Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/371

Rh to rise, and with the microscope the miliary glands began to appear.

This observation confirms what I have been saying, that in cold countries the nervous glands are less spread; they sink deeper into their sheaths, or they are sheltered from the action of external objects. Consequently they have not such lively sensations.

In cold countries, they have very little sensibility for pleasure; in temperate countries they have more; in warm countries their sensibility is exquisite. As climates are distinguished by degrees of latitude, we might distinguish them also, in some measure, by degrees of sensibility. I have seen the operas of England and of Italy; they are the same pieces and the same performers; and yet the same music produces such different effects on the two nations, one is so cold and indifferent, and the other so transported, that it seems almost inconceivable.

It is the same with regard to pain; which is excited by the laceration of some fibre of the body. The author of nature has made it an established rule that this pain should be more acute in proportion as the laceration is greater: now it is evident that the large bodies and coarse fibres of the people of the north are less capable of laceration than the delicate fibres of the inhabitants of warm countries; consequently the soul is there less sensible of pain. You must slay a Muscovite alive to make him feel.

From this delicacy of organs peculiar to warm climates, it follows, that the soul is most sensibly moved by whatever has a relation to the union of the two sexes: here every thing leads to this object. Rh