1. An obstinate tendency to pessimism—the persistent and exclusive

taste for gloom in art predominating in certain epochs of history,

especially in our own. Its contagion is not sufficiently explained

by imitation and fashion; it springs from deeper causes—from a

general state of depression, enervation, and debility. Art is the

expression of this secret uneasiness, both among those who create

and those who enjoy. This pessimism is not a disease of art, but of

the individual and the age, which can bring forth no other fruit. We

know that the nature of the ground modifies the flowers of plants

and gives to their fruits a peculiar taste—the flavour of the soil;

the human soil is subject to the same necessity, and at certain

stages of civilisation it can produce nothing save a melancholy crop

of flowers with strange and acrid odour. The constant love and

complacent enjoyment of the mournful and morbid, of all connected

with death, is the æsthetic form of the _luxury of pain_ which I

have already (Part I., chap. iv.) tried to analyse, and to determine

its pathological causes.

2. The tendency to megalomania under the form of pride, and still

more of excessive vanity. The remark on the _genus irritabile vatum_

is of old date; but at various epochs the insanity of greatness has

raged like an epidemic in the domain of art. It has found its

supreme expression in this century in the doctrine of “the divinity

of art” proclaimed by the school of Schelling, and surviving among

contemporary “æsthetes.” “The beginning of all poetry,” said

Schlegel, “is to suspend the march and the laws of reason, to plunge

us once more into the beautiful maze of fantasy, the primitive chaos

of human nature. The good pleasure of the poet suffers no law above

him.” We have gone still farther since then, and an interesting

collection might be made of the folly written on this subject. When,

sincerely and without prepossessions, we ask ourselves what are the

grounds of these high pretensions, of this apotheosis, they are not

very evident. Is it because art yields enjoyments far superior to

those of the senses? But scientific research, and the love of

travelling and exploration, do the same thing. Is it because of its

creative function? But we find creation everywhere—in science,

mechanic art, politics, commerce, industry: artistic creation is

only one form among many others. Is it because it adds an ideal

world to the real? Religions do as much, with the advantage that

they do not work for the few, the elect, but for the whole world.

Malherbe used to say that a good poet is no more useful to the State

than a good skittle-player. This is an extreme statement on the

other side, for the poet, after all, has a social value; he can

foresee, instruct, express the confused feelings of the mass of

human beings who arrive through him at the consciousness of life.

If, accepting this form of megalomania as a fact, without discussing

its legitimacy, we seek for its psychological causes, we shall find

two principal ones.

The first is in the character of the individual, the hypertrophy of

his _ego_. The self-feeling breaks out under an æsthetic mask, as it

might do under any other. “Egotist” art is the sincerest expression

of this impulse of pride (be it noted in passing that it is the very

antipodes of primitive art, which is collective, social, anonymous);

but it is an ephemeral form destined to die of inanition. Besides,

its expansive force would be, if necessary, limited by the expansion

of rival individualities. The production of monsters is a necessity

of civilisation. By means of the division of labour, it imposes, in

all positions and occupations, an excess of unilateral development,

of tendency towards a single aim; it requires specialisation. In

primitive times, art was not a profession; the artist, while all the

time going on with other work, produced naturally, spontaneously, as

a rose-tree gives its roses; it was a superabundance of mental

activity which thus found vent. Gradually he fell into the

professional track, and now, a victim to his own glory, he is

_forced_ to produce, _nolens volens_, as he can, consciously

fabricating works of art as others do articles of commerce, reckless

of over-production. It is a hypertrophy of the creative function.

The second cause must be sought in a deeper region than that of

consciousness, in that unconscious part of us (whatever opinion may

be entertained as to its nature) which produces what is vulgarly

called inspiration. This state is a positive fact accompanied by

physical and psychical characteristics peculiar to itself. First and

foremost, it is impersonal and involuntary; it acts like an

instinct, when and as it pleases, it may be solicited but not

compelled. Neither reflection nor will can supply the place of

original creation. We have numerous anecdotes relating to the habits

of poets, painters, and musicians when composing: striding up and

down, lying in bed, seeking complete darkness or full daylight,

keeping the feet in water or ice, and the head in the sun, the use

of wine, of alcohol, of aromatic drinks, of haschisch or other

poisons acting on the intellect. Apart from some oddities not easy

to explain, all these proceedings have the same object—viz., to

bring about a particular physiological condition, and increase the

cerebral circulation in order to provoke or maintain the unconscious

activity. The ancients saw in inspiration a supernatural state, a

divine action, a possession in which they firmly believed.

Certainly, we now look on the Muses, and the various mythological

gods of music and poetry, merely as superannuated fictions; yet

there remains an impression of mystery, of a superior power, of a

rare inborn gift bestowed on a man, which is his special privilege,

which acts through him and is unknown to others, something analogous

to what we have already met with in the case of theomania. From the

vague consciousness of this state of election, this exceptional

favour on the part of nature, it is for the artist an easy step to

the affirmation of his greatness.

II. The pathology of the creative imagination does not belong to our

subject; it is only connected with it through the influence of

feeling on its operations. The power of constructing an imaginary

world is a human attribute of which no one is devoid, since without

it we could never take one step out of the present into the future

and form for ourselves an image, however inadequate, of the latter.

Observation shows that, from this universal level upward, there are

all gradations, from the dry, clear, coherent imagination to

incoherent, impalpable reverie and disordered exuberance: now, the

increasing predominance of the imagination involves the danger of

living entirely in the world of the unreal, which frequently

happens. Biographical documents permit us to note the stages in this

ascent towards the suprasensible.

There are artists who divide their lives into two parts and keep

them distinct; they keep their accounts in double entry; they have

their hours of unbridled imagination, and their hours of practical

good sense. Ariosto was one of these; it was said of him that he had

put his folly into his books and his wisdom into his life.

Others are, for the moment, caught by their own creations, and so

violently carried away by them that they are near the state of

hallucination. According to the constitution of their minds, they

either see their characters or hear them speak; the sounds are in

their ears, they breathe odours, taste flavours. On this last point,

Flaubert’s declaration, reported by Taine has been doubted, but

without sufficient reason.

There are some who appear to be in an almost continuous state of

hallucination. Such seems to have been the case of Torquato Tasso.

