The ethnic psychologist has a wide field in the study of the influence of particular occupations on the minds of those engaged in them, and thereafter on the mind of the group. He will have to examine the assertion that some, though necessary, are in themselves deteriorating to the better elements of humanity. Can the slaughter of men in war be carried on without brutalising the sentiments? Can commerce be successfully conducted without deception? Can the advocate do his best for the guilty client without impairing his sentiment of truthfulness? Further subjects of study must be the influence of occupations on home and family life. Many involve travel, enforced absences, or a migratory career, weakening such ties. A marked tendency of modern occupations is toward increased specialisation. A man will spend his life, it has been said, in making the ninth part of a pin; and it has been asked, with accents of despair, what hope for the mental growth of such a case? Yet, in fact, the lawyer confined to his local code, or the medical specialist to the diseases of one organ, has the horizon of his daily labour as narrowly circumscribed. The truth is that the individual is in the position of the primitive tribe. If he is forced to give all his waking hours to “getting a living,” it matters little what his employment is. One is as bad as another. And if by his work he wins leisure, all depends on the use of that leisure. Spinoza gained his bread by grinding optical glasses,—surely an uninspiring mechanical drudgery! But in odd times he wrote his _Ethics_, than which no nobler contribution to the highest realms of thought has ever been composed. CHAPTER IV _THE INFLUENCE OF THE GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT_ The extent to which the geographic environment decides the character and history of a people has been and still is a question on which competent writers differ widely. On the one side we have such writers as Draper, Menschikoff, von Ihering, Ratzel, and generally the Russian and English schools, who seek in climate, soil, and waterways the explanation of the whole of history. Their views may be summed up in the maxim of von Ihering, “The soil is the Nation.” In contrast to them stand the pure psychologists, notably the French school, who refuse to admit any great or lasting power of the material surroundings on the psychical traits. These, they claim, are to be looked for in race and in permanent anatomical differences, persisting in all climes and spots. They would say with the philosopher Hegel: “Tell me not of the inspiration of Ionian skies! Have they not for a thousand years spread their beauties in vain before degenerate eyes?”