Montesquieu an Essay on Cuases Affect Men'Smind Character#M Richter

An Introduction to Montesquieu's "An Essay on the Causes That May Affect Men's Minds andCharacters"Author(s): Melvin RichterReviewed work(s):Source: Political Theory, Vol. 4, No. 2 (May, 1976), pp. 132-138Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/190625 .

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AN ESSAY ON EXPLANATION BY MONTESQUIEU

AN INTRODUCTION TO MONTESQUIEU'S "AN ESSAY ON THE CAUSES THAT MAY AFFECT MEN'S MINDS AND CHARACTERS"

MEL VIN RICHTER City University of New York Graduate School and Hunter College

X'~HIS IS MONTESQUIEU'S1 closest approximation to a dis- course on explanation in the social sciences. Regarded by him as a working paper for the Spirit of the Laws (1st ed., 1749), this essay was written between 1736 and 1743. In 1892, it was printed in French for the first time.2 My translation is, as far as I know, the first published in English.

The "Essay" focuses upon the determinants of human law, politics, and society. Montesquieu establishes two categories of causes. The first he calls "'physical," such as climate, terrain, and air; the second, "moral," those determined by human will, belief, and action such as law, philosophy, religion, and institutions, including legislation consciously devised to take such considerations into account. To a surprising extent, the analysis of physical causes is more physiological than that given in the Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu here reveals himself as a believer in a materialistic psychology, as well as a follower of Locke in emphasizing the dependence of the human mind upon the impressions gained by the senses from external objects.

Nevertheless, and this contradicts what has most often been asserted about Montesquieu's theory of climate, he concluded both in this essay

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Research for this paper was done during tenure of grants from the City University of New York Faculty Research Program and from the National Endowment for the Humanities

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 4 No. 2, May 1976 ? 1976 Sage Publications, Inc.

[132]



Richter / INTRODUCTION TO MONTESQUIEU [1331

and in the Spirit of the Laws that moral causes may outweigh and prevail over those that are physical in origin.3 This is particularly apt to be the case when legislators, secular or religious, are aware of the effects of physical causes. Once men learn to analyze such causes, they may manipulate nature rather than being its mere subjects.- Thus Montesquieu was far from being a crude determinist obsessed with non-human causes. Rather he believed in the creative possibilities of politics, constitutions, and legislation. Indeed so great was his belief that the effects of climate and other physical causes may be mitigated or overcome by legislators who understand them that he was criticized by Emile Durkheim for exag- gerating what could be done by political means.

This is not to say that Montesquieu was completely consistent on this point. He seldom was. On occasion, both in this essay and in the Spirit of the Laws, he could not resist the temptation to assert that because his theory of physical causes was more precise than any of its predecessors it also ought to be regarded as the single most significant explanation of human law and institutions. Yet it is clear that such overstatements were not his own ultimate judgment. This may be demonstrated by examining Montesquieu's first formulation of the theory in the Persian Letters, and by comparing and contrasting his treatment of it in the "Essay" and in the Spirit of the Laws

Already in the Persian Letters, Montesquieu had made much of climate as a determinant of human institutions and behavior. At that time his conception of physical causes was more mechanical, simplistic, and unmediated than in his later work. As has been pointed out by Jean Ehrard, this first and more nearly geographical determinism was combined in a sort of static equilibrium with an untroubled affirmation of the validity of natural law.4 Even though men do things as the result of physical causes, nevertheless human actions should be condemned when- ever they violate the prescription of natural law. This for the most part Montesquieu did by satirizing-sometimes humorously, sometimes sav- agely-deplorable practices in France and elsewhere. As for the content of the natural law, Montesquieu simply asserted its existence and value (as in his reference to the law of nature in Roxane's last letter). He also assumed that violations of the law of nature automatically are punished by nature itself. It is in this context that he used a theory of climate to explain how the Spanish were punished for their wars of colonial conquest in the Americas.

In Persian Letter CXXI, Montesquieu condemned the aggressive colonial policies of the European powers in countries far from Europe.



[134] POLITICAL THEORY / MAY 1976

Such uses of force not only violated the law of nature and the law of nations, but were futile because condemned to failure by the operation of climate. In a primi-tive formulation of his theory, Montesquieu argued that it was dangerous for men to attempt to live in climates where they had to breathe air of a sort that differed completely from that of the countries where they had been brought up. The Spanish had not hesitated to destroy ancient empires and their inhabitants. Erroneously, they had believed that they could repopulate their American conquests by importing African black slaves and by bringing in colonists from Spain. But neither the slaves nor their European masters could survive in this new climate. "On the contrary, by a fatality best called divine justice, these destroyers destroy themselves...

