We pass on to consider other conditions which have contributed to setting free and stimulating the spirit of inquiry. We have seen that physical environment played a predominant part in moulding the mental qualities of races in the prehistoric period. And we must recognise that, although with the beginning of settled national life it probably ceased to modify race-qualities to any considerable extent, it has yet been important in favouring the rapid evolution of the intellectual tradition of some peoples, and this in several ways. First, by its direct influence upon the minds of individuals. Buckle and others have pointed out that, while, in India and throughout a great part of Asia, the physical environment was unfavourable to intellectual progress, while its vast and terrible aspects fertilised the superstition of the people, and repressed the spirit of inquiry by rendering hopeless any attempt to cope with its terrific displays of force, in Europe and especially in South and Western Europe, the comparatively small scale on which the physical features are planned and the relative feebleness of the forces of nature encouraged men to adopt a bolder attitude towards them. Buckle, contrasting Greece with India in this respect, showed how the physical features of both countries were reflected in their national cultures; how, while the Hindus cringed in fear before monstrous and cruel gods, the Greeks fashioned their gods in their own image, simply personifying each leading human attribute, and made of them a genial family of beings, differing from men and women in little but their immortality and their superior facilities for the enjoyment of life. In general the buoyancy and serenity of the Greek attitude towards life and nature reflected the beautiful, secure and diversified aspects of their physical environment. In such an atmosphere the spirit of inquiry would naturally flourish more freely than where man’s spirit was oppressed by the fear of terrible and uncontrollable forces and where he was made to feel too keenly the limitations of his mental and physical powers. Buckle summed up his review of these effects as follows:—“In the civilisations exterior to Europe, all nature conspired to increase the authority of the imaginative faculties and to weaken the authority of the reasoning ones. In Europe has operated a law the reverse of this, by virtue of which the tendency of natural phenomena is, on the whole, to limit the imagination, and embolden the understanding; thus inspiring man with confidence in his own resources, and facilitating the increase of his knowledge, by encouraging that bold, inquisitive and scientific spirit, which is constantly advancing and on which all future progress must depend.”