II. Influence des circonstances extérieures sur la liberté.

CHAP. 3: II. Influence of external circumstances on liberty.

§ 1. I had not given this subject, in the first edition of this volume, all the attention it deserves. I had spoken of it only incidentally and with little scope. I had indeed recognized, in a general manner, that man is more or less aided or thwarted, in the exercise and development of his forces, by the nature of the material things in the midst of which he lives, by the heat, the humidity, the cold, the fertility or sterility of the soil, the disposition of the waters and lands, and in general by the whole physical constitution as well as by the geographical position of the country where he is placed; but I had not shown with enough detail how far these influences extend. I had, on the contrary, shown a sort of haste to set aside this order of considerations, in order to direct the reader's attention back to the natural and acquired forces of man; observing that he was, of all animals, the one upon whom the external world had the least dominion, and that it would be to evidently misunderstand his nature to attribute his progress to the influence of external causes, even though this influence was very real, and it was necessary to recognize that it could powerfully hinder or second the action of his faculties [^46] .

I therefore need to return to this matter and make it the object of a particular examination; not to rectify my first ideas in this regard, which I believe to be just; but to present them with more development. I persist in thinking and saying that the first principle of the power and liberty of man is in himself, in his activity, in his energy, in the greater or lesser perfection of the instruments with which nature has provided him, in the power he has to perfect these instruments still further by culture, and not in the nature of the material things by which he is surrounded. Only, I have to show, with more care than I had done at first, to what point these things can harm the progress of his forces, or else to what point it is in them to favor it.

§ 2. Certain writers have seen no bounds, in a way, to the influence that the external world exercises on the development, not only of man, but of all that has life. Cabanis goes so far as to believe that the different beings that nature has placed in each climate receive their character and their physiognomy from the physical circumstances that surround them. He finds again in the vegetable productions the qualities of the soil that serves as their support, of the water and air that nourish them. The animals, whose nature is more supple, modified, fashioned without cease by the impressions they receive from external objects, appear to him the living image of the place they inhabit, of its vegetable productions, of the aspects it offers, of the sky under which it is placed; and man, the most supple of animals, differs, he says, so sensibly from himself, in the diverse climates, that certain naturalists have believed that the human genus had been formed originally of several distinct species. Cabanis adds that the analogy of man with the objects that surround him and which he is obliged to appropriate to his needs is so striking that one can almost always, by simple inspection, assign the zone to which each individual belongs. He makes no difficulty of considering, with Buffon, the differences that the diverse varieties of the species present in the external characters that distinguish them, as the work of the physical circumstances to which they are subject. Finally, he goes so far as to attribute the diversity of moral dispositions to the different manner in which sensibility is excited in the diverse climates, observing that particular impressions, but constant and always the same, like those that result from the nature of places, are capable of modifying organic dispositions, and of rendering, by generation, these dispositions fixed in the races [^47] .

M. Comte, of whom I spoke in the preceding chapter, perhaps does not go as far as Cabanis. He does not admit like him, for example, that it is in the power of external causes to alter the particular characters of a race, and to make it deviate from its primitive type. He agrees, on the contrary, that each race unalterably preserves, in all situations, the characters proper to it [^48] . But, apart from that, there is little, if I am not mistaken, that he does not recognize the climate has the power to do. If he hesitates to attribute some influence to race, he accords without hesitation an immense one to climate, I mean to the ensemble of external circumstances whose action every man undergoes. He consecrates a considerable portion of his work to showing how far this influence extends.

[^46]: See the first edition of this volume, p. 110. [^47]: Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, t. II, p. 110 and following. [^48]: Traité de Législation, t. II, p. 288.“If climate,” he says, “cannot efface the characteristic traits of species, it can diminish or increase the physical forces of individuals, weaken or fortify their intellectual faculties, irritate or calm their passions. The order in which the faculties of peoples develop, corresponds in everything to the physical nature of the regions where they are placed. We find the same social physiognomy in all peoples placed in analogous physical circumstances, whatever be the race to which they otherwise belong; and the same analogy is observed in animals and even in plants. The difference of places being given, it becomes easy to explain the difference of progress that certain populations have made. If, following a shipwreck, Europeans had been cast naked upon the coast of the Cape of Good Hope, and if they had found themselves reduced there to only those resources that the country offered to the natives, they would have been just as incapable as the Hottentots of making the slightest progress in civilization. It is in the difference of local circumstances that one finds the reason for the very different progress that the indigenous peoples of America had made. Fishermen, hunters, shepherds, peoples are almost always what the circumstances in which they find themselves will them to be. What may have been lacking in certain of them are not natural dispositions, but external circumstances favorable to their development. Any people, suitably placed, to whatever species it may otherwise belong, bears within itself the means of attaining a high degree of culture. The advantage of a good position is more than sufficient to compensate for the disadvantage of race, if it be that, in this respect, a people can be inferior to another; and the people least susceptible of development will go further than the best organized, if the latter finds itself in less favorable circumstances. In a word, the degree of civilization that each can attain depends, not on the degree of development of which it is susceptible by its own nature, but on that which its geographical position permits it to receive [^49] .”

