EFFECTS OF AGE, SEX, CLIMATE, ETC. UPON MIND.
By age, sex, locality, climate, and regimen the mental operations are likewise powerfully influenced. By locality and climate we do not mean air and temperature merely, but the sum total of all influences, whether physical or moral, by which in every place we are surrounded. The bodily structure is undoubtedly and materially influenced by climate. Of this the modern Hungarians afford a most convincing proof—a race of people of a fine physical conformation, and yet, as their language and traditions attest, derived from the same stock as the barbarous, deformed Ostiaks inhabiting the Uralian Chain, to whom, as we learn from history, they bore no slight resemblance, on their arrival in the countries in which they are at present located. Climate may thus affect the mind in two ways, by modifying the structure of the body, and by the more direct action which it exerts upon the mind itself; and it is to these two causes that we must ascribe the differences in the form and habits, the government and laws, the superstitions and literature, of northern and southern nations.
To differences and modifications of structure constantly correspond differences and modifications in ideas and passions. The physical form and intellectual qualities are closely and mutually connected. Thus, one individual may excel another in a given pursuit, this excellence resulting rather from a peculiar aptitude for, than from a particular devotion to, its cultivation.
This aptitude, in many cases at least, is to be mainly referred to some peculiarity of structure in one or more of the organs of the senses; it is original, and without the particular organic conformation could never have been acquired by centuries of practice and experience.