Q8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
races, and nationalities are accentuated by this isolation. This was notably true in central and southern Europe. Greece and Germany are striking examples of this. Nevertheless these variations are accessory; what dominates is the dependence of all parts of Europe and Asia upon the general orographical system. The same is true of Belgium, which, because of its plains and mountains, belongs to this general structure of Europe and Asia; it is attached to the Cimbric plains up to the Ardennes; by the latter it is strongly united to the Alps; beyond the Ardennes, it is joined to the Lorraine and the Bourgogne, that is to say, to the Mediterranean watershed which inclines Europe toward Africa. In its geography and orography rest the early foundations of its civilization, not only local, but also international.
The mountains furnish the natural and the most persistent limits of territory and of populations ; they are the separating walls. In the mountains vanquished peoples take refuge ; here are conserved in a tenacious manner, secure from the military and authoritative influences of the conquerors, the communal and liberal, rigid and narrow, forms of societies which have come in this manner to escape the despotic evo- lutions almost universal. As for the subjected peoples, they are usually huddled together in the valleys, or give them- selves up to peaceful labor, while their conquerors are installed on the high plateaus. Often, after centuries, the larger socie- ties forced themselves out of their conquered condition, and, throwing off their despotic structure, sought to adopt the more liberal forms of organization of those peoples whose isolation had made them more independent. The influence of these groups can become more considerable as, in the course of civili- zation, the military societies, already based on a division of labor, more particularly military and industrial, are themselves transformed into peaceful societies, possessing political and nominal equality. Switzerland, for example, a veritable nucleus of Europe, with its many valleys and mountains, exercised this beneficent influence on France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not only by its own evolution, but also by its edu- cative and reformative influence.