§ 3. I know not if I am in error, but I believe that M. Comte, in the series of propositions I have just cited, and which are like the summary of his ideas on the influence of external causes, accords to these causes far too much power. I add that Cabanis appears to me to have exaggerated their power even more.

§ 4. How can one admit, first, with Cabanis, that the different beings receive their character and their physiognomy from the physical circumstances that surround them? No being, then, would have a character proper to it! Everything would bear a borrowed physiognomy! Things would not resemble what they really are, but what external objects would make them appear! I do not know if it is perfectly conformable to reason to thus take from each thing the figure that is particular to it in order to compose for it one from the traits of all the objects by which it is surrounded. It seems to me that every created being has its own nature, which maintains itself identically wherever it can exist. An oak, a poplar, a birch, will preserve, in whatever place they are transplanted, the form, the bearing, the particular foliage of the species to which each of these trees belongs. They may well not prosper to the same degree in all soils and under all latitudes, but wherever they can live, they will preserve the characteristic traits of their species, and one will certainly not see their figure vary like the nature of the places. Now, what I say of plants, one can say with all the more reason of animals, and with still more reason of men. Men, no more than animals, no more than plants, do not prosper to the same degree everywhere; but wherever a people can live, it invariably preserves the particular traits of its race.

§ 5. If it does not appear possible to say with Cabanis that the character and physiognomy of the different beings are determined by the influence of external objects, I do not believe that one can any more admit with M. Comte that the development of a people depends on the goodness of its geographical position, and not on the more or less natural perfection of its faculties.

Doubtless there is such a position where the best-organized race could not learn to make use of its organs. Place the most happily endowed men in the bosom of an immutable nature, on an arid and barren rock, in the middle of a shoreless ocean, put them in a position where it is impossible for them to live, and it is clear that they will not be able to exercise any of the arts whose object is to preserve, to embellish, or to honor life.

But, from the fact that the best-made race needs, in order to develop, to find itself in a position where progress is possible for it, does it follow that the progress of which a people is susceptible depends solely or even principally on the nature of the places where it finds itself established?

If the civilization of peoples depended, above all, on their geographical position, those who occupy the best places on this planet would have to be, by that very fact, the most civilized. It would be necessary to graduate the scale of civilization according to the position and nature of the territories, and one would see the degree of culture correspond exactly, throughout the earth, to the advantage of the situations.

Does one think that in fact it is so? That is the first thing I ask. I do believe that, in the diverse quarters of the globe, the portions of land most favorable to the life of men are those where men must have first begun to develop. But does one find that progress has everywhere been in the same proportion as the physical advantages; and can one say, considering the terrestrial sphere in a general manner, that civilization has spread in the world as the nature of the places ordained? Is it possible to claim that the regions of the earth most favored by nature are also those where civilization has gone the furthest?

I readily agree that when the Europeans discovered America, they found, in this immense continent, the peoples of the center more advanced than those of the extremities. But although there was, without question, less culture in Greenland than in Mexico, and in Tierra del Fuego than in Peru, there was certainly less of it in Mexico and Peru than there had been anciently, and than there was again then in Europe. Was it then that the Europeans had found themselves, with respect to local circumstances, in a better situation than the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Peru? It would be difficult to claim it. What are the countries of Europe which, with respect to physical advantages, can sustain the slightest comparison with the countries of the New World I have just named, especially with Mexico? Where would one find, in our quarter of the globe, a country that could have originally offered to its inhabitants more varied resources, richer mines, a more fertile soil more proper to every kind of culture, a greater number of indigenous products able to serve the exercise of the arts and the subsistence of men, a milder and healthier air [^50]? It is true that Europe, by its most southern countries, had been able to communicate early with Egypt, that Egypt had had communications with India, and that India is one of the richest countries in the world, and one of the most anciently civilized. But if the superiority of culture must be decided by that of places, one does not see very well why civilization would not have been as advanced in Mexico as in India itself; and then it is a question of knowing whether, in India, it is truly in keeping with the advantage of the situations.

If, therefore, we pass from America to Asia, I will grant again that the peoples of this part of the world who inhabit its highest, coldest, most sterile portion, are less advanced than those who occupy the low and most cultivable regions: I will agree that civilization has made less progress on the central plateau than among the inhabitants of China and India. But it will doubtless also be granted me that the civilization of the Chinese and that of the Hindus, although perhaps superior to that which had formed in Mexico, is still very inferior to that which has developed among us; that it is far from being as enlightened, as strong, as learned, as correct... I must therefore ask again if the peoples of Europe found themselves, in order to make progress, in a better situation than those of China and Hindustan? If, for example, there are in Europe countries that nature has more favored than India, which are watered by wider and more numerous rivers, where one breathes a generally more salubrious air, where a more fertile land is covered with more varied productions, more proper to the nourishment of man and to the execution of every sort of labor; where one can cultivate at once the trees, the cereals, the fruits, the flowers of the temperate zone, and the productions that grow between the tropics; where the bowels of the earth conceal more precious treasures; where the animal kingdom presents a greater number of useful varieties; where nature offers men more means of communicating among themselves and of putting themselves in relation with other nations?... I do not believe that it is possible to give an affirmative answer.

