dunbar6
Author: Unknown
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Essay VI

Of the General Influence of Climate on National Objects

The influence of climate on the policy, if not on the character of nations, is acknowledged by every observer of human affairs.

To estimate this influence, in the various regions of the globe, were an arduous problem. But, by attending to the distinct modes of its operation, we may be able, perhaps, to set bounds to its empire.

Climate then may be regarded either as a natural principle, acting with powerful energy, or with irresistible impulse, on the fabric of our being; or it may be regarded merely as a local circumstance leading to a variety of action in the oeconomy of civil life. Viewed in this secondary light alone, it will appear eminently to affect the progress of arts and government.

The means of subsistence, the subject of art, the incitements to industry, the scene of its operations, so diversified in the several districts of the earth, must affect proportionably the course of affairs. And in circumstances so dissimilar, it would be strange, if the conduct of the actors were governed precisely by the same laws, or every where attended with the same success.

The genius of mankind, far from being equal, must have been as various as the situations in which they are placed, did we observe all nations exalted to an equal pitch of civility, or of eminence in arts and sciences.

To a peculiarity of situation, and often to the urgency of occasions, nations as well as individuals owe their greatness. Pressed with no difficulties, and not conscious of wants, mankind in general love repose. The calls must be loud and frequent, which animate their exertions, and urge them forward in active or laborious pursuits.

In countries therefore of original affluence, supplying spontaneously, or with little culture, the necessaries of life; arts will remain long neglected, or will be cultivated slowly, and with inferior ardour. But in countries, more penurious by nature, the deficiency is supplied by the resources of industry and invention.

If the former situation the genius of mankind lies dormant, or is feebly exercised, or evaporates upon subjects which make but little figure in the history of civil society. Of consequence, many characteristics of primitive simplicity will be long preserved: and a people may increase and flourish, to a high degree, before they have recourse to the partition of land, the division of labour, and the distinctions of private property; circumstances which first open domestic commerce, diversify and embellish the ranks of life, and furnish out the objects of a regular oeconomy.

Unacquainted with these objects, men soothed by indolence, or immersed in the gratifications of sense, are surely in no condition to establish a plan of government upon rational or just foundations. Yet the habits formed among them, in the infancy of society, gradually break the mind for political servitude. The desire of equality is balanced by a regard to exterior accommodations; and the love of safety, of pleasure, or of ease, triumphs, in every competition, over the passions which are the natural guardians of law and liberty.

Such, in some climates of the world, is the real description of mankind. Habits, chiefly incident to polished ages, vitiate and enfeeble the savage life. And the usual effects of refined and commercial arts in the decline of civilized government, are causes, in those climates, which, operating from the beginning, supersede their origin, or obstruct their growth.

To be unassisted then by arts, yet obnoxious to the evils with which they are commonly associated, is, considered in a moral or in a political light, one of the hardest dispensations of fortune.

In other countries, the imbecility of government derives often a temporary support from the very arts which tend to its destruction. Thus the commercial opulence of Carthage prolonged her existence for half a century, by satiating the avarice of Rome. Thus Rome herself, when no longer able to defend her empire by arms, was able by subsidies to postpone her fate.

Rome indeed, in her better days, could resist the most desperate onsets of barbarians: for to equal enthusiasm in arms, the added superior skill in the art of war. When the Cimbri and Teutones, in the career of glory and of victory, were preparing to cross the Alps, Marius, by one decisive blow, crushed that formidable invasion. Yet the destroyers of the Roman name were one day to come from the same quarter. The nations of Scythia, situate between the Euxine and Caspian seas, having been exterminated by Pompey, directed their course, under the conduct of Odin, towards the north and west of Europe. They established themselves in the almost evacuated settlements of the Cimbri and Teutones, where, incorporating with the feeble remnant of the species, they repaired the strength and population of the North. And it was their descendants, now confounded with the northern nations, who, returning some ages after, retaliated on the Romans the calamities inflicted on their forefathers, and on mankind.

