About the middle of the sixteenth century we find Michelangelo avowing to Vasari (who hailed from Arezzo): “Any mental excellence I may possess, I have because I was born in the fine air of your Aretine district.”[[39]]
In “Measure for Measure” (Act III, Sc. I, v. 8–11), a play first produced in 1604, Shakespeare affirms of man:
“... a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences
That do this habitation where thou keep’st,
Hourly afflict.”
During the Renaissance, Greek thought on milieu is resurrected in France. Thence it spreads later, particularly in the eighteenth century, to England and Germany. Jean Bodin bridges the gap existent since the close of classical antiquity. He is the first among modern writers not only to revive the idea in Western Europe,[[40]] but also to make it a subject for detailed investigation. Bodin thus first in French letters introduces and firmly establishes a line of study destined to be followed by a long list of authors among whom are to be found many illustrious French names.
Bodin “treats of physical causes with considerable fulness in the fifth chapter of the ‘Method,’[[41]] and in a still more detailed and developed form in the first chapter of the fifth book of the ‘Republic.’”[[42]] He traces the relation between climate and the ever changing fate of States, and elaborates the manifold effects of climate on States, laws, religion, language, and temperament.[[43]] In Bodin’s view, man’s physical constitution is closely and directly connected with climate and surrounding nature; it is in harmony with the behavior of the earth in the respective zones of his abode.[[44]] From this assumption of dependence of the human body on climate, there follow a number of inferences concerning the physical properties of man’s constitution.[[45]] Temperament varies according to climate. Language, the generative power, diseases likewise depend indirectly on climate.[[46]] Man’s talents and capacities do so no less.[[47]] The climate in each region always favors the development of some special aptitude; on this basis he groups the peoples of the earth.[[48]] Although the nexus between human abilities and the physical milieu is thus intimate, yet reason, common to all men and invariable, is per se independent of physical environment.[[49]] He postulates, then, reason as the absolute part of the mind, not subject to surrounding influences, whereas the unfolding of the human faculties is relative to the environment. By taking this middle course concerning the effect of nature on man, Bodin escapes the extreme views of nature’s compelling influence over man, on the one hand, and of man’s total independence of nature, on the other.[[50]]
Bodin also investigates the influence upon national character of geographical situation, of elevation, of the quality of the native soil, and of an east-west position.[[51]] Nations and their civilizations differ according to the particular conditions of a given national existence.[[52]]
He holds fast to the doctrine of the freedom of the will. Man is morally free from environmental control. The circumambient medium determines only the development of man’s capabilities.[[53]] Man can counteract, and may, even though with difficulty, overcome the injurious action of climate and nature.[[54]]