Do we wish to transport ourselves to another part of the world, and compare the situation of the peoples of our race to that of the peoples of the Malayan species? With what immense advantage will one not be able to oppose to the continent of Europe these innumerable archipelagos of the South Sea, these labyrinths of islands of which travelers have given us such ravishing descriptions, where the air is so pure and so mild, nature so smiling and so fecund; where the peoples, united rather than separated by the Ocean in whose bosom they are spread, and which embraces them all, find, in waters that have deserved the name of pacific, so powerful a natural means of communicating among themselves?... And yet what comparison will it be possible to establish between the civilization of these peoples, so happily situated, and that of the peoples of our race, who found themselves originally in physical circumstances comparatively so disadvantageous?

One finds, therefore, in successively bringing the most beautiful regions of the earth near to Europe, and in comparing the civilization of these countries to that which has grown among us, the constant proof that civilization has not spread in the world in proportion to the advantage of the situations. It may well be, I repeat, that, in each quarter of the globe, the race to which that quarter was assigned made its first progress in the places where life was easiest, where the arts destined to sustain it had the most means of being exercised; but it appears impossible to say, in a general manner, that physical advantages have decided the extent of developments, and that the regions which united the most advantages are those where the species has most perfected itself. The Otaheitans of the brown race have not made, and especially had not made, four centuries ago, as much progress as had been made by the Mexicans of the copper-colored race, although these latter peoples did not find themselves, geographically, in a more advantageous situation. The Mexicans of the American species had not made as much progress as the Chinese of the Mongol race, although it does not seem that these latter peoples were in a better geographical situation than the Mexicans. None of these peoples, finally, had made progress comparable to that of most of the nations of Europe, although the advantage of local circumstances has certainly not been on the side of the Europeans. It suffices to compare what has been acquired of development in our quarter of the globe, which nature has treated with such parsimony and ill grace, with what one finds of culture in other parts of the world, which she has heaped with her richest gifts, to be forced to recognize that the influence of race has prevailed over that of place, and that the genius of man has done more for the progress of civilization than the most favorable physical circumstances.

§ 6. If it is difficult to say, in general, that the places most favored by nature are those where the species has made the most progress, can one maintain, in particular, that it has especially developed in the very hot and very fertile regions?

Montesquieu, in the portions of his principal work where he treats of the subject that occupies us at this moment, appeared to regard the elevation of temperature and the fertility of the soil as contrary, in general, to the physical and moral perfection of the species; so that if one wished to determine the influence of these two causes according to his principles, it would be necessary, it seems, to make a table in which one would see civilization decrease as one moved away from the poles, and as one descended toward the regions of the earth where the temperature is highest and the vegetation more vigorous.

M. Comte has at great length combated, on this point, the point of view of the author of The Spirit of the Laws; and, conforming to the more just ideas that the progress of natural history and geography permit one to conceive of the manner in which life has spread over our planet, he has presented to the reader, in a series of chapters, a table in which the forms under which life manifests itself, and the effects it produces, instead of degrading as they move from the polar regions to the center of the globe, weaken and deteriorate, on the contrary, as one moves away from the center of the earth and rises toward the poles.

This manner of viewing the terrestrial sphere and the laws according to which life has propagated itself there, appears conformable, in many respects, to the exact observation of things. It appears certain that the vegetable kingdom, as one moves away from the central regions of the earth, gradually loses its force and its proportions [^51]. It appears equally true that the stature of animals diminishes as one advances toward the poles. Finally, it is perhaps possible to maintain, despite the rather numerous exceptions one could cite in this regard, that men themselves are larger between the tropics than in the temperate zone, and especially toward the polar circles [^52].

But does moral life observe here the same laws as physical life, and can one say that it also loses its force as one moves away from the equator? I will surely not say that civilization came to us from the polar regions; I do not even think that one could, with justice, accuse Montesquieu of having had such an idea. But must we adopt the inverse proposition; and shall we say, with M. Comte, that it has particularly developed in the torrid zone, and that it is from there that it spread into the temperate zones? I do not know if this proposition is more conformable to the truth than the first would be. China, India, Egypt, Greece, Mexico, Peru—these are the places commonly pointed out as the first cradles of civilization. Now, of all these places, there is really only India that is under a torrid temperature. China is outside the tropics; the center of Egypt is under the thirtieth parallel; that of Greece under the thirty-seventh. If Mexico and Peru are found, in large part, in the equatorial regions, the influence of latitude is here strongly counter-balanced by the elevation of the soil. Two-thirds of Mexico, raised, in the form of an immense plateau, to a height of two thousand to two thousand five hundred meters above sea level, enjoy a climate that is rather cold or temperate than burning [^53]; and if civilization, to develop, needs a high temperature, it seems that, in the New World, it is not on the plateau of Mexico that it should have made its greatest progress. It also seems that, in the old continent, it is not in China, in Egypt, in Greece, that it should have been born; since these countries are all in the middle region of the globe, and the heat there is, and especially must have been at first, rather moderate [^54]. Must one therefore admit that civilization had its first cradle in India, and that it is from there that everything came? But how to prove it; how to establish, for example, that the civilization of modern Europe is a product of Asiatic origin? What traits of resemblance or what family air could one perceive between our civilization and that of the Indians? Why, moreover, wish that all civilizations came from a single one? Why would there be but one people in the world whose progress was spontaneous?

