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afforded of this fact by the ridiculous appearance presented by the German regiments, when dressed in ready-made clothes manufactured for the American market, and which were much too long for the men in every way. There is, also, a considerable body of evidence showing that in the Southern States the house slaves of the third generation presented a markedly different appearance from the field slaves."

And Darwin again says: "Adaptation to any special climate may be looked at as a quality readily grafted on an innate wide flexibility of constitution, common to most animals. On this view, the сарасity of enduring the most different climates by man himself. . . ought not to be looked at as anomalies, but as examples of a very common flexibility of constitution, brought, under peculiar circumstances, into action." 2

"Races would advance and become improved," Wallace says, "merely by the harsh discipline of a sterile soil and inclement seasons. Under their influence a hardier, a more provident, a more social race would be developed than in those regions where the earth produces a perennial supply of vegetable food, and where neither foresight nor ingenuity is required to prepare for the rigors of winter. And is it not a fact that in all ages, and in every quarter of the globe, the inhabitants of temperate have been 1 Darwin: The Descent of Man, p. 196.

2 Darwin: The Origin of Species, vol. i, pp. 175-176.

superior to those of hotter countries? All the great invasions and displacements of races have been from north to south, rather than the reverse; and we have no record of there ever having existed, any more than there exists to-day, a solitary instance of an indigenous inter-tropical civilization.” 1

2

Buckle ascribes to climate, food, soil, and "the general aspect of nature” those physical agents “by which the human race is most powerfully influenced," and by "the general aspect of nature,” he says, "I mean those appearances which, though presented chiefly to the sight, have, through the medium of that or other senses, directed the association of ideas, and hence in different countries have given rise to different habits of national thought. That Buckle was a profound believer in the physical agents already mentioned is known to every student of his monumental work, and he elaborates his thesis at length. "It now remains for me," he says, "to examine the effects of those other physical agents to which I have given the collective name of Aspects of Nature, and which will be found suggestive of some very wide and comprehensive inquiries into the influence exercised by the external world in predisposing men to certain habits of thought, and thus giving a particular tone to religion, arts, literature, and, in a word, to all the principal manifestations of the human mind.'

1 Wallace: Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, p. 177. 'Buckle: History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 29.

Buckle, op. cit., p. 85.

I think the conclusion can be properly reached, based not on a priori reasoning but sustained by evidence, that environment has an enormous influence on the mind of man, and this influence is as powerful mentally as the physical characteristics of a country are upon his structure; just as the struggle for existence has developed certain organs, both in animals and men, and no physiologist will challenge the correctness of this assertion. But physical and structural variations are easily recognized; mental processes are not only slower but more subtle; the mind is concealed, and the changes that affect the mind of a race are so gradual that they can be ascertained only by long and laborious research. I may go further and assume an even more positive tone. With the sole exception of the American people it has been impossible scientifically to study the influence of environment on mentality, because of four obstacles.

In the first place, the early records of all other races are lost in obscurity, and although we have in many instances literature and traditions, we have no such precise literature, no such accurate record of any people from their beginning as we have of the Americans. Secondly, other races have been influenced in greater or lesser degree by the native civilization of which they became a part. This was absent in America. There was no native civilization. We shall have occasion later to refer to this. Again, every other race, whether as con

queror or emigrant, that have spread beyond the confines of their own country or territory, whether merely as a nomadic tribe or a people with a defined civilization, grafted themselves on the native stock or absorbed it into themselves, their own civilization becoming tempered and modified in the process. And lastly, all other races have engaged in wars and conquests, and the effect of war in the formative period of national character has lasting results. The American people, as we have remarked in a previous chapter, engaged in war in their formative period, but it was a war neither for conquest nor aggression; it was a war inspired by a cause unlike that of any other in history, and it produced certain well-defined psychological tendencies.

We shall now consider the climatal conditions found in the United States and see how far-reaching they have been in the formation of American character.

CHAPTER IV

CLIMATIC AMALGAMATION OF RACE

THE United States is in the temperate zone, but it enjoys all variations of temperature; in some parts its summers are almost tropical in their intensity and the winters are arctic in their severity. These wide variations in temperature in a people of common stock, under one political system, inspired by the same ambitions, have resulted in remarkable race characteristics. The people of the North — of all those states lying north of the fortieth degree of latitude, whose winters are long and severe, but whose summers compensate, the temperature rising west of the eightieth meridian— have the vigor, energy, and physical alertness of the people of northern Europe. South of the fortieth parallel of latitude winter is milder and summer long and hot, at times and in places rivaling the heat of the East, but still not so hot that the white man cannot labor and live without injury to his health. In some parts of some of the states of the South snow is practically unknown and frost is rarely experienced. The long hot summers and mild winters have made the Southern man different from the Northern; he is less energetic, more inclined to take life easy, in a measure less enter

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