Brazilian literature - Cristo Raul

lo BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
belongs the excessive heat, in conjunction with the
droughts in the major part of the country, as well as the
malignant fevers prevalent on the coast. Chief among
the second is the "relative incapacity" of the three
races that comprise the population. To the last be-
long the "historic factors called politics, legislation,
habits, customs, which are effects that afterward act
as causes."
Ronaldo de Carvalho ^ 'considers Romero's reply
somewhat timid, inasmuch as he accepts, erroneously,
many of Buckle's conclusions. Buckle's passage "is not,
as it appeared to the illustrious Brazilian writer, 'true in
a general sense.' Yet it should 'be meditated upon by
all Brazilians', that they may see what a dangerous snare
it is to rely so much, in our inveterate fondness for
things foreign, upon the notions imported from the
intellectual markets on the other side of the Atlan-
tic. . . . Buckle's error consisted in considering the
evolution of peoples solely under the influence of physical
and geographical factors; more enduring than these are
the ethnico-historical factors, which are much more important
and far more powerful than the first." Dc
Carvalho adds little to Romero's refutation, which. In
substance, he repeats. At the time that Buckle's first
volume was originally published (1857), BrazIHan literature
had long entered upon an autonomous career
and was In the throes of Romanticism, which in Brazil
was an era of intense and highly fruitful production.
He can hardly be blamed for his ignorance on this score,
when an authority like Ferdinand Wolf, writing his Le
Bresil Litteraire some six years later, is accused by the
8 Op. Cit. 16-17.