CLIMATE AND CHARACTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21935, 19 October 1934, Page 10

CLIMATE AND CHARACTER

The supposed effect of climate on. character, and the resultant habit of labelling whole nations with particular characteristics, was traced back to earlier centuries by Professor E. G. R. Taylor in a paper which he delivered to tho geography section of the British Association. He said that in the sixteenth century the word "climate" connoted, not certain meteorological characters, but a belt or zone of tho earth's surface lying beneath a certain zone of tho wheeling heavens, and so subjected to particular planetary and stellar influences. The rule of climate was the rule of the stars. Mars and the moon commanded the destinies of the Northern man, who was therefore a great warrior and huntsman. Tho Southern man, on the other hand, was ruled by Saturn and Venus; he was obliged therefore to give himself to contemplation and to voluptuousness, becoming crafty as a fox. This antithesis of strength and subtlety, of fighter and diplomat, was an antithesis running throughout Renaissance thought, discernible in Macchiavelli, and equally discernible in Shakespeare, as a modern writer had pointed out. Between the North and the South came a middle climate, ruled over by Jupiter and Mercury, who bestowed on mankind a mastery of science, of law, and of oratory, and so destined them to rule; hence Jean Bodin, although ho did not deny the influences of tho aspect of. tho heavens, itook* into account also tho, influences of winds, water and earth. The general public of tho sixteenth and seventeenth centuries resembled the general public of to-day. From a Jean Bodin or a Francis Bacon they caught up, not a new scientific spirit, but a new and facile generalisation. The habit of labelling whole nations with virtues and vices was thoroughly well established by that time, although exceptional men sought to combat and deride it. How far wore the general notions of a majority of mankind to-day upon questions of race and culture in advance of the "theoretical geography" of the seventeenth century, which had its roots in the superstitions and misconceptions of the astrologers of the Dark Ages?.