“At certain moments,” Gérard de Nerval used to say, “everything

would assume a new aspect to me: secret voices rose from plants,

trees, animals, to warn and encourage me. Formless and lifeless

objects had mysterious ways, whose meaning I understood.” The

“symbolists” of various countries—French, Belgian, English—are now

telling us the same thing with more to the like effect. I do not

think, however, that we can be deceived by them. They are returning,

through a sharpened and refined sympathy, to the primitive period of

naïf animism, in which everything in nature has life, sight and

voice, in which, as one of them says, the real world assumes the air

of fairyland.

Beyond this there is only one step, that of complete and permanent

hallucination, such as is to be found in lunatic asylums; the total

substitution of an imaginary world for the real, without

intermission, doubt, or consciousness of unreality.

This is the clearest part of the subject, but there is one obscure

point which must detain us, the more that it is connected with the

fundamental phenomenon of emotional life: _tendency_. If there is

one psychological law more firmly established than another, both by

facts and argument, it is that every intense representation of an

act tends to realise itself; which is inevitable, since the vivid

image of a movement is the beginning of a movement—a revival of

motor elements included in the image. A man who, standing on the top

of a tower, is fascinated by the idea of a possible fall, runs the

risk of throwing himself over; the attraction of the abyss is

nothing else but this. On the other hand, artists naturally have

intense representations and feel things violently; they dream of

orgies, love adventures, sanguinary dramas, self-devotion, virtues

and vices of all sorts. How comes it that all this is merely

imagined, and never passes into action, or becomes a reality?

It is because in their case the law is subject, not to an exception,

but to a _deviation_. The intense representation _must_ be

objectivised—_i.e._, from being internal become external, and it may

arrive at this result in two ways: by a real action, as in the case

of ordinary people, or by the creation of a work of art which

delivers one from the haunting idea: this is the peculiarity of

artists. If, besides this, a physiological reason is required, it

might be admitted, merely as a hypothesis, that in these cases the

motor centres have not, usually, sufficient energy for practical

realisation, whence it comes that their satisfaction is a purely

æsthetic one.

To keep strictly to our subject, we have a large body of testimony

to show that many have only been delivered from their haunting ideas

by creative production, as I have already mentioned when treating of

memory. It is fixed in a poem, a novel, a drama, a symphony, on the

earth, or in stone; we may remember Michelangelo and the sculptures

of the Medici chapel, Schiller’s early manner and the “Robbers.” Is

not Byron, whose psychological state has been so well analysed by

Taine (born for action and adventure, returning, perhaps, to his

true vocation when he went to die at Missolonghi), the poet of

pirates, of strange and doubtful enterprises? The reader will think

it needless for me to enumerate further instances.

This rule, however, is not without exceptions. The law which

requires that the intense image shall be actualised is always

satisfied; but sometimes this happens in two ways, artistically and

practically, at once. Many have lived out their dreams of love,

orgies, adventures, violence, and have produced a work of art

besides; a double stream has flowed from the same source. Some of

the romantic school have revived the aspect of past ages in their

houses, their furniture, their lives. Artistic sovereigns have been

able to realise their imaginations to the full: Nero, Hadrian,

Ludwig II. of Bavaria, and others.

An Italian anthropologist, Ferrero, has pointed out, with some

justice, that, in spite of our complaints of the pessimistic,

satanic, _macabre_, or neurotic character of contemporary art, this

evil is not without its accompanying good; it is a safety-valve, an

overflow channel. Morbid art “is a defence against abnormal

tendencies, which, otherwise, would tend to transform themselves

into action.” Many content themselves with a literary, plastic, or

musical satisfaction. This seems to be indisputable. We may also

grant to this author that the suggestion of a work of art has not

the power of direct suggestion, that of the actually perceived fact,

and that, so far, it is less dangerous. But as it is more widely

diffused and acts especially on subjects predisposed to it, it may

be questioned whether, in the long run, the gain is serious.

This is a sociological question which it would be out of place to

discuss here, and which, consequently, we may dismiss with a bare

reference. Our conclusion is that the pathology of the æsthetic

sentiment has no independent existence. It is one among many forms

of expression (of which we have already pointed out several) of a

morbid predisposition which can only follow this track in a small

minority of persons—those possessed of the power of creative

imagination.

CHAPTER XI.

THE INTELLECTUAL SENTIMENT.

_Its origin: the craving for knowledge—Its evolution—Utilitarian

period: surprise, astonishment, interrogation—Disinterested

period: transition forms—Classification according to

intellectual states—Classification according to emotional

states: dynamic forms, static forms—Period of passion: its

rarity—Pathology—Simple doubt—Dramatic doubt—"Folie du

doute"—Mysticism in science: deviation comes, not from the

object, but from the method of research._

I.

This name stands for the emotional states—agreeable, disagreeable,

or mixed—which accompany the exercise of the intellectual

operations. Intellectual emotion may be connected with images,

ideas, reasoning, and the logical course of thought; in a word, with

all the forms of knowledge. Except in some rare cases, which will be

pointed out later on, it scarcely ever rises beyond a medium tone,

especially in its higher manifestations.

After having traced it to its origin, we shall have to follow its

evolution, which passes through three principal phases: the first,

utilitarian and practical; the second, disinterested and scientific;

in the third, which is much less frequent, it attains the power and

exclusiveness of a passion.

I. This feeling, like all the others, depends on an instinct, a

tendency, a craving; it expresses in consciousness its satisfaction

or non-satisfaction. This primitive craving—the craving for

knowledge—under its instinctive form is called curiosity. It exists

in all degrees, from the animal which touches or smells an unknown

object, to the all-examining, all-embracing scrutiny of a Goethe;

from puerile investigation to the highest speculations; but whatever

may be the differences in its object, in its point of application,

in its intensity, it always remains identical with itself. Those

devoid of it, such as idiots, are eunuchs in the intellectual order.

Assuming this innate craving, how is it developed during the first

period?

