CHARACTER
"All men are not equal, either at birth or by training. Nature gives
each of us the neural clay, with its properties of pliability and of
receiving impressions; nurture moulds and fashions it, until a
_character_ is formed, a mingling of innate disposition and acquired
powers. But clay will be clay to the end; you cannot expect it to be
marble."--Thomson & Geddes.
"Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge."--King John.
It is essential that attendants, relatives, and friends carefully study the
character of neuropaths, and recognize clearly how abnormal it is, for
untold misery is caused by judging neuropaths by normal standards.
Patients are often harshly treated because others regard the victim of
defective inhibition as having gone deliberately to work, through wicked
perversity and pure wilfulness, to make himself a nuisance, to persist in
being a nuisance, and to refuse to be other than a nuisance, rather than
exercise what more fortunate men are pleased to term self-control.
Character is usually appraised as "good" or "evil" by the nature of a man's
actions, the assumption being made that he can control his impulses if he
be so minded.
This is not so. "Good" and "evil" are only relative terms. What one man
thinks "evil", a second holds "good", while a third is not influenced.
Now the performance of the act judged is directed by the performer's brain,
the constitution of which was pre-determined by the germ-plasm from which
he arose, so that _the basis of character is inherited_.
The moral sense is the last evolved and least stable attribute of the last
evolved and least stable of our organs, the brain; and brains are born, not
made to order. To blame a man for having weak control--a sick will--is as
unreasonable as to blame him for a cleft palate or a squint. The "good"
people who jog so quietly through life little reck how much they owe their
ancestors, from whom they received stability.
These tendencies represent the total material for building character.
Training and environment can only nourish good tendencies and give bad ones
no encouragement to grow gigantic.
If training and environment alone formed character, then children reared
together would be of similar disposition; by no means the case. Similarly,
if external influences altered inborn tendencies, then, not only would the
evil man be totally reformed by strong inducements to virtue, but strong
inducements to vice would lead totally astray the good man, for "good" is
no _stronger_ than "evil", both being attributes of mind.
In mind as in body, from the moment he is conceived to the moment his dust
rests in the tomb, man is directed by immutable laws, though he is not
simply a machine directed by impulses over which he has no control. There
is real meaning in "strong will" and "weak will" will being a tendency to
deliberate before and be steadfast in action, a tendency which varies
immensely in different people. The fallacy of "free will" lies in assuming
that every one has this tendency equally developed, making character a mere
matter of saying "Yes!" and "No!" without reference to the individual's
mental make-up.
Deliberate, persistent wickedness implies a strong will, just what
neuropaths lack. A man of weak will can never be a very good nor yet a very
bad man. He will be very good at times, very bad at times, and neutral at
times, but neither for long; before sudden impulses, whether good or bad,
neuropaths are largely powerless.
The many perversities of a neuropath are not deliberately put forth of his
"free will" to annoy both himself and others, for the neuropath inherits
his weak-control no less than his large hands.
Friends _must_ remember they are dealing with a person whose _nature_ it is
to "go off half-cock", and who cannot be normal "if he likes". The
neuropath, young or old, says what he "thinks" _without thinking_, that is
he says what he _feels_, and acts hastily without weighing consequences.
_Cassius_: Have you not love enough to bear with me,
When that rash humour which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?
_Brutus_: Yes, Cassius; and, from henceforth
When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,
He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.
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One cannot detail the effects of neuropathy on character, when its victims
include madmen, sexual perverts, idiots, criminals, imbeciles, prostitutes,
humble but honest citizens, common nuisances, invalids of many kinds,
misanthropists, designers, enthusiasts, composers, communists, reformers,
authors, artists, agitators, statesmen, poets, prophets, priests and kings.
Very mild epilepsy--from one fit a year to one in several years--instead of
hindering, seems rather to help mentality, and many geniuses have been
epileptic. These talented victims, are less rare than the public suppose,
owing to the jealous care with which symptoms of this disease are guarded.
Socrates, Julius Cæsar, Mahomet, Joan of Arc, Peter the Great, Napoleon,
Byron, Swinburne, and Dostoieffsky are but a few among many great names in
the world of art, religion and statecraft. Epileptic princes, kings and
kinglets who have achieved unenviable notoriety might be named by scores,
Wilhelm II being the most notable of modern times.
This brilliant mentality is always accompanied by instability, and usually
by marked disability in other ways. The success of these men often depends
on an ability to view things from a new, quaint or queer standpoint, which
appeals to their more normal fellows.
In matters that require great fertility, a quick grasp, ready wit, and
brilliant but not sustained mental effort, numerous neuropaths excel. In
things calling for calm, well-balanced judgment, or stern effort to conquer
unforseen difficulties, they fail utterly.
Subtle in debate, they are but stumbling-blocks in council; brilliant in
conception, they fail in execution; fanciful designers, they are not
"builders of bridges". They are boastful, sparkling, inventive, witty,
garrulous, vain and supersensitive, outraging their friends by the
extravagance of their schemes; embarrassing their enemies by the subtlety
of their intrigues.
They wing on exuberant imagination from height to height, but the small
boulders of difficulty trip them up, for they are hopelessly unpractical;
they have neither strength of purpose nor fortitude, and their best-laid
schemes are always frustrated at the critical moment, by either the
incurable blight of vacillation, or by the determination to amplify their
scheme ere it has proved successful, sacrificing probable results for
visionary improvements.