“One must not,” says, on this subject, a very learned writer, “seek in Asia or Ethiopia obscure origins that cause certain facts close at hand to be neglected. There have been in Europe, notably among the Turdetani, among the Celts, among the Scandinavians, among the Etruscans, cradles of civilization contemporary with the primitive civilization of the Hellenes” [^55].

If, therefore, one could not reasonably maintain that civilization descended from the poles, one can no more admit that it came from the equator.

[^49]: Traité de Législation, t. II, p. 288 and following. [^50]: Essai politique sur la Nouvelle-Espagne, by M. de Humboldt, t. II, p. 460 and following. [^51]: Traité de Législation, t. II, p. 297. [^52]: Traité de Législation, t. II, p. 300. [^53]: Essai politique sur la Nouvelle-Espagne, by M. de Humboldt, t. I, p. 57. [^54]: Traité de Législation, t. II, p. 313. [^55]: Revue encyclopédique, t. XL, p. 119.§ 7. Not only has the human species not developed by preference in the torrid zone, but the warm part of the temperate zone does not appear to be that where it has made the greatest progress. Civilization had been less perfect in Egypt, under the thirtieth degree of latitude, than it later was in Greece under the thirty-seventh. It was perhaps less so in Greece than it has been later in Italy, a few degrees further north. It has never been in Italy, if not with respect to the fine arts, as advanced as it is now in other, more northern countries of Europe. Who could deny that the civilization of France, of England, of Germany, of the Low Countries, is not in general more developed than is the present civilization, and than was the past civilization of the south of Europe and the north of Africa? Far, therefore, from degenerating as it moves away from the tropics, it appears certain, at least until now, that it has acquired more perfection.

M. Comte appears to wish to attribute these advances of the latter countries I have just named to a revolution that occurred in their temperature. In the time of Julian and Caesar, he observes, Gaul saw, each winter, all its rivers freeze to the point of being able, for several months, to serve as bridges and roads. Little by little, he adds, these cases became rarer, and the climate having softened, it was possible to introduce into the north the crops of the south, which exercised the most happy influence on the arts and soon on the life of men.

But, this revolution in temperature, what proves that it had preceded the efforts of the populations; and why, instead of giving the climate credit for the progress of man, not attribute to man the happy changes that have occurred in the climate? It is very probable that this revolution which the temperature has undergone in Europe, and the no less remarkable changes that it is gradually experiencing in North America, are the consequence of the successive modifications that the hand of men has made the soil undergo, of the draining of swamps, of the clearing of forests, of all the labors that have had for their object or for their effect to facilitate the prompt drainage of waters, and, by thus diminishing evaporation, to destroy by degrees one of the principal causes of the cooling of the atmosphere.

Far, therefore, from our having to attribute to the softening of the temperature the progress made by the peoples of the middle region of Europe, it seems that one of their principal merits is to have forced their climate to soften, and to have bent it by degrees to a multitude of crops that its nature seemed to repel. It is despite the extreme disadvantage of their position that they have surpassed the peoples of the south, whose education had begun long before theirs, and in infinitely more favorable circumstances.

§ 8. In sum, it may well be that the hottest and most fertile countries are those where civilization was born; but they are not those where it has most grown. I conceive that man first sought to settle in the places most favorable to his weakness, his inexperience, his laziness, there where life was easiest, where there were the fewest efforts to be made; but the places where there was the least to do are certainly not those where he has done the most. There is nothing unreasonable in supposing that the imperfect state in which the industry of the peoples who inhabit the islands of the Pacific Ocean remains is due in part to the care that nature herself has taken to provide for the needs of these peoples, and to make life sweet and easy for them. A geographer no less judicious than erudite, Malte-Brun, regards the extreme fertility of certain territories in Asia as having been almost as harmful to the progress of men as the extreme sterility of some others.

“The nomadic life,” he says, “is prescribed by nature herself to many Asiatic nations; but in other regions of Asia, the uniform fertility of the soil and the constant mildness of the climate, by rewarding too rapidly the slightest labor, have stifled, almost at its birth, the energy of the human spirit which, in order not to slacken, wishes to be stimulated by need and by obstacles [^56] .”

It is in this sense that Montesquieu says that lands are not always cultivated in proportion to their fertility; that one sometimes sees deserts in the most fertile countries; that men remain uncultivated where the earth of itself produces many fruits proper to nourish them; that to become industrious, sober, active, courageous, they need the soil to refuse them something and make them purchase its products [^57] . Finally, it is in the same sense that M. Comte himself, wishing to explain why the Caribs are the most improvident of savages, says that the nature of the land and waters on which they live, by assuring them provisions for the whole year, dispenses them by that very fact from foresight [^58] . Now, if circumstances that are too favorable can dispense man from foresight, why could they not also dispense him from activity, from industry, etc.?

