CHAPTER XII.. Normal Characters.[240]

NORMAL CHARACTERS.

Necessity of the synthetic point of view in psychology—Historical summary of theories of character: physiological direction, psychological direction—Two marks of the real character: unity, stability—Elimination of acquired characters—Classificatory procedure: four degrees—Genera: the sensitive, the active, the apathetic—Species—Secondary function of the intellect: its mode of action—Sensitives: the humble, the contemplative, the analytical, the purely emotional—Active type: the medium, the superior—Apathetic type: pure type, intelligent type, calculators—Varieties: the sensitive-active, the apathetic-active, the apathetic-sensitive, the temperate—Substitutes for character: partial characters; (a) intellectual form, (b) emotional form.

Several writers have on various occasions pointed out, with some reason, that the great analytical work carried on in our day, in the domain of psychology, ought to be completed by studies of a directly opposite character; i.e., analytic and abstract psychology has as its indispensable complement a synthetic and concrete psychology. Like every other science, ordinary psychology proceeds by means of generalities. Whether it is concerned with percepts or concepts, with the association of ideas or with movements, with the attention or the emotions, it takes these manifestations, wherever it finds them, in men or in animals, and attempts to explain them by tracing them back to their most general conditions. It starts with the implied assumption that instincts, habits, intellectual, emotional, voluntary phenomena are to be found in every man. But in what proportions are these elements combined in order to constitute the various psychological individualities? What complex assemblages can they produce? Is there a preponderance of emotion, intelligence, or action? Has the preponderance of one any influence on the development of the rest? These questions, and many other analogous ones, are not put by analytical psychology, and justly so, because they do not come within its province. Yet it is worth while to put them, were it only for the sake of practical utility.

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Footnote 240:

This chapter was published as an article in October 1893; it has been left unchanged as far as the main argument is concerned.

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It has been said with regard to medicine that “there are no diseases, only diseased persons.” This is why pathological treatises, describing the general characteristics of a disease in the abstract, are necessarily supplemented by those clinical studies which describe concrete, particular cases. In the same way, in psychology, it might be said that there is no such thing as humanity, but only human beings. It is not sufficient to describe the manifestations of the mind in general, we must also take into account the individuals in whom they are incarnated and the varieties which they reveal to us. The synthetic point of view is neither visionary nor negligible, and less so in psychology than elsewhere.

A very widespread error consists in believing that when we have resolved a complex whole into its elements we have all the constituents. We are apt to forget that the greater number of combinations resemble rather chemical combinations than simple mixtures, that they are not formed by simple addition, and that there is more in the synthesis than there can be in the analysis.

The elimination of the synthetic point of view becomes less and less admissible as we rise from inorganic nature to life, consciousness, society. Even in the inorganic world, which contains only the general properties of matter in the rough, certain composite bodies already show a sort of individuality—i.e., a way of acting and reacting peculiar to themselves. This is best seen in crystals; their growth may be interrupted and go on again; when broken or mutilated they can repair their losses; they may undergo disaggregation or profound modification, but so long as one portion remains unaltered it still has the power of growing and escaping “senility.” Two totally different substances, even, may be almost inextricably intertwined, while preserving each its own individuality. In the world of life the cell and the ovule have a very definite individuality; then come aggregates of a vague, unstable, and precarious unity, such as those of vegetables, hydrozoa, and those fixed or wandering animal colonies which have been called federations; but after passing through these stages of evolution, the higher animal forms assert their individuality so decidedly that argument is needless. The same may be said of psychology. What has not been said of the unity and utility of the ego, considered as a simple and indissoluble entity? The present writer will not be suspected of an inclination towards this view. Yet it must be acknowledged that we have been so much occupied of late years with disturbances, alterations, disaggregations, and dissolutions of personality, that the triumph of the analytical method has been complete, and the synthetic side of the subject somewhat neglected.

Without insisting on a question of too great extent to be treated incidentally—viz., the opposition between analytic and synthetic psychology,—we may say that there are two equally legitimate ways of considering all things in nature: the analytic, abstract manner, which recognises only laws, genera, species, generalities; and the synthetic, concrete manner, which sees only particular facts, events, individuals. Each one presupposes and completes the other: they are two stages of the same method.

So far it is clear that, in the new psychology, the analytic process has prevailed. In spite of these unfavourable conditions, some valuable work has been done in the other direction, the principal being the determination of certain types of imagination, visual, auditory, motor, and other varieties. But the chief problem proposed to synthetic psychology is elsewhere, in the region of action, not of knowledge. It is practical, and consists in determining the principal types of individuality from the kind of action and reaction which has its source in the feelings and the will. This is called by a name slightly vague, but consecrated by usage—character.

The aim of the present chapter is not to treat this difficult subject, but simply to attempt a classification of characters, and to show their relations with affective psychology.

I shall pass by in silence the history of the question; it would be long and monotonous. It seems to me that it has developed in two directions, one especially physiological, the other especially psychological.

