The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic PsychologyBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Science
The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic Psychology
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Ethnopsychology; Sociology
Malaria is the curse of plains and lowlands, while mountainous regions
have almost the monopoly of goitre and cretinism. These endemic maladies
directly diminish the mental powers through disturbing the circulation
of the brain. They contribute largely to the inferior intellectual
status of mountaineers, already prepared by the isolation of their
lives.
The most important ethnic question in connection with climate is that of
the possibility of a race adapting itself to climatic conditions widely
different from those to which it has been accustomed. This is the
question of Acclimatisation.
Its bearings on ethnic psychology can be made at once evident by posing
a few practical inquiries: Can the English people flourish in India?
Will the French colonise successfully the Sudan? Have the Europeans lost
or gained in power by their migration to the United States? Can the
white or any other race ultimately become the sole residents of the
globe?
It will be seen that on the answers to such questions depends the
destiny of races and the consequences to the species of the facilities
of transportation offered by modern inventions. The subject has
therefore received the careful study of medical geographers and
statisticians.
I can give but a brief statement of their conclusions. They are to the
effect, first, that when the migration takes place along approximately
the same isothermal lines, the changes in the system are slight; but as
the mean annual temperature rises, the body becomes increasingly unable
to resist its deleterious action until a difference of 18° F. is
reached, at which continued existence of the more northern race becomes
impossible.
They suffer from a chemical change in the condition of the blood-cells,
leading to anæmia in the individual and to extinction of the lineage in
the third generation.
This is the general law of the relation to race and climate. Like most
laws, it has its exceptions, depending on special conditions. A stock
which has long been accustomed to change of climate adapts itself to any
with greater facility. This explains the singular readiness of the Jews
to settle and flourish in all zones. For a similar reason a people who
at home are accustomed to a climate of wide and sudden changes, like
that of the eastern United States, supports others with less loss of
power than the average.
A locality may be extremely hot, but unusually free from other malefic
influences, being dry, with regular and moderate winds, and well
drained, such as certain areas between the Red Sea and the Nile, which
are also quite salubrious.
Finally, certain individuals and certain families, owing to some
fortunate power of resistance which we cannot explain, acclimate
successfully where their companions perish. Most of the instances of
alleged successful acclimatisation of Europeans in the tropics are due
to such exceptions, the far greater number of the victims being left out
of the count.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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