Most certainly, therefore, the places where man can live with the least effort are not those where he makes the most considerable progress. It is perceptible that under an overwhelming sky, that on a soil which covers itself spontaneously with products proper for his nourishment, his laziness must be doubly favored, and that he can have neither the same impetus to act, nor the same interest in taking pains. Diminish the number of our needs, and you reduce, by that very fact, that of our faculties. Where one is already clothed by the climate, there is less need to exert oneself to find the means of being clothed. Where one has no winter to fear, there are no precautions to be taken against the cold, either. It is well enough known that one is better heated in Russia than in Italy or in Spain. The houses are better constructed and of finer stone in Holland, where the soil contains not a pebble, than in France, where the country is full of quarries. It is in the countries most favored by nature that the sweetest fruits come, and in the less happy regions that they are cultivated with the most care. The Marquis de Caraccioli would no longer say that baked apples are the only fruit that ripens in England. The sun of that country, which he reproached for being no warmer than the moon of Naples, now has the power to color and to ripen fruits, not, without a doubt, as savory, but more beautiful perhaps than those of Italy [^59] .

One can posit as a principle that the industry of men is less stimulated by the facility than by the difficulty of living. Necessity is our most pressing spur; and obstacles, provided they are not invincible, can be regarded, up to a certain point, as a circumstance favorable to our development. When, to find the means of satisfying their most immediate needs, men have been obliged to strain all their faculties, their intelligence, awakened on one point, then turns more easily to other objects, and, step by step, they arrive at perfections that are not even suspected by men who, from their entry into life, have known its enjoyments.

This is what explains, at least in part, how peoples placed in comparatively unfavorable circumstances have gone further than other peoples very advantageously situated; how countries for which nature had done everything have prospered less than other regions where man had, so to speak, everything to do. The two most beautiful and most fertile provinces of China are the provinces of Kiang-Nan, which were reclaimed from beneath the waters. Two of the richest regions of Europe are the Low Countries and Holland, which were originally but marshes. One knows what power the Venetians had managed to found in the lagoons of the Adriatic. The whole of Europe, according to historians and geographers, was at first but an indigent and harsh region, which nature had adorned only with forests, had enriched only with iron. There was no gold in our mines, nor diamonds among our pebbles. We can name only fifteen to twenty species of quadrupeds that belong to us exclusively; and even then they are small animals of little appearance, such as rats and bats [^60] . Our most precious animal and vegetable races appear to be, in large part, products of foreign origin. We had neither the horse, nor the ox, nor the ass, nor the sheep. The silkworm is a native of India. The walnut tree grew in Persia, as did the peach tree; the orange tree in China, the olive tree in Syria, the vine on the shores of the Caspian Sea, barley and wheat in Tartary, the potato in America [^61] . What a prodigious metamorphosis have we not made this region undergo, which nature had so cruelly disfavored!

“Science would now seek in vain to distinguish the benefits of art from indigenous products; cultivation has changed even the climate; navigation has brought the plants of all zones; this Europe, where the beaver peacefully built its dams and its lodges on the banks of solitary rivers, has become peopled with powerful empires, has been covered with harvests and palaces; this mediocre peninsula has become the metropolis of the human genus and the legislator of the universe. Europe is present in all parts of the world; an entire continent is peopled only with our colonies; barbarism, deserts, the fires of the sun will not long shield Africa from our active enterprises; Oceania seems to call for our arts and our laws; the enormous mass of Asia is almost traversed by our conquests; soon British India and Asiatic Russia will touch, and the immense, but weak empire of China will not resist our influence, if it escapes our arms. The entire Ocean is the exclusive domain of Europeans or of colonists from Europe: while even the most civilized nations of the other parts of the world dare not stray from their shores, our bold navigators follow, from one pole to the other, the route that, from the depths of their study, our geographers have traced for them. We alone subject to our will the most formidable forces of nature herself. The lightning of the sky falls chained at the feet of our learned men. We have attempted, not without success, the conquest of the atmosphere: we can rise with safety above the clouds, and perhaps we shall discover the means of directing ourselves in the regions of the air, as we have found that of conducting ourselves in the bosom of the vastest seas. The tree of science has grown on our soil, at first so harsh and so savage, more than in the places of the world that nature had most heaped with her favors [^62] .”

In truth, this most surprising progress of Europe must be, in large part, attributed to the particular genius of the race of men that inhabits it; but perhaps this race itself, if a less arduous task had been imposed upon it, if it had been born on a more fertile land and under a milder sky, would have been much less distinguished by its works.

§ 9. For the rest, the elevation of the temperature and the fertility of the soil are not, by a long shot, the only external circumstances that influence our development. To tell the truth, all that enters into the physical constitution of a country: the nature of the air and that of the winds that prevail there; the quality, volume, and direction of the waters; the configuration of the soil; its nature and that of its productions of every kind, are so many circumstances that can act more or less upon us, solicit in one sense or another the action of our faculties, and influence at once the character of the arts we will exercise, and the progress we will manage to make in them.

It is not possible, one easily feels, for a people to be inspired in the same manner in all positions; for all localities to lead it to make the same use of its forces; for it to act to procure food, for example, in the same way on the bank of a river or a fish-filled sea, as it would in the middle of a country abounding in game or in the bosom of a desert that offered resources only for pasture. There are, in the arts that men exercise, as in the customs they observe or in the practices to which they devote themselves, a multitude of differences that could only have been inspired by the diversity of places. All differences have not come from those; but those have certainly entailed many others.

