James Bryce “has recently clearly set forth the climatic control of government in an essay on ‘British Experience in the Government of Colonies’ (Century, March, 1899, 718–729).”[254]Vallaux, however, is sceptical as to the influence of physical environment upon the State.[255]William Ridgeway avers that political and legal institutions are the result of environment.[256]
Far-reaching and weighty historical consequences “have followed from special conditions of climate or weather. Maguire’s ‘Outlines of Military Geography’ (Cambridge, 1899) contains a chapter on the influence of climate on military operations, but this subject has hitherto received little attention. More recently, Bentley, in a presidential address before the Royal Meteorological Society, London, considered the matter.”[257]Still more recently, the relation of climate or weather to war has been scrutinized, among others, by F. Lampe in “Der erdkundliche Unterricht,”[258]by Otto Baschin in “Der Krieg und das Wetter,”[259]and by E. Alt in “Krieg und Witterung.”[260]
Hellwald, “the well-known traveller and geographer,” compiled his “History of Civilization in its Natural Development” in 1874, according to the findings of which, cultural development is “a natural process, conditioned by race, geography, and climate. Civilisation means the mastering of nature and the taming of man.... Hellwald’s standpoint is shared, though less aggressively displayed by Henne-am-Rhyn.”[261]
To the late meteorologist Cleveland Abbe, “Everything seems to combine to prove that the existing order of events both material and intellectual has been brought about by a slow process of change, due to the interaction of the atoms and masses that constitute the material world around us.”[262]
The great diversity of existent civilizations, declares Auguste Matteuzzi, is due to the diversity of the milieus where they developed. In order to discover why any civilization becomes more heterogeneous and more perfect, one must study the geographic milieu where it evolved. The organic and inorganic milieu of evolving ethnic groups constrains human societies to an incessant process of adaptation, and these societies in their turn react upon the milieu and modify it.[263]
In short, says Auguste Comte, “all human progress, political, moral, or intellectual, is inseparable from material progression, in virtue of the close interconnection which, as we have seen, characterizes the natural course of social phenomena.”[264]
That civilization is a result of adaptation to environment, physical as well as political, is the view entertained by Bryce, Strachey, and Geikie.[265]
Climate and Man’s Characteristics
There are “certain broad, distinguishing characteristics of man in the temperate and tropical zones, in determining which it is reasonable to believe that climate has played a part. Similarly, there has been a natural tendency to attribute certain differences between northerners and southerners in the temperate zones to a difference in climate.... These national differences are proverbial between northern and southern Germans, French, Spanish, Russians, Italians, Arabs, and other peoples. The influence of climate has likewise been traced in the sad, even pessimistic tone of much of the northern literature, and in the gravity and melancholy of modern northern music, as well as of the older northern folk-songs ... even racial distinctions are more or less directly traceable, in many instances, to climate.... Sir Archibald Geikie, in hisScottish Reminiscences, has emphasized the climatic influence in producing the grim character of the Scot....”[266]
Tacitus, in the 29th chapter of theGermania, assures us that the soil and climate of the land of the Mattiaci caused them to be more bellicose than their neighbors.[267]
Daudet, “who has written an entire novel (‘Numa Roumestan’) to depict the great influence of the climate of southern Europe upon conduct, says: ‘The Southerner does not love strong drinks; he is intoxicated by nature. Sun and wind distil in him a terrible natural alcohol to whose influence every one born under this sky is subject. Some have only the mild fever which sets their speech and gesture free, redoubles their audacity, makes everything seem rosy-hued, and drives them on to boasting; others live in a blind delirium. And what Southerner has not felt the sudden giving way, the exhaustion of his whole being, that follows an outburst of rage or enthusiasm?’”[268]
Draper “emphasized the important historical consequences of the difference in the characteristics of northerners and southerners in the United States, which he attributed largely to climate, and which found expression in the Civil War.... The Boers in Africa have developed along lines different from those of the Dutch in the United States.”[269]