The first stage is that of _surprise_. It appears early in the

child; quite clearly, at latest, in the twenty-second week,

according to Preyer. It is a special emotional state which cannot be

traced back to any other, consisting of a shock, a disadaptation. In

my opinion, its special and peculiar character lies in its being

without contents, without object, save a relation. Its material is a

_relation_, a transition between two states—a mere movement of the

mind, and nothing more. The mode of expression and the physiological

accompaniments of surprise are very clearly defined. The description

of these will be found in Darwin (_Expression of the Emotions_, ch.

xii.); the eyes and mouth are wide open, the eyebrows raised, the

sudden shock is followed by immobility, the pulsations of the heart

and the respiratory movements are accelerated, etc.

The second stage is that of _wonder_. I think with Bain and

Sully,[229] that the distinction between these two stages is not a

vain subtlety. Surprise is momentary, wonder is stable; one is a

disadaptation, the other a readaptation; one is without objective

material, the other has for its material some strange or

unaccustomed object. It is this second stage, no doubt, which

Descartes called admiration, and which he placed among his six

primary passions:—"Admiration is a sudden surprise of the soul which

leads it to consider with attention the objects which appear to it

rare and extraordinary."[230] In fact, wonder is the awakening of

the attention, of which it has the principal characteristics—unity

of consciousness, convergence towards a single object, intensity of

perception or representation, adaptation of movements.[231] In the

beginning, before wonder is accompanied by pleasure (or pain, as the

case may be), it has a peculiar character approximating to what we

have called the neutral state, or that of simple excitation.

-----

Footnote 229:

Bain, _The Emotions_, ch. iv. pp. 85, 86; Sully, _Psychology_,

vol. ii. p. 126.

Footnote 230:

Descartes, _Traité des Passions_, Part ii., § 70.

Footnote 231:

I have given further details on this point in my _Psychologie de

l’attention_.

-----

The third stage is that of _interrogation_, of reflections

succeeding to the consternation produced by the first shock. This is

the stage of curiosity properly so called, which consists in two

questions, put implicitly and explicitly: What is that? What is the

use of it? What is the concrete nature of this object? and what can

be its utility? Primitive peoples, children, animals, incessantly

put to themselves this double question; not, certainly, in clear and

analytical terms, but instinctively and by their actions. The dog,

brought face to face with an unknown object, looks at it, smells it,

approaches, withdraws, ventures to touch it, returns, and begins

again; he is pursuing this investigation after his own fashion; he

is solving a double problem of nature and utility.[232] The

interrogation consists in assimilating the new object to our former

perceptions or representations—classing it, in fact.

-----

Footnote 232:

See for facts as to the curiosity of animals, Romanes, _Mental

Evolution_, pp. 283-351.

-----

Is primitive man curious? Herbert Spencer alleges a large number of

facts in proof of his distaste for novelty.[233] However, the

craving for knowledge seems to be very unequally distributed among

the various races; the only universal fact appearing to be that

primitive curiosity is limited to very simple things, all of which

have, or seem to have, some practical utility. Curiosity and the

emotional state which accompanies it have no other end than the

preservation of the individual—just as we have seen with regard to

the tendency to live in communities, or to revere the gods, in this

same initial period of evolution. To be wide awake, to make

inquiries as to what will help or harm one, in a word, knowledge in

the practical order, is a powerful weapon in the struggle for life;

a cause of selection in favour of the curious, and at the expense of

the incurious. It is the survival of this entirely utilitarian

curiosity which explains why, at the present day, uncultured and

even semi-civilised peoples object to the entrance into their

country of travellers from a distance for the purpose of geological

or other scientific explorations; they are always suspicious of a

search for treasure, of espionage, or of some unknown ill deed on

the part of the strangers.

-----

Footnote 233:

_Principles of Sociology_, i. pp. 98, 99.

-----

II. How did the transition to the disinterested period come about?

We may admit, with Sully,[234] that this took place through the

natural, innate inclination of the human intellect towards the

extraordinary, the strange, the marvellous. The same tendency which,

under its creative form, engenders religious, poetical, social

myths, attempts under the form of research to discover instead of

imagining causes.[235]

-----

Footnote 234:

_Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 131.

Footnote 235:

In the following, reported by a traveller, we have an instance of

this spontaneous transition to disinterested curiosity, in the

case of an intelligent Basuto. “Twelve years ago” [the man himself

is speaking] “I went to feed my flocks. The weather was hazy. I

sat down upon a rock and asked myself sorrowful questions; yes,

sorrowful, because I was unable to answer them. Who has touched

the stars with his hands? On what pillars do they rest? I asked

myself. The waters are never weary; they know no other law than to

flow without ceasing,—from morning till night, and from night till

morning; but where do they stop? and who makes them flow thus? The

clouds also come and go, and burst in water over the earth. Whence

come they? Who sends them? The diviners certainly do not give us

rain; for how could they do it? and why do I not see them with my

own eyes, when they go up to heaven to fetch it? ... I cannot see

the wind; but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow? ... Then I

buried my face in both my hands.”—Quoted by Vignoli, _Mito e

Scienza_, p. 63. This passage is from _The Basutos_, by the French

missionary Casalis (p. 239).

We are here at the point of junction between the æsthetic and the

intellectual sentiments, which will presently bifurcate, and pursue

each its own course. This inquiry is only half disinterested,

however, for if man tries to penetrate the mystery of things it is

in the hope of profiting thereby.

For the rest, however this transition may have come about, it took

place when the struggle for existence became less keen, and it was

possible to cultivate disinterested research for its own sake. Next,

curiosity became scientific emotion, and gradually extended itself

to every kind of investigation: the intellectual sentiment was

formed in all its fulness.

It has been studied with a certain favour by psychologists,

especially those of the school of Herbart, or those who have felt

his influence, under the name of “feelings of relation,” "feelings

connected with the cause of representations." I do not intend to

follow them through their tedious and uninstructive task of

divisions, subdivisions, and distinctions worthy of the schoolmen

of the fourteenth century. Besides, the alleged classification of

the intellectual feelings varies from one writer to another—one

giving fifteen, another sixty. It is an artificial method, a

labyrinth, a source, not of clearness, but of obscurity. I defy

the subtlest psychologist to note and fix the delicate gradations

of feeling which, _ex hypothesi_, should answer to this endless

enumeration.[236] But its most serious defect lies in its

including only the intellectual and not the emotional states.