Everywhere man has sought, though with very diverse degrees of intelligence, activity, courage, persistence, and consequently with very diverse successes as well, to take advantage of his local position, to profit from the advantages and to paralyze the disadvantages it presented. Here the vine has been cultivated; there, cereals; elsewhere, one has had to devote oneself by preference to the raising of livestock. Such a people lives from fishing; such another from the products of the hunt. The southern nations of Asia cultivate rice and maize; those of the cold zone, millet and barley. The lack of construction wood obliges the inhabitant of the central plateau to lodge in tents covered with hides or fabrics, both coming from his flocks; the Indian, on the contrary, who is rich in wood and especially in palm wood, has lodged himself in light little houses, such as his natural laziness and the mildness of his climate advised him to make, etc., etc.

The character of customs has felt the influence of the local position of populations no less than that of labors. Voltaire observes very sensibly that the same legislator who was sure to be joyfully obeyed in ordering the Indians to bathe in the Ganges, at certain times of the moon, would have been stoned if he had wished to prescribe the use of the bath to the peoples on the banks of the Dvina. He adds that Muhammad, who had forbidden the use of wine in Arabia, where one needs refreshing beverages, would perhaps not have forbidden it in Switzerland, especially before going into combat. He says further that certain libations of wine could be prescribed in wine-growing countries, which no legislator would have imagined ordering where wine was not known [^63] . It is possible that one has sometimes yielded lightly, inconsiderately to the indications of nature; but it is certain that many practices and habits have been determined by these indications.

If the nature of places has influenced the direction we have given to the use of our forces, it has had no less influence on their progress. Not only can one not devote oneself everywhere to the same labors, but the same labors cannot be exercised everywhere with the same power. There is not an industry, especially in the class of those that act upon the material world, that does not find in the physical constitution of the countries where it is possible to exercise it local circumstances more or less favorable to its exercise. Not every country possesses mines equally rich and equally easy to exploit. One does not see everywhere lands, equally fertile, lend themselves to cultures equally precious and equally varied. The labor of vegetation, powerfully seconded, in certain places, by the habitual state of the sky, can be elsewhere frequently interrupted or thwarted by the same cause. A country is more or less well watered. The rivers that cross it offer more or less convenient routes for navigation. Its rivers flow into seas more or less frequented and surrounded by peoples more or less rich. The coasts it presents to these seas have more or less extent; they are more or less accessible and more or less well indented. All this is incontestable; and it is incontestable also that, from these circumstances, there must result more or less facility for the execution of a great number of labors.

If local circumstances have the power to decide, up to a certain point, the progress of the arts, they are not without influence either on the perfection of the sciences, of morals, of social relations. One knows the close connection there is between all these things. Where industry could not develop, one does not have the same interest in cultivating the knowledge that its exercise demands; nor does one have the same means of cultivating it. Where enlightenment and well-being are lacking, it is rare that morals are distinguished by much delicacy and purity, and that social relations are very sure and very gentle. Place a people in a country that is absolutely proper only for pasture, and it will be very difficult for its industry, its knowledge, its morals, its relations with other peoples, and the relations of its members among themselves, to be other than those one remarks among most nomadic peoples. I leave to the reader the care of examining whether it is possible that the intelligence, the affections, the habits of the Bedouin Arab or of the Tartar do not derive a part of their character from the particular situation in which these peoples are placed.

One can therefore say that there is no order of developments that does not depend, to a certain degree, on the action that the material world exercises upon us, and that, consequently, external circumstances have a very real influence on liberty.

[^56]: Précis de la Géographie universelle, t. I, p. 250. [^57]: Esprit des Lois, liv. XVIII, chap. 3, 4, 6, 7. [^58]: Traité de Législation, t. II, p. 320. [^59]: Précis de la Géographie universelle, t. I, p. 250. [^60]: Précis de la Géographie universelle, t. I, p. 250. [^61]: Précis de la Géographie universelle, t. I, p. 250. [^62]: Revue encyclopédique, t. XL, p. 119. [^63]: Essai sur les Mœurs, chap. 197.§ 10. However, it is essential to observe that the power of these circumstances can be modified by many causes.

First, it does not act to the same degree on all races. Not every people shows itself equally skillful in taking advantage of favorable circumstances and in escaping the action of harmful causes. It is possible that a people, very suitably placed, may let the advantages of a good situation be lost through ineptitude, negligence, or laziness. It is possible that a people surrounded by unfavorable circumstances may compensate, by dint of industry and activity, for the disadvantages of a bad position. There are enough examples of both of these things, and I will not return to a subject that has already detained us at length.

