History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3. Henry Buckley
which regulate the relation they bear to man, we shall find that in each division the most important agent is climate. When men live in a hot country, their animal heat is more easily kept up than when they live in a cold one; therefore they require a smaller amount of that non-azotized food, the sole business of which is to maintain at a certain point the temperature of the body. In the same way, they, in the hot country, require a smaller amount of azotized food, because on the whole their bodily exertions are less frequent, and on that account the decay of their tissues is less rapid.66
Since, therefore, the inhabitants of hot climates do, in their natural and ordinary state, consume less food than the inhabitants of cold ones, it inevitably follows that, provided other things remain equal, the growth of population will be more rapid in countries which are hot than in those which are cold. For practical purposes, it is immaterial whether the greater plenty of a substance by which the people are fed arises from a larger supply, or whether it arises from a smaller consumption. When men eat less, the result will be just the same as if they had more; because the same amount of nutriment will go farther, and thus population will gain a power of increasing more quickly than it could do in a colder country, where, even if provisions were equally abundant, they, owing to the climate, would be sooner exhausted.
This is the first point of view in which the laws of climate are, through the medium of food, connected with the laws of population, and therefore with the laws of the distribution of wealth. But there is also another point of view, which follows the same line of thought, and will be found to strengthen the argument just stated. This is, that in cold countries, not only are men compelled to eat more than in hot ones, but their food is dearer, that is to say, to get it is more difficult, and requires a greater expenditure of labour. The reason of this I will state as briefly as possible, without entering into any details beyond those which are absolutely necessary for a right understanding of this interesting subject.
The objects of food are, as we have seen, only two: namely, to keep up the warmth of the body, and repair the waste in the tissues.67 Of these two objects, the former is effected by the oxygen of the air entering our lungs, and, as it travels through the system, combining with the carbon which we take in our food.68 This combination of oxygen and carbon never can occur without producing a considerable amount of heat, and it is in this way that the human frame is maintained at its necessary temperature.69 By virtue of a law familiar to chemists, carbon and oxygen, like all other elements, will only unite in certain definite proportions;70 so that to keep up a healthy balance, it is needful that the food which contains the carbon should vary according to the amount of oxygen taken in: while it is equally needful that we should increase the quantity of both of these constituents whenever a greater external cold lowers the temperature of the body. Now it is obvious that in a very cold climate, this necessity of providing a nutriment more highly carbonized will arise in two distinct ways. In the first place, the air being denser, men imbibe at each inspiration a greater volume of oxygen than they would do in a climate where the air is rarefied by heat.71 In the second place, cold accelerates their respiration, and thus obliging them to inhale more frequently than the inhabitants of hot countries, increases the amount of oxygen which they on an average take in.72 On both these grounds the consumption of oxygen becomes greater: it is therefore requisite that the consumption of carbon should also be greater; since by the union of these two elements in certain definite proportions, the temperature of the body and the balance of the human frame can alone be maintained.73
Proceeding from these chemical and physiological principles, we arrive at the conclusion, that the colder the country is in which a people live, the more highly carbonized will be their food. And this, which is a purely scientific inference, has been verified by actual experiment. The inhabitants of the polar regions consume large quantities of whale-oil and blubber; while within the tropics such food would soon put an end to life, and therefore the ordinary diet consists almost entirely of fruit, rice, and other vegetables. Now it has been ascertained by careful analysis, that in the polar food there is an excess of carbon; in the tropical food an excess of oxygen. Without entering into details, which to the majority of readers would be distasteful, it may be said generally, that the oils contain about six times as much carbon as the fruits, and that they have in them very little oxygen;74 while starch, which is the most universal, and, in reference to nutrition, the most important constituent in the vegetable world,75 is nearly half oxygen.76
The connexion between this circumstance and the subject before us is highly curious: for it is a most remarkable fact, and one to which I would call particular attention, that owing to some more general law, of which we are ignorant, highly carbonized food is more costly than food in which comparatively little carbon is found. The fruits of the earth, of which oxygen is the most active principle, are very abundant; they may be obtained without danger, and almost without trouble. But that highly carbonized food, which in a very cold climate is absolutely necessary to life, is not produced in so facile and spontaneous a manner. It is not, like vegetables, thrown up by the soil; but it consists of the fat, the blubber, and the oil77 of powerful and ferocious animals. To procure it, man must incur great risk and expend great labour. And although this is undoubtedly a contrast of extreme cases, still it is evident that the nearer a people approach to either extremity, the more subject will they be to the conditions by which that extremity is governed. It is evident that, as a general rule, the colder a country is, the more its food will be carbonized; the warmer it is, the more its food will be oxidized.78 At the same time, carbonized food, being chiefly drawn from the animal world, is more difficult to obtain than oxidized food, which is drawn from the vegetable world.79 The result has been that among nations where the coldness of the climate renders a highly carbonized diet essential, there is for the most part displayed, even in the infancy of society, a bolder and more adventurous character, than we find among those other nations whose ordinary nutriment, being highly oxidized, is easily obtained, and indeed is supplied to them, by the bounty of nature, gratuitously and without a struggle.80 From this original divergence there follow many other consequences, which, however, I am not now concerned to trace; my present object being merely to point out how this difference of food affects the proportion in which wealth is distributed to the different classes.