A people, however, so long progressive as the Romans, could fall only by degrees. The resources of the Roman government were not exhausted with Roman virtue.

The Goths, who, by the memorable defeat of the Emperor Decius, had become masters of the Illyrian provinces, were induced, by the pecuniary concessions of the succeeding emperors, to abandon their conquests. Concessions so pusillanimous, I am not ignorant, have been supposed to hasten the fall of Rome: but they seem, at this conjuncture, to have been as necessary as they were inglorious, and the feeble expedients of a declining empire in the crisis of its fate.

A variety of such expedients, in calamitous periods, policy and arts afford. But the communities of mankind, in the climates above described, by a cruel fatality, are destitute of the ordinary resources of government, whether in a rude or cultivated age.

Their peculiar circumstances, then, with regard to foreign powers, deserve attention. The same original and luxuriant profusion which so long exempts them from labour, and dispenses with arts, and postpones the assignation of property, exposes them the more to the envy and hostile designs of other states. In proportion to the fertility of their settlement, the possession of it is the more precarious. To defend that settlement, is almost the sole end of public union: nor will the apprehension of danger from abroad allow their attention to fix upon the objects of interior government. Implicit submission to the command of a superior, an idea so requisite in the conduct of armies, and in the science of war, insinuates itself into the frame of their political constitution. In supporting political existence, they part with all the ideas of natural liberty: and the rigour of despotism alone, controuling the tendency of their manners, can secure that command of the national force which, in times of public danger, is necessary for the protection of their country. To avoid, therefore, the condition of a conquered people, they acquiesce in a constitutional tyranny, perhaps not less oppressive.

Thus danger from abroad concurs with their domestic circumstances in the subversion of their natural rights; and neither the operations of peace nor of war supply the occasions which animate a rising people.

The spirit of liberty, in its full strength, is not always superior to the sense of public danger.

When thirty cities of Latium, confederated with the Sabines, threatened to crush in its infancy the Roman commonwealth, consternation and terror seized all ranks of men. And the dictatorship, a sort of temporary despotism, and a solecism in a free government, owed its original establishment to this alarming conjuncture. The confederacy, indeed, was quickly dissolved: the battle at the lake Regillus was of a decisive nature; and the men who had expelled the Tarquins were able to rule the storm. But has such perils, which were transient and accidental, been inherent in the soil; had the Romans been more liable to suffer, than prone to commence hostilities; had the possession of a more productive or extensive settlement drawn upon them at first the envy of mankind, instead of animating their own ambition, the necessity of public affairs must have soon rendered that magistracy perpetual, which was at first of so limited a duration, resorted to only in great emergencies, and during the flourishing ages of the commonwealth altogether discontinued.

Let us imagine, then, the spirit of liberty already languishing, menaced with danger like that which made the Romans tremble, but arising from fixed and permanent causes, and we imagine the circumstances of mankind, in climates which establish and perpetuate a despotism more absolute, more formidable, and mor degrading, than the dictatorship of Rome.[A]

A nation determined by external situation to embark in schemes of dominion possesses immense advantages in war over any other nation who arms merely for defence. The principles of interest, of ambition, of glory, embolden the designs of the former, and give to their efforts irresistible impetuosity. The efforts of the latter are more constrained and reluctant; and the most prosperous success, ultimately terminating in a temporary security, rather than in positive acquisitions, produces not the martial ardour and enthusiasm which actuate heroic minds.

Hence the formidable incursions of the antient Scythians, and the unequal opposition of the Asiatic states. Hence the difficulties encountered by the Romans in extending their conquests in Europe, and their more easy triumphs on the theatre of Asia. Hence we may observe, on the one hand, the astonishing career of the northern conquerors, who overturned all the governments of Europe, and on the other, the feeble resistance made to their progress by more opulent and luxurious nations.

