Vegetti M
Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Pavia, Italia.
Med Secoli. 1995;7(3):611-9.
The treatise can be considered as one of the first and most important writings of the ancient ethnology. Its most outstanding character consists in an interrelated analysis of the influence both of natural environment and of the political and social conditions on pathology and on the different ways of life. If the natural and climatic aspects of the human habitat play a basic role in determining the health conditions as well as the psychic characters of different populations, it is also true that the political institutions can counteract on these environmental factors. In particular, freedom and democracy may improve the moral and intellectual attitudes of men, while dispotic forms of power make them unwilling to fight and to exercise autonomous judgement. The psychological and intellectual superiority of the Greeks should be traced back to their democratic institutions, that could apply to other people as well.
该论文可被视为古代民族学最早且最重要的著作之一。其最显著的特点在于对自然环境以及政治和社会状况对病理学及不同生活方式的影响进行了相互关联的分析。如果人类栖息地的自然和气候方面在决定不同人群的健康状况以及心理特征方面起着基础性作用，那么政治制度也能够对这些环境因素产生反作用这一点同样成立。特别是，自由和民主可能会改善人们的道德和智力态度，而专制的权力形式则会使人们不愿战斗且不愿进行自主判断。希腊人的心理和智力优势应追溯至他们的民主体制，这种体制也同样适用于其他民族。