The physiological theory is very ancient, and was for centuries the only one current. It is summed up in the classical doctrine of the four temperaments, which dates from the Greek physicians. These great observers had deduced it from their long experience, adding, it is true, chimerical hypotheses as to the predominance of the liquids of the organism or the cosmic elements. Criticised, defended, abandoned, taken up again, modified, increased by Cabanis by the addition of the nervous and muscular temperaments, reduced by others to three, it has remained substantially the same up to the present day. Psychology has been content with adapting this arrangement to its own use, and translating the terms into its own language. For the rest, this work was, so to speak, done in advance; for the description of each temperament enumerates not merely physical, but also psychical characteristics. The sanguine is reputed to be light, versatile, superficial, accommodating; the melancholic, deep, self-involved, hesitating; the choleric has an active imagination, and intense, tenacious passions, difficult to supplant; the lymphatic (or phlegmatic) is soft, cold, with slow reactions and dull imagination. The detailed description of these four types may be found almost anywhere, so that I need not dwell on them. I notice that, during the present century, it is mostly in Germany that this psycho-physiological theory has been dominant. Kant adopted and developed it (Anthropologie, Bk. III.). Lotze substitutes the term “sentimental” for that of “melancholic,” as being less equivocal; while Wundt, in his Physiologische Psychologie, reproduces Kant’s divisions almost unchanged.

The psychological theory is more recent, and, I believe, of English origin. We know that J. S. Mill demanded the constitution of a science of character (“Ethology”) to be deduced from the general laws of psychology. Bain seems to have attempted a response to this appeal in his book On the Study of Character (1861). This is not the place to analyse his work. Half of it is devoted to a criticism of the phrenologists, who also, in their way, were making an examination of our subject without paying much attention to the temperaments. It is only of importance to note that Bain’s position is strictly, rigorously psychological; he admits three fundamental types: the intellectual, emotional, and volitional or energetic. More recently, M. B. Perez has proposed a classification of characters, based solely on an objective phenomenon—viz., the movements, their rapidity and energy. He distinguishes, in the first place, the lively, the slow, and the eager; further, as mixed types, the lively-ardent (vifs-ardents), the slow-ardent, and the deliberate (pondérés). Paulhan traces back the law explaining the formation of character to a more general law: that of “systematic association—i.e., the aptitude inherent in every element, desire, idea, or image of exciting other elements which may associate themselves with it in working towards a common end.” He has given a very detailed description of the numerous and varied forms to be met with in ordinary life, illustrating it with a vast multitude of instances. Fouillée makes a separate study of temperaments and characters, and divides the latter into three categories: the “sensitive,” the “intellectual,” and the “voluntary,” with several subdivisions.

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Footnote 241:

B. Perez, Le caractère de l’enfant à l’homme, chap. i. With this objective classification may be compared the work of graphologists and of those who have devoted themselves to the expression of the emotions.

Footnote 242:

Paulhan, Les caractères (1894); Fouillée, Tempérament et caractère selon les individus, les sexes, et les races (1895). These two works have appeared since the first publication of the present chapter.

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If we now try to take up the question again at our own risk, the first thing to be done is clearly to determine the essential marks of a true individuality, a real character. This will permit us to eliminate at once all that resembles it, but is not: appearances, simulacra, phantoms of individuality.

In order to constitute a character, two conditions are necessary and sufficient: unity and stability.

Unity consists in a manner of acting and reacting which is always consistent with itself. In a true individuality the tendencies are convergent, or at least there is one which subdues the others to itself. If we consider man as a collection of instincts, cravings, and desires, they form, here, a tightly fastened bundle acting in one direction only.

Stability is merely unity continued in time. If it does not last, this cohesion of the desires is of no value for the determination of character. It must be maintained or repeated, always the same in identical or analogous circumstances. The special mark of a true character is, that it shall make its appearance in childhood and last through life. We know beforehand what it will or will not do in decisive circumstances. All this is as much as to say that a true character is innate.

This disposition might be found fault with as being too ideal. In truth, invariable characters, all of a piece, are rare enough; yet some exist, and it is the conscious or sub-conscious notion of this type which influences our judgment. There is an instinctive craving for this ideal unity in our psychological, moral, æsthetic conception of character. It does not please us to see a contradiction between a man’s beliefs and his acts. We are annoyed if an ascertained rascal should show a good side, or a very good person some weakness. Yet what more frequent? On the stage, or in a novel, undecided or contradictory characters do not attract us. This is because individuality appears to us as an organisation which must be governed by an inner logic following inflexible laws. We are very ready to put down to duplicity and hypocrisy what is often only a conflict between incoherent tendencies; and it is not the least important among the practical results of recent investigations into personality to have shown that its unity is merely ideal, and that, without going the length of mental dissolution and madness, it may be full of unreconciled contradictions.

These reserves being made, our definition of character has the advantage of supplying us with a criterion which remarkably simplifies our task; for it is clear that, among the innumerable individuals of the human species, there must be some, and these by far the greater number, who have neither unity nor stability nor personal characteristics peculiar to themselves. This immense number of defective cases, which are ruled out of our study, may be divided into two categories—the amorphous and the unstable.

