Du développement intellectuel acquis en Afrique et en Europe, sous différents degrés de latitude, pa

CHAP. 12: > Of the intellectual development acquired in Africa and in Europe, under different degrees of latitude, by peoples of the Ethiopian species and by peoples of the Caucasian species.

The human race has followed the same course in its developments in Africa as in Asia and America. Of all the peoples of the Ethiopian species, the least advanced are those who inhabit the southern extremity of this continent. Nothing establishes that, at the arrival of the Europeans, the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope knew the art of cultivating the land [327]. They lived as most still live, on milk, animals killed in the hunt, wild roots, locusts of which the winds bring them clouds, ant nymphs, spiders, caterpillars, and, if possible, coarser and more repulsive foods [328]. To clothe themselves, they know no other art than to wrap themselves in a sheepskin, and in the still-fresh intestines of the animals they have slaughtered. Finally, their huts, into which they can enter only by crawling and where it is impossible for them to stand upright, receive daylight and let smoke escape only through a hole made near the ground, by means of which they enter [329]. It is in these dark dens that they remained until they were driven out by the vermin that covers them [330]. These peoples are among the filthiest and most fetid that travelers have ever encountered [331]. According to Raynal, their intelligence scarcely rises above that of their flocks [332]. The English have begun to civilize some of them.

The Kaffirs, placed at a lower latitude, also engage in hunting and possess numerous herds: but they devote themselves at the same time to agriculture; they have fields and even gardens. Their villages or kraals are composed of a greater number of huts, and these huts are more cleanly and more solidly constructed. They are higher and of a more regular form than those of the Hottentots; the body is composed of a kind of solid and smooth latticework; it is then coated outside and inside with a kind of plaster that gives it an air of cleanliness [333]. Finally, as one penetrates further into the territory that this people inhabits, one finds that it has made more progress. “We found,” says Barrow, “a great expanse of land cultivated in gardens, and we arrived toward noon at Litakou, quite astonished to find in this part of the world a large and very populous city” [334]. The peoples of Mozambique are also cultivators; their villages, similar to those of the Indians, are shaded by fruit trees planted in a regular manner [335].

The inhabitants of the western coast of Africa, from the seventeenth degree of north latitude to about the tenth degree of south latitude, have made more progress in the arts than the Kaffirs. The peoples who inhabit the banks of the Senegal cultivate their fields with care. Each village has weavers, shoemakers, even blacksmiths. Their fabrics are woven with care, and adorned with designs of a delicate taste. Finally, they possess the art of smelting iron [336].

The peoples of these coasts seem to us today very barbarous; but when one examines attentively their social organization, the subordination that reigns between the chiefs of the diverse tribes, the power they exercise with regard to one another or over simple individuals, the manner in which they administer justice, and the ordeals to which they subject the accused, one is not a little astonished to find among them the morals, the laws, the governments, and even the prejudices that reigned over the whole extent of Europe in the Middle Ages: it is feudal government in all its original purity. If, in recent centuries, the Asiatics had come to Europe to conduct the slave trade, they would have found our peasants in the same state in which the slave traders of our countries today find the Africans [337].

The burning climate of the tropics has therefore not been more unfavorable, in Africa, to the development of the intellectual faculties of the Ethiopian species, than the temperate climate of the southern extremity of this continent. The peoples who belong to other species and who have inhabited the northern coasts of this continent, have they been arrested in their intellectual development by the heat of the climate? Were the sciences and arts stifled in Egypt by the rays of the sun? Were these ruins, spread over a soil that the avidity of barbarians could never exhaust, brought there from the forests of Germania, or from the icy banks of the Volga? Were these famous monuments, whose remains, mutilated by the hand of stupid shepherds, still excite our admiration, conceived, executed by men whose minds had been enervated and whose imagination had been extinguished by heat? [338]

Could it be in Europe that cold climates have been particularly favorable to the progress of human intelligence? Is it not, on the contrary, in Italy, in Spain, in France that the renaissance of the sciences and arts took place? Did not knowledge spread gradually toward the north, and are not the coldest countries the last to which it arrived? One can doubtless find, in Poland and even in Russia, men who have reached a high civilization; but it is not by a small number of individuals enjoying a great fortune that one must judge the progress of a nation; it is by the entire population. Now, in these countries, the population, if one excepts a part of the inhabitants of some large cities, is still less advanced than was the French nation in the fifteenth century [339].