-----

Footnote 236:

I give a specimen, choosing a classification which is neither one

of the longest nor one of the shortest: (1) Emotions arising from

logical relations (reasonable, unreasonable, contradictory,

logical satisfaction, ignorance, the unknown, the hypothetical;

possibility or impossibility of coming to a conclusion). (2)

Emotions arising from relations of time (present, past, future,

anticipation, hope, presentiment; feeling of the irremediable, of

opportunity, of routine, etc.). (3) Emotions arising from

relations of space (size, nearness, distance, etc.). (4) Emotions

arising from relations of coexistence and non-existence, quantity,

identity, etc. This is a much abridged catalogue; there are

thirty-two subdivisions in all.

-----

I can only admit one division, which has the advantage of

simplicity, and, more especially, of being based on the very nature

of the emotional process. This is, into the pleasures and pains

accompanying research or the acquisition of knowledge, and those

which are attached to its possession, or the state of being without

it. The former are _dynamic_, the second _static_.

Intellectual emotion, under its _dynamic_ form, depends on the

quantity of energy expended. In fact, it is only a particular case

of the emotional state accompanying every form of activity directed

towards an end compatible with success or failure; it is only one

form of self-feeling, differing only in its object, not in its

nature, from the feeling of the explorer or the hunter. The search

for knowledge is a hunt like any other, truth being the game, and

just as many sportsmen find more charm in the vicissitudes of their

expedition than in their spoils, so many truth-seekers will accept

as their own, Lessing’s well-known saying: “If I were offered the

choice between already ascertained truth and the pleasure of finding

it out, I would choose the second.”

Under its _static_ form, intellectual emotion is still a particular

case of self-feeling, whose principal manifestation is the sense of

power, or its opposite. It is one form of this sense, by the same

right as the pleasure of physical strength, the pleasure of riches,

or their opposites. It approximates especially to the feeling

inspired by possession or property; it is felt, under its positive

form as augmentation, under its negative as diminution and poverty;

ignorance is a retrenchment, a limit.

To sum up, intellectual emotion is simple enough; it is only the

transfer of the emotional manifestations already known to us, to a

group of mental operations. There is no need, therefore, to insist

further on the matter.

III. We have still to follow it into a third stage, which it rarely

attains, because pure ideas have little attraction for average human

beings—viz., the cases in which it becomes a _passion_. It is

evident that the intellectual passion cannot exist outside the

dynamic group, possession being, in the nature of things, a calm

pleasure, or, as the ancients said, a pleasure at rest.

We might find numberless instances in the biographies of scientific

men and philosophers. Some names suggest themselves at once: Kepler,

Spinoza, and many others who devoted their lives strictly and

exclusively to the pursuit of truth. It may be objected, however,

that, in certain cases and with certain men, nothing proves that the

intellectual passion has not been fed or sustained by foreign

elements; that the love of learning, though the principal motive,

has been the only one; that it has not been adulterated with

others—_e.g._, desire for position, influence, riches, fame, glory,

in short, ambition under its manifold aspects. It is not easy to

find absolutely pure cases; for, besides the rarity of the

intellectual passion, the terms in which the demand is framed are

almost contradictory, since the men we want to find must be unknown

to fame. The following instance, however, seems to me to answer

perfectly to all the conditions. Descuret, in his _Médécine des

Passions_, gives a brief biographical sketch of a Hungarian named

Mentelli, a philologist and mathematician, who, without a definite

end in view, simply for the pleasure of learning and to satisfy his

intellectual cravings, consecrated his whole life to study, having

apparently no other want. “Living at Paris, in a filthy lodging, the

use of which was allowed him out of charity, he had cut off from his

expenditure all that was not absolutely necessary to sustain life.

His outlay—apart from the purchase of books—amounted to seven sous a

day, three of which went for food and four for light; for he worked

twenty hours a day, without intermission, except on one day in the

week, when he gave lessons in mathematics, on the fees received for

which he subsisted. All he needed was water, which he fetched for

himself, potatoes which he cooked over his lamp, oil to feed the

latter, and coarse brown bread. He slept in a large packing-case,

into which, during the day, he used to put his feet wrapped in a

blanket or a little hay. An old arm-chair, a table, a jug, a tin

pot, and a piece of tin roughly bent into a convex shape, and

serving as a lamp, formed the rest of his furniture. Mentelli saved

the price of washing by wearing no linen. A soldier’s coat bought at

the barracks and only replaced in the last extremity, a pair of

nankeen trousers, a fur cap, and huge _sabots_ composed his entire

costume. In 1814 the cannon-balls of the allies fell all round the

lodging he was then occupying, but failed to disturb him.... During

the first epidemic of cholera at Paris, it was necessary to employ

armed force to compel this scientific anchorite to interrupt his

studies, so as to clean out his pestilential cell. He lived thus,

uncomplainingly, and indeed happily, for thirty years, without a

day’s illness. At last (on December 22nd, 1836), at the age of

sixty, having gone as usual to fetch water from the Seine, his foot

slipped, he fell into the river, then in flood, and was drowned.

Mentelli left no work behind him, in fact there remains no trace of

his long researches.”[237]

-----

Footnote 237:

Quoted by Letourneau, _Physiologie des Passions_, p. 23.

-----

Other instances might be quoted, but they would appear trifling by

comparison with this. Great anonymous collaborations, like those of

the Benedictines, have certainly enlisted the services of

enthusiasts of this kind; thus Dom Mabillon was the type of a worker

animated with passionate fervour, modest, unknown, punctually

fulfilling his religious duties, and when free from these,

travelling about the world on foot to collect historical documents.

Thus we find cases where the love of knowledge alone, untarnished by

other motives, has all the characteristics of a fixed and tenacious

passion, filling the whole of life, and expressing the whole nature

of a man.

II.

The intellectual feeling also has its pathology, in connection with

which I have to point out two principal cases: the extreme forms of

doubt, and the introduction of mysticism into science.

1. Doubt is a state of unstable equilibrium in which successive

contradictory representations neither mutually exclude nor

conciliate each other. I distinguish simple doubt, dramatic doubt,

and the insanity of doubt.

In simple or limited doubt, intellectual indecision has as its

emotional accompaniment a slight uneasiness, a state of discomfort

resulting from an unsatisfied desire, a tendency which comes to

nothing. Under this form doubt is normal, legitimate, and even

necessary; it becomes morbid when it takes a chronic, permanent, and

aggressive form, when it produces a violent shock and a long

reaction.

