254 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
ence, almost absolute, which afterward more accurate observa- tions discredited. In Book XVIII he studies laws in their connection with the nature of the soil, but without attaching to this latter the same importance as to the preceding factor. One can reproach him in that, after having quite well defined the natural laws, he almost completely neglected them for the posi- tive laws. It is necessary, however, to render him this justice, that he did not hesitate to affirm repeatedly that positive laws ought to react against the baneful tendencies of certain .natural laws, such as deficient hygiene and the peculiar indolence, accord- ing to him, of the orientals.
With Bodin and Montesquieu, representing the mesologic school, appears again the theory of natural frontiers, conformably to the constant parallelism between institutions, facts, and doc- trines already previously indicated. The French monarchy was an absolute monarchy, a great domain shut in; and the colonies even were exploited as dependencies, or as farms of this domain.
The climatic school, actually a transitory stage between the metaphysical rationalism and positivism, continued to the end of the eighteenth century, first with Herder, who in his Ideas upon the History of Humanity identifies God and nature, and later with Friederich Schlegel. Finally, with the great historian Buckle, who founded his philosophy of history altogether upon climate and the constitution of the soil, and of the alimentary conditions, the climatic theory comes to be more and more connected with sociology.
The school arising directly from Herder divided itself into two branches: one theological, with Bunsen (God in History); the other strictly naturalistic, with Schelling. The latter con- sidered the world as an animated organism, developing according to determined laws. The idea was still certainly metaphysical, but it was an admirable prelude to the purely scientific movement which went to transform the natural science after the latter half of the nineteenth century.
In opposition to this chiefly naturalistic current, Hegel denied the influence of climate in these terms: "One never comes to me to speak of the climate of Greece since the Turks have come