Montesquieu was to abandon this intellectual strategy. As used in the Persian Letters, there were dangers in combining determinism with satire, in asserting that although men had to act as they did, they nevertheless were to be held accountable for not conforming to the law of nature. For such a combination of ideas could produce a sceptical passivity just as easily as the will to reform or revolution. In classical antiquity, the Sceptics had attempted to prove that it is impossible to attain knowledge either of the nature of things or of ethical truths. Among the common- places of scepticism was the discrepancy between the world as it actually is and the prescriptions of natural law. If nature can nowhere be found, how can men be held responsible for not conforming to it? If nature cannot be known, what sense is there in attempting to make human arrangements correspond to ideal standards? Men are what they are and the world must be accepted as it is.

Because of the possibility that he might be promoting scepticism and passivity, Montesquieu altered both his intellectual strategy and the part played in it by his analysis of causation, climatic and otherwise, in his explanatory and prescriptive scheme. In both his Considerations and the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu moved toward a qualified determinism that made room for positive intervention and correction of abuses, injustices, or practical defects by legislators and statesmen. Increasingly, his argument took the form of pointing out that the causes of all human practices may be understood by analysis both of physical nature and by the study of history, government, law, and society.

Thus Montesquieu abandoned his earlier disposition to contrast the abstract perfection of nature and natural law with the vices and curiosities of actual human practices. Abandoning this method so long practiced by classical moralists and some theorists of natural law, Montesquieu set out



Richter / INTRODUCTION TO MONTESQUIEU [135]

to prove that history is rational in the sense that its causes may be understood and to establish that human behavior is never merely capricious but always is based upon intelligible reasons. In his Considera- tions, Montesquieu had already phrased his views in terms of two types of causes: "there are general causes, whether physical or moral, which act upon every monarchy, which create, maintain, or ruin it."6 Nevertheless, the Considerations has little to say about the effects of climate or milieu. If we wish to perceive Montesquieu's decisive step toward his ultimate position as stated in the Spirit of the Laws, it is to the "Essay on the Causes" that we must look.

Written between 1736 and 1743, it served as Robert Shackleton has remarked, as a "storehouse of ideas," for the major later sections of the Spirit of the Laws. 7 These ought to be distinguished both chronologically and methodologically from the earlier sections, especially the celebrated treatment of England in Book XI, the first draft of which was finished in 1733, while the final version was completed before 1738. From the "Essay," Montesquieu removed sections for use in the Spirit of the Laws; he also added further reflections to this unusual work written for his own benefit. Some of the most crucial sections of Book XIX, perhaps Montesquieu's major contribution to social theory, were derived from this source. His treatment of climate in Book XIV also owes a good deal to the "Essay," which, however, is far more precise in its account of how physical causes produce physiological changes. But the focus of those sections of the "Essay" dealing with moral causes differs somewhat from the Spirit of the Laws, with which it is not incompatible. For the "Essay" deals more with the psychology of different peoples than with their institutions. Yet both, Montesquieu held, are determined by the general spirit of the society, the outcome of all the forces operative on it.

In the "Essay," Montesquieu makes use of a physiology that is now completely discredited. But he was attempting to take into account the best available scientific knowledge of his day. Montesquieu himself performed experiments that depended upon his capacity to use a microscope; he followed closely the development of the thermometer. As a young man, he reported on his experiments in physiology to the Academy of Bordeaux; he was elected to the Royal Society while living in England, before the publication of either the Considerations or the Spirit of the Laws.

Central to the theory of physical causes is Montesquieu's concern with the effects of air upon the human mind and body. This was a subject that could not as yet be adequately treated by the science of his day, which



[136] POLITICAL THEORY / MAY 1976

had not yet been able to determine the composition of air. The chemistry of gases remained unknown. But Montesquieu attempted to make his study as scientific as possible. Although it was clearly premature, his emphasis upon the effects of temperature reflected contemporary work on the construction of thermometers, which for the first time provided a way of quantifying the effects of climate upon the human body.

All the operations of the human mind, or soul, derive, Montesquieu believed, from the faculty of feeling. This may be more or less sensitive, depending upon how supple are the fibres of the brain. It is the temperature of air that, acting upon the cerebral fibres of a country's inhabitants, thus determines the constitution of their minds and bodies. The characteristics of every country will vary depending upon the temperature, food (itself affected by qualities of the air), and the prevailing winds. Within any population, there will also be further variations deriving from physical causes such as diet or sleep.

Despite his extensive treatment of the effects of physical causes upon the aggregate characteristics of peoples, Montesquieu concluded in the "Essay" that "Moral causes contribute more than physical causes to the general character of a nation and to the quality of its thinking." This conclusion derives in part from his emphasis upon the importance of what he calls education, conditioning in schools, family, religion, and society, and in part from his overall scheme of analysis, which insists upon treating climate as but one of the major causes acting upon men. Every society has a distinctive general character. This results from not only physical but also moral causes, by which Montesquieu meant a combination of laws, religion, moeurs, manieres, and the dominant style of thought, often derived from its capital or court. Professions often exert a significant effect upon the mentality of their practitioners. All such causes may work together, in which case they tend to produce an integrated type of character among the inhabitants. But when certain causes work against others, then the type of character will contain contradictions-as when Christianity teaches the unimportance of civic life instead of reinforcing it as did the pagan religions of antiquity.