This is the doubt which I call dramatic, because it is an internal

convulsion, a crisis which often lasts a long time and repeats

itself. It precedes great conversions and then subsides, but

sometimes lasts through life, as with Pascal. There is nothing

surprising in its violence, since it is, in the intellectual order,

the equivalent of an intense, incurable, and hopeless love; in the

two cases the situation and effects are identical.

The insanity of doubt takes us further into the intricacies of

pathology. It is “a chronic disease of the mind, characterised by

constant uneasiness.” It presents numerous varieties, which have

been classified by alienists. Some do not pass beyond the region of

every-day trivialities, as the man who will return twenty times to

see whether he has really locked his door. Others exhaust themselves

in abstruse and insoluble questions, never able to satisfy

themselves or stop, like an ever-turning wheel. Others, the timid,

lose themselves in endless scruples and puerilities. But, whatever

be the matter to which the mind applies itself, the psychological

process remains the same. It is a questioning without pause or

limit, accompanied by distress, constriction of the head, epigastric

oppression, vaso-motor troubles, etc. There is the ardent desire to

find a fixed state for thought without the ability to do so.

Under its gravest form it is “the complete loss of all notion and

feeling of reality.” It is absolute scepticism, not theoretic and

speculative, after the manner of the Pyrrhonians, but _practical_,

bearing not only on ideas, abstract conceptions, memories,

reasonings, but even on perceptions and actions; the exercise of the

intellect is not accompanied by any belief—_i.e._, any state of mind

which presupposes a reality. “I exist,” says one of these patients,

“but outside real life and in despite of myself ...; something which

does not seem to be in my body impels me to act as I formerly did,

but I cannot succeed in believing that my actions are real. I do

everything mechanically and unconsciously. My individuality has

completely disappeared; the way in which I see things makes me

incapable of realising them, of feeling that they exist.... Even

when I see and touch, the world appears to me like a phantom, a

gigantic hallucination.... I eat, but it is a shadow of food

entering the shadow of a stomach; my pulse is only the shadow of a

pulse.... I am perfectly conscious of the absurdity of these ideas,

but cannot overcome them.”[238] This state belongs, in fact, to the

category of conscious madness.

-----

Footnote 238:

See Hack Tuke’s _Dictionary of Psych. Medicine_, article,

“Insanity of Doubt.” Analogous cases have been reported by various

authors, Griesinger, Clouston, etc.

-----

But it is not essentially a disease of the understanding: the

intellectual element is secondary; this perpetual doubt, these

endless questionings are merely the effects; the cause lies in a

weakening of the emotional life and the will, rendering them

incapable of arriving at a belief—_i.e._, an affirmation—and, more

deeply still, in a disturbance of the organic life, as demonstrated

by sensory perversions, motor enfeeblement, and the melancholic

state of the patient with its physiological accompaniments, and

lowering of the vital functions.

2. The introduction of mysticism into science, though particularly

prevalent just now, is an intellectual disease incident to all ages.

In the beginning, scientific research had no clear consciousness

either of its method or its object.

The earliest Greek philosophers speculated at once on first causes,

second causes, and practical applications, without drawing any hard

and fast distinction between these subjects. Thales constructed a

cosmology and calculated eclipses; Pythagoras reduced the universe

to numbers, but he also greatly advanced the study of mathematics,

and founded a communistic society on his own principles. By slow

degrees the proper domain of science became recognised: the

determination of second causes, of natural laws. At the Renaissance,

alchemy, astrology, and the occult sciences were discredited, in

spite of their provisional services, and some positive discoveries

due to them. At present, the methods are fixed, in their main lines;

a fact which permits us to determine the anomalies and deviations of

the intellectual sentiment.

How does it deviate from the normal track? It is needless to remark

that it is not by seeking the unknown, since this is its fundamental

task, for every day and for all time. Is it by pursuing the

unknowable? This view is scarcely tenable, for how can we determine

where the unknowable begins? Let us admit, for the sake of argument,

and in order to simplify matters, that this word covers the whole

region of first causes, taken as inaccessible; but, having

eliminated these, only by an arbitrary act can it be decided that

this or that thing is unknowable. The history of science supplies us

with proofs in abundance. To give but one example, which is closely

connected with psychology: one of the greatest physiologists of the

century, J. Müller, declared that the time necessary for perceiving

a sensation is not measurable and can never be determined; this,

however, did not prevent Helmholtz from measuring it some years

later, and it is well known what successful experiments have since

been made in that direction.

It is not so much in the object pursued as in the method employed

that the love of science may go astray. Scientific mysticism

consists in replacing regular methods by intuition and divination;

in expecting everything from an inward revelation, a supernatural

illumination; in substituting the subjective for the objective,

belief for demonstration and verification, individual for universal

validity. True, it would be a great mistake to assert that intuition

and divination have not played an important part in the discoveries

of scientists; they lie at the origin of nearly all, and there is a

certain point where the psychological conditions of scientific and

of artistic creation coincide; but no scientist worthy of the name

will confound the vision of a truth with its demonstration. He does

not allow it to rank as scientific till he has furnished his proofs.

Mysticism is the reintegration, in science, of the love of the

marvellous, and the illusory desire of acting on nature without

preliminary research, work, or trouble.

Intellectual emotion, therefore, has two principal morbid forms:

doubt, which, at the last extremity, ends in dissolution; and

mysticism, which is only a deviation, and whose essence consists in

substituting imagination for logical methods.[239]

Footnote 239:

Two American psychologists, without mentioning the principal forms

we have just studied, reckon among contemporary aberrations of the

intellectual feeling some tendencies which appear to me to be very

slight infirmities by comparison: (1) “A more subtle form is that

distinctively nineteenth-century disease, the love of culture, as

such. When the feeling is directed, not towards objects, but

towards the state of mind induced by the knowledge of the objects,

there originates a love of knowing for the sake of the development

of the mind itself. The knowledge is acquired because it widens

and expands self. Culture of our mental powers is made an end in

itself, and knowledge of the universe of objects is subordinated

to this. The intellectual feelings are separated from their proper

place as functions of the integral life, and are given an

independent place in consciousness. Here, as in all such cases,

the attempt defeats itself. The only way to develop self is to

make it become objective; the only way to accomplish this is to

surrender the interests of the personal self. Self-culture

reverses the process and attempts to employ self-objectification

or knowledge as a mere means to the satisfaction of these personal

interests. The result is that the individual never truly gets

outside of himself” (Dewey, _Psychology_, pp. 305, 306). This

criticism is just. We might say, more simply, that the pursuit of

intellectual emotion for its own sake borders on scientific

dilettantism—_i.e._, a superficial disposition and a tendency of

the mind to run in every direction without going very deeply into

anything. But we cannot reckon as morbid the love of abstract and

purely speculative research; for in this the intellectual feeling

remains faithful to its nature, _i.e._ curiosity, and its mission,

_i.e._ the pursuit of truth. Besides, the speculations which in

appearance are the most useless and merely theoretical, may some

day show themselves in results susceptible of practical

application. (2) Ladd, _Psychology Descriptive and Explanatory_,

pp. 566 _et seq._, considers as a morbid form of the intellectual

sentiment the personification of Science, which is so popular at

the present day (in my opinion, it is rather a disease of thought,

an instance of the incurable tendency of the human mind to realise

abstractions and bow the knee before idols of its own

fabrication), and also criticises the growing love of minutiæ and

the obstinate pursuit of small facts. It must be acknowledged that

this tendency sometimes becomes a nuisance in sciences founded on

observation, experiment, or documents, and that those whose

attention has been confined to this kind of work have a natural

disposition to exaggerate its importance; but it is nevertheless

necessary, and is the price paid for all progress in science. Each

individual contributes in his degree and according to his

strength; there is no architecture without labourers.

To sum up, the intellectual emotion moves between two poles: one,

where it involves a confused knowledge and plays a preponderant part

under that instinctive form which may be called _flair_, or

intuition; the other, where it is only the pale shadow of the

exercise of abstract thought. Under this last form it is the type to

which all other emotions approximate, when the affective element is

impoverished—viz., moral emotion in rationalistic theorists (the

Stoics, Kant), æsthetic emotion in critics, and religious emotion in

metaphysicians and dogmatic theologians.

CHAPTER XII.

NORMAL CHARACTERS.[240]

_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.

-----

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.

-----

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.

I.

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[241] 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.[242]

-----

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.

-----

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,[243] 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.

-----

Footnote 243:

_Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, vol. iii.

-----

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.[244]

-----

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.

-----

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.”[245] 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.[246]

-----

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.

-----

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.”[247]

-----

Footnote 247:

Bain, _Study of Character_, p. 214.

-----

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,”[248] 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.

-----

Footnote 248:

Reproduced _in extenso_ in Bain, _The Will_, p. 413 (chap. vii.).

-----

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?

V.

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.

CHAPTER XIII.

ABNORMAL AND MORBID CHARACTERS.

_Are all normal characters mutually equivalent?—Attempt at

classification according to their value—Marks of abnormal

character: absence of unity, impossibility of prevision—Class I.

Successive contradictory characters: anomalies, conversions;

their psychological mechanism. Alternating characters—Second

class: Contradictory coexistent characters. Incomplete form:

contradiction between principles and tendencies. Complete form.

Contradiction between one tendency and another—Third class:

Unstable characters. Their physiological and psychological

characters—Psychological infantilism._

In the works already quoted—those of Perez (1892), Paulhan (1894),

and Fouillée (1895)—and in the preceding chapter, the various forms

of character have been classified, described, traced back to

explanatory principles. In spite of divergent interpretations and

differences of nomenclature, there are types universally accepted:

the active, the sensitive, the apathetic. But are they equivalent?

Such is the question put in the first instance when we pass from

normal to morbid characters. It seems to be implicitly admitted

that, each type having its qualities and defects, its advantages and

disadvantages, they ought to be placed on the same level. The writer

who confines himself to classification and description may, by going

no further, avoid the difficulty. But as soon as we enter the region

of frankly morbid characters, we are led to ask, in the first place,

whether the characters reputed normal are all so in the same degree,

or whether some are not, by their very nature, nearer to

pathological forms, and more apt to undergo a retrogressive

metamorphosis; in other words, we have now to establish, not a

classification, but a hierarchy, a valuation often disputed, and

difficult to fix.

A Russian anthropologist, N. Seeland, is the only writer, so far as

I know, who has taken up the question from this point of view. In

fact, the ancient authors, when classifying temperaments, and

consequently characters, only divided them into strong (the choleric

and melancholic) and weak (the sanguine and phlegmatic).

This division (recently accepted by Wundt) is not at bottom very

clear, and might give rise to numerous objections. Seeland has once

for all broken with tradition and abandoned the quadripartite

division; he “does not look upon all temperaments, as having the

same value, some approximating more to the idea of perfection, some

less.”[249] His classification is, therefore, in fact a hierarchy;

and, beginning with the most perfect forms of character, may be

briefly stated as follows[250]:—

I. The _strong_ or _positive_ temperaments, including—

1. The gay temperament, a type of which the classic “sanguine” is

only a variety; it comprehends three species: (_a_) the strong

sanguine, vegetative life predominant, reactions rapid but

appropriate, adapted to their end, without agitation; (_b_) the

weaker sanguine, resembling the preceding, but with a mixture of the

nervous type, the reactions are less moderate and controlled; the

French and the Poles belong to this division; (_c_) the serene

temperament which stands midway between the strong sanguine and the

phlegmatic, uniting the advantages of both.

2. The _phlegmatic_ or calm temperament never rises above medium

intensity, and presents a singular uniformity; it is a mass whose

movement can neither be accelerated nor retarded: but calm does not

exclude the possibility of strength; on the contrary, it presupposes

it. As nations, the English, the Dutch, the Norwegians belong to

this type.

II. We descend a degree lower with the _medium_ or _neutral_

temperament, “unknown to science, though that of the majority of

men.” It corresponds to the “balanced natures” of Paulhan, and to

those whom elsewhere we call the amorphous, because they have no

definite characteristic peculiar to themselves.