The amorphous are legion. I understand, by this term, those who have no special form of their own, the acquired characters. In these there is nothing innate, nothing resembling a vocation; nature has made them plastic to excess. They are entirely the product of circumstances, of their environment, of the education they have received from men and things. Some other person, or, failing that, the social environment, wills for them, and acts through them. They are not voices, but echoes. They are this or that, according to circumstances. Chance decides on their occupation, their marriage, and other things; once caught in the machinery of life, they act like every one else. They represent, not an individual, but a specific, professional character; they are copies, to an unlimited number, of an original which once existed. It has been said that the production of amorphous people is the speciality of civilisation, to which we owe their present abundance. This is only half true. It is certain that excessive culture rubs down the angles of character, and that, by raising some and lowering others, it tends to a general dead level. But we must not forget that, at the other extreme of social life, in the savage state, where the manners, customs, ritual, traditions of the tribe or clan, which can neither be discussed nor infringed, weigh heavily on each individual, where every innovation is rejected with horror (this is what Lombroso calls misoneism), the conditions are also very unfavourable to individual development. It seems, if we may judge from history, as if the period best suited for the growth of true characters were the half-civilised ages, such as the first centuries of the Roman Republic and of the Middle Ages, or epochs of disturbance like the Italian Renaissance, and, in general, all periods of revolution.

The unstable are the disjecta and scoriæ of civilisation, which may justly be accused of multiplying them. They are the complete antithesis of our definition, having neither unity nor permanence. Capricious, changing from instant to instant, by turns inert and explosive, uncertain and disproportionate in their reactions, acting in the same manner under different circumstances, and varying their actions in the same circumstances, they are indefiniteness itself. These are, in different degrees, morbid forms, expressing the inability of tendencies and desires to attain cohesion, convergence, unity. We shall return to these in the next chapter.

These two categories being excluded, the first because they are simply a product of their environment, and the second as being only an incoherent bundle of almost impersonal impulses, there remain the self-existent characters, which we must attempt to classify. Like every good classification, this must be systematically conducted—i.e., descending, step by step, from the general to the particular. It must determine genera, species, varieties, and thus, at last, reach the individual. The principal defect in the doctrine of the four temperaments (adapted to psychology, as we have already seen) is that of being too general: it remains, as it were, suspended in air, without intermediary, without middle term, or anything to connect it with the individual. It states the genera, nothing more. For the rest, some writers appear to have perceived this lacuna, having described mixed temperaments, but they are far from being agreed as to the nature and number of the latter.

The attempt at classification I am about to make includes four degrees of increasing definiteness and diminishing generality. On the first stage, we have the most general conditions, a mere framework, almost empty, and not corresponding to any concrete reality, but analogous to the zoological and botanical genera. In the second degree (corresponding to species), we have the fundamental types of character, pure forms, but real, this time, and, later on, justified and verified by observation. In the third degree, the mixed or composite forms (corresponding to varieties) are less clearly defined than the preceding. In the fourth degree, we have those substitutes or equivalents for character (they might also be called partial characters) which depart more and more widely from the pure type, but, in many people, take its place.

II.

We may begin by laying down the most general conditions for the determination of character, the main guiding lines, the dominant traits which impress on it a clear and decisive mark.

As the psychic life, considered from the most general point of view, can be reduced to two fundamental manifestations: feeling and acting, we have in the first place, broadly speaking, distinguished two types: the sensitive and the active.

1. The sensitive, who might also be called the affective or emotional, have as their special characteristic the exclusive predominance of sensibility. Impressionable to excess, they are like instruments in a perpetual state of vibration, and their life is for the most part inward. The physiological bases of this type of character are not easy to enumerate; but if we admit what seems to me incontestable—viz., that the internal organic sensations of vegetative life are the principal source of the affective development, as external sensations are the source of the intellectual development,—we must admit also that here the balance inclines in favour of the first. It may be known by the extreme susceptibility of the nervous system to agreeable or disagreeable impressions. In general, this type may be said especially to include the pessimists; for experience as old as the world itself proves that sensitive subjects suffer more from a small misfortune than they enjoy a great happiness. Uneasy, timid, fearful, meditative, contemplative, such are the very vague terms in which they may be for the moment characterised, without passing beyond the region of generalities.

2. The active have as their dominant characteristic a natural and continually renewed tendency to action. They are like machines always in motion, and their life is mostly directed outwards. The physiological basis of this type of character consists in a rich fund of energy, a superabundance of life,—what Bain calls spontaneity,—which is very different from the intermittent and explosive reaction of the unstable, and which, in the end, amounts to a good state of nutrition. Taken in mass, and under their pure form, they are optimists, because they feel strong enough to struggle with obstacles and overcome them, and take pleasure in the struggle. Gay, enterprising, bold, daring, rash—such words describe their principal characteristics.

H. Schneider, in an interesting article on zoological psychology, has attempted to show that all special movements in the higher animals are only differentiations of two simple, primary movements: contraction and expansion. The tendency to contraction is the source of all impulses and reactions, including flight, by which the animal acts in a manner tending towards its own preservation. The tendency to expansion shows itself in impulses and instincts of an aggressive form: feeding, fighting, seizing on a female, etc. The antithesis between the sensitive and the active connects itself also with this fundamental contrast between contraction and expansion, between the tendency towards the inward life in some and that towards the outward life in others.

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Footnote 243:

Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, vol. iii.

