degree of apparent influence than now when we cannot view them excepting as parts of the great complex which forms the world. The wanderings of the old nomadic races, the enlarging of the domains of culture, the transfer of the natural productions of all climes, as well as the traditional ideas of all lands, proceeded from the central portions of the ancient world toward the extremities. The manner of this progress, following as it does the order of history, displays more clearly than almost anything else the close dependence of all national development upon geographical conditions, and their indissoluble connection. Without this connection the order of historical events would have been completely changed. In no instance has there been self-evolved progress in the North, East, South, or West; it uniformly began at the geographical center, at the point of conflict between the Orient, the Occident, and the tropical South. Western Asia, northern Africa, and southeastern Europe were the homes of the earliest culture, and it is to them that all other parts of the world owe the light which they enjoy, though they may have received it at second or third hand. The territory of which I speak extended from the highlands of India to Italy, and from the Nile to the Don, including the valleys of the Euphrates and the Gihon. This broad and fertile reach of territory has been the fruitful mother of the world’s present thought and culture. Nor must we overlook the fact that, despite what was said above, regarding the oceans as the greatest barriers to the spread of civilization, that smaller seas aided it, for the very country of which I speak was intersected by five important seas, and to them it is under immeasurable obligations for its development. This Asiatic-Africo-European belt has exercised the greatest influence on all the course of human affairs, on all colonization, on the differing of races and languages, and the arts of war and of peace, over the habitable world. This territory lies as the background of all the events of history, and has given to every one its distinctive character and its appropriate place. Nor can we in the future dispense with the element involved in this, of historical occurrences yet to come dependent on past geographical conditions, although this will be far less marked than it has been in the past. It demands and will demand a far larger measure of investigation and thought than it has yet received. Whatever independent