a trifle more
erratic. With them or without them, the course of things would have been
much the same.

As an illustration of the truth of his view, he would point to the new
science of Political Economy. Here already was a large area of human
activity in which natural laws were found to act unerringly. Men had
gone on for centuries trying to regulate trade on moral principles. They
would fix wages according to some imaginary rule of fairness; they would
fix prices by what they considered things ought to cost; they encouraged
one trade or discouraged another, for moral reasons. They might as well
have tried to work a steam-engine on moral reasons. The great statesmen
whose names were connected with these enterprises might have as well
legislated that water should run up-hill. There were natural laws, fixed
in the conditions of things: and to contend against them was the old
battle of the Titans against the gods.

As it was with political economy, so it was with all other forms of
human activity; and as the true laws of political economy explained the
troubles which people fell into in old times, because they were ignorant
of them, so the true laws of human nature, as soon as we knew them,
would explain their mistakes in more serious matters, and enable us to
manage better for the future. Geographical position, climate, air, soil,
and the like, had their several influences. The northern nations are
hardy and industrious, because they must till the earth if they would
eat the fruits of it, and because the temperature is too low to make an
idle life enjoyable. In the south, the soil is more productive, while
less food is wanted and fewer clothes; and in the exquisite air,
exertion is not needed to make the sense of existence delightful.
Therefore, in the south we find men lazy and indolent.

True, there are difficulties in these views; the home of the languid
Italian was the home also of the sternest race of whom the story of
mankind retains a record. And again, when we are told that the Spaniards
are superstitious, because Spain is a country of earthquakes, we
remember Japan, the spot in all the world where earthquakes are most
frequent, and where at the same time there is the most serene disbelief
in any supernatural agency whatsoever.

Moreover, if men grow into what they are by natural laws, they cannot
help being what they are; and if they cannot help being what they are, a
good deal will have to be altered in our