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3. The above classification is not sufficient. No doubt, if we confine ourselves to theory, there is nothing to be taken into account beyond feeling and acting; but observation teaches us that it is necessary to form a third class, that of the apathetic, corresponding, on the whole, to the lymphatic temperament of physiology. Its general characteristics are very well defined; they consist in a state of atony—a lowering of the powers of feeling and acting beneath the ordinary level. The two other classes are positive; this is negative, but very real. The apathetic characters must not be confounded with the amorphous, the first being innate and the second acquired: the special mark of the pure type of apathetic is inertia. He is not plastic, like the amorphous type: there is no hold over him. He cannot feel enough to induce him to act. He is neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but indifferent. Idle, sluggish, inert, careless: such are the epithets which usually describe him. The physiological basis of his character is the often-described lymphatic constitution—lowering of the nervous tension, increase of the lymphatic circulation according to some, weakening of the circulation of the blood according to others. However, we must not conclude that it is only a barren soil, on which nothing will grow. Add a third element,—which till now we have purposely refrained from mentioning,—intelligence, and the apathetic character assumes an individuality, as we shall see presently.

In this definition of the genera, of the fundamental types reduced to their most general form, are we to admit a fourth type—the temperate? We might say that when we have (a) predominance of feeling, (b) predominance of action, (c) apathy in the absence of both the foregoing, there is required, as a complement, a fourth state of perfect equilibrium between sensibility and action. This type exists, but I cannot admit that it should be included in a primary definition. It is a mixed, composite form, whose study is consequently out of place here. Besides, we must not allow ourselves any illusions; every character is hypertrophied or atrophied; the “perfectly balanced” character is an ideal analogous to the temperamentum temperatum of physiologists; or else it approaches the amorphous.

III.

Leaving this very general classification, let us enter upon our definition of the second degree. Let us pass from genera to species. Here there enters on the scene a new factor: the intellectual dispositions.

The term feeling is applied to two distinct groups of psychic manifestations, originally confounded—the affective and the representative states. So far, in employing this term we have taken account of the affective states only, because they and the movements are the sole primary constituents of character. They form the lower stratum, which is the first to make its appearance: the intellectual dispositions form a second layer, superimposed on the first. What is fundamental in the character is the instincts, tendencies, impulses, desires, and feelings; all these, and nothing else. This fact is so easily verified, and so obvious, that there would be no need to insist on it if the majority of psychologists had not confused the question by their incurable intellectualist prejudices—i.e., by their efforts to connect everything with intelligence and explain everything by means of it, to lay it down as the irreducible type of mental life. This view is quite untenable, for just as, physiologically, the vegetative life precedes the animal life based on it, so, psychologically, the affective precedes the intellectual life, which is based on it. The groundwork of every animal is “appetite” in Spinoza’s sense, “will” in Schopenhauer’s—i.e., feeling and acting, not thinking. I do not wish to insist on this point, which would require to be developed at great length; I forbear, not on account of the scarcity, but of the superabundance of proof.

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Footnote 244:

I refer the reader to the brilliant chapter of Schopenhauer entitled “On the Primacy of Will,” while reminding him that, with this writer, “will” signifies tendency or feeling. (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, supplement to Book II., chap. xix.) I shall return to this subject in the Conclusion of this work.

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Let us confine ourselves to some decisive remarks which belong, in the strictest sense, to our subject. As the character expresses the inmost qualities of the individual, it can only be composed of essentially subjective elements, and these must not be sought among the intellectual qualities, since the intellect, in the ascending evolution from sensations to perceptions, images, concepts, tends more and more towards the impersonal.

We might in addition prove, by means of numerous examples, that the excessive development of the intelligence frequently involves atrophy of the character, clearly establishing their independence. The great manipulators of abstractions, confined to pure speculation, tend to reduce their ordinary life to a monotonous routine, whence emotion, passion, the unforeseen in action, are as far as possible excluded (Kant, Newton, Gauss, and many others). Schopenhauer was right in saying that many men of genius are “monsters by excess,” i.e., by hypertrophy of the intellectual faculties. “If normal man,” he says, “is made up of two-thirds will and one-third intellect, the man of genius consists of two-thirds intellect and one-third will.” There are exceptions, as we all know. They prove, not that the development of the intellect favours that of the character, but that in some cases it does not fetter it. Is it not also a matter of common observation that these two factors, character and intellect, are often discordant? Men think in one way and act in another; they write sublime treatises on a morality which they do not practise; they preach action and remain inactive; they have the tenderest hearts in the world, and dream of plans for universal destruction.

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Footnote 245:

Op. cit., supplement to Book III., chap. xxxi.

Footnote 246:

Need we recall the often-quoted cases of Francis Bacon, D’Alembert, etc.? On this point see Dr. Le Bon’s article in the Revue philosophique, vol. iv. p. 496.

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Intellect, then, is not a fundamental constituent of the character; it is its light, but not its life, nor, consequently, its action. The character sends its roots down into the unconscious—i.e., into the individual organism: this is what makes it so difficult to penetrate and modify. The intellectual dispositions can only exercise an indirect action in its constitution. We have now to see by what mechanism they do so.