The Spartans are almost the only instance of a warlike people who, by system, abstained from conquest. Yet was it consonant with the maxims of Spartan policy to transfer every war to a distance from the seat of government. And during a period of six hundred years, which elapsed from the first establishment of the Dorians in Lacedaemon to the reign of Agesilaus, no foreign enemy had dared to set foot in Laconia. To render that country the theatre of war, was reserved for Epaminondas.

“Many of you,” said an Argive to a Spartan, “sleep on the plains of Argos.” — “Not one of you,” replied the Spartan, “sleeps on the plains of Lacedaemon.”

Sparta, though great in war, was singularly formed for peace, for virtue, and for harmony. The rigour of domestic discipline rendered war a relaxation from toil. And the duration of its civil government was owing, in a great degree, to the confinement of territory, to the love of justice, to the exclusion of luxury, of money, of commerce, and of arts and sciences.

There is a nation too, described by Tacitus, who seem to have been distinguished among the antient Germans, as the Spartans were distinguished among the antient Greeks; and, though their territory was more extensive, to have resembled the Spartans in the maxims of their policy, and in some features of their national character.[B] But though such examples of wisdom and moderation sometimes occur, and adorn historical annals, the rules of distributive justice are commonly little regarded by nations in the career of military glory.

The nature of climates, the comparative fertility of countries, by determining the course of offensive war, and by affecting the measure of subordination in civil society, must be allowed no inconsiderable sway over the general fortune of the world: and circumstances apparently the most favourable prove often, in their consequences, the most adverse to the great proceedings of nations.

Nature, in some climates, like an over-indulgent parent, enervates the genius of her children, by gratifying at once their most extravagant demands. In other climates she dispenses her bounty with a more frugal hand, and, by imposing harder conditions, impels them to industry, trains them up to enterprize, and instructs them in the advantages of arts and regular government.

But the extremes of munificence and rigour, by withholding the motives to industry, or by rendering the ends desperate, often produce similar effects. A middle situation between those extremes is perhaps the most eligible in a moral light, as well as the most auspicious for civil progress.

Mankind, however, in the various climates where they have fixed their habitations, will long preserve a genius and character wonderfully corresponding with the various discipline of nature. One people, enured to difficulties, become addicted to hardy enterprize. Another people, blessed with ease, exert their talents in refined speculation, rather than in active pursuits.

The speculative sciences accordingly can be traced back to infancy in Chaldaea, in India, in Egypt, and countries that verge to the torrid zone; while we observe them attain to full growth and perfection only in the higher latitudes.

In these latitudes their connexion with arts is recognized, their importance to society more steadily kept in view, and a rank and estimation assigned them, regulated in part by the standard. But in those lower latitudes, cultivated from other considerations, they retain long their primeval form, and with little reference to mechanical or vulgar arts, command, on their own account alone, the veneration of the people. Yet rendered subservient perhaps to the ends of superstition, or an engine of despotic power, they may have contributed more to sink and debase, than to improve and dignify the species.

Religious sentiments and opinions, which are co-eval with the beginnings of refinement, and which, when duly regulated, are so beneficial and ornamental to society, may thus, by false associations, assume a form, and instil passions, which disgrace reason and humanity. Accordingly, in the countries first enlightened by science, the religious passions have ever fermented with the greatest violence, and produced the most astonishing effects.

Under their impression, a wild race from Arabia proved an overmatch for valiant and hardy nations. For, by this spirit, the Saracens arose; and turning the tide of conquest, which had run so generally from north to south, into an almost opposite direction, threatened, by the progress of their arms, to reverse the history of the world.[C]

In the same climates have reigned, at different periods, the most abject superstition, the wildest fanaticism, the most sublime theology: and, exclusive of the pure and divine institutions of the true religion, many of the rites and observances propagated over various and distant regions have originally centered there.

But to account for so striking an effect in any latitude or climate, there is no need to recur to the positive and direct influence of the outward elements on the human mind. The series of events, once begun, is governed more perhaps by moral than by physical causes: and this propensity of genius and temper may owe its original to the primary direction of the sciences, and their early alliance with theology and civil government.

