Des difficultés que présente la question de l’influence des climats sur les facultés humaines. — Exp

CHAP. 6: > Of the difficulties presented by the question of the influence of climates on human faculties. — Exposition of Montesquieu's system on this influence. — Vices of this system.

In expounding what is the influence of the analytical method on the morality and on the laws of peoples, I have shown that the simple knowledge of facts and of the causes that engender them can, in certain circumstances, produce the perfection of morals and laws; and that the ignorance and errors of men are among the most powerful causes that produce vices and bad institutions. If the observations I have made on this subject are exact, it follows that any people whose intelligence is susceptible to development is susceptible to perfecting its morals and its physical organs, if moreover the things that surround it do not place invincible obstacles to its progress. It is a question therefore of knowing whether all peoples are capable of conceiving the same truths; whether all have or can acquire a sufficient capacity to perceive the connections that exist, in morality and in legislation, between effects and causes. Supposing that they have or that they can acquire a sufficient capacity, do there not exist external causes capable of paralyzing the power of truth on their mind?

If it is with the human race as with all genera of animate beings, if it is subdivided into several species, and if they differ from one another in their organization, it is not impossible that they may not all be susceptible to the same intellectual development, and consequently to the same moral and physical perfection. Also, in the questions I have just posed, my intention is not to compare diverse species with one another; my only object is to compare among themselves nations that are of the same species, but that find themselves in different circumstances, or that do not live under the same latitude. The question, for these nations, is to know whether, by accidental circumstances of position, they have become incapable of discerning truth from error, of contracting good habits and of losing bad ones; or whether, having in themselves the capacity to conceive the truth, they are not arrested in their progress by local circumstances.

False religions and vicious governments are very powerful obstacles to the development of nations; but, if a false religion and a bad government were invincible obstacles to the perfection of men, what people would not have remained in an eternal barbarism? For which is the one that has never been subjected to a despotic government, or among which a mendacious religion has never been seen to reign? There is no error or false opinion that has not had a beginning, and that consequently cannot be destroyed. Man, in coming into the world, does not bring into his mind a fully formed religious system and political system. The ideas of government and religion that he acquires are given to him as his understanding is formed, and the circumstances that preside over this formation can vary infinitely. It is a question here only of investigating the causes that act constantly on man, and that it is not in his power to destroy, such as climate, the position of places, the course of waters, the nature of the soil, and other similar ones. The heat of the climate, according to the system of several writers, and the old age of peoples according to some others, can be invincible obstacles to the perfection of men. In expounding the physical, intellectual, and moral state of the peoples of all species, on the diverse parts of the globe, I will show that these opinions are far from being founded on the exact observation of facts.

To determine in a complete manner what is the influence of climate and of places on the human race, it would be necessary to engage in research that would greatly exceed the limits I have prescribed for myself, and the very nature of this work.

It would be necessary to examine first what is the influence exercised, on the foods proper to the diverse species of men, by the temperature of the atmosphere, the nature and exposure of the soil, the quality of the waters, and even the direction and force of the winds; it would be necessary to examine next what is the influence exercised on man by his foods thus modified. It would be necessary to investigate how this influence of foods is itself modified by the effects of cultivation, commerce, and the inequality of fortunes. It would be necessary to examine further what is the action exercised directly on man by the temperature, the dryness or the humidity of the atmosphere, the course or the force of the winds, and the quality of the waters. It would be necessary to examine how this influence is itself modified by the greater or lesser wealth of a people, and by the means that this wealth gives to escape the action of heat, cold, winds, or waters. Finally, it would be necessary to determine what is the share of influence that must be attributed to religion, to government, to national prejudices, to the nature of the language, to the diversity of species, and to the surrounding nations.

It is evident that, to engage in this research, it would be necessary to embrace not only all of natural history, but also the physical, moral, and political history of the human race; and one would encounter along the way many questions that one would have no means of resolving. But the writers who have attributed to climate an immense influence on the laws, on the religions, and on the morals of peoples; and those who have claimed that this influence is null, have not given themselves so much trouble. The ones and the others have seen in climates only the action of heat or cold exercised directly on the organs of man: it is this action whose effects some have exaggerated, and whose importance others have contested.

