Does Climate Define National Characters?

²⁰ If men’s characters depended on the air and climate, heat and cold should naturally have a mighty influence, since it has the greatest effect on all plants and irrational animals.

There is some reason to think that the nations which live beyond the polar circles or between the tropics are inferior and incapable of all the human mind’s higher attainments.

Without having to recourse to physical causes, the following might account for this remarkable difference:

• the poverty and misery of the northern inhabitants of the globe, and
• the indolence of the southern, from their few necessities,

The characters of nations are certainly very promiscuous in the temperate climates.

But almost all the observations of southern or northern people in these climates are false.

²¹ If we say that closeness to the sun inflames men’s imaginations and gives it a peculiar spirit and vivacity:

The French, Greeks, Egyptians, and Persians are remarkable for gaiety. The Spaniards, Turks, and Chinese are noted for gravity and a serious deportment, without any such difference of climate as to produce this difference of temper.

²² The Greeks and Romans called all other nations barbarians.

They confined genius and a fine understanding to the more southern climates. They said the northern nations were incapable of all knowledge and civility. But our island has produced as great men, either for action or learning, as Greece or Italy has to boast of.

²³ It is pretended that:

• men’s feelings become more delicate as the country is nearer to the sun
• the taste of beauty and elegance is proportionally improved per latitude, as we can observe of the languages.
• the southern languages are smooth and melodious.
• the northern languages are harsh and untuneable.

But this observation is not universal.

• Arabic is uncouth and disagreeable.
• Russian is soft and musical.
• Latin has a character of energy, strength, and harshness.
• Italian is the most liquid, smooth, and effeminate language that can be imagined.

Every language will depend somewhat on the people’s manners. But it will depend much more on that original stock of words and sounds, which they received from their ancestors. Those words and sounds remain unchangeable even if their manners change greatly.

The English are presently more polite and knowing than the Greeks were after the siege of Troy. Yet is there no comparison between the language of Milton and that of Homer.

The greater the changes to the people’s manners, the less changes can be expected in their language.

A few eminent and refined geniuses will communicate their taste and knowledge and produce the greatest improvements. But they fix the tongue by their writings. They prevent, in some degree, further changes to the language.

²⁴ Lord Bacon observed that the inhabitants of the warm south are generally more ingenious than those of the cold north. But where the native of a cold climate has genius, he rises to a higher pitch than can be reached by the southern wits.

A late writer confirms this by comparing the southern wits to cucumbers.

I believe this remark is just, when confined to:

• the European nations, and
• the present age, or rather to the preceding one.

But I think it may be accounted for from moral causes. All the sciences and liberal arts have been imported to us from the south. The few who were addicted to them would:

• carry them to the greatest height, and
• stretch every nerve and faculty to perfection.

Emulation and by glory would prompt them to do so. Such a people would:

• spread knowledge everywhere, and
• begot an universal esteem for the sciences.

Afterwards, that industry relaxes when men:

• do not find suitable encouragement
• are not given such distinction by their attainments

Learning is then universally diffused among a people and banishes ignorance and rusticity. With everyone learned, people start to take learning for granted. The Dialogus de Oratoribus says that knowledge was much more common in Vespian’s time than in the time of Cicero and Augustus. Quintilian also complains of the profanation of learning, by its becoming too common.

Juvenal says:

This state of learning is remarkable because Juvenal is himself the last of the Roman writers with any genius. Those who succeeded just had facts.

I hope the recent conversion of Russia to the study of the sciences will not end up like the present period of learning.

²⁵ With regard to candour and sincerity, Cardinal Bentivoglio prefers the northern nations, such as the Flemings and Germans, to the southern, such as the Spaniards and Italians.

But I think that this has happened by accident.

The ancient Romans seem to have been a candid sincere people, as are the modern Turks. But if this event arose from fixed causes, we may only conclude that all extremes:

• are apt to concur
• are commonly attended with the same consequences

Treachery usually accompanies ignorance and barbarism. If civilized nations ever embrace subtle and crooked politics, it is from an excess of refinement. It makes them disdain the plain direct path to power and glory.

²⁶ Most conquests have gone from north to south.

That is why people have inferred that the northern nations are braver and fiercer. But it would be fairer to say that most conquests are made by poverty and a want on plenty and riches.

The Arabs left the deserts of Arabia. They carried their conquests north on all the fertile provinces of the Roman empire. They met the Turks half way, who were coming southwards from the deserts of Tartary.

Sir William Temple remarked that:

But the Swedes have disadvantages in food but are not inferior to any nation in terms of martial courage.

Mentality Creates Reality

²⁸ In general, of all national qualities, courage is the most precarious because it is exerted:

• only at intervals, and
• by a few in every nation.

Whereas industry, knowledge, civility, are used constantly and universally.

For several ages, these may become habitual to the whole people. If courage be preserved, it must be by discipline, example, and opinion.

The tenth legion of Caesar and the regiment of Picardy in France were formed promiscuously from the citizens. But having once entertained a notion that they were the best troops in the service, this very opinion really made them such.

²⁹ The proof of how much courage depends on opinion can be seen in the Greek Dorians and Ionians.

The Dorians were always esteemed. They always appeared more brave and manly than the Ionians, even if the colonies of both were interspersed and intermingled throughout:

• Greece,
• Asia Minor,
• Sicily,
• Italy, and
• the Aegean islands.

The Athenians were the only Ionians that ever had any reputation for valour or military achievements. But even these were inferior to the Spartans, the bravest of the Dorians.

³⁰ People shallowly observe that northern people prefer strong liquors while southern people prefer love and women. This observation is important.

This is because:

• the cold climates require wine to warm the frozen blood and protect men against the weather.
• the heat of the sun in southern countries inflames the blood and exalts the passion between the sexes.

³¹ Moral causes can also contribute to it.

All strong liquors are rarer in the north. This makes them more coveted.

Diodorus Siculus tells us that the Gauls in his time were great drunkards. I suppose they were addicted to wine chiefly from its rarity and novelty.

On the other hand, the heat in the southern climates, obliges men and women to go half naked. It renders their frequent commerce more dangerous. It inflames their mutual passion.

This makes parents and husbands more jealous and reserved, which still farther inflames the passion. Not to mention, that women ripen sooner in the southern regions. It is necessary to observe greater jealousy and care in their education.

A 12-year old girl cannot possess equal discretion to govern this passion, with one who does not feel it strongly until she be 17 or 18.

The passion of love is:

• encouraged most by ease and leisure
• destroyed most by industry and hard labour.

Men in the warm climates have fewer necessities than in the cold ones. This circumstance alone may make a considerable difference between them.

³² I doubt that nature has, either from moral or physical causes, distributed these respective inclinations to the different climates.

The ancient Greeks were born in a warm climate.

• They seem to have been much addicted to wine.
• Their parties of pleasure were just drinking matches among men who passed their time away from the fair.

Persia was even warmer. When Alexander led the Greeks into Persia, they multiplied their drinking matches in imitation of the Persian manners which honoured drunkards.

Cyrus the younger solicited the sober Spartans for succour against his brother Artaxerxes. Cyrus claims it chiefly on account of his superior endowments, as more valorous, more bountiful, and a better drinker. Darius Hystaspes made it be inscribed on his tomb-stone, among his other virtues and princely qualities, that no one could drink more than him.

You can get anything from the Negroes by offering them strong drink. For a cask of brandy, they will sell their children, wives, and mistresses.

In France and Italy, few drink pure wine, except in the hottest summer. The heat evaporates the spirits so it must be recruited by wine, just as it is necessary in Sweden to warm bodies congealed by winter.

³³ If jealousy were regarded as a proof of an amorous disposition, the Russians are most jealous, before their contact with Europe changed this manner.

³⁴ If it were true that nature physically regularly distributed the love of wine to the north and amorous love to the south, the climate may affect our bigger bodily organs than our finer organs which control the mind and understanding.

This is agreeable to the analogy of nature. The races of animals never degenerate when carefully tended. Horses, in particular, always show their blood in their shape, spirit, and swiftness. But a vain man may have a philosopher son A virtuous man may have a worthless son

³⁵ The passion for liquor is more brutal and debasing than amorous love.

When properly managed, amorous love is the source of all politeness and refinement. Yet this gives not so great an advantage to the southern climates, as we might initially imagine.

When love goes beyond a certain pitch, it renders men jealous. It cuts off the free intercourse between the sexes, on which a nation’s politeness will commonly depend.

People in very temperate climates are the most likely to attain all sorts of improvement. Their blood is not so inflamed as to render them jealous. Yet it is warm enough to make them set a due value on the charms and endowments of women.