Auguste Comte, who “was very slightly affected by German thought,” and who, in early youth, came under the influence of the philosophy that had become prevalent in France before the Revolution,“read the works of most of its leading representatives. He accepted its cardinal principle that ‘thought depends on sense, or, more broadly, on the environment.’”[270]
Adolf Bastian worked unceasingly “among the conceptions of theNaturvölker—the ‘cryptograms of mankind,’ as he called them—..., demonstrating first the surprising uniformity of outlook on the part of the more primitive peoples, and secondly the correlation of differences of conceptions with differences in material surroundings, varying with geographical conditions. This second doctrine he elaborated in hisZur Lehre von den geographischen Provinzen, in 1886.”[271]
Physiology and statistics “show that most human functions are subject to the influence of heat (Lombroso, ‘Pensiero e Meteore,’ Milan, 1878). It is to be expected, then, that excessive heat will have its effect upon the human mind.”[272]
The physiographer, “... looking back over the history of life upon the earth’s surface, ... is forced to the conclusion that its highest estate embodied in the moral and intellectual qualities of man has been, in the main, secured by the geographic variations which have slowly developed through the geological ages.”[273]
Benno Erdmann, in his “Gedächtnisrede auf Wilhelm Dilthey,” observes that in ripe old age Dilthey in the last of his larger works declared that man finds himself determined by the physical world in which mental occurrences appear only as interpolations.[274]
As physical characteristics “are in the main the result of environment, social institutions and religious ideas are no less the product of that environment.... We might just as well ask the Ethiopian to change his skin as to change radically his social and religious ideas. It has been shown by experience that Christianity can make but little headway amongst many peoples in Africa or Asia, where on the other hand Muhammadanism has made and is steadily making progress, ... This is probably due to the fact that Muhammadanism is a religion evolved ... in latitudes bordering on the aboriginal races of Africa and Asia, and that it is far more akin in its social ideas to those ofthe Negro or Malay than are those of Christianity, ...”[275]
Ernest Renan “points out that the desert is monotheistic, its uniformity suggesting a belief in the unity of God.... In hisSeas and Skies in Many Latitudes(London, 1888, pp. 42–43), Abercromby gives two maps, showing respectively the areas of Mohammedanism and the districts in Asia and Africa with a mean annual rainfall of less than ten inches. The maps are strikingly similar. The author adds: ‘Whether this distribution of a great creed is the result of chance, or of some deep connection between the tenets of that religion and climatic influences, I can not say;—but still the relation is so remarkable that I have thought it well to bring the matter forward.’”[276]
The “frequent and sudden weather changes of the temperate zones affect man in many ways, as do the larger seasonal changes. The relations between weather and conduct have frequently been investigated. Professor E. G. Dexter has made anextended empirical study of the effects of the weather ... Bertillon has collected data on suicides and seasons in France, ...”[277]Dexter studies empirically by means of statistics—plotting certain curves—the relation between temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, wind, character of the day, precipitation, on the one hand, and the child in school—work, deportment, attendance—, crime, insanity, health—sickness and death—, suicide, drunkenness, attention—errors in calculation made by clerks in banks—, on the other.[278]Of his general conclusions[279]the first is: “Varying meteorological conditions affect directly, though in different ways, the metabolism of life”; the second: “The ‘reserve energy’ capable of being utilized for intellectual processes and activities other than those of the vital organs is affected [effected, in the original] most by meteorological changes”; the third: “The quality of the emotional state is plainly influenced by the weather states”; the fourth: “Although meteorological conditions affect the emotional states, which without doubt have weight in the determination of conduct in its broadest sense, it would seem thattheir effects upon that portion of the reserve energy which is available for action are of the greatest import.”[280]
The nervous effects of the weather including cyclonic winds have also been noted. Among the Eskimos, “Marriages take place at an early age, especially among the women, and the return of the sun after the long winter has a stimulating effect on the animal passions which leads to sexual excesses of all kinds.”[281]