III. Lastly, we descend another step with the _weak_ or negative

characters. “Their reaction may be quick or slow, but what

characterises them is the irregularity, the superfluity, and even

the perversity of their manifestations. There are three varieties:

(_a_) the pure melancholic, distinguished by sadness and apathy,

without nervous symptoms, or at any rate, without dominant ones;

(_b_) the nervous, versatile, with alternations of normal activity,

and dejection, or excitement; (_c_) the choleric, which is not a

genus, is tolerably rare and distinguished by irascibility, and may

be combined with the melancholic or the weaker sanguine; the serene

and the phlegmatic are incompatible with it.”

-----

Footnote 249:

“It has been asserted that every temperament is equal to every

other, and that all are equally necessary to the progress of

humanity: I do not believe this.”

Footnote 250:

“Le tempérament au point de vue psychologique et anthropologique,”

a paper published (in French) in the _Bulletins du Congrès

International d’Anthropologie_, iv. St. Petersburg, 1892, pp.

91-154.

-----

In support of this classification follows a long anthropological

inquiry, drawn up in six tables. Its subjects were 160 men and 40

women belonging to the four principal types, gay, phlegmatic,

neutral, and melancholic. It includes comparative statistics of

stature, chest measurement, neck and arm measurement, cubic capacity

of the lungs, respiration, pulse, temperature, dynamometric

pressure, cephalic indices, state of the senses, etc. The results

are decidedly favourable to the gay and unfavourable to the

melancholic temperament (see especially Table V., p. 114), the

latter being ascertained to have less strength and less delicate

senses, except as regards sensitiveness to pain. In women, the

nervous group, which takes the place of the melancholic group in

men, is the only one presenting any anomalies.

In his conclusions, this writer combats the “rooted tendency to seek

the essence of the temperaments in the phenomena of the circulation

and its satellite, the activity of tissues.” Eight soldiers in good

health, four of whom belonged to the gay, and four to the

melancholic type, were kept by him on the same diet and carefully

watched for three days: the result of the analysis of weight,

secretions, and excretions “does not show that a more rapid change

of tissue took place in the case of the sanguine than in that of the

melancholic subjects.”

Can so limited an experiment, and one of such short duration, be

called decisive?

However that may be, rejecting the chemical theory, Seeland prefers

a physical explanation. In his view, “the nervous tissue, besides

its general activity, possesses an elementary life which is the

basis of temperament and character.” Everything depends on the way

in which the nervous system responds to external or internal

excitation. The gay temperament would correspond to rapid and

harmonious molecular vibrations; the phlegmatic to vibrations less

rapid, but of imperturbable regularity; the neutral to slow but

constant vibrations, and the negative forms to slow and discordant,

or rapid and interrupted vibrations.

This arrangement in order of precedence is not free from objection.

I give it merely as an instance of a classification according to the

presumed value of characters, and as an introduction to the study of

the morbid forms which we are about to commence.

I

In the first place, it is necessary to know by what signs we can

recognise whether a character deviates from the normal types. Not to

return to a subject already treated in the preceding chapter, we may

briefly say:

1. A true character is reducible to one characteristic, one

preponderant tendency which ensures its unity and stability

throughout life. This conception is somewhat ideal, but definite

characters tend, in varying degrees, to approximate thereto.

2. In practice, a clearly defined character always (except in rare

cases, which explain themselves) permits us to foresee and foretell.

We know beforehand what an active, a sensitive, a phlegmatic, or a

contemplative will do under given circumstances. Neutrals, who are,

properly speaking, not characters at all, are acted on by events or

by other people, and calculations as to their future must start from

a point, not within, but outside them.

One, if not both of these marks, is wanting in abnormal

characters, and the further they depart from these two constituent

conditions—unity and the possibility of foresight—the further they

depart from the typical forms, to become at last unmistakably

morbid.

We might be tempted to believe that the anomalies of character, as

observed, are so varied in aspect, so manifold, as to elude all

classification, so that it is impossible to find our way through the

chaos. I think, however, that the determining characteristics given

above will supply us with a clue. It is scarcely necessary to say

that I exclude from the group of anomalies those slight, temporary,

and intermittent deviations which are only passing infractions of

the unity of character. Cæsar, Richelieu, Napoleon were well-defined

types; yet, at certain points in their lives, they ceased to be

themselves. On his journey to Elba, in face of the fury and the

insults of the populace, Napoleon had moments of strange timidity.

Facts of this kind prove, once more, that the complete character

only exists as an ideal; but an indisposition lasting a few hours

cannot be called an illness. Having made this reserve, we may, in

our classification, follow the retrogressive march from co-ordinate

unity to multiplicity, from stability to dissolution, and we thus

have three groups departing more and more widely from the normal

forms: (1) successive contradictory characters; (2) simultaneous

contradictory characters; (3) unstable or polymorphic characters:

the last stage of disaggregation. It only remains to study them, one

by one, in their order.

By _successive_ contradictory characters, I understand two opposite

forms or manners of feeling and acting, so that the life taken as a

whole seems to be that of two individuals, one preceding, the other

following the crisis.

Before dealing with the genuine cases, we must eliminate:

1. The apparently contradictory characters abounding in political

history, such as the triumvir Octavius and emperor Augustus.

Cromwell, by turns an illuminated mystic and a practical joker,

retained, under these appearances, the fundamental tendencies of an

entirely practical nature. So far from contradicting themselves and

being unstable, the character is single and homogeneous throughout:

there is perfect unity in the aims: it is only in the means that

contradiction appears. The moralist has a perfect right to call them

false characters, because they wear masks; for the psychologist they

are quite normal and well marked. They may frequently be met with in

ordinary life, and there one need not be an actor on a great stage

to appear to contradict one’s self; it is enough to be faithful to

the end in view and unscrupulous in the choice of means. Those whom,

in revolutionary times, fear makes suddenly cruel belong to the same

category; their unity lies in the instinct of self-preservation.

2. The transformations produced by the evolution of life and the

change of circumstances. Thus an active character may show itself

successively in love, in dangerous adventures, in ambition, and in

the pursuit of riches.

Having got rid of doubtful cases, we may divide the successive

contradictory characters into two classes: the first including

anomalies, the second pathological forms.

I. As, in our classification, we start from the normal state and

gradually leave it behind us, we must begin with the modified forms

which are simple deviations from the ideal of the character—_i.e._,

from a constant and undisturbed unity. Apart from all ideals, the

successive characters are exceptional with regard to the generality

of people; for even neutrals have throughout their lives a kind of

unity, that of their perpetual plasticity.

