Du développement moral des peuples de diverses espèces. — De l’analogie qui existe entre les mœurs e

CHAP. 13: > Of the moral development of peoples of diverse species. — Of the analogy that exists between morals and laws. — Of the relations between the intellectual development and the moral perfection of men. — Method followed in this exposition.

To know the laws to which peoples obey, it is necessary, as I have observed elsewhere, to determine the action that men exercise with regard to one another, as individuals or as a collection of individuals; it is necessary to observe, moreover, the causes that determine them to act or to yield to the action that is exercised upon them, and the consequences that result from this action. Laws are, in effect, only powers, and this power can exist only in men or in things: the portion of force that exists in men is found in their ideas or in their passions; the portion of force that exists in things is found in the qualities by means of which they affect us for good or for ill. The books or registers of assemblies can contain, as I have already said, only more or less exact descriptions of the phenomena produced by these powers to which we give the name of laws.

The distinction I previously established between the powers that constitute laws, and the descriptions of the phenomena that these powers produce, becomes all the more important here, as I have to make known the laws to which a multitude of peoples are subject who have never described their social order; I have to make known the action that men of all species exercise upon themselves, or upon others than themselves, in an individual or collective manner; I have to show, at the same time, how this action of man upon himself or upon beings of the same kind as himself, is modified by the difference of species, by the temperature of the atmosphere, by the nature and exposure of the soil, by the course of the waters, or by other analogous circumstances. In undertaking this exposition, I will again be obliged to examine the opinion of several philosophers on the influence of climates.

When I expounded the diverse elements of power of which laws are composed, I showed that one must include among these elements the ideas, prejudices, sentiments, needs, or passions of the diverse classes of the population; I showed that, in the study of laws, the ideas and passions of a people present themselves sometimes as causes, or as elements of force, and sometimes as effects. The identity between the laws of a nation and the morals that constitute them, or that are their expression, is so real that the writers who have described the state of barbarous peoples have never thought to distinguish the one from the other. It has often required nothing more, to give the name of laws to the phenomena designated by the name of morals, than to have found a more or less authentic description of them. Tacitus, who traced for us the picture of the morals of the Germans, would probably have traced the picture of their laws, had he found that the phenomena he described under the name of morals had been described by the peoples of whom he spoke. Thus, from the fact that several of the nations whose social state I have to describe know neither books nor archives, one must not conclude that they are not subject to any law. It has not been many centuries since most of the nations of Europe were in the same case, and yet they were governed by laws to which we have given the name of customs.

If the existence of peoples is modified by the physical circumstances in the midst of which they are placed, such as the nature and exposure of the soil, the nature, direction, and volume of the waters, the division of the seasons, the temperature of the atmosphere, and other analogous ones, these circumstances themselves are in their turn modified to a certain point by the action that peoples exercise upon them. Men modify the nature of the soil by plantations or deforestation, by land-clearing, by fertilizers, or by a succession of harvests that exhausts it. They act upon the waters, sometimes by constricting their limits, sometimes by directing them to places where they are lacking, sometimes by destroying the forests that feed the rivers. They act upon the temperature of the atmosphere and even on the nature of the air they breathe, by deforestation, by the draining of marshes, or by other artificial means. There is exercised, in a word, a continual action and reaction of things upon men, and of men upon things, and this action and reaction always influence more or less the relations that individuals and the aggregations of individuals of which the human race is composed have among themselves.

Of all the physical circumstances in the midst of which men are placed, there is none that appears more independent of them than the temperature of the atmosphere. However, they manage to modify it in the action that is supposed to be the most influential, in that which affects them in an immediate manner. As they make progress, they learn to create for themselves a temperate atmosphere, by varying their clothing and their dwellings; so that if cold and heat produce the effects that most philosophers have attributed to them, these effects must manifest themselves with all the more force as peoples are more barbarous.

If we wish to know how the physical circumstances in the midst of which peoples are placed influence them, and how this influence of things on men then contributes to modifying the action they exercise, either on themselves or with regard to one another, we must continue to consider separately each of the principal divisions into which the human race has been shared; we must seek to ascertain the state that each of the species or varieties of men we know has reached, under all climates and in all positions. This sketch of the comparative civilization of the peoples of all species, and of all parts of the globe, has required very numerous researches. I have tried to abridge it as much as was possible for me; however, to be followed, it demands some patience on the part of those who wish to know it.

In observing the course that civilization has followed in each of the principal parts of the earth, we have seen enlightenment form first in hot climates; then spread into temperate climates, and stop before cold climates or penetrate them only with difficulty. I will expound elsewhere what were the principal causes of this phenomenon; for the moment, we have only to examine whether vicious passions and laws have followed the same course as enlightenment; and whether the most barbarous peoples have had more virtues and better laws. We have to examine above all whether the vices and virtues, the good and bad laws that are observed among peoples of diverse species, placed in different zones, are effects of the temperature of the climate, or whether they must be attributed to other causes.

