Chapitre Premier.

CHAP. 38: CHAPTER ONE.

Of the first objects upon which human faculties develop. — Of the relations that exist between the distribution of these objects and the distribution of peoples on the surface of the globe. — Of the natural division of nations, according to the formation of mountains and the division of waters. — Of the influence exerted on the progress of peoples by the nature and position of the soil, the course of the waters, and the temperature of the atmosphere.

A multitude of causes influence the fate of nations, and contribute either to keeping them in barbarism, to causing them to make progress, or to causing them to retrogress. To know these causes, one can seek them only in men themselves, or in the things that surround them. The causes that are in themselves pertain to their physical organization, to the manner in which they can be affected, to the development of which their intellectual and moral faculties are susceptible. Those that are in things are found in the nature, configuration, and aspect of the soil, in the latitude under which it is situated, in the elevation at which it is placed above sea level, in the waters that water or cross it, in the direction they take, in the temperature of the atmosphere, in the division of the seasons, and in other analogous circumstances. We have first seen some of the causes that pertain to the nature of man or to his intellectual and moral faculties. In then researching how civilization has spread over the surface of the globe, we have found that it developed between the tropics or in the countries closest to them; that it spread from there toward the temperate zones, and that the peoples closest to the poles or the most isolated have always been the most barbarous.

If this phenomenon had manifested itself only on a single continent or among a single species of men, one could attribute it to accidental and fleeting causes; but it has appeared, as has already been seen, on all continents and among all species; of all the peoples of the copper-colored race, none have been encountered more barbarous than those who inhabit the two extremities of the American continent, beyond the forty-seventh degree of southern latitude and northern latitude. In the Pacific Ocean, the weakest and most barbarous peoples are those of Van Diemen's Land, New Holland, New Zealand, the Aleutian Islands, or the Fox Islands. In Asia, the barbarous nations inhabit the banks of the rivers that flow toward the north pole, beyond the fiftieth degree of latitude, or on the immense plateau that is at the center of this continent. In Africa, the most stupid or least advanced peoples that have been discovered are those who live at the Cape of Good Hope. Finally, in Europe, civilization began to develop in Greece and in Italy; it spread from there to the southern coasts of Spain and France. It then advanced by degrees toward the more temperate regions; but it has not yet arrived and it will perhaps never arrive at the northern extremity of the Russian empire [367].

To determine the principal causes that, under certain latitudes or in certain places, have arrested peoples in their development, it is necessary to recall what this development consists of, what are the causes that produce it, and what are the things upon which it can be exercised. A people can develop physically in two ways: by the multiplication of the individuals of which it is composed, or by the increase of the physical strength of each of these individuals. The most active immediate cause of this multiplication or this increase is either an increase in subsistence, or a better distribution or a wiser use of that which exists. Whenever a population finds itself reduced to what is rigorously necessary for it to live, and it is not in its power to procure a greater quantity of food, or to better distribute what it possesses, it has reached the ultimate limit of growth it can possibly reach. A people can acquire a greater quantity of subsistence only in one of these four ways: by multiplying the products of its own soil; by acquiring, through exchange, the products of a foreign soil; by seizing by force the wealth of other nations; by learning to make a better use of the products it possesses. If none of these means is possible, no new physical development can take place for it.

In considering what are the principal objects upon which the intellectual faculties of men develop, we find that these objects are relative either to their food, or to their clothing, or to their dwellings. To multiply, vary, and perfect the products of their soil, to preserve them as long as possible, to prepare them in such a way as to render them pleasant and healthy, such are the first operations upon which they exercise their intelligence. The first need, after those of hunger and thirst, is that of sheltering themselves from the elements; to give their clothing, with the least possible trouble and time, the qualities proper to protect them from the inclemency of the seasons, to vary them so as to make them light or warm, according to the weather, are also occupations that absorb a great part of their intelligence. Finally, the cares required by architecture, from those required for the simple construction of a hut to those necessary to build and adorn a palace, absorb another part of their intellectual faculties.