Great and cunning strategists while fortune smiles, they are impotent to
direct a retreat, but flee before the fury they ought to face. They rarely
have personal courage, but are timid, conciliatory and vacillating just
when bravery, sternness, and determination are needed; furious, obstinate
and reckless, when gentleness, diplomacy and wisdom would carry their
point.
They are ready to forgive when there is magnanimity, vainglory and probably
folly in forgiveness, but will not overlook the most trivial affront when
there is every reason for so doing. They have brain, but not ballast, and
their whole life is usually a lopsided effort to "play to the gallery".
In poetry and literature, fancy has free play, and they often succeed,
sometimes rising to sublime heights; usually in the depiction of the
whimsical, the wonderful, the sardonic, the bizarre, the monstrous, or the
frankly impossible. They are not architects as much as jugglers of words,
and descriptive writing from an acute angle of vision is their forte. They
sometimes succeed as artists or composers, for in these spheres they need
not elaborate their ideas in such clean-cut detail, but many who might
succeed in these branches have not sufficient strength of purpose to do the
preliminary "spadework".
They have too many talents, too many differing inclinations, too much
impetuosity, too much vanity, too little concentration and will-power, and
they fail in ordinary walks of life from the lack of resolution to lay the
foundations necessary to successful mediocrity.
No greater obstacle to progress exists than the reputation for talent which
this class acquire on a flimsy basis of superficial brilliance in
conversation or a penchant for witty repartee. They are self-opinionated
and egoistical, with a conceit and assurance out of all proportion to their
abilities. Their mental perspective is distorted and they are conspicuous
for their obstinacy. In conversation they are prolix and pretentious, and
they often contract religious mania, in which their actions by no means
accord with their protestations, for they have very elementary notions of
right and wrong, or no notions at all.
Often they are precocious, but untruthful, cruel, and vicious; the despair
of relatives, friends, and teachers. They combine unusual frankness with an
audacity and impulsiveness that is very misleading, for below this show of
fire and power there is no stability.
Their character is a tangle of mercurial moods, the neuropath being
passionate but loving, sullen one moment, overflowing with sentimental
affection the next, vicious a little while later, quick to unreasoning
anger, and as quick to repent or forgive, obstinate but easily led,
versatile but inconstant, noble and mean by turns, full of contradictions
and contrasts, at best a brilliant failure, vain, deaf to advice or
reproof, having in his ailing frame the virtues and vices of a dozen normal
men.
Mercier aptly describes him:
"There is a large class of persons who are often of acute and nimble
intelligence, in general ability equal to or above the average, of an
active, bustling disposition, but who are utterly devoid of industry.
For by industry we mean steady persistence in a continuous employment
in spite of monotony and distastefulness; an employment that is
followed at the cost of present gratification for the sake of future
benefit. Of such self-sacrifice these persons are incapable. They are
always busy, but their activity is recreative, in the sense that it is
congenial to them, and from it they derive immediate gratification. As
soon as they tire of what they are doing, as soon as their occupation
ceases to be in itself attractive it is relinquished for something
else, which in its turn is abandoned as soon as it becomes tedious.
"Such people form a well-characterized class: they are clever; they
readily acquire accomplishments which do not need great application;
and agreeably to the recreative character of their occupations, their
natures are well developed on the artistic side. They draw, paint,
sing, play, write verses and make various pretty things with easy
dexterity. Their lack of industry prevents them ever mastering the
technique of any art; they have artistic tastes, but are always
amateurs.
"With the vice of busy idleness they display other vices. The same
inability to forgo immediate enjoyment, at whatever cost, shows itself
in other acts. They are nearly always spendthrifts, usually drunkards,
often sexually dissolute. Next to their lack of industry, their most
conspicuous quality is their incurable mendacity. Their readiness,
their resources, their promptitude, the elaborate circumstantiality of
their lies are astonishing. The copiousness and efficiency of their
excuses for failing to do what they have undertaken would convince
anyone who had no experience of their capabilities in this way.
"Withal, they are excellent company, pleasant companions, good-natured,
easy-going, and urbane. Their self-conceit is inordinate, and remains
undiminished in spite of repeated failures in the most important
affairs of life. They see themselves fall immeasurably behind those who
are admittedly their inferiors in cleverness, yet they are not only
cheery and content, but their confidence in their own powers and
general superiority to other people remains undiminished.
"_The lack of self-restraint is plainly an inborn character_, for it
may show itself in but one member of the family brought up in exactly
the same circumstances as other members who do not show any such
peculiarity. The victim is born with one important mental faculty
defective, precisely as another may be born with hare-lip."
In neuropaths the mental mechanism of _projection_, which we all show, is
often marked.
Any personal shortcoming, being repugnant to us causes self-reproach, which
we avoid by "projecting" the fault (unconsciously) on some one else.
Readers should get "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoieffsky, an epileptic genius
who saw that for those like him, happiness could be got through peace of
mind alone, and not in the cut-throat struggle for worldly success. He
projected his stabler self into Prince Muishkin, the idiot, and every one
of the six hundred odd pages of this amazing description of a neuropathic
nation is stamped with the hall-mark of genius.
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