The way in which this proportion is actually altered has, I hope, been made clear by the preceding argument; but it may be useful to recapitulate the facts on which the argument is based. The facts, then, are simply these. The rate of wages fluctuates with the population; increasing when the labour-market is under-supplied, diminishing when it is over-supplied. The population itself, though affected by many other circumstances, does undoubtedly fluctuate with the supply of food; advancing when the supply is plentiful, halting or receding when the supply is scanty. The food essential to life is scarcer in cold countries than in hot ones; and not only is it scarcer, but more of it is required;81 so that on both grounds smaller encouragement is given to the growth of that population from whose ranks the labour-market is stocked. To express, therefore, the conclusion in its simplest form, we may say, that there is a strong and constant tendency in hot countries for wages to be low, in cold countries for them to be high.
Applying now this great principle to the general course of history, we shall find proofs of its accuracy in every direction. Indeed, there is not a single instance to the contrary. In Asia, in Africa, and in America, all the ancient civilizations were seated in hot climates; and in all of them the rate of wages was very low, and therefore the condition of the labouring classes very depressed. In Europe, for the first time, civilization arose in a colder climate: hence the reward of labour was increased, and the distribution of wealth rendered more equal than was possible in countries
The evidence of an universal connexion in the animal frame between exertion and decay, is now almost complete. In regard to the muscular system, see
Though both objects are equally essential, the former is usually the more pressing; and it has been ascertained by experiment, what we should expect from theory, that when animals are starved to death, there is a progressive decline in the temperature of their bodies; so that the proximate cause of death by starvation is not weakness, but cold. See
Until the last twenty or five-and-twenty years, it used to be supposed that this combination took place in the lungs; but more careful experiments have made it probable that the oxygen unites with the carbon in the circulation, and that the blood-corpuscules are the carriers of the oxygen. Compare
On the amount of heat disengaged by the union of carbon and oxygen, see the experiments of Dulong, in
The law of definite proportions, which, since the brilliant discoveries by Dalton, is the corner-stone of chemical knowledge, is laid down with admirable clearness in
‘Ainsi, dans des temps égaux, la quantité d'oxygène consommée par le même animal est d'autant plus grande que la température ambiante est moins élevée.’
‘The consumption of oxygen in a given time may be expressed by the number of respirations.’
If we now put these facts together, their bearing on the propositions in the text will become evident; because, on the whole, there is more exercise taken in cold climates than in hot ones, and there must therefore be an increased respiratory action. For proof that greater exercise is both taken and required, compare
See the note at the end of this chapter.
‘The fruits used by the inhabitants of southern climes do not contain, in a fresh state, more than 12 per cent. of carbon; while the blubber and train-oil which feed the inhabitants of polar regions contain 66 to 80 per cent. of that element.’
‘So common, that no plant is destitute of it.’
The oxygen is 49.39 out of 100. See the table in
Of which a single whale will yield ‘cent vingt tonneaux.’
It is said, that to keep a person in health, his food, even in the temperate parts of Europe, should contain ‘a full eighth more carbon in winter than in summer.’
The most highly carbonized of all foods are undoubtedly yielded by animals; the most highly oxidized by vegetables. In the vegetable kingdom there is, however, so much carbon, that its predominance, accompanied with the rarity of nitrogen, has induced chemical botanists to characterize plants as carbonized, and animals as azotized. But we have here to attend to a double antithesis. Vegetables are carbonized in so far as they are non-azotized; but they are oxidized in opposition to the highly carbonized animal food of cold countries. Besides this, it is important to observe that the carbon of vegetables is most abundant in the woody and unnutritious part, which is not eaten; while the carbon of animals is found in the fatty and oily parts, which are not only eaten, but are, in cold countries, greedily devoured.
Sir J. Malcolm (
‘Cabanis’ (