Conclusion de ce livre.

CHAP. 37: > Conclusion of this book.

In comparing among themselves the peoples who belong to the same species, it is impossible for us to discover in those who are closer to the poles any physical, intellectual, or moral superiority over those who are closer to the equator or who live between the tropics; we see, on the contrary, that the more one ascends toward one or the other of the two extremities of the globe, the more men are rare, vicious, and stupid; the same phenomena exist for all species: the individuals of the American species are subject to the same laws as those of the Mongol species, or as those of the African species. Must we conclude from the numerous facts we have observed that cold and heat produce effects contrary to those that Montesquieu and other writers have assigned to them? Must we think that a cold temperature is an obstacle to the perfection of men, and that heat, on the contrary, tends to develop their faculties?

This opinion would come much closer to the truth than the contrary opinion: man lives only by heat; the foods on which he nourishes himself grow and multiply only by heat. As one ascends toward the cold climates, the species of plants that are proper for his subsistence diminish; each species has a zone that is proper to it, beyond which it can no longer grow; but the species that can multiply under hot climates are more numerous and furnish a greater quantity of subsistence than those that can multiply under cold climates; even between the tropics, the plant that furnishes the principal food of the inhabitants no longer grows above fifteen hundred and fifty meters of elevation, and the wheat of Europe does not exceed three thousand meters. Now, it requires no reasoning to prove that the less the earth produces subsistence proper to man, the less a people can develop. Lands that produce no plant on which men can immediately feed themselves can be inhabited only by hunting or pastoral peoples.

However, although it is true to say that a climate under which all that is necessary for the needs of men can grow in abundance is, by that very fact, favorable to the development and perfection of the human race; although it is proven by numerous and incontestable facts that as one advances from the poles toward the equator, one finds peoples who are generally more enlightened, more active, more industrious, and more moral, one must not hasten to conclude that the immediate effect of great heat is to render men intelligent and virtuous, and that the immediate effect of what is called a cold climate is, on the contrary, to render men vicious and stupid: such a reasoning would be as false as the contrary system.

If one had to expound what is the influence of the temperature of the climate on the development of the human race, there would be several orders of facts to verify; and, among the first, one would have to place the different degrees of temperature of the atmosphere, on each of the points of the globe; one would have to ascertain, by multiplied observations, what is the average heat that one experiences, if not on all points of the earth, at least on the points where one finds associations of men. These facts had not been ascertained when the system that places virtues and liberty in cold climates, and vices and servitude under hot climates, was adopted; even today, observations have been made on only a very small number of points. The lack of observations of this kind has been supplemented by observations of another nature: the degree of latitude under which each people is placed has been noted. This basis of reasoning is so false that one cannot adopt it without being led to maintain that the men who inhabit near the icy summit of the Alps live under a warmer climate than those who live in the plains of Provence where the vine and the olive tree grow.

If, instead of taking latitude as a measure of the temperature of the atmosphere, one had taken the degree of elevation of the soil above sea level, one would still have been mistaken; but the error would have been less great. At sea level, when the atmosphere receives no very considerable influence from the land, the temperature changes, so to speak, only in an insensible manner; one must travel an immense space to pass from an average temperature to an icy temperature. The navigator who departs from the equator and ascends toward one or the other pole must travel nearly twelve hundred leagues before finding water at the temperature of ice. But if, instead of following a horizontal plane, one follows a perpendicular plane, one passes, in a very short time and by traveling a space of a few thousand toises, from the torrid zone into a glacial zone. It results from this that a slight elevation of the soil is sometimes sufficient to place a people under the climate that Montesquieu considers as cold; whereas, on the contrary, a distance that is considerable by latitude produces only a very slight difference in temperature.

