ABSTRACT
THERE are two problems, we do not say great problems, for that would imply the existence of fixed data and preliminary certainties which are lacking in this case, but two vast and confused collections of ill-defined questions by which everyone who is interested in history is at once confronted. Two words, two labels rather, are sufficient to mark them. We call them commonly the “Problem of Race” and the “Problem of Environment”, and it is of the second of these that we wish to state the terms. But how are we to begin? How should we conceive a general geographical introduction to the various special volumes of an elaborate enterprise of scientific synthesis? Let us attempt to set it out clearly, for this is no superfluous precaution.