We know that the various emotions (fear, anger, love, contempt, etc.) show themselves in certain spontaneous movements and attitudes of the body, which constitute their natural expression. Emotion is the cause; the movements are the effect. It is less generally known that movements and attitudes of the body, artificially produced, are capable (in some cases, and to a slighter degree) of exciting the corresponding emotions. Remain for some time in an attitude of sadness, and you will feel sad. By mingling in cheerful society and regulating your outward behaviour in accordance with it, you may awaken in yourself a transient gaiety. If the arm of a hypnotised subject is placed, with clenched fist, in a threatening attitude, the corresponding impression spontaneously appears in the face and in the rest of the body; the same holds good for the expressions of love, prayer, contempt, etc. Here the movement is the cause and the emotion the effect. The two cases are reducible to a single formula. There is an indissoluble association between a given movement and a given feeling. Emotion excites movements, movements excite emotion; but with this very important difference: that movements are not always capable of exciting emotion, and when they do succeed, the states they bring about are neither intense nor permanent. In a word, the action from without inwards is always inferior to the action from within outwards.

It is exactly the same psychological law which governs the relations between the affective and the intellectual dispositions in the manifestations of the character.

Let us (merely in a metaphorical way, and for the sake of making the matter clear) call the action of the feelings on the ideas, action from below upwards, and that of the ideas on the feelings, action from above downwards.

The action from below upwards is solid, tenacious, energetic, efficacious; it has its strength within itself, drawing it from the region of the unconscious—i.e., from the organisation. When it reaches the consciousness, it merely becomes sensible. Thus what is at first a vague sense of discomfort, asserts itself in the consciousness as hunger, and may lead to theft, murder, and all sorts of excesses. Another state of the organism shows itself in floating, indeterminate desires, then asserts itself as love for some particular being, and may in the end break out like a thunderstorm. It would be superfluous to review in like manner the whole of the passions, making the same comments. Whether simple or complex, their evolution is the same. The moral, religious, or æsthetic vocations have their periods of incubation, of revelation, and of action. The saying of Correggio, on looking at the painting of a master, whether true or false historically, is psychologically true.

On the other hand, the action from above downwards is unstable, vacillating, variable, weak, and of doubtful efficacy. It has only a borrowed, extrinsic force. The psychological (and often pedagogic) problem stated is the following: How to bring about intellectual states, ideal images, so that they may, if they can, provoke, by way of reaction, the corresponding feelings. The action is mediate, indirect, and usually fails or shows very poor results. The sensibility produced is entirely intellectual; and who does not know that intellectual passions are mere phantoms, which a real passion sweeps away like a gust of wind?

In conclusion, the action of the emotions on the movements resembles that of the feelings on the ideas; the action of the movements on the emotions is like that of the ideas on the feelings.

Having thus briefly established the secondary and superficial part played by the intellect in the formation of character, let us return to our classification. We are now face to face with real individuals, unequally endowed with energy, sensibility, and intelligence. Let us now take our three great skeleton divisions, and fill them up, one by one.

I. The Sensitive.—In this genus I distinguish three principal species, which I am about to describe, taking the simplest first, and consequently departing more and more from the pure type as we approach the mixed characters.

1. The first species cannot be designated by any proper name; it is that of the humble. Excessive sensibility, limited or moderate intelligence, no energy—such are their constituent elements. Every one knows such persons, for they are frequently met with. Their dominant note is timidity, fear, and all paralysing modes of feeling. Like La Fontaine’s hare, they live in perpetual uneasiness. They are afraid for themselves, for their families, for their small position or business, for the present, for the future. They worry themselves about everybody’s opinion, even that of unknown passers-by. They tremble for their salvation in the other life, and in this they feel their own nothingness, and the weight of the social organism pressing upon them, which, in most cases, they cannot understand. The smallest misadventure gives them a severe shock, because they are conscious of being weak, and without springs of action or the spirit of initiative.

There is no one who cannot affix one or more names to this portrait; but I need mention none in particular, just because they are humble. I have eliminated all pathological cases from this study; but I may point out, by way of illustration, that many hypochondriacs belong to this type, and show it in an exaggerated form.

2. The second species is that of the contemplative, distinguished from the preceding by a much higher intellectual development, so that their constituent elements may be enumerated in the following order: acute sensibility, sharp and penetrating intellect, no activity.

A tolerably large number of varieties may be grouped under this heading; they all resemble one another by having the above three marks in common:

The irresolute, like Hamlet, who feel and think deeply, but cannot pass to action.

Certain mystics, not the great ones, who have acted, and whom we shall find later on, but pure adepts of the Inner Life, such as may be found in all ages and countries—Hindu Yogis, Persian Sufis, Therapeutæ, monks of all creeds—plunged in the beatific vision, writing nothing and founding nothing, and, always in pursuit of their dream, passing through life without leaving a trace behind them.

The analysts, in the purely subjective sense—i.e., those who assiduously and minutely analyse themselves, who keep diaries, noting down from hour to hour the small changes of their inner life, the variations of their feelings according to the prevalent atmospheric influences. Such were Maine de Biran among psychologists and Alfieri among poets. For the rest, it is needless to mention particular names, since this mania for personal analysis has, in recent times, under the influence of excessive nervous excitement, of intellectual refinement, and the enervation of the will, become a disease. It should be noted that these sensitives are nearly all pessimists.

3. There still remains the third species, whom I shall call the emotional type, though not in the wide sense in which the word is used by Bain, who makes them into a class. In this type, which abounds in great names, the category of the sensitives attains its apogee. Activity is here added to the extreme impressionability and the intellectual subtlety of the contemplatives. But their activity has its own special characteristic: it is intermittent and sometimes spasmodic, because arising from an intense emotion, not from a permanent reserve of energy. The purely emotional character, says Bain, is inclined to indolence. Nothing can be juster, under an appearance of paradox. He only acts under the momentary influence of powerful motives, then he falls back into the inaction which is his essential nature; he alternates between impetuous energy and sudden collapse.

To this group belong many great artists: poets, musicians, and painters, capable of feverish activity when sustained by inspiration—i.e., by an unconscious impulse; then undergoing periods of exhaustion and impotence. We may cite, at random, Jean Paul Richter, Mozart, Rousseau. This last, as has frequently been demonstrated, should be regarded as a pathological case. The same may be said of certain orators, those who have “temperament.” It is only on certain occasions that they put forth their full power, when there is a cause, in which their feelings are deeply engaged, to be defended, or enemies to be overthrown.

II. The Active.—I divide this type into two species, according as the intellect is mediocre or powerful.

1. The species of the mediocre active shows us more clearly the distinctive traits of this form of character and the points in which it differs from the sensitive. “The active man does his work better [than the sensitive] because he can do the uninteresting drudgery, while the other neglects whatever has not an intense and sustaining interest. One man can take a walk without any object in view more engrossing than the prospective warding off of ill-health; the other cannot move abroad without a gun, or a fishing-rod, a companion or something to see.”

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Footnote 247:

Bain, Study of Character, p. 214.

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The active are strongly constructed machines, well supplied with vital force, and still more with potential energy. Look at a small shopkeeper belonging to this type, a man without talent or education; he wears himself out in continual goings and comings, in offers of service, in talk without end or cessation. It is not the love of gain alone which impels him, it is his very nature, he must be active. Put a sensitive in his place, he will do nothing but what is absolutely necessary, or what interests him. To this first group belong all those who have an abundant supply of physical energy and need an outlet for it: sportsmen, those who love an adventurous life without other aim than action, globe-trotters, who hurry about the world as fast as steam will take them, not for the sake of business or of acquiring knowledge, making no attempt to study the countries they pass through, either at the time, or before, or afterwards, hurrying to the end of their journeys in order to begin again. We may add those fighters who are actuated by no resentment or ill-feeling, but are merely letting off their superfluous energy. The mercenary armies of former times must have been recruited almost entirely among men of this type.

2. Let us now take the ordinary condottiere, such as the Italian republics had in their pay by the thousand, fine types of physical energy and mindless activity. On this robust stock, graft an intellect, powerful, penetrating, supple, refined, unscrupulous, thoroughly skilled in diplomacy, and the ordinary condottiere becomes Cæsar Borgia, and we pass from the lower to the higher form of the active character.

The latter, the great active types, abound in history, and play prominent parts in it. Unhappily, the line of separation between these and the mixed forms which we shall encounter later on is so vague that I hesitate to name any individuals. Julius Cæsar seems to belong to this pure type; Lucan’s line Nil actum reputans si quid superesse agendum, is the complete formula for the active. Nothing either in his life or his style indicates an acute sensibility, unless we reckon certain well-known passions, and his epileptic fits, which, however, prove nothing. We may also cite the Conquistadores of the sixteenth century (Cortez, Pizarro), those Spanish captains whose expeditions read like romances, who, with a handful of men as daring as themselves, overthrew the great empires of Mexico and Peru, and appeared to the vanquished as gods.

III. The Apathetic (lymphatic, or phlegmatic, in the ordinary classification of the temperaments).—I use this word in the etymological sense, to denote, not a complete absence of feeling, which is impossible, but a slight degree of excitability and consequently of reaction. We should be disposed to think, a priori, that this type of character never rises above mediocrity; experience, however, shows the contrary. It is here that intellect is paramount. In the silence of the passions, and the absence of physiological activity, it finds a medium suitable for its development.

Nowhere can we better see the influence of the intellectual powers on the constitution of the character, and the exact limits imposed on them by nature.

In this class, too, I distinguish two species:

1. The first is the pure apathetic type: slight sensibility, slight activity, slight intelligence, a negative state. There is little to add to what has been already said. They are at once above and below the amorphous: above, because they have their own special character, their indelible mark, inertia, which the amorphous have not; and below, because they meet external occurrences with a passive resistance. They are only slightly influenced by education or suggestion, not plastic, equally incapable of good and evil.

2. With a powerful intellect, the case is quite different; but we have to distinguish two cases, according as the intellectual tendencies are speculative or practical.

The first case is outside our subject. If a lymphatic temperament coincides with a lofty speculative intellect, which has occurred in a tolerably large number of mathematicians, metaphysicians, and scholars generally, we have to do with pure intellect only: these are Schopenhauer’s monstra per excessum, and I have nothing further to say of their character.

The second case, that of practical intellect, deserves attention, because it shows us a very special form of character, that which is the result of the action from above downwards, of the influence of ideas on feelings and movements. I call this group of characters the calculators. The ideas give the first impulse, and thus we observe a lack of spontaneity; the tendencies are only excited indirectly, the will is not a laisser faire, but an alternation of effort and inhibition: of effort, because the motor power of ideas is always very weak compared with that of desires; of inhibition, not because there are any violent movements to check, but because reflection is dominant and only allows of action at proper times and places. These characters might also be called reasonable, and they are the work of art much more than of nature. If this chapter were not exclusively devoted to individual psychology, I should point out that this form of character has been predominant among certain races, in certain tribes, and at certain epochs.

