society and economic status
downward, while in the cooler countries of the Temperate Zone, the
process is upward. The laborer of the north, owing to his providence and
larger profits, which render small economies possible, is constantly
recruited into the class of the capitalist.

[Sidenote: Contrasted temperaments in the same nation.]

Everywhere a cold climate puts a steadying hand on the human heart and
brain. It gives an autumn tinge to life. Among the folk of warmer lands
eternal spring holds sway. National life and temperament have the
buoyancy and thoughtlessness of childhood, its charm and its weakness.
These distinctions and contrasts meet us everywhere. The southern
Chinese, and especially the Cantonese, is more irresponsible and
hot-blooded than the Celestial of the north, though the bitter struggle
for existence in the over-crowded Kwangtung province has made him quite
as industrious; but on his holidays he takes his pleasure in singing,
gambling, and various forms of dissipation. The southern Russian is
described as more light-hearted than his kinsman of the bleaker north,
though both are touched with the melancholy of the Slav. In this case,
however, the question immediately arises, how far the dweller of the
southern wheat lands owes his happy disposition to the easy conditions
of life in the fertile Ukraine, as opposed to the fiercer struggle for
subsistence in the glaciated lake and forest belt of the north. Similar
distinctions of climate and national temperament exist in the two
sections of Germany. The contrast between the energetic, enterprising,
self-contained Saxon of the Baltic lowland and the genial, spontaneous
Bavarian or Swabian is conspicuous, though the only geographical
advantage possessed by the latter is a warmer temperature attended by a
sunnier sky. He contains in his blood a considerable infusion of the
Alpine stock and is therefore racially differentiated from the northern
Teuton,[1428] but this hardly accounts for the difference of temperament,
because the same Alpine stock is plodding, earnest and rather stolid on
the northern slope of the Alps, but in the warm air and sunshine of the
southern slope, it abates these qualities and conforms more nearly to
the Italian type of character. The North Italian, however, presents a
striking contrast to the indolent, irresponsible, improvident citizens
of Naples, Calabria and Sicily, who belong to the contrasted
Mediterranean race, and have