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.
BODILY SUFFERING DEPENDENT UPON ORGANISATION OF NERVOUS SYSTEM.
To differences in the degree of sensibility of the nervous system, together with the varying amount of the peripheral ramifications distributed to the external surface, must be ascribed the different amount of suffering experienced upon the application of inordinate stimuli to the nerves. The will is undoubtedly capable of exerting very great control over the manifestations of feeling called forth by such painful impressions upon sentient nerves. Of this Roman history affords us many notable examples. But it seems probable that the Romans were not endowed with a nervous system so delicately organised as that of the more highly civilised Greeks; witness the general structure of their language and their comparative inferiority in the fine arts. Neither heroism, nor philosophy, nor even religion, can prevent some organisations from exhibiting manifestations of great pain from impressions upon nerves, which in others would occasion but a moderate amount of suffering; a physical necessity compels them to manifest evidences of intense feeling; and thus, by a rude shock inflicted upon the nervous system, a mathematician may be at once recalled from the contemplation of other spheres, or a metaphysician from the most sublime speculations on the nature and essence of the Deity.