Albert Leffingwell investigatesThe Influence of Seasons Upon Conduct[282]in Great Britain and elsewhere. He formulates the underlying assumption of his inquiry in the following manner: “It is not a new theory, though I propose to carry it somewhat further than it has been pushed hitherto. Over half a century ago, Quetelet in his great work “On Man,” suggested the hypothesis.... The hypothesis toward which all the facts point is simply this: that upon the nervous organization of human bodies (perhaps specially upon dwellers in the temperate zones) there is exerted during the procession of the seasons, from winter’s close till midsummer, some undefined, specific influence, which in some manner tends to increase the excitability of emotion and passion, and thus also toincrease all actions arising therefrom.”[283]To mention only one of Leffingwell’s illustrations, he brings together in a statistical table the total number of all crimes against persons in England for ten years (1878–87), the same facts for Ireland during the same decade, and for France during forty years (1830–69), and in conjunction therewith says: “Here, again, we find that all crimes, even those arising from personal antipathy or hatred, seem specially prevalent in the warmer half of the year. In England, 55 per cent of all such acts of violence during the ten years 1878–1887 happened in spring and summer, and in France during a period of forty years the average was the same. Ireland, indeed, shows a more even distribution of such crimes; but the tendency is seen even there.”[284]
Cesare Lombroso, who is claimed to be the first to have essayed to portray the effect of physical environment on the human psyche,[285]states in hisCriminal Man,[286]referring to Ferri and Holzendorf,that with high temperature there is an increase in crimes of violence, while low temperature has the effect of increasing the number of crimes against property. In “comparing statistics of criminality in France with those of the variations in temperature, Ferri noted an increase in crimes of violence during the warmer years.”[287]
Lombroso, in hisCrime, Its Causes and Remedies,[288]citing the conclusions of the relevant statistical evidence, establishes that in England and France and Italy the crimes of rape and of murder occur in greatest number in the hottest months; that the maximum number of all rebellions in the whole world between 1791 and 1880 falls everywhere in the hottest month, while its minimum number comes in the coldest months; and that crimes against property markedly increase in the winter.[289]
In the southern parts of Italy and France “there occur many more crimes against persons than in the central and northern portions.... Guerry has shown that crimes against persons aretwice as numerous in southern France (4.9) as in central and northern France (2.7 and 2.9).Vice versa, crimes against property are more frequent in the north (4.9), than in the central and southern regions (2.3).”[290]According to Buckle,[291]climate makes men’s habits regular or irregular.
Climatic Control of Food and Drink
William Ridgeway, summarizing his argument in “The Application of Zoölogical Laws to Man,”[292]says: “We have seen that environment is a powerful factor in the differentiation of the various races of man, alike in physique, institutions, and religion. It is probable that the food supply at hand in each region may be an important element in these variations, whilst the nature of the food and drink preferred there may itself be due in no small degree to climatic conditions.... The aboriginal of the tropics is distinctly a vegetarian, whilst the Eskimo within the arctic circle is practically wholly carnivorous. In each case the taste is almost certainly due to the necessities of their environment.... It is probable that the more northward man advanced the more carnivorous he became in order to support the rigours of the northern climate. The same holds equally true in the case of drink.... All across Northern Europe and Asia there is a universal love of strong drink, which is not the mere outcome of vicious desires, but of climatic law.... This view derives additional support from the well-authenticated fact that one of the chief characteristics of the descendants of British settlers in Australia is their strong teetotalism. This cannot be set down to their having a higher moral standard than their ancestors, but rather, as in the case of Spaniards and Italians (temperancereformers point to the sobriety of the Spaniards, Italians, and other South Europeans), to the circumstance that they live in a country much warmer and drier than the British Isles. We must therefore, no matter how reluctantly, come to the conclusion that no attempt to eradicate this tendency to alcohol in these latitudes can be successful....”[293]