Second, the influence of local circumstances is not the same at all degrees of civilization. As society becomes more powerful, the power of favorable circumstances increases, and that of adverse causes diminishes [^64] . The more advanced a people is, the more it is in a state to profit from the advantages that its position presents; the more advanced it is, the less it is dominated by the inconveniences of its situation. Europeans established in some of the most beautiful islands of the South Sea would probably not be content with the life that the natives lead there: to the delights of the climate they would wish to add the pleasures of civilization, and they would know how to draw from the natural resources of these favored places means of well-being far superior to those that the still barbarous peoples of these islands draw from them. The natives of New South Wales, even if they experienced no inferiority with respect to race, would be much more influenced by whatever vexations the nature of the places they inhabit may offer, than must be the English, who have established themselves in these places with all the means of action that man has acquired in Europe. The most rebellious nature always ends by granting something to the industrious and patient efforts of civilized man. Thus it would be unwise to affirm that such a still-deserted country must remain forever uninhabited. Who knows how far cultivation is destined to extend, as men multiply and the mass of their means increases? Cabanis observes with reason that climate does not act in the same way on the rich and on the poor [^65] . A rich man can make a climate to his liking everywhere. There is, so to speak, no winter in Saint Petersburg for a great Russian lord whose hotel is perfectly heated, and who goes out only when wrapped in thick furs. An English lord sees the fruits of the tropics ripen in his hothouses, and he gathers there grapes as sweet as those of France and Italy.

A third remark to be made is that the same external causes can be alternately favorable or contrary according to circumstances. For example, the mildness of the climate and the fertility of the soil could very well not produce the same moral effect on a people when it is very far behind and when it is very advanced. We have seen that these circumstances contributed to maintaining the laziness of the still uncultivated man, whose needs are very limited; and perhaps they would do nothing but impart a new degree of activity to the industry of civilized man, whose needs grow without cease, and who aspires to draw from the position in which he finds himself all that it can give. - It is a very favorable circumstance for the progress of a country to be extremely accessible, and to be able to communicate easily with a great number of other countries; however, only one thing would be needed for this circumstance, so favorable, to become exceedingly fatal to it: that it should find itself surrounded by barbarous nations aspiring to invade and subjugate it. It would perhaps be better then for it to be bordered by rocks and precipices, and for no one to be able to reach it from any side. — The mountains, which have the inconvenience of greatly hindering the communications of commerce, have, as a counter-effect, the advantage of halting the march of conquerors and sometimes protecting the liberty of peoples. Suppose Europe to be peaceful, active, prosperous, reasonably governed, and there will be a real disadvantage for the United States in finding itself so distant from it: suppose, on the contrary, the Holy Alliance reformed, liberty vanquished, the counter-revolution triumphant, and it will then be for the Anglo-Americans a happy circumstance to be separated by fifteen or eighteen hundred leagues of sea from such a hotbed of tyranny, disorder, and obscurantism.

Finally, a fourth and last observation is that the most essential thing for a people is perhaps not so much to find itself surrounded by a great confluence of favorable circumstances, as to know its situation well, and to know how to direct its faculties in such a way as to draw the greatest possible advantage from the advantages it possesses. A single advantage, skillfully exploited, sometimes suffices to make the fortune of a people. The Danes, for a time, found in the simple fishing of herring the source of an opulence and a luxury that the peoples of the north had not yet known. "Formerly dressed like simple sailors, the Danes," says Arnold of Lubeck, "are today clad in scarlet and purple. They overflow with the riches that the herring fishery on the coasts of Scania procures for them each year [^66] ." — The same industry, in appearance so vulgar and so limited, was the first source from which the Dutch drew their wealth and their strength. Such was the extension that this fishery had taken among them, toward the end of the seventeenth century, that they employed in it, according to Jean de Witt, more than a thousand vessels of twenty to thirty tons burden [^67] . In general, the principal and almost the only advantage that the Dutch found in their geographical situation was to be able to devote themselves easily to navigation: but they knew how to take such skillful advantage of this circumstance that, for a century and a half, they were the carriers and almost exclusive commercial agents of all of Europe. England enjoys neither a very brilliant sky, nor a very warm temperature; the natural productions of its soil are neither the richest nor the most varied: but this country has been so happily constituted for the exercise of certain industries; it offers to agriculture, to manufacturing, to commerce a small number of natural agents so powerful, of local circumstances so particularly favorable, that these advantages, in appearance rather limited, put to use by an intelligent, laborious people, endowed above all with great persistence and method in its affairs, have sufficed to develop on the soil that this people inhabits more wealth and power than the world has ever seen elsewhere in so narrow a space of land [^68] . —It is better, therefore, without question, to possess only a small number of advantages of which one knows how to profit well, than to find oneself in the midst of a multitude of resources that one would not have the spirit to turn to account, and of means of prosperity that one would let be lost.

However, if a people were endowed with faculties supple enough and active enough to excel at once in a great number of arts, or if its faculties were to extend as a vaster field opened to their action, there is no doubt that it would be profitable for it to find itself surrounded by a numerous collection of favorable circumstances. It is clear that, with a proportional equality of talents and emulation, the people that possesses the most advantages must also be the one that makes the most progress; just as, with equality of natural strength and perfection in the organs, the tree that is placed in the most favorable environment for the labor of vegetation is the one that puts forth the most vigorous shoots and develops the vastest branches. Surely there is little advantage in being charged with a task superior to one's forces, in possessing more resources than one is in a state to put to use; but when the faculties of two peoples are equally capable of sufficing for all labors, of proportioning themselves to all tasks, it is evident that the one which has the most mines to exploit, that the one whose position offers the most sources of wealth is also the one that can become the richest and the most powerful.