Montesquieu seems to have fixed popular opinion in this regard; his judgment has not carried away that of all learned men; great writers, illustrious scholars have seen in it only a baneful error; but this error has been destroyed neither by the attacks of Helvétius, nor by the pleasantries of Voltaire, nor by the reasonings of Volney; there is still a great number of persons, even among the educated, who consider the institutions and morals of peoples as the product of the climate they inhabit: this opinion has become in some sort a popular prejudice.

The opinion of Montesquieu on the effects of cold and heat was not born, as one might believe, from the profound examination of facts; it is a system that he took from Chardin who himself had borrowed it from others, and in support of which he reported some facts, without taking much trouble to see if these facts were consequences of the principle he attributed to them, or even if they were not in opposition with a multitude of contrary facts. The identity between the system of Chardin and that of Montesquieu is so striking, even in the details, that it is enough to place them one beside the other to be convinced that the philosopher has added nothing to the traveler [88].Chardin claims to have observed in his travels that the heat of the climate enervates the mind as well as the body; that it dissipates that fire of imagination necessary for the invention and perfection of the arts; that it renders one incapable of those long nights of work and that strong application which give birth to fine works in the liberal and mechanical arts; that from this it comes that the knowledge of the peoples of Asia is so limited, and that it consists only in retaining and repeating what is found in the books of the ancients; that their industry is crude; and that it is in the North that one must seek the sciences and the trades in their highest perfection [89].

“I always find,” the same traveler says elsewhere, “the cause or origin of the morals and habits of the Orientals in the quality of their climate, having observed in my travels that as morals follow the temperament of the body, according to Galen’s remark, the temperament of the body follows the quality of the climate; so that the customs or habits of peoples are not the effect of pure caprice, but of some causes or some natural necessity that one discovers only after an exact investigation [90].”

In adopting this system, Montesquieu nevertheless did not wish to rely blindly on Chardin’s opinion; he subjected this opinion to the test of facts, and the experiment by which he judged it is of such an extraordinary nature that it would be unbelievable if he had not himself recorded it in The Spirit of the Laws. The philosopher-jurist took half a sheep’s tongue; he subjected it alternately to a hot temperature, and to a cold temperature down to freezing; he examined, with the aid of a magnifying glass, the effects produced by the cold and by the heat on this half-tongue, and these effects served him to determine the influence that cold and heat exercise on the physical and moral nature of man, in all parts of our globe. Here are the results of this singular experiment.

By the sole effect of temperature, the man of the north has a larger body, and consequently more confidence in himself, that is to say, more courage; more awareness of his superiority, that is to say, less desire for vengeance; more opinion of his security, that is to say, more frankness, fewer suspicions, politics, and ruses. The peoples of hot countries are timid like the old; those of cold countries, courageous like the young. The peoples of the north must have little vivacity; they must have little sensitivity to pleasure and to pain: one must flay a Muscovite to give him feeling. In northern climates, the physical aspect of love barely has the strength to make itself felt; in hot countries, the soul is supremely moved by everything that relates to the union of the two sexes.

In northern countries, a healthy and well-constituted machine, but a heavy one, finds its pleasures in everything that can set the spirits in motion: hunting, travel, war, wine. You will find in the climates of the north peoples who have few vices, a fair number of virtues, and much sincerity and frankness. Approach the southern countries, and you will believe you are moving away from morality itself; more vivid passions will multiply crimes; each will seek to take from others all the advantages that can favor these same passions. In temperate countries, you will see men who are more inconstant in their manners, in their very vices, and in their virtues: the climate there does not have a quality determined enough to fix them themselves.

The heat of the climate can be so excessive that the body will be absolutely without strength. Then, the dejection will pass to the mind itself; no curiosity, no noble enterprise, no generous sentiment; the inclinations there will all be passive, laziness will be happiness; most punishments will be less difficult to bear than the action of the soul, and servitude less unbearable than the strength of mind necessary to conduct oneself [91].