Montesquieu's insistence upon the potentially greater effect of moral causes is carried over from the "Essay" to Book XIX of the Spirit of the Laws. After its appearance, Montesquieu twice defended himself against the accusation of being a determinist who had asserted that everything human, including religion, depends upon climate. In his "Defense of the Spirit of the Laws," Montesquieu wrote:



Richter / INTRODUCTION TO MONTESQUIEU [1371

All effects whatever have causes: climate and other physical causes produce an infinite number of effects. Had the author asserted the contrary, he would have been thought stupid. The whole question may be reduced to that of knowing whether in countries far removed from us, whether under different climates, there are characteristics of mind that are [distinctively] nationaL That such differences do exist is the consensus of almost all books on this subject.... In a word, this physics of the climate may produce a variety of dispositions in the minds of men; such dispositions may influence human actions....

In his "Responses and Explanations given to the Faculty of Theology," Montesquieu replied to the criticism of a clerical writer who had reproached him for attributing all effects to climate:

It would appear that the author of the Spirit of the Laws ought to be the last to be accused of having ignored the power of moral causes, and hence, morality itself. If he has spoken much of moral causes throughout almost all of his work, because it involved moral causes. And it may be said that the book called the Spirit of the Laws consists of a perpetual triumph of morality

9 over climate, or rather of the general triumph over physical causes.

NOTES

1. The best edition of Montesquieu is that of Andre Masson, Oeuvres Completes de Montesquieu (3 vols; Paris: Nagel, 1950-1955). It reprints the best eighteenth- century edition with corrections by Montesquieu and has the most complete version of his correspondence, a chronological arrangement of Montesquieu's notebooks, and a number of valuable articles, including R. Shackleton's analysis of the hands in which Montesquieu's manuscripts were copied by his secretaries. The most available edition is that of Roger Caillois, Montesquieu: Oeuvres Completes (2 vols; Paris: Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1949-195 1), but he did not include any correspondence, and he reproduced a topical arrangement of Montesquieu's notebooks. Thus those using the Caillois cannot determine when his ideas occurred to Montesquieu. Masson does date them with the aid of Shackleton's discovery. In 1939, the Bibliotheque Nationale acquired from Montesquieu's family the only surviving manuscript of De l'Esprit des Lois As yet there is no critical variorum edition that collates the 1758 edition with the manuscript. The edition that comes closest to doing so is De l'Esprit des Lois, ed. Jean Brethe de la Gressaye (4 vols; Paris: Les belles Lettres, 1950-196 1). The best critical editions of the Lettres Persanes are those of H. Barckhausen (Paris, 1897), Antoine Adam (Geneva and Lille, 1954), and Paul Verniere (Paris, 1960); of the Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de Leur De'cadence, the best editions are by H. Barckhausen (Paris, 1900), and Gonzague Truc (Paris, 1954). I have followed the Masson version of the text For the date of the essay, see



[1381 POLITICAL THEORY / MAY 1976

Robert Shackleton, "The Evolution of Montesquieu's Theory of Climate," Revue internationale de philosophie 9 (1955), 317-329.

2. In Melanges inedits de Montesquieu, ed. Baron de Montesquieu [and R. Celestel (Bordeaux and Paris, 1892).

3. The title of Book XIV, chapter 5 of the Spirit of the Laws is: "Bad legislators favor those vices produced by climate; good legislators, oppose them." This chapter is translated in The Political Theory of Montesquieu, trans., ed., and with an introduction by Melvin Richter (to be published by the Cambridge University Press, 1976).

4. Jean Ehrard, l'Idee de Nature en France dans la premiere moiti du XVIIIe siecle (2 vols; Paris, 1963), II, 726 et seq.

5. Persian Letters, CXXI. Two good translations of the Persian Letters are those by J. Robert Loy (Cleveland, 1961) and George R. Healy (Indianapolis, 1964).

6. Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Romans' Greatness and Decline, ch. XVIII.

7. Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1961), pp. 314-3 15.

8. Montesquieu, Defense de l'Esprit des Loix, seconde partie, in Masson, Oeuvres Completes, I, 465-466; Caillois, Montesquieu: Oeuvres Completes, II, 1145.

9. Montesquieu, Reponses et explications donn&es a la faculte de theologie, in Masson, Oeuvres Compltes, III, 651; Caillois, Montesquieu: Oeuvres Completes, II, 1175.

Melvin Richter is a Professor of Political Science in the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He is the author of The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age, the editor of and a contributor to Essays in Theory and History, and the editor and translator of The Political Theory of Montesquieu (forthcoming, 1976). A former Chairman and Secretary- Treasurer of the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, he is editing its 1975 papers on "How Ought the Next Generation of Political Philosophers Be Trained."



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