There is a multitude of other kinds of knowledge that at first seem foreign to the satisfaction of one of these needs; such are mathematics, astronomy, geography, mineralogy, and others; but if one will take the trouble to examine what is the definitive result of this knowledge, one will see that it is useful only for the help it provides to the arts; and that the arts, with the exception of a very small number of those called fine arts, have no other object than to increase, vary, or perfect our food, to procure for us more comfortable and more pleasant clothing or dwellings, or to defend these various objects when we possess them. Even research that bears on the physical constitution of man has no other goal than to increase, preserve, or restore his strength. If, therefore, it happens that a people has reached the point of being unable to procure better clothing or more comfortable dwellings, all the arts and all the sciences whose result is to clothe us better or to house us better are without object for it.

There exist, doubtless, among peoples who have made great progress in the sciences and in the arts, other enjoyments than those that result immediately from the satisfaction of their physical needs; but, in general, these enjoyments are foreign to persons who are obliged to struggle ceaselessly against nature or against their fellows, either not to perish from cold or hunger, or not to be the victim of an enemy; there are few intellectual or moral enjoyments for individuals who have neither leisure nor security, and who are continually occupied with protecting themselves from physical evils. The same causes that reduce a people to what is rigorously necessary for it to eat, clothe, or house itself, therefore prevent in it any intellectual or moral development that would not have for its object the immediate satisfaction of one of these needs.

There is one kind of intellectual development that seems to suit all positions; it is that which relates to the knowledge of morals. It seems that a man, whatever the position in which he finds himself, can observe the consequences of his actions; that he can foresee what will be the effects of laziness, intemperance, perfidy, vengeance, cruelty, and other malevolent passions, and that he can consequently correct his bad habits and those of his children. It is not so, however; knowledge of this kind is, on the contrary, the last that men acquire. Various causes combine to arrest, in this regard, their intellectual development; but there is one that alone can suffice to explain their ignorance. The morals of nations are almost always consequences of a given position; and when this position itself pertains to insurmountable causes, it is in vain that one would seek to destroy the vices that are its effects [368].

Having indicated what is, in general, the object of human knowledge, and what are the most influential causes on morals, it will be easy to understand how, in certain positions, there are peoples who have always been stationary and barbarous, while there are others who, in different positions, have made immense progress, and have become flourishing nations. To explain this phenomenon, we have only to ask ourselves what are the parts of the globe on which peoples have been able to multiply and vary their subsistence with the most facility; what are those on which it has been easiest for them to communicate with other peoples, to profit from their discoveries, to exchange the products of their soil or their industry for other products, to be enlightened, in a word, by the knowledge of others, and to be enriched by their wealth; what are the parts on which vegetation experiences the shortest interruptions, and those where the seasons interrupt, for the least amount of time, man's occupations. There is no need, in effect, for reasoning to prove that the parts of the globe on which human industry has been able to increase the supply of necessities for men in proportion to the growth of the population have been the most favorable both to the development of intelligence and to the multiplication of the species; and that in the parts, on the contrary, on which men have been, in a way, without influence over nature, they have been able neither to become enlightened nor to multiply.We do not know in what order plants and animals spread over the surface of the earth; but we can affirm, without fear of being accused of temerity, that when, between two things, one can exist without the other, and the latter cannot exist without the former, it is the first that preceded the second in the order of generation; there must necessarily have existed matter proper to nourishing vegetation before there were plants, and plants preceded animals, which can live only by their means. Thus, although we do not know what path the human race followed in spreading over the diverse parts of the globe; although at all epochs of which history has preserved the memory, men have existed in the places where they exist today, we can affirm that each country already produced plants or animals when it began to be populated. But, if we judge these productions by those found in places that human industry had not changed, they were very little varied, and very little suited to immediately satisfying the needs of man.

All places are not equally favorable to all productions, and all productions, even in the places that are proper to favoring their development, do not have equal force. There are plants that grow only in the torrid zone, others only in a temperate zone, others that can grow in an almost glacial zone; in one region, one finds only mosses, lichens, and a few stunted willows or birches; in another, one finds firs, poplars, willows, birches; in another, oaks, maples, cereals; in another, various kinds of fruit trees and sugary substances. In general, the plants that contain a large quantity of nutritive matter proper to man develop only under a mild temperature, and grow only slowly; from which it follows that, in places that enjoy only a few months of summer, the nutritive plants perish before their development is complete, and that consequently they can never propagate there without the use of artificial means; if chance or human industry brings some seeds there, they do not develop or remain unproductive. On the other hand, all the plants that grow on the same soil, not having equal force, the most vigorous choke out the weakest or render them unproductive; from this it results that, when the earth is abandoned to its natural fertility, the productions change with the zones, but that, under each zone, one finds only a small number of species that dispute the terrain, so to speak, and render each other unproductive. It now remains to see how these diverse circumstances have influenced the development of each people.