The Indians are naturally without courage as a consequence of their climate; and if they execute acts that require energy, such as voluntarily throwing themselves into the flames, or inflicting the most cruel pains upon themselves, it is because the climate excites their imagination. In the time of the Romans, the peoples of northern Europe lived without arts, without education, almost without laws, and yet, by the sole good sense attached to the coarse fibers of these climates, they maintained themselves with admirable wisdom against the Roman power, until the moment they came out of their forests to destroy it [92].

The climate that produces dejection of body and mind, that prevents all curiosity, all noble enterprise, thereby renders immutable religion, morals, manners, laws; as it leads men toward speculation, it engenders monasticism; it engenders laziness, and the pride that is a consequence of it; men are therefore driven to a painful duty only by the fear of punishments; servitude is therefore natural to certain particular countries of the earth [93].

The law that forbids the use of wine would not be good in cold countries where the climate seems to force a certain national drunkenness. Drunkenness is found established over the whole earth in proportion to the coldness and humidity of the climate. Go from the equator to our pole, and you will see drunkenness increase with the degrees of latitude. Go from the same equator to the opposite pole, and you will see drunkenness head toward the south, just as from this one it had headed toward the north [94].

The climate not only produces moral vices, it also engenders diseases, such as leprosy and the plague. It is the climate that leads the English to suicide, even in the midst of prosperity. Finally, it is to the same cause that one must attribute the atrocious morals of the Japanese, and the mistrust that these morals inspire in the laws and magistrates of that people [95].

Such is Montesquieu’s system on the effects of climate, or, to speak with exactitude, of cold and heat; for this illustrious writer concerned himself only with the immediate influence produced on man by the temperature of the atmosphere. I have reduced his opinions to the smallest number of terms possible, whenever I could do so without fear of altering his thoughts: I have reported the very expressions he used in the most remarkable passages. In examining this system, I will not investigate whether the moral and political phenomena that Montesquieu attests must result from the physiological phenomena to which he attributes them, such as the constriction and shortening of the external fibers by the deprivation of caloric, and the increase in strength that results from it; the relaxation and lengthening of the same fibers by the action of heat, and the diminution of strength that is the consequence; I will not examine whether the action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the fibers are better felt in the north than in the south, if the fluids are in better equilibrium there, if the blood is more determined toward the heart, and if reciprocally the heart has more power. Although little versed in physiology, I have difficulty persuading myself that these facts can be ascertained by experiments done on half a sheep’s tongue; and even if they were ascertained by such experiments, I cannot see any link between them and the moral consequences that Montesquieu deduces from them. I confess that a moral and political system that rested on such experiments would seem to me to rest on a scarcely solid base. Before examining whether the moral phenomena that Chardin and Montesquieu attribute to the influence of climates are consequences of the action of cold or heat on the external fibers, it would have been necessary to properly ascertain the existence of these phenomena; it would have been necessary to then investigate whether these phenomena were the product of a single cause, and what that cause was. But in this case, as in many others, one began by imagining a system, and then gathered a few facts here and there to justify it, without even taking the trouble to show the supposed link between the effects and the cause.

The examination of the system on the influence of climates leads me to investigations of the highest importance: it obliges me to distinguish the causes of prosperity or misery that exist in men considered in themselves, from those that exist in the things by which they are surrounded. If one does not make this distinction, if one attributes exclusively to men what is the product of the nature of things, or to things what is the product of human wills, one cannot seek to influence the fate of a nation without engaging in a dangerous or at least useless struggle. Man exercises an immense influence on most of the objects that surround him; but in their turn, things exercise on him an influence that is scarcely less extensive. It is this influence that must be ascertained, if we wish to know to what extent peoples are masters of their destinies, and how they must act if they wish to make progress. The influence of things on men has been perceived by political theorists and by moralists only in a confused manner: they have designated it by the vague name of influence of climates; but they have not been successful when they have tried to determine the effects they have attributed to this influence.