In this first class I distinguish two cases. The reader may find

these divisions and subdivisions excessively minute, yet they are

necessary. There is no classification without distinctions, and it

is impossible to follow a retrogressive order without marking every

step on the way to dissolution.

1. The simplest case, and the nearest to the normal condition,

consists in a change of direction in one and the same predominant

tendency in the individual. Such is the case of Raymond Lulli, the

change of the profane loves which occupied the first part of his

life into the platonic and chivalrous love which filled the second;

while the converse case, too, is not rare, and examples might be

found among the mystics. Such are sincere conversions in religion or

in politics (St. Paul, Luther). The same may be said of the cases

where the fire of the temperament, having previously expended itself

for good, now does so for evil, or conversely. All this, from the

moralist’s point of view, is a complete change—_i.e._, there are two

men; from the psychologist’s, it is simply a change of direction,

and there is only one man. It is easy to see that, under the two

contrasts, there is a common foundation, a latent unity, the same

quantity or the same quality of energy directed to different ends;

but we can recognise the chrysalis in the butterfly without

difficulty.

2. These last are the modified forms; the clear cases, which

depart further from the rule, imply a fundamental and genuine

duality—_e.g._, the passage from a life of orgies to a _lasting_

ascetic one (if it does not last, the change is only a passing

accident), from active to contemplative life (Diocletian), from

contemplative to active life (Julian the Apostate); in short, all

the cases where men burn what they have worshipped and worship

what they have burnt, where we find two individuals in the same

person. The common language calls this “a conversion.” It may be

religious, moral, political, artistic, philosophical, scientific,

etc., but it always consists in the substitution of one tendency

or group of tendencies for the contrary, of one belief for its

opposite, of one form of unity for another form, synonymous

expressions which express the different psychological aspects of

transformation. We may note, in passing, that in men who have

passed through two opposite phases, common opinion is only

cognisant of one, usually the final, or else the one of longest

duration and the most conspicuous, the other being overlooked. We

understand by St. Augustine, the man of the post-conversion, by

Diocletian, the man of the pre-abdication period. This judgment is

founded on the need for simplification and unity of mind as

applied to character.

How does this change, dividing life in extreme cases into two

contradictory phases, come about? It is impossible to reply in

general terms; each particular case supposes special conditions. We

may try, however, to determine, approximately, the causes oftenest

in action.

First, the physical causes. A serious illness may, by changing the

constitution, transform the character, thus showing how far it

depends on cœnæsthesia. It is immaterial whether we suppose the

ultimate condition to consist of chemical (or nutritive), or of

physical modifications, the latter being the view of Henle and

Seeland. There are violent shocks, more especially injuries to the

head, of which we shall take occasion to speak later on. Azam gives

some examples of these metamorphoses.[251] A steady, industrious man

sustains a complicated fracture of the leg and subsequently becomes

impulsive and ill-tempered; the author supposes that there must have

been cerebral ischæmia. Another, under similar circumstances,

exchanges a cheerful disposition for incurable melancholia.

Persistent facial neuralgia has transformed a thoroughly

kind-hearted man into a spiteful and morose being.

-----

Footnote 251:

_Le Caractère dans les Maladies_, p. 188 _et seq._

-----

We now come to the moral causes. They appear to act like a shock

whose effect is either immediate or falls due some time later; hence

the change is either sudden or consequent on a long incubation. The

type of the former is found in conversions following an unforeseen

crisis: St. Paul and his vision, Pascal and his accident, Raymond

Lulli and the revelation of one of his mistresses; the Spanish

nobleman, Maraña, whose story has so often been told, who, for half

his life, was a Don Juan, and was suddenly changed by listening to

church music. The “sudden conversions” of theologians involve a

psychological truth. Those of the second type do not take place all

at once, but after a struggle between the old and new tendencies.

St. Augustine, Luther, Loyola, Francisco de Borgia, who, on seeing

the corpse of his empress (Charles V.’s wife), resolved to renounce

the world, but did not do so for many years after. To these

illustrious names each reader may add for himself less known ones

from among his own acquaintances.

We may ask whether even the most sudden changes are, in truth, as

much so as they seem, if they have not their antecedent conditions

in the life of the individual in question, and are not the

accelerated result of a subconscious process. Whatever we may think,

the psychological mechanism of conversions is very similar to that

of irresistible impulses. In its complete evolution it passes

through three stages: (1) the conception of an opposite aim or

ideal; this may happen to any one without lasting or leading to

action; this state will produce no effect if it merely passes

through the mind. (2) This conception must become a _fixed_ idea,

with the permanence, the predominance, the overmastering possession,

which are the peculiarities of such ideas. (3) The action takes

place because already included in the fixed idea, and because the

fixed idea is a belief, and all beliefs presuppose something

existing or about to exist. In short, there is no result till the

idea becomes an impulse. In the cases where the individual is, so to

speak, struck by lightning, the impetuous movement of the passion

springs up suddenly and triumphs immediately. This is yet another

point of resemblance to the irresistible impulses which pass into

action, sometimes after a period of struggle, sometimes in a sudden

ecstasy.

There is, in any case, this difference, that the new

character—_i.e._, new ways of feeling, thinking, and acting—is

lasting. This could not be, if in both stages, incubation and

eruption, a profound change had not taken place in the individual

constitution. Conversions do not create a new tendency, but they

show that the greatest antitheses are latent in us, and that one may

replace the other, not by an act of the will, which is always

precarious, but by a radical transformation of our sensibility.

2. This division includes the _alternating_ characters, whose phases

sometimes succeed one another with such rapidity and frequency as to

approximate to the simultaneous contradictory characters. Instead of

two different characters, one before and one after the crisis, whose

formula for the whole life of the individual would be A, B, we have

the alternation of two forms of character, with or without

intermediary crises, and the formula would be A, B, A, B, and so on.

This alternation is found in the normal or quasi-normal state, but

is too fugitive or too difficult to fix, to be distinguished from

the unstable characters; but the case is not the same with the

morbid types which show it in an exaggerated form. Such are the

phenomena so much studied in our own day, under the name of

alterations, diseases, disorders of personality. They will be known

to the reader, but they are not altogether germane to our subject,

and I only touch upