ABSTRACT
Each ancestry, each heritage attained outwardness in the compelling light of Mediterranean shores. That alone is the Mediterranean compulsion. No place is provincial, each place is self-contained. A continental climate, on the other hand, is a crude, browbeating force which moulds the men who come into it as if they had no ancestry: whereas the Mediterranean climate brings out their shape like the carver who externalizes the inner life of the stone. It is the difference between the uniform handling of a plastic process and the love for individual material exerted in a carving process. While the Russian of Kazan or Archangel can talk readily with the citizens of Moscow or Petrograd, neighbouring villagers in Italy often speak entirely different dialects. Other circumstances being equal, a continental climate will exact, in the end, an almost identical response from what were once the most diverse people.
