8 - The Influence of Climate on Character

Summary

Editors’ Note

Rev. W.M. Runciman’s essay of 1915 highlights the continued importance of social Darwinist and environmental determinism in the Society’s papers. Runciman was a Presbyterian minister and associated with other ministers like W. Murray, who was also a member of the Society. Runciman’s essay took up the theme of environmental influence on character and race which had been the focus of Ridley’s earlier contributions. Whereas Ridley saw racial difference in far starker terms, and government attempts to intervene in processes of natural selection as harmful, Runciman would differ. Runciman saw climate as playing a determining role in racial characteristics, preventing permanent European settlement of the tropics and modifying settled races elsewhere. Yet this was not to assume that racial differences were solely subjected to the environment. He surmised that the development of human society, science and religion “of the right type”, could counteract the negative effects of climate on societies, thus making their reform and “improvement” possible.

To those who live among or have travelled among peoples differing widely from their own nation, there must always be a great interest attached to the study of the differences and the reasons for them. There are perhaps few places in the world so favourably placed as Singapore as a meeting place for various types of humanity, representing several races. Under our tropic sun we have men from the Land of the Midnight Sun, as well as those whose home is anywhere on that imaginary line that from time immemorial has been running round the earth. From many spots between the Arctic Circle and the Equator men have congregated in this land of sunshine and shower.

It is surely a useful question to ask if the change of climate has an influence, beneficial or disadvantageous, upon those who immigrate here, for short or long periods. It has been asserted that to man belongs the exclusive privilege of being a denizen of every region of the earth. While plants and animals have their particular habitats, man can make his abode anywhere, from the Torrid to the Arctic zone, from sea-level to mountain-top, from the depths of the sea to the heights of the atmosphere.