THE SOCIOLOGY OF FRONTIERS.

The article focuses on the sociological aspects of the frontiers. In the beginning the article gives a brief description of natural history of the frontiers. Western civilization can show some unexpected evidence of the way cultural frontiers, once set, tend to resist change. The great distinctions of religion are eloquent in this respect. Take the case of Islam and Christianity, between which the frontiers have only undergone modification in such parts of Europe as were socially and politically backward, viz, the East. Again, the relative immobility of the line of cleavage set at the end of the Wars of Religion. The most obvious mark of cultural frontiers is the change from one language to another, which tends with the average man to count for more than it really should. At bottom the whole of western Europe rests on, and has never got away from, the single culture pattern of Latin Christianity as it stood throughout the Middle Ages. Throughout the article an area in question is treated as if it were a "colony," the question whether the strings of its economic, cultural, and political existence being held outside the area does not preclude the possibility of normal processes of social and cultural development altogether.