Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal

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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. THE HUMAN RESPONSE TO THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT.1 WE think of man as living in an environment, the elements of which are largely the subject-matter of physical geography; and we are coming to realize that the true and complete geography is a study, not of physiography and the climate merely, but of the interaction between man and the physical part of his environment. The term "environment" is so loosely used, and is made to include so much, that we must do some careful defining, to be sure of our ground, before taking up a discussion of our subject. The general conception of environment is the not-me which acts and i-eacts upon me. But this whole universe of forces and influences outside of myself is made up in part of the material world and its forces, and in part of the spiritual world and its creations, which are quite as vital in determining my career as are many of the material considerations. So our environment is to be analyzed in a dual way, as (I) physical, and (2) social, or sociological, as Herbert Spencer had it. Over a century ago Montesquieu, in his Spirit of the Laws, was fairly convinced of this analysis, and wrote so clearly and with such conviction as to the influence of the physical elements in our environment as to make himself one of the greatest contributors along this line, though he wrote before there was a science of geology, or physiography, or meteorology to furnish data or establish laws. And again about fifty years later Buckle, in his History of Civilization, made a wonderful statement of the significance of the purely physical elements in our social evolution, so good a presentation as to have been scarcely equaled since. And even in his time the modern science of geology was scarcely out of its swaddling-clothes, and the sciences of meteorology and geography were not yet born. Now that the tributary fields have been well worked, observa-