In casting a quick glance over the terrestrial sphere, one perceives instantly that the parts that are situated under the mildest and most even temperature, that are the best watered, and that possess the easiest and most multiplied communications with others, are also the most populated and the most anciently civilized. In the least advanced countries, as in those that have made the most progress, it is in the gulfs, at the mouths, or on the banks of rivers that we find the most numerous populations. Peoples, in their migrations and in their growth, are subject to laws as invariable as those to which animals are subject: they spread into all the places that offer them means of living, and stop where they no longer find subsistence. In researching the order they follow in their migrations, one finds that they distribute themselves by families in the manner that waters divide themselves; if, in each country, one starts from the point where a river discharges into the sea, and if one ascends to its source, traversing all the branches or all the rivers that carry their waters to it, one finds, in general, on both banks, peoples belonging to the same family, speaking the same language or dialects of the same language, and having analogous morals.

This phenomenon, which seems to exist in all countries, is especially easy to observe in Europe. Several rivers take their source in the mountains of the Alps, at a short distance from one another; but they do not follow the same direction: one heads toward the Ocean; another toward the Mediterranean, and several toward the Adriatic Sea. If one ascends from the mouth of the latter to the point from which they depart, one finds on all their banks peoples of the Italian race. If one ascends from the point where the Rhine discharges into the Ocean, to the summit of the mountains that carry their waters to it, one finds on both sides only peoples of the German or Germanic race. Finally, if one ascends from the Mouths of the Rhone to its source, one encounters only populations that speak the French language; there is only a single point on which one finds a few Germanic families. In the mountains from which these rivers depart, one finds a confederation of diverse peoples, and this confederation is composed of French, Italians, and Germans.

These divisions exist independently of any political combination and of the governments to which these diverse populations are subject. Thus, the populations that inhabit the two banks of the Rhone and the lands that carry their waters into this river, all speak the same language, although they are divided among five governments independent of one another: that of France, that of Piedmont, that of Valais, that of the canton of Vaud, and that of Geneva. The populations that live on the lands whose waters flow into the Rhine are all equally of the Germanic race, although they are divided among the governments of France, Switzerland, Prussia, Holland, and others. Likewise, the populations that live on the rivers whose waters flow toward the Adriatic or on the lands inclined on that side, belong to the Italian race, although some are part of the Swiss confederation formed in majority of German peoples, although others are subject to various Italian governments, and others to the government of Austria. The diplomatic combinations and the violence of governments can disturb the order in which peoples have naturally divided themselves; but this order, although often disturbed, has never been able to be erased.

The difference or diversity of governments has therefore not been able to destroy the unity of population that the configuration of the soil and the course of the waters had produced; the unity of government has been equally powerless to bring back to unity populations that the course of the waters and the configuration of the soil had divided. Piedmont and Savoy were long subject to the same authority; and yet the morals, the language, and the interests of the two populations are as distinct as they were before they were united. The peoples who inhabit the basin of the Po have been part of the Italian family, even when they were subject to French domination. The peoples who inhabit the basin of the Rhone have continued to be part of the French family, even when they were subject to an Italian government. Switzerland unites, under the same federal government, Germans, Italians, French; and each population preserves its language, its morals, its interests, and its laws. The various governments of France have employed all possible means to give unity to the diverse populations that were subject to them: they have cut the territory into shreds; they have brought uniformity to legislation, administration, education; they have, in a way, run a level over the surface of the soil, and yet they have not managed to establish there this much-desired unity. The foreigner who enters it by one of the rivers that discharge into the Mediterranean or into the Ocean, finds almost everywhere two languages, that of the country, and that of the place where the government sits. The first is spoken by the mass of the population, and is bounded only by the summit of the mountains; the second is spoken, outside the country where it is natural, only by the agents of authority, by the academies it protects or pays, by those who aspire to serve it, and by those who are destined to be intermediaries between it and the people. We will see, when I have to speak of territorial divisions, that the interests are no less distinct than the languages [369].

