CHAPTER III.
SOCIETY AND STATE IN RELATION TO THE LAND [Sidenote: People and land.] Every clan, tribe, state or nation includes two ideas, a people and its land, the first unthinkable without the other.

History, sociology, ethnology touch only the inhabited areas of the earth.

These areas gain their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the development of actual or possible inhabitants.

A land is fully comprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon its people, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of its activities.

More than this, human activities are fully intelligible only in relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulated them in different parts of the world.