Thus we see how, in all these ways, both in earlier and in later times, the history of every country has been influenced by its geography. ♦Influence of national character.♦ No doubt the history of each country has also been largely influenced by the disposition of the people who have settled in it, by what is called the national character. But then the geographical position itself has often had something to do with forming the national character, and in all cases it has had an influence upon it, by giving it a better or a worse field for working and showing itself. Thus it has been well said that neither the Greeks in any other country nor any other people in Greece could have been what the Greeks in Greece really were. The nature of the country and the nature of the people helped one another, and caused Greece to become all that it was in the early times of Europe. It is always useful to mark the points both of likeness and unlikeness of the different nations whose history we study. And of this likeness and unlikeness we shall always find that the geographical character, though only one cause out of several, is always one of the chief causes. § 3. _Geographical Distribution of Races._ Our present business then is with geography as influenced by history, and with history as influenced by geography. With ethnology, with the relations of nations and races to one another, we have to deal only so far as they form one of the agents in history. And it will be well to avoid, as far as may be, all obscure or controverted points of this kind. But the great results of comparative philology may now be taken for granted, and a general view of the geographical disposition of the great European races is needful as an introduction to the changes which historical causes have wrought in the geography of the several parts of Europe.