A diversification among human communities is essential for the provision of the incentive and material for the Odyssey of the human spirit. Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration.

A. N. Whitehead: Science & the Modern World

 

‘They tell us this is a table land. If it is, they have turned the table upside down and we are scrambling up and down the legs’ – A British soldier’s comment on Ethiopian scenery, during the Napier Expedition, 1867–8.