The sciences corrupted in their source, or perverted in their application, were early instrumental, among the nations of the East, in consecrating absurdity, and giving consistency to error. Dressed up in the solemn airs of mystery, they abated religious imposture; and served, in the hands of priests and civil rulers, as a charm to allure and fascinate the crowd. Augury, divination, and such wretched literature as tended rather to corrupt than to improve the understanding, were, above all other learning, admired and cultivated. The motions of the heavens were studied, in order to discover the imaginary influences of stars: and a science which opens the noblest view of the universe, and is so capable of being directed to valuable ends in civil life, was connected in its origin with the credulity and superstition of mankind.

In Chaldaea, the most antient seat of astronomical observation and discovery, judicial astrology was held in supreme and universal esteem. Pythagoras, the most accomplished master that ever flourished in Greece or Italy, borrowed his ideas from the Magi of Chaldaea, from the Gymnosophists of India, or from Egyptian priests, was admitted into their colleges, initiated into the mysteries of their religion, and by them instructed in the true system of the world.

But the mysterious sciences of Pythagoras were soon forgotten in the Italic school. The Romans, occupied, from the institution of their commonwealth, in scenes of action, had no taste or leisure for such pursuits. With invincible prejudices against the Chaldaeans, and other Orientals, and with no turn towards astrology, they regarded their character and erudition with equal and undistinguished contempt. From the reign of Numa there had elapsed a period of above five hundred years, when Julius Caesar, aided by the superior learning of the East, adjusted the civil year, with some accuracy, to the true annual period, and established, on astronomical principles, the reformation of the Roman calendar.

Yet the Romans as far excelled those other nations of antiquity in the fabric of their jurisprudence, and in the application of the true principles of government, as they were excelled by them in astronomy, in geometry, in physics, in theological refinements, and in all the abstract deductions of philosophy.

In general, fertile and luxuriant countries seem peculiarly fitted to be the nursery of refinement: because leisure awakens curiosity; and curiosity leads to pursuits that fill up the vacancies in human life. Every new situation presents to man new objects of solicitude and care. The demands of animal nature no longer bound his desires. The scene now opens to the intellectual eye. He marks the relations and dependencies of things; and learns to contemplate the world and himself.

Constituted in such circumstances, what more natural to a mind, somewhat elevated above common life, than this soliloquy:

“Where am I! Whence my original! What my destiny! — Is all around me discord, confusion, chaos! Or is there not some principle of union, consistency, and order? — Am I accountable to any superior? connected with any great system of being? — Is this contracted span of life the whole of man? or was he born with higher expectations; and for nobler ends? Is there a Power above to justify that hope!” —

Various opinions will afterwards arise, in the course of philosophical generations, concerning the oeconomy of invisible powers. Various rites will be instituted to render the Divinity propitious, and, since fear predominates in most religions, more to aver his wrath. But those questions are the suggestions of nature, and, in the more productive regions of Asia and Africa, gave a beginning to the philosophic age. Yet, in such regions, from the want of the chief incentives to action, the improvements of civil life will seldom arrive at a high pitch of eminence or perfection.

Countries of a different description will be slower in their first improvements; because an attention to the necessary functions of life allows not sufficient leisure for observation, or the sublimer culture of the understanding. But sciences and arts transplanted hither in a maturer form, take root and flourish; and, alleviating the toils, or enlarging the accomodations of society, grow up to an extraordinary height, gradually removing the obstacles which prevented their more early establishment.

Here, too, the mechanical arts, which owe their maturity, if not their birth, to the more pressing occasions, or increasing demands of mankind, become subsidiary to the sublimer sciences, and advance them beyond the limit assigned them in their antient seats. To this fortunate alliance, the labours of the learned in modern Europe have been indebted for one half of their success: and, this alliance broken, the sciences, in our climates, would sink down to the level at which they have stood so long in the climates of Asia.

