Note 256 — II A Sketch of the History of the Idea of Milieu Since the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

“... as political and legal institutions are indissolubly bound up with social and religious, it follows inevitably that the political and legal institutions of a race cradled in Northern Europe are exceedingly ill adapted for the children of the equator. Accordingly in any wise administration of these regions it must be a primary object to study the native institutions, to modify ... them ..., but never to seek to eradicate and supplant them. Any attempt to do so will be but vain, for these institutions are as much part of the land as are its climate, its soil, its fauna, and its flora. ‘Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.’”—The Application of Zoological Laws to Man, in Rep. Brit. Assoc, f. the Adv. of Sci., 1908 (London, 1909), p. 843.