The philosophers who judged the average temperature of a country by the degree of latitude under which that country is situated were bound to fall, and have in fact fallen, into the most serious errors. Montesquieu, for example, considered England as being situated under a cold climate, and it is to this circumstance that he attributed either the insensibility to the charms of music, which he says he observed among the English, or the liberty they enjoy. He also considered as living under a cold climate the peoples who inhabit the right bank of the Rhine; and he attributed to the coldness of this climate the wisdom of these peoples and the resistance they opposed to the invasions of the Romans. However, the average temperature of England is as mild as that of the greater part of France, and that of a part of the banks of the Rhine is more so. The difference in the elevation or the position of the places does more than compensate for the difference of latitude. Montesquieu fell, with regard to Asia, into errors similar to those he committed on some parts of Europe. He considered the vast empire of China as being placed under a hot climate, not only without knowing its average temperature, but even without knowing what is the elevation of the soil and the influence of the mountains; I could say, without looking closely at the latitude under which the greater part of this country is situated.

The errors into which one has fallen with regard to the American continent are no less serious. The temperature of this continent, whether because of the elevation of the mountains, or because of any other circumstance that it is not my subject to investigate, is much colder than the temperature of the old continent, at equal degrees of elevation and latitude. The difference from one continent to the other is, according to some scholars, fourteen or fifteen degrees of latitude, and according to others, eighteen [363]. The temperature of France, under the forty-fifth degree, must therefore be equal to the temperature found in America under the thirtieth or under the twenty-seventh, all other things being equal. Florida and a large part of Mexico are thus found under a climate that we consider temperate. It must even be remarked that as one advances from the two extremities of America toward the center, a part of the soil rises gradually; so that the highest mountains are found between the tropics. Thus, a part of the heat that one should experience from a greater proximity to the equator is lost by the effect of a greater elevation of the soil [364].

Robertson took account of these facts, as long as he had only to describe the climate and the soil of America; but he lost sight of them as soon as he wanted to explain the causes of the despotism of the caciques and the incas. Then, he saw in the heat of a climate under which, according to him, fruits that the Cape of Good Hope easily produces barely ripen, the cause of the enslavement of the natives to their nobles or to their princes, just as he saw the cause of the supposed liberty of the savages in the cold climate under which they live [365]. To judge the temperature of the atmosphere, he no longer took account of anything but latitude; he did not even always consult it well, since he considered as free peoples such as those of the mouths of the Orinoco, while he considered the Mexicans and the natives of the Floridas as slaves enervated by the heat [366].

Among the numerous systems that have been imagined, whether on the formation of peoples and governments, or on their vices and their virtues, there is none whose consequences are more extensive than that which has been adopted on the influence of cold and heat. In this system, strength and weakness, virtues and vices, good and bad laws, liberty and servitude, wealth and poverty, in a word, prosperity or misery, are inevitable consequences of the degree of temperature under which a people is placed. I say that these phenomena are inevitable consequences of the causes to which they are attributed, although Montesquieu often advises combating the influence of the climate by laws; for, to have laws, one must have men, and men can think and act only in a manner conformable to their own nature, which is itself determined by the climate.

However, however extensive the consequences of this system may be, however imposing the names of the men who have adopted it, it would perhaps have been enough that the facts that should have formed its basis had not been ascertained, to dispense with making a thorough examination of it. But I did not only have in view to destroy a fatal error, whose influence is felt in all branches of legislation; I also had to expound what is the general course that civilization has followed on the surface of the globe; I had to expound what are the causes that push peoples toward their prosperity, without their knowledge and in a way without their participation, and what are the causes that hold them back or push them back toward barbarism. Among animate beings, there is none that can exercise a greater influence on its own destiny than man; there is none that has more means to paralyze the causes that tend to harm it, or to second those that are favorable to it. But, to act in one or the other sense, he needs to see distinctly what these causes are: if he does not know them, he remains inactive; if he judges them badly, he acts in a manner contrary to his interests.In considering the diverse nations spread across the surface of the globe, we observe some very remarkable phenomena; we see civilization form in the central regions of the globe, spread from there gradually toward the poles, and stop at a certain degree of elevation; we see the uncivilized populations of the extremities tend continually toward the center, enslave the peoples who have already made more progress, and bring to them their prejudices and their vices; we see analogous governments establish themselves among all the conquered populations; we see the conquerors lose a part of their ignorance and ferocity among the vanquished, while peoples of the same species who remain in their native country preserve their primitive morals; finally, we see, in all countries, the vices inseparable from barbarism, and the same moral degradation almost everywhere we observe the same lack of intellectual development.