In considering the human race from a more extended point of view, we see it divide into great masses, and follow the great divisions of the globe, as we have seen it divide into great families, according to the configuration of the soil and the direction of the mountains and rivers. Thus, the peoples who inhabit the center of Asia and that multitude of rivers or streams that head toward the east or the south, belong, almost without exception, to the Mongol race. Those who inhabit the islands of the Pacific Ocean, from New Zealand to the Sandwich Islands, and from Easter Island to the peninsula of Malacca, almost all belong to the Malay race. Those who inhabited the American continent, before the arrival of the Europeans, from Tierra del Fuego to the Hudson Strait, belonged to the copper-colored race. A completely different race was spread over the continent of Africa, with the exception of a part of the territory watered by the Nile and the northern coasts occupied by peoples of the European race. Peoples have thus propagated in a manner even more regular than plants: the races have occupied entire continents; the particular families of each race have moved to the mouths of rivers, and ascending the valleys, have followed the direction of the waters. It is even remarkable that the points by which the continents touch or approach each other are often populated by races belonging sometimes to one and sometimes to the other. We see, for example, at the northern extremity of America, peoples of the Mongol race; on the coasts of Africa and on the parts of Asia closest to Europe, peoples of the same race as the Europeans.

It is not possible for us to know which were the first points of the globe to be populated, and how peoples spread to all the habitable points; but, in supposing that all had a similar beginning, in supposing for all, what, with regard to some, is proven by history, that they began by being as barbarous as those who existed in the north of America at the epoch when that continent was discovered, nothing seems to me easier than to determine the causes of the successive development of some in the same valleys or on the course of the same waters, and of the stationary state of others.

In studying the parts of the globe on which civilization has made the least progress, one finds that the less advanced the peoples are, the more they concentrate in bays, on the seashores, at the mouth or on the banks of rivers. If they move away into the interior of the country, it is only accidentally and to devote themselves to hunting; even in their excursions, they generally follow the course of the waters, whether they ascend or descend. This phenomenon is observed in the north of Asia, throughout the extent of America, in New Holland, and in all the islands where cultivation has made but little progress. When a coast, however fertile it may otherwise appear, is not cut by any considerable watercourse, it is generally deserted; or, if it is visited by some peoples, it is only momentarily. Thus, a large part of the northeast coasts of Asia, a still more considerable part of the west coasts of America, and almost all the coasts of Arabia, Africa, and New Holland are deserted or have only an extremely small population. If there are semi-barbarous peoples in the uncultivated interior of the country, it is only when they have already reached the state of pastoral peoples, like the Bedouin Arabs, the Tatars and Mongols of central Asia, and some peoples of South America.

The causes that, in uncivilized countries, thus bring peoples to the banks or to the mouths of rivers, are easy to perceive. The quantity of food that the earth, abandoned to itself, furnishes to man is almost entirely nil. Under each zone, as I have said, the earth produces only a very small number of species of plants; those whose vegetation is the most vigorous take possession of the soil and choke all the others, or strike them with sterility. Most cannot, by their own nature, produce any kind of fruit; those that would be susceptible of producing them are almost always sterile, either because they harm one another, or because they are hindered by parasitic plants. Finally, even when there are trees or shrubs that produce some fruit, it is a resource that can last only a few days; first, because these fruits are disputed with man by animals, and, second, because they perish as soon as they have reached their maturity. In a temperate zone, the earth abandoned to itself furnishes man with no vegetable food substances, neither during the winter, nor in the spring, nor during a large part of the summer. The torrid zone, where vegetation has no rest, where the trees cover themselves with flowers while they are still laden with fruit, offers nourishing substances for a longer time, and with a certain abundance; but it is far, however, from offering them during the whole course of the year. As for the lands situated in a glacial zone, they can furnish none in any season; the time of vegetation there has so little duration that no fruit can ripen there; men can live there only on game or fish [370].

Men who have adopted neither the pastoral life nor the agricultural life are therefore attracted, in all zones, toward the lakes, rivers, and gulfs, by the need for subsistence. There they enjoy the advantages of fishing, at the same time as those of hunting. Animals are attracted there by the facility they find in living, and it is easier to surprise them there. The food plants, roots, berries, and fruits grow much better there: the soil is covered with more topsoil; it is under a milder temperature; it is more watered and less shaded; the air circulates more freely there; the species are more varied. The waters and the winds tend ceaselessly to transport into the valleys the diverse species of plants that grow in the higher places; but it is more difficult for the plants that grow in the low places to be transported into the mountains. Finally, the valleys that rivers traverse generally represent a triangle whose summit is formed by the junction of two mountains, and the base by the shores of the sea: from which it follows that the closer one gets to the mouth of a river or the confluence of two rivers, the more extensive is the space of topsoil one encounters.