According to Montesquieu, the heat of the climate weakens the strength of the soul at the same time as that of the body; it produces cowardice, laziness, jealousy, mistrust, cunning, falsehood, pride, vengeance, cruelty; finally, it extinguishes all generous sentiment; according to him, one finds 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, he says, 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.

If it is true, as seems to me proven, that civilization first developed in hot climates, whenever it was not arrested there by insurmountable causes, such as the aridity of the soil; and if heat produces the moral effects that Montesquieu attributes to it, it will be necessary to admit, with J.-J. Rousseau, that human knowledge has always been accompanied by the corruption of morals; it will be necessary to recognize that, if vices are not consequences of the sciences and arts, they are produced at least by the same causes. In this hypothesis, it will be true to say that the same force that retains the peoples of cold countries in ignorance and barbarism, gives them or preserves their virtues [341].

The mind tires of refuting opinions that are founded on no well-made observation, and that are contradicted by innumerable facts. But when an opinion, however false it may appear to those who have subjected it to examination, has been professed by men such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Raynal, Robertson, and others less celebrated; when this opinion bears on the greatest interests of the human species, morality, laws, and even religion [342]; finally, when one sees men who lack neither judgment nor knowledge publish the least sensible opinions on the moral sciences, must one believe that the multitude, which has no opinion it can call its own, and which thinks only according to books, will know how to guard itself against all errors? Can one think that it will not believe in the influence of climates on morals, when one sees writers, whom one might believe to be sensible, attribute the revolutionary spirit of peoples to the electrical charge of the atmosphere, and their moral reformation to the use of coffee [343]?

It is easy to give birth to systems, and to explain, with the help of a few words, to the least enlightened men, all the revolutions of the world. But this is not how the sciences proceed; no one guesses them, nor improvises them: they must emerge from the slow and painstaking study of facts, or they remain unknown. One must not lose sight, moreover, that the examination of the system on the immediate influence of cold and heat on the organs of the diverse species of men is here only a secondary object. The principal object that I propose is to determine, as I have already said, the action that things, considered from a general point of view, exercise on men; that which men exercise in their turn on things, and that which they then exercise with regard to one another.

Montesquieu, in affirming that peoples placed in cold climates have more virtues and fewer vices than peoples placed in hot climates, and that in approaching the southern countries one believes one is moving away from morality itself, deduces these facts, not from the examination of the morals of each people, but from the physical weakness produced, according to him, by heat on the organs of man: and as it has been previously proven that peoples placed in hot climates are in general better constituted and stronger than peoples of the same species placed in the coldest climates, one could reverse his system; one could say that, according to his principles, vices are reserved for cold climates and virtues for hot climates. But before affirming that such or such a physical constitution produces such or such a kind of passions, it would have been necessary to examine the facts; it would have been necessary to be convinced that wherever such a constitution is found, one sees such passions reign, and that one never sees them reign in places where men are differently constituted: now, this is an examination to which neither Montesquieu, nor any of the writers who have adopted his system, has devoted himself.

The fewer advances men have made, the easier it is to observe the action that uncultivated and wild nature exercises upon them. Nowhere does the influence of things on the morals of nations manifest itself with more energy than in the countries where civilization has never penetrated. It is therefore a necessity to observe the peoples of all species, in all the circumstances in which they have been placed. In devoting ourselves to these observations, and in seeing what action nations have exercised upon one another, we will find the origin of a great number of our prejudices, our passions, our laws. By comparing among themselves peoples who belong to the same species, but who are placed in different positions, it will be easier for us to find the causes of the prosperity of some, of the decadence or the stationary state of others. By comparing among themselves peoples of different species placed in similar situations, it will be easier for us to judge whether there exists some superiority between the ones and the others, and what is this kind of superiority. If comparative anatomy has made us make great progress in the knowledge of the physique of men, a treatise of comparative morality or legislation will perhaps not be useless to the progress of the moral sciences.

In order to put order into the exposition of the morals or laws of the peoples of the diverse species, I will first make known what are the diverse classes into which each nation, each horde or each tribe is divided; I will then expound what are the relations that the individuals of each class have, either among themselves, or with individuals who belong to different classes; I will expound, in the third place, what is, in each state, the condition of women, children, and the elderly; I will expound, moreover, what are the habits that immediately affect only the individuals who have contracted them; finally, I will make known what are the relations that exist from people to people; one will thus be able to see how the moral habits of each fraction of which the species is composed influence the fate of the whole, and how migrations, invasions, or conquests transport the ideas, morals, and institutions formed under certain local circumstances, to peoples placed in different circumstances.