ABSTRACT
So far as the first factor is concerned, we are for the most part in the region of material necessaries in which, as we have already seen, the organic securities for human utility are strongest. Where any population has for many generations been settled in a locality, it must adapt itself in two ways to the physical conditions of that locality. Its chief constituents of food, clothing, shelter, etc. must be accommodated to all the more permanent and important conditions of soil, climate, situation and of the flora and fauna of the country. A tropical people cannot be great meat-eaters or addicted to strong drinks, though the materials for both habits may be abundant. An arctic people, on the other hand, must find in animal fats a principal food, and in the skins of animals a principal article of clothing. In a country where earthquakes frequently occur, the materials and structure of the houses must be light. In the same country the people of the mountains, the valleys, the plains, the sea-shores, will be found with necessary differences in their fundamental standard of consumption. It is, indeed, self-evident that physical environment must exercise an important selective and rejective power represented in the material standard of consumption. So far as man can modify and alter the physical environment, as by drainage, forestry, or the destruction of noxious animals or bacteria, he may to that extent release his standard of consumption for this regional control.