According to Montesquieu, the northern climate, or rather, a cold temperature, therefore gives man a large body and little vivacity, confidence in himself, courage, security, frankness, little desire for vengeance. It gives him few suspicions and ruses, little sensitivity to pleasure and pain, little inclination for love and jealousy, few vices and a fair number of virtues. Finally, it gives him good sense attached to coarse fibers, and an irresistible penchant for drunkenness [96].

A temperate climate or country gives man inconstancy in his manners, in his vices and in his virtues, and more sensitivity to pleasure and pain.

A hot climate deprives man of strength, dejects his spirit, deprives him of courage, imagination, generous sentiment, leads him to contemplation, laziness, and pride, makes him mistrustful, suspicious, cunning, false, vindictive, gives him an excessive sensitivity to pleasure and pain, leads him to love and jealousy, makes him stationary in his religion, in his morals, and in his laws; finally, this climate makes slavery a necessity for him.

If this system is true, all peoples who live under a certain latitude are condemned by nature herself to live eternally in vice, crime, ignorance, and misery. It is in vain that one would bring them enlightenment: a power from which they could not escape renders them incapable of seeing better or of conducting themselves better. The peoples situated in the temperate climates of Europe, America, and Asia are condemned by the same power to eternally change their morals, laws, and opinions; to pass alternately from vice to virtue, from virtue to vice, from enlightenment to ignorance, from ignorance to enlightenment, from despotism to liberty, from liberty to despotism. The peoples placed under a cold climate are the only ones to whom nature has been decidedly favorable.

The first difficulty that presents itself when one wants to subject this system to examination is to know what the limits are of the three climates that produce such different effects. For the peoples who live between the tropics, in places little elevated above sea level, Italy, Spain, and Portugal are temperate countries, if not even cold countries; but, for the Russians, they are hot countries. The inhabitants of the Solomon Islands, of Quito, or of Sumatra could imagine, in reading The Spirit of the Laws, that the Italians, the Spanish, and the Portuguese have a large body and little vivacity; but the Russians, making the same reading, must believe that these same peoples have neither courage, nor imagination, nor genius, and that they are as immutable in their manners as bees and beavers. The words cold and heat, applied to the sensation that the atmosphere produces on us, are relative words, whose value is determined only by our habits. The same temperature that an inhabitant of Syria would find glacial would make a Swede or an inhabitant of Saint Petersburg sweat. The inhabitants of Charleston are seized with cold and cannot do without a fire when Réaumur’s thermometer holds at only twelve degrees above freezing; and although their winters are very short, the cold does not last three days in a row, and the hardest frost does not penetrate the earth two inches, they consume, for their heating, as much wood as the inhabitants of Philadelphia [97]. The Russians do not complain of the cold when the thermometer falls only a few degrees below zero. What then is a cold climate, a hot climate, and a temperate climate for the ones and for the others [98]?

But let us take the words in the sense that Chardin and Montesquieu undoubtedly meant to give them; in this acceptation, a temperate climate will be that to which a Parisian is accustomed; a hot climate will be that which produces dejection in him and causes him too abundant a perspiration; a cold climate will be that where the impression of the atmosphere usually causes him a disagreeable sensation and makes the presence of fire necessary. This is still very vague, but it is not possible to give the terms greater precision: in this sense, Poland, Sweden, Russia, and Denmark are cold climates in Europe; it is the same for all the parts of Asia and America located at the same latitude; we can consider as hot climates all the low-lying parts of the globe situated between the tropics. The temperature of a country does not depend only, in effect, on the degree of latitude under which that country is placed; it also depends on the greater or lesser elevation of the soil, and on the way it is exposed; it depends, moreover, on the state of the country: at the same degree of latitude, a soil covered with forests does not have the same temperature as a soil that is covered with sand or that is in a state of pasture; a soil placed in the center of a vast continent, like Africa, does not have the same temperature as an island placed in the middle of the Ocean. Montesquieu took no account of any of these circumstances, nor of a great number of others equally influential; they deserved, however, to be considered.