They have been formulated without reference to the all-important fact that the geographical relations of man, like his social and political organization, are subject to the law of development.

Just as the embryo state found in the primitive Saxon tribe has passed through many phases in attaining the political character of the present British Empire, so every stage in this maturing growth has been accompanied or even preceded by a steady evolution of the geographic relations of the English people.
Owing to the evolution of geographic relations, the physical environment favorable to one stage of development may be adverse to another, and _vice versa_.

For instance, a small, isolated and protected habitat, like that of Egypt, Phoenicia, Crete and Greece, encourages the birth and precocious growth of civilization; but later it may cramp progress, and lend the stamp of arrested development to a people who were once the model for all their little world.

Open and wind-swept Russia, lacking these small, warm nurseries where Nature could cuddle her children, has bred upon its boundless plains a massive, untutored, homogeneous folk, fed upon the crumbs of culture that have fallen from the richer tables of Europe.

But that item of area is a variable quantity in the equation.
It changes its character at a higher stage of cultural development.
Consequently, when the Muscovite people, instructed by the example of western Europe, shall have grown up intellectually, economically and politically to their big territory, its area will become a great national asset.