Benjamin Franklin is an excellent example: he is “the great genius of prudential calculation.” In his letter to Priestley entitled “Moral Algebra, or method of deciding doubtful matters for one’s self,” the reasons pro and con are entered opposite one another every day, after reflection for a sufficient, frequently a long, period; they are then compared, cancelled, balanced, and, this arithmetical operation concluded, we proceed to action.

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Footnote 248:

Reproduced in extenso in Bain, The Will, p. 413 (chap. vii.).

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Among the great names of history bearing this mark we may mention William the Silent; Louis XI., who, considering his epoch, was so devoid of the chivalrous spirit; Philip II., who would not be interrupted in his vespers by the news of the victory at Lepanto, and, shut up in that cold bare room which is still to be seen at the Escurial, concocted plots involving the fortunes of both worlds.

In more modest circumstances we may observe the same character in cold-hearted speculators, tenacious of purpose, who leave nothing to caprice, imagination, or chance—neither uplifted by success nor dejected by reverses.

To sum up: the three classes include great names. The celebrated sensitives have acted through the intensity and contagion of their feelings; the celebrated actives by the force of their energy imposing itself upon others; the great calculators by their power of reflection, which leaves nothing to chance. They are strong, because wise; but their glory is lustreless, unsympathetic, without prestige. They are, however, true characters, because they have reactions peculiar to themselves—coming from within, not from without.

IV.

I cannot enter on my definition of the third degree without some preliminary remarks. We pass from species to varieties—from relatively simple to composite characters. The doctrine of temperaments attempts a similar definition when it undertakes the description of the mixed temperaments (lymphatico-sanguine, nervous-sanguine, etc.), which has given rise to many discussions. Instead of one dominant characteristic—sensibility, energy, or reflection—we have two, in juxtaposition and coexistent, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in contradiction. We are departing from unity. Those who, treating this subject as logicians, reason on pure concepts, have said: There are states of being which are mutually exclusive; we cannot, e.g., be at the same time apathetic and active; ergo, mixed forms must be rejected. We need pay no attention to this: our business is to observe, not to reason. Has experience established the existence of mixed characters, whether contradictory or not? This is the whole question. And it is not this point which perplexes me, but the difficulty of finding clear, and, above all, legitimate and incontestable differences between the second and third degrees of definition—between the species and the varieties of character. I have already pointed out that the higher forms of the sensitive, active, and apathetic types tend to shade away into the mixed types.

Without undervaluing possible objections, I would propose the following groups:—

1. The sensitive-actives. Nothing contradictory in this form of character. An acute sensibility, without excess or morbid hyperæsthesia, is easily reconciled with an active and energetic temperament, because there is a natural connection between feeling and acting. These characters result from a synthesis of the sensitive and the active types, having all the qualities not mutually exclusive found in both. In short, as shown in its most brilliant representatives, it seems to us one of the richest and most harmonious varieties of character.

I find it in its lowest degree in those who, without much intellectual scope, live a life of pleasure, have a purely egoistic craving for enjoyment and action. These specimens of the sensitive-active character are without marked features and have no originality; it would not always be easy to distinguish them from the amorphous on the one hand, or the unstable on the other.

On a higher plane are the martyrs and enthusiastic heroes who feel the need of action, of self-devotion, of sacrificing themselves for their country or their faith: the great mystics, founders or reformers of orders: St. Teresa, St. Francis of Assisi; the great religious preachers: Peter the Hermit, Luther; and men consumed by love for others, as St. Vincent de Paul; in short, all those who may be called, in the widest sense of the word, apostles.

Further, we may include warriors like Alexander and Napoleon; many great leaders of revolutions, like Danton; such poets as Byron; and such artists as Benvenuto Cellini and Michelangelo. I mention only well-known names, and of these only just enough to make my meaning clear.

2. The apathetic-active. This variety closely approximates to the species just described as “calculators.” It seems to me, however, to be rendered more complex by the addition of a certain quality of feeling or passion which allows them to act, but rather defensively than offensively. The dominant element is the idea which gives to this character an unalterable fixity, and subjects their somewhat weak sensibilities to its sovereign power. It is the “moral temperament,” par excellence, but its morality is cold, has been hardened by habit, and inspires respect rather than sympathy. The moral ideal which is the groundwork and support of this form of character may be either true or false: it varies according to time and place, consisting now of public health, now of the general advantage, or belief in some dogma, religious or other, or duty in the abstract, or the categoric imperative. It is found among martyrs and passive heroes, who do not run to meet danger, or challenge tortures and death, but without enthusiasm, and equally without fear or hesitation, do their duty to the end.

Current language calls them stoics. We may add to them cold-blooded fanatics of all sorts, the Jansenists and others.