If we observed these phenomena only on a few points of the globe or among a single species of men, we could attribute them to some fortuitous circumstances, to the appearance of an extraordinary genius who had united scattered men, who had taught them the arts and given them laws. But these phenomena are general; they have existed on all continents and among nations of all species; each of the most anciently civilized peoples has attributed to some great men the progress it had made: the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Arabs, the Jews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Peruvians, the Mexicans, have had their sages, their legislators; but why have the Kamchadales, the inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands, the Eskimos, the Greenlanders, the Iroquois, the Poles, the Russians, and the inhabitants of Siberia not also had theirs? Why do we find Bacchus in India, in Egypt, and in Greece, and why do we not find him in Siberia, in New Zealand, or in the Fox Islands?

But, at the same time that we see civilization form in hot climates and spread from there toward temperate climates, we see peoples still half-barbarous, hunters or shepherds, hurl themselves upon those who were the first to cultivate the land, divide them up like prey, and consider them only as instruments of cultivation, until civilization has softened the morals of the conquerors and given liberty to the vanquished. Celebrated writers known as philosophers have been, in a way, seized with admiration upon seeing the feudal regime form in Europe after the invasions of the barbarians, and establish itself, in almost all states, in a uniform manner. Had they extended their view further, their admiration would have been greater still; they would have found the same regime, and, in large part, the same laws, among the negroes of central Africa, among the no less barbarous peoples of Abyssinia, among the Malays who have invaded the greater part of the archipelagos of the tropics, and among the peoples of the copper-colored race who had invaded the center of America before the arrival of the Europeans.

When we consider peoples before conquest, we see them divided into small independent or confederated tribes, each having chiefs elected by it, governing itself according to its expressed will, and recognizing that their power has no other source than the wishes of their fellow citizens. We observe the same social order in all parts of Europe: before the Roman conquests, Italy, Gaul, Helvetia, Germania, and Great Britain were divided into an immense multitude of small republics. We observe the same order in all parts of America: with the exception of Mexico, Peru, and the Floridas, all other parts of this continent were divided into so great a multitude of republics that travelers have estimated the number of languages spoken there at over a thousand. Finally, such a social order has existed or still exists in the greater part of Africa, in Arabia, in a part of the Caucasus mountains, and in the north of Asia.

But, if we consider peoples after conquest, or, to put it better, after their enslavement to foreign races, we find an entirely different order: we see everywhere masters who are more or less numerous, but almost always hereditary. And what is most remarkable is that the masters, without attributing the source of their power to force, all give it a divine origin. The Malay kings consider themselves the equals of their gods, and bear the same names; their grandees are not only the masters of the earth, they are also the lords of the sun and the firmament. The conquerors of the American race likewise attributed to themselves a divine origin; they were the sons of the stars, and the children of the sun. The conquerors of the Tatar race give their subjects the same ideas; the Shahs of Persia, the sultans of the Turks call themselves the lieutenants of God on earth. We find, in the political maxims of all governments that have a similar origin, the same analogy that we observe in the titles they attribute to themselves.

The similarity of customs, among peoples whose intellectual faculties have been little developed, is no less striking than the similarity of governments. If one compares the peoples who are placed at the polar extremities of each of the principal parts of the globe, one will be struck by the resemblance that exists between them. One will be no less struck if one compares the intelligence and morals of the populations that barbarous conquerors have long oppressed with the morals and intelligence of the tribes that have never been civilized. One will find in both the same calamities and the same vices; and the men who have imagined that true liberty is found only among savages will not be a little surprised to see that, if some difference exists between these peoples and those whom civil and political slavery have brutalized, this difference is still in favor of the latter.

In the observation of these great phenomena, all differences of species or race disappear: the yellow-skinned Mongols, the swarthy Malays, the copper-colored Americans, the Negroes, the Caucasians, all bear the same moral physiognomy, whenever they find themselves placed in analogous circumstances; and, while their physical characteristics remain invariable in all positions and under all latitudes, their morals bear the imprint of the diverse local circumstances in the midst of which they are placed.

Having observed the general course that civilization has followed on the principal parts of the globe, and the points where it has stopped, it remains for me to expound what have been the principal causes of its progress, and what are those that have arrested it or caused it to retrogress. This will be the subject of the following book.