And of the influence of climate and temperature in forming the
nature of man (a conception perhaps pressed too far in modern days
when the 'race theory' is supposed to be a sufficient explanation
of the Hindoo, and the latitude and longitude of a country the best
guide to its morals(6)) Aristotle is completely unaware. I do not
allude to such smaller points as the oligarchical tendencies of a
horse-breeding country and the democratic influence of the
proximity of the sea (important though they are for the
consideration of Greek history), but rather to those wider views in
the seventh book of his POLITICS, where he attributes the happy
union in the Greek character of intellectual attainments with the
spirit of progress to the temperate climate they enjoyed, and
points out how the extreme cold of the north dulls the mental
faculties of its inhabitants and renders them incapable of social
organisation or extended empire; while to the enervating heat of
eastern countries was due that want of spirit and bravery which
then, as now, was the characteristic of the population in that
quarter of the globe.

Thucydides has shown the causal connection between political
revolutions and the fertility of the soil, but goes a step farther
and points out the psychological influences on a people's character
exercised by the various extremes of climate - in both cases the
first appearance of a most valuable form of historical criticism.

To the development of Dialectic, as to God, intervals of time are
of no account. From Plato and Aristotle we pass direct to
Polybius.