"Several things govern men," he says, "climate, religion, laws, precepts of government, historical examples, morals, and manners, whence is formed as their result a general mind (esprit general)." This co-ordination of climate with products of social life is characteristic of his unsystematic thought.
But the remark which the author went on to make, that there is always a correlation between the laws of a people and its esprit general, was important.

It pointed to the theory that all the products of social life are closely interrelated.
In Montesquieu's time people were under the illusion that legislation has an almost unlimited power to modify social conditions.

We have seen this in the case of Saint-Pierre.

Montesquieu's conception of general laws should have been an antidote to this belief.

It had however less effect on his contemporaries than we might have expected, and they found more to their purpose in what he said of the influence of laws on manners.