§ 11. Let us conclude, therefore, that if, to become free, the first interest of a people is to be endowed with faculties that are upright, strong, active, ardent, and perfectible, its most immediate need after that is to find itself in a physical situation that does not offer too many obstacles to the application of these faculties, or rather in a situation that presents to their development the greatest possible number of favorable circumstances.

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Notes

[^46]: See the first edition of this volume, published under the title of Industry and Morality, etc., p. 159 et seq. [^47]: Relations between the Physical and Moral Aspects of Man, ninth memoir. Influence of climates, etc.: See the introduction to this memoir and paragraphs 3 and 5. [^48]: See above p. 58 et seq. This is a point on which I had insisted since the first edition of this volume, and which we owe to Lawrence for having placed beyond dispute. [^49]: Treatise on Legislation, vol. II, pp. 113 and 228; vol. III, pp. 243, 257, 271, 296, 353, 487. [^50]: Almost all of Mexico enjoys a temperate climate. In the region that the natives call tierras templadas, temperate lands, the average year-round temperature is 20 to 21°; and in the zone they call tierras frias, cold lands, one enjoys an average temperature of 12 to 13°, equal to that of France or Lombardy. The heat is very strong only near the coasts, in low-lying lands interspersed with small hills. Even in this comparatively small part of Mexico, the temperature rises only to 25 or 26° on the centigrade thermometer, 8 or 9° above the average heat of Naples. (See Malte-Brun, Précis de la Géogr. Univ., vol. V, p. 457 et seq. of the 2nd ed.). [^51]: Everyone knows that the same phenomenon is observed on the slopes of mountains, as one ascends to colder regions. In Mexico, without changing degree of latitude, one can see pass before one's eyes the productions of all zones, from those of the tropics to those of the frigid zone. For this, it is enough to ascend, from plateau to plateau, up to the region of eternal snows. [^52]: A certain number of exceptions can be found in the work of M. Comte, and the author does not cite them all. [^53]: Précis de la Géograph. Univ., vol. V, p. 445. [^54]: There are enough points in the old and new worlds where there is proof that the temperature has gradually softened for one to be founded in supposing that it has been the same everywhere, and especially in all countries where the land has been cultivated, if it is true, as it is still permissible to believe, that cultivation has the effect of softening the climate. See further on pp. 116 and 117. [^55]: Malte-Brun, Précis de la Géog. Univ., vol. VI, p. 78, 2nd ed. [^56]: Précis de la Géograp. Univ., vol. III, book 46, p. 21 of the 2nd ed. [^57]: The Spirit of the Laws, book 18, ch. 3, 4, and 9. [^58]: Treatise on Legislation, vol. II, book 3, ch. 8, p. 173. [^59]: See in the Rev. Brit., vol. 2, p. 223 et seq., a curious article on the progress that horticulture has made in England. [^60]: Précis de la Géog. univ., vol. VI, pp. 1 and 20. [^61]: Malte-Brun, while saying that the organic power with which nature is endowed did not, in the beginning, act on a single point of the globe, and that a great number of plants in Europe could do without the honor of a foreign origin, nevertheless admits that the migrations of man have singularly favored the geographical extension of plants, and that Europe in the beginning was in a great destitution of useful plants and animals. Compare what he says, vol. 2, book 42, p. 504 of his Précis, with what he adds on p. 505, and what he says again vol. VI, pp. 1 and 2. [^62]: Précis de la Géog. univ., vol. VI, pp. 2 and 3. [^63]: Dictionnaire Philos., under the word climat. [^64]: It would not be accurate to say, in a general manner, as is sometimes done, that the influence of climate is all the greater the less civilized man is: this influence is doubtless greater in what is pernicious about it, but not in what is useful; the salutary influences are, on the contrary, all the weaker the less man is in a state to take advantage of them, all the weaker the more uncultivated he is. [^65]: Relations between the Physical and Moral Aspects of Man: Influence of climates, § xvi.—M. de Tracy makes an analogous observation in his commentary on The Spirit of the Laws. [^66]: See the Histoire des expéd. marit. des Norm., vol. II, p. 197. Paris, 1826. — See also the Mémorial portatif de chronologie, etc., Part I, under the word Poissons, p. 578 of the 1829 ed. [^67]: See the Mémorial, ibid., pp. 581 and 582. [^68]: One can see in the work of M. Comte, vol. 3, book 4, ch. 5, p. 333 et seq., what these particular circumstances are that England has so skillfully taken advantage of. I had indicated a part of them in the first edition of this volume, and especially in the course I gave at the Athénée in 1826, when I treated of commerce and the diverse causes to which its power is linked: See further on, vol. 2, chap. 17 of this work. M. Ch. Dupin, in his work on the productive forces of Great Britain, had also shown how happily the land and waters are disposed in England for the exercise of commercial industry. M. Comte joins to remarks of the same kind considerations on the habitual temperature of this country and on its coal mines, which complete the demonstration of what a small number of favorable circumstances can do for the power of a nation, when they are vigorously exploited.