In considering the human race from a high point of view, we see that, since the most remote times, it has been subject to a continual action and reaction of civilization and barbarism. The nations placed under the happiest climates are the first to develop; they shed some light on the barbarians who surround them; but they are in their turn plunged into darkness by other barbarians, among whom the light has never penetrated. The peoples situated in the most beautiful countries of Asia preceded all others in the career of civilization; it is they who appear to have brought the light to Egypt, from where it spread to Greece, to Italy, and to all the southeastern part of Europe. But the barbarians who inhabited the central plains of the Asian continent, in their turn spread over the civilized world, and plunged it back into darkness as much as was in their power. We can observe the same movement of action and reaction in all the states of Europe; the peoples of the south made some feeble rays of light penetrate to their neighbors of the north, and these neighbors rewarded them for it by seeking to lead them back into darkness.

It is true that the civilized peoples of central America were enslaved and plunged back into barbarism; the Hindus, the Chinese, the Persians, were likewise conquered by peoples who came from the north; the peoples of southern Europe also suffered the yoke of peoples who lived under cold climates. But must one conclude from this that hot climates are an obstacle to the perfection of the human race? The civilized peoples of central America have been plunged back into barbarism; but the peoples of the same species, situated at the extremities of that continent, have never emerged from it; the number of the former has grown, despite the oppression of the Spanish; the number of the latter is diminishing in a frightening manner, despite the efforts made by the government of the United States to preserve them: would that prove anything in favor of cold climates? Persia, China, Hindustan have been enslaved; but the countries from which the conquerors departed have always remained barbarous; they are poorer than the vanquished nations, without for that being any less enslaved. The south of Europe was enslaved by the north; and yet the peoples there are generally more enlightened, richer, and even freer: if there is not more political liberty, there is much more civil liberty.Chardin, Montesquieu, and all the writers who have adopted their opinions, observed that for centuries the human mind has made no further progress in the hottest climates of Asia, and that, on the contrary, the peoples of Europe who live in cold or temperate climates were advancing rapidly; they concluded from these two great phenomena that heat is an obstacle to the perfection of the human race, and that cold is favorable to it. But to reason correctly, it would have been necessary to compare the progress of the Asiatic peoples who live in a hot or temperate climate to the peoples of the same species who live in the cold climates of that part of the world, and who are subject to similar governments and religions; for, if it is evident that the state of the latter is even more stationary than that of the former, I do not see what conclusion can be drawn from this in favor of cold climates. Doubtless, one does not suppose that civilization never had a beginning in Hindustan, in China, or in Persia: these peoples, like all others, started from a state of ignorance and brutishness to arrive at the point where they find themselves. At some epoch, therefore, they made immense progress: it is infinitely further from the peoples of Kamtchatka to them, than it is from them to the peoples we judge to be the most advanced. Now, how did the cause that prevents them from taking the second step not prevent them from taking the first? [340]

In expounding the nature, causes, and effects of slavery, I will show in a more specific manner what causes render peoples stationary, or make them regress. I proposed to expound, in the preceding chapters, some of the physical circumstances under which peoples prosper or remain stationary: I wanted to investigate further whether the heat of the climate, considered in itself, is an obstacle to the development of the faculties of the human mind; whether it is true that it dissipates the fire of the imagination, that it destroys all curiosity, that it extinguishes all noble enterprise, and renders man incapable of that strong application which gives birth to fine works. I have found nothing suited to justify such assertions; I have seen, on the contrary, that it is always in hot or temperate climates that civilization has developed. Must one conclude from this that a certain degree of heat is alone sufficient to develop the intellectual faculties of peoples? That would be a system that could be supported by many reasons, and which would be no more absurd than the one we have just examined.