The genius of nations is more or less turned to peace or war, to speculation or action. The more speculative begin improvements, and the active conquer; yet improve often upon the improvements of the vanquished.

Thus the situation of the species in one country is more advantageous to the first openings of refinement, from circumstances which allow a freedom to genius, and an exemption from animal toil: while their circumstances, in another country, conduce more effectually to the farther extension and cultivation of the liberal arts. And these effects, frequently resulting from soil and climate, whose temper depends so often upon the position of the globe, mark a fundamental and fixed distinction between the communities of mankind in the lower and higher latitudes.

The temperament indeed of countries is diversified by a variety of causes, natural and artificial, which we shall not attempt to enumerate. Elevation above the level of the sea has sometimes a decisive influence, and confers many of the advantages of the temperate zone on countries that approach almost the equator. But, notwithstanding a number of exceptions, the more general character of climates corresponds with the astronomical divisions of the earth. And, suitably to this course of nature, the same civil order of things, which we have remarked in the antient continent, seemed to have been preparing in the new.

The sun of science arose there, as on our side of the globe, on the confines, or within the limit of the torrid zone. Civilization had begun, and even made some progress, in the empires of Peru and Mexico, while mankind in all the upper latitudes were utter strangers to refinement, in the lowest stage of political union, and, like the antient Germans, scarce acquainted with subordination in civil or domestic government.

The aera of civility has not yet arrived. The system to which they belonged was unhinged by violence. But had the Peruvian and Mexican arts been transplanted into those regions of the new hemisphere, they would, in all probability, have flourished there, from the same combination of causes as in Europe, with a degree of vigour and success unknown in the more productive climates which gave them birth.

The New World, from its connexion with the Old, opens to the arts and sciences an opposite career. And, in contradiction to the first arrangements, and the apparent order of physical laws, they will be carried by a more impetuous current, along the stream of political events, from the northern to the southern climates.

It becomes, not, perhaps, a Briton, a private citizen, at such a crisis, to anticipate this order of things; to predict the revolutions of government, or the eventual glory of a future age.

This chapter of accidents should be read in the cabinets of Europe.

It is local circumstances alone whose tendency we are contemplating in both hemispheres: and to open the extent of that influence in the general system, it is necessary, as in the following Essay, to descend into some farther detail.

NOTE [A]

I have mentioned the office of Roman Dictator, as being the most extraordinary concession which the exigency of public affairs ever extorted from a free people.

Had such an accumulated jurisdiction been transferred to one man, by a solemn act of the whole legislature, it might be vindicated, perhaps, on the principles of state necessity. But when the right of nomination was vested in a single consul, without the consent, against the will of the people; and without even a decree of the senate, though that sanction was indeed necessary to confirm the consul’s nomination; we observe, with astonishment, among a people jealous of their rights, an engine of government one of the most tremendous, in appearance, that ever hung over the liberties of mankind.

It deserves however to be remembered, that the authority of Dictator, while it annihilated in a moment every other authority in the state, left the tribunitial power untouched, whose influence formed a sort of constitution controul on the proceedings of that formidable magistrate. Yet more admirable far is the policy of the British government, in such extremities as called for a Dictator under the Roman.

In England, to borrow the language of a late noble Author, well read in the constitution of his country, “In England, where a mixed constitution of government unites the powers of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, much more happily than that of Rome ever did, even in its best state, if extraordinary dangers require that the Habeas Corpus law (the great security of our freedom) should, for a time, be suspended, it can only be done by the joint advice and authority of the whole legislature. And if, in any case where delay would be fatal, the safety of the public apparently obliges the king, in whom alone executive power resides, to act against this or any other law, without having been previously impowered so to do by both houses of parliament, his ministers are responsible for it to their country, and can no otherwise be secured than by a bill of indemnity, which if the necessity pleaded for their justification is found to have been real, the Lords and Commons will not refuse to pass. But, in Rome, a single consul, agreeing with the senate to name a Dictator, without the concurrence, and against the will of the people, might subject, at any time, the liberty and the life of every Roman citizen to the arbitrary power of one man, set above all the laws, and in no way responsible, for the exercise of his sovereignty, to the justice of the State. Indeed, after the end of the second Punic war, the senate itself grew so jealous of the danger of this office, that, for an hundred and twenty years before Sylla took it up, no Dictator was appointed.”

