Note 771 — Chapter XII · —Continents And Their Peninsulas

From this general law of race movements it follows that certain groups of land-masses, favored by location and large area, play a great imperial rôle, holding other lands as appanages. The Eastern Hemisphere, as we have seen, enjoys this advantage over the Western. Still more the Northern Hemisphere, blessed with an abundance of land and a predominant Temperate Zone location, is able to lord it over the Southern, so insular in its poverty of land. The history of the Northern Hemisphere is marked by far-reaching historical influences and wide control; that of the Southern, by detachment, aloofness and impotence, due to the small area and isolation of its land-masses. A subordinate rôle is its fate. Australia will always follow in the train of Eurasia, whence alone it has derived its incentives and means of progress. Neither the southern half of Africa nor South America has ever in historical times struck out a road to advancement unaided by its northern neighbors. Primitive South America developed the only independent civilization that ever blossomed in the Southern Hemisphere, but the Peruvian achievements in progress were inferior to those of Mexico and Central America.771