Let us turn to a widely different kind of explanation, which is wont to be set forth at the opening of most modern histories of Greece, as a _vera causa_ to account for a wonderful and exceptional result. This theory is the echo of the famous opening of Buckle’s great book on Civilisation, wherein it is asserted that man is the creature of external circumstances and that these determine not only his physical, but his intellectual increase. In particular, the greatness of Egypt and its early victory over the obstacles of nature are attributed to the heat and moisture of the climate; and so we are told that the temperate airs of the Ægean, the multitude of its islands, its indented coast, its fiords, its broken outlines, and varied scenery--these are such that the people living among them would naturally develop the qualities which have given the primacy in its turn to Greece. Such conclusions are based upon very superficial and inaccurate observation. It was assumed that Egypt had been necessarily an unity, owing to the isolation of its land from neighbours, and to the fact that its great high-road, the Nile, traversed the whole country. We now know this to be false, and that the reduction of Egypt first to two, and then to one state was not accomplished till after ages of separation among its _nomes_, and was accomplished not by natural necessity but by the genius of a conqueror. As regards the physical peculiarities of that country, they are all to be found again on the Indus, with its affluents from far inland Alps bringing down a periodical inundation, with its great delta spreading from Hyderabad, with its long course through a desert which affords it not a rivulet of increase: yet the peoples of the Indus have never thriven and waxed great like the Egyptians. So far as our evidence leads us, we may assert that had the Egyptians been settled on the Indus, and the population of the Indus on the Nile, the respective parts played by these rivers in civilisation would have been reversed. I am equally convinced that had the Greek race been settled on the Adriatic, with many fiords and islands, and over against Italy, instead of Asia Minor, or on the west coast of Italy, with its headlands and bays, its great and fruitful islands within sight,--these circumstances would have been equally favourable to their genius, whereas they were not sufficient to raise the Corsicans and Sardinians, perhaps the best situated of all, from a very low level among nations. I will not cite Sicily, drawn from its obscurity by the Greeks, for they were already great in the scale of nations when they transformed that splendid island, long undistinguished under Sikels, Sicans, Phœnicians, into a brilliant province of Hellenedom. It may perhaps occur to some of you that the special qualities of the race came from its being a purer branch of the great Aryan stock than its brethren; that it was pre-eminently Japhet dwelling