At the same time that the waters conceal in their bosom a considerable part of man's subsistence, that they multiply in certain places the species of plants, and that they attract animals, they offer more or less easy routes through impassable forests. Lands abandoned to themselves are almost always covered with immense forests; but these forests do not resemble those we see among civilized nations. In the latter, the shrubs or undergrowth are destroyed and removed, the trees never fall from old age; the waters of the rains, streams, and rivers have outlets maintained with care. But, in the forests that belong to savages, nothing that the earth produces is removed; the shrubs, the brambles, the undergrowth cover the soil, and often render access to it impossible for the hunter or the traveler. The trees, being able to be destroyed only by time, fall from old age, and contribute to rendering the country impassable. Finally, the foliage, the debris of plants, the earth carried away by the rains, stop the flow of the waters, divert their natural course, and transform immense plains into swamps. The country is then covered with insects and reptiles, and if animals can still penetrate it, man can pursue them there only with difficulty and through a thousand dangers. The forests that civilized man has not subjected to his empire are so impassable that the animals themselves are obliged to trace paths there, and that these paths are often the only ways by which men can traverse them.Rivers, among savage peoples who inhabit a soil covered with forests, do not present the same facilities for navigation as among civilized peoples; immense trees fallen from old age or uprooted by the waters often obstruct their course and make navigation dangerous. However, whatever the difficulty of traversing them, the peoples who inhabit their banks and who possess the art of building canoes have, in the waters, very great means of transport, compared to those offered them by the land. It is enough for them to abandon themselves to the current to travel immense distances; the facility they have in descending, and the difficulty they have in ascending, contribute further to fixing them at the mouths of rivers or in gulfs [371].

All the causes that contribute to determining the dwelling of a tribe of savages, contribute to the growth of the population and the development of human faculties. A tribe of savages, to engage in fishing with success and safety, needs to find a place where the fish are attracted by the calm of the waters and by the facility of subsistence, and where they themselves are sheltered from storms. They choose the calmest and deepest bay, or place themselves at the mouth of a river: they build their huts on the banks and establish their families there: there, they begin to perfect navigation; they can, according to need, either advance into the sea to engage in fishing, or go deep into the woods to pursue game there. The temperature there being milder, vegetation is more continuous; it is easier for them to observe its progress: the idea of cultivating plants thus presents itself more naturally to their minds. At the same time, cultivation is easier for them there: the land they must clear is that which is least distant from the place where they find their habitual subsistence. It is easier for them to watch over it, they have less time to lose to get there; it is easier for them to transport its products from one place to another. Finally, the land there is ordinarily more fertile, for the reason that it is under a milder climate, being less elevated above sea level. From there, cultivation and population gradually extend into the valleys; villages form at the confluence of rivers, because it is there that the land susceptible to cultivation has the most extent, that it is the easiest point of communication between two populations, and that subsistence can arrive there from several sides at the same time [372].

The waters thus have an immense influence on the distribution and on the civilization of peoples; but the configuration and extent of the diverse parts of the globe, the nature of the soil, and the temperature of the atmosphere have an influence no less great on the course, on the distribution, on the volume, and on the utility of the waters. Rivers that, by an effect of the configuration of the soil, would head toward landlocked seas, like those that carry their waters into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, or the Lake of Sudan; that would cross cold and sterile lands, like some of those northwest of the Ural mountains, or that would be covered with ice for a large part of the year, like the rivers located at the boreal extremity of Asia and America, would offer men only weak resources. Likewise, rivers that, by the volume of their waters, would cover and render uninhabitable an immense space of country, or that would water only lands little susceptible to cultivation, like the savannas of America, would be, for a long time at least, obstacles to civilization, much more than causes of progress. In speaking of the influence of the waters, one must therefore not lose sight of the fact that they are only means, and that these means can be rendered useless or fatal by a multitude of circumstances.

Having seen, in a general manner, what are the causes that determine peoples in the preference they give to certain places over others, and what are those that contribute to hastening, slowing, or stopping their progress, it only remains for me to expound the special causes that, on each of the principal parts of the globe, have retained peoples in barbarism, or have made them advance in civilization.