3. The apathetic-sensitive. This is a contradictory synthesis, which, nevertheless, exists. It must be recognised that if “character” signifies an essential, fundamental, invariable mark, this variety is not so much normal as semi-pathological. I reduce it to the following formula: atony and instability. We meet with people (this is not a fancy portrait, but one taken from nature) of lymphatic temperament, passing their days in inaction and torpor, who, flung into action by some unforeseen circumstance, spend themselves with as feverish an energy as the sensitives; but this only happens by way of episode. A man of this sort, whom I knew as leading a sedentary life and disliking locomotion and change, suddenly started for Australia, fascinated by some very hazardous project, and returned as quickly as possible, vowing he would never do such a thing again. The dominant note of this variety is apathy, though it approximates to the unstable.

4. If we admit the existence of the temperate character, it ought to find its place here. Can we admit it, or ought it not rather to be looked on as a purely ideal category? Though we may admit that persons are actually to be found in whom feeling, thought, and action are present in strictly equal proportions, ought we not to consider this as the absolute suppression of character, i.e., of any marks of individuality? Such perfect equilibrium belongs to a being favoured by nature, and is a pledge of happiness, no doubt; but the constitution of a character requires something other than this. We might say that the temperate come under our definition of character as complying with its two fundamental conditions, unity and stability, and that they have a system of action and reaction peculiar to them and consistent with itself, so that it can be foreseen. But we should need to know whether this initiative does not come from circumstances rather than from themselves, and whether their personality is not above all things an adaptation.

I do not intend to dwell on an ambiguous problem, which would become a mere debate about words. In any case, it is a fugitive, indecisive form, without marked traits, and bordering on the amorphous.

I can find no names of mark to place under this heading. Goethe has often been cited as a fine example of a balanced character; but is he to be reckoned as a character or a genius?

Departing more and more from simple, clear, and definite forms, we come at last to a group of what I have called the substitutes, or equivalents for character. The shortest and most suitable appellation for them seems to me to be “partial characters.” Their formula is: amorphousness plus an intellectual disposition, or a well-marked affective tendency. The complete character expresses the whole individual; the sensitive, active, and apathetic are respectively sensibility, energy, apathy to the backbone; all their reactions, or failures to react, show it. The partial character only acts on one point; but on this one point the reaction is energetic, invariable, consistent with itself, foreseen. In all other ways, he thinks, feels, and acts like the rest of the world. He is an imitator, a copy, an impersonal product of his education and environment. This state of being takes the place of a character in many persons, and many take it for such.

The partial characters resulting from intellectual aptitudes are the simplest. If we suppose an innate aptitude for mathematics, mechanical arts, music, painting, etc., it tends to develop itself and to mask all the rest of the character, to become the mark of the individual as a whole, and to produce the illusion of a character which, after all, does not exist, i.e., is impersonal. Current speech applies to this sort of hypertrophy an expression borrowed from the phrenologists: “He has such or such a bump.”

Partial characters of an affective form consist in the exclusive predominance of some one passion—e.g., sexual love, gambling, avarice, etc. Anything which excites this, whether near or far off, causes an energetic and identical reaction. Outside this ruling passion there is either slight reaction, or indifference. It should be noted that this form of partial character has not much stability, because it is in the nature of passion to extend its influence, gradually to invade the whole individual, and to bring about in him a pathological transformation.

Lastly, as nature is fertile in combinations, and we must try not to forget any, we find composite forms—e.g., an amorphous character plus an intellectual aptitude and a passion.

However incomplete, the classification just detailed may have seemed over minute. I have no apologies to make for this, my aim being to follow the natural method—viz., carefully to distinguish the dominant from the subordinate elements, to descend from the general to the particular by an uninterrupted derivation, adding new characteristics as we proceed. Is this a practical method? can it serve to guide us amid the multitudinous manifestations of character? If not, it ought to be rejected.

What, at any rate, is apparent from this classification is the diversity and heterogeneity of those individual modalities which we designate under the collective name of character. The unity of the word disguises the multiplicity of the cases. This permits us to reply, in conclusion, to a very important question frequently debated from the practical point of view: Is character immutable?

Two opposite answers have been given, both equally sweeping.

Some think that character is acquired, and, consequently, indefinitely transformable by appropriate culture. This is the theory of the tabula rasa transferred from the region of the sensations to that of the tendencies and feelings. It was held by some of the eighteenth century philosophers, and is implied in the views of all who have blind faith in the omnipotence of education.

Others look upon character as innate and immutable. All acquired gradations are borrowed garments, or a superficial and fragile coating which falls off at the least shock. With a vast superfluity of metaphysical distinctions, Schopenhauer has maintained this view with much spirit and vigour.

The problem, therefore, seems to be reduced to this dilemma: innate or acquired. I cannot, however, accept it under this form; it is not so simple. Character is an abstract entity—there exist only characters. For this ambiguous term, which has only an abstract and factitious unity, let us substitute the multitude of species and varieties already described, and perhaps forgotten. Let us place at one extreme the clear and definite forms which I have called the pure types. Nothing modifies them, nothing impairs them; good or bad, they are solid as the diamond. At the other end of the scale let us place the amorphous, who, by their very definition, are plasticity incarnate. Between these two extremes we may arrange seriatim all modes of character, so as to pass by imperceptible gradations from one end to the other. It is clear that, as we descend towards the amorphous, the individual becomes less refractory to the influences of his environment, and the proportion of acquired character increases in the same ratio. This is equivalent to saying that true characters never change.