Lord Lyttleton’s Works, p. 36.

In one instance, perhaps the only one to be met with in the Roman annals, the senate referred the choice of a Dictator to the people; and the consul Marcellus named Quintus Fulvius in obedience to their order.

Liv. l. 27. c. 5.

On another occasion, the influence of the people was no less predominant. For, by their interposition, the authority of Minutius was declared equal to that of the Dictator Fabius Maximus.

NOTE [B]

The Spartans are not degraded by a comparison with this virtuous people, whose character is thus delineated by the Roman historian:

Tam immensum terrarum spatium non tenent tantum Chauci, sed et implent: populus inter Germanos nobilissimus, quique magnitudinem suam malit justitia tueri. Sine cupiditate, sine impotentia, quieti secretique, nulla provocant bella, nullis raptibus aut latrociniis populantur. Idque praecipuum virtutis ac virium argumentum est, quod ut superiores agant, non per injurias assequuntur. Pompta tamen omnibus arma, ac si res poscat, exercitus: plurimum virorum equorumque: et quiescentibus eadem fama.

Tacit. De Morbi. Germ. c. 35.

NOTE [C]

Had the Saracens, actuated by the same fanatical spirit, begun their career some centuries sooner, they might have met, with equal force, the barbarians of the North, and contended with them for the spoils of the western empire. Or, perhaps, the encounter of such armies might have prolonged its date.

When the Saracens, in the eighth century, after the conquest of Africa, appeared in Spain, the Goths settled there, degenerated from the valour of their ancestors, were in no condition to make head against such invaders. The contest would have been very differently maintained by those Goths, who, in the fifth century, passed the Pyrenees, and bid defiance to the masters of the world. But now the empire of the Caliphs was soon established in Spain. And the Saracens, after the reduction of that country, meditated the conquest of all Europe. They became masters of that part of Landuedoc which had been subject to the Goths; and were marching on, in confidence and triumph, to complete their designs, when, fortunately for the Christian world, in the year 731, they were defeated in a pitched battle by Charles Martel, the champion of the faith, and the most renowned general of the age.

To establish the Mahometan religion all over the earth by the sword, was conformable with its avowed maxims. Predestination too was an article of faith that served to heighten the constitutional valour of the Saracens, which was still farther enflamed by an opinion inculcated by their leaders, that to die in battle secured infallibly to every Mussulman an immediate entrance into paradise, and an introduction to the beatific vision.

Their valour, indeed, had be signalized before the age of Mahomet. Along with hospitality and eloquence, it formed their antient character: and some resemblance may be traced between the genius of the Arabians and that of the Greeks in the age of Homer. It is not therefore pretended, that religious enthusiasm acted alone, without the co-operation of other causes, in the establishment of the Moslem yoke.

“Pour expliquer, says Montesquieu, cet evenement fameux de la conquete de tant de pays par les Arabes, il ne faut pas avoir recours au seul enthousisme. Les Sarrasins etoient, depuis long temps, distingues parmi les auxiliaires des Romains, et des Perses: les Osroeniens, et eux etoient les meilleurs hommes de trait qu’il y eut au monde: Severe, Alexandre, et Maximin en avoient engage a leur service autant qu’ils avoient pu, et s’en etoient servis, avec un grand succes, contre les Germains, qu’ils desoloient de loin: sous Valens, les Goths ne pouvoient leur resister; enfin, ils etoient, dans ces temps-la, la meilleure cavalerie du monde.”

Grandeur et Decadence des Romains, ch. 22.