Articles de cette rubrique

• XIV.1 The main argument

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  If it is true that the character of the mind and the passions of the heart are extremely different in the various climates, laws must be relative both to the difference of those passions and the difference of those characters.

• XIV.2 How different people are in the different climates

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  Cold air shrinks the extremities of the exterior fibers of our bodies, and that increases their compression and favors the return of blood from the extremities towards the heart. It decreases the length of these same fibers ; thereby further increasing their strength. Warm air on the contrary (…)

• XIV.3 Contradiction in the characters of certain southern peoples

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  The Indians naturally lack courage ; even the children of Europeans born in the Indies lose the courage of their own climate. But how can we reconcile this with their atrocious acts, their customs, their barbaric forms of penitence ? Men subject themselves there to unbelievable sufferings, the (…)

• XIV.4 The cause of the immutability of religion, of morals, manners, and laws in Oriental countries

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  If, to this weakness of organs that makes Oriental peoples receive the most powerful impressions in the world, you add a certain indolence of mind, naturally linked to that of the body, which makes that mind incapable of any act, effort, or contention, you will understand that the mind which has (…)

• XIV.5 That bad legislators are those who have favored vices of the climate, and good ones are those who have countered them

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  The Indians believe that repose and oblivion are the foundation of all things, and the end to which they lead. Thus they regard utter inactivity as the most perfect state and the object of their desires. They give the surname “unmovable” to the sovereign being. The Siamese believe that supreme (…)

• XIV.6 On the cultivation of the land in warm climates

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  Cultivation of the land is men’s greatest labor. The more the climate inclines them to flee this labor, the more religion and the laws must prompt them to it. Thus the laws of the Indies that give the lands to the princes and suppress the spirit of property in private citizens increase the (…)

• XIV.7 On monasticism

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  Monasticism there does the same harm ; it was born in the warm Oriental countries where a person is less inclined to action than to speculation.
  In Asia, the number of dervishes or monks seems to increase with the warmth of the climate : the Indies, where it is excessively warm, are full of (…)

• XIV.8 A good custom in China

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  The relations of China tell us of the ceremony of opening the land, which the emperor performsd every year. The idea was to incite the people to plow by this public and solemn act.
  Furthermore, the emperor is informed every year of the plowman who has the most distinguished himself in his (…)

• XIV.9 Means of encouraging industry

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  We shall show in Book XIX that indolent nations are generally arrogant. One could turn the effect against the cause, and destroy indolence by arrogance. In the south of Europe, where people are so imbued with the point of honor, it would be well to give prizes to the plowmen who had best tilled (…)

• XIV.10 On laws related to the sobriety of peoples

  6 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  In warm countries, the aqueous part of the blood is largely dissipated through perspiration ; therefore equivalent liquid must be substituted. Water is excellent for this purpose ; strong liquids would coagulate the globules of the blood that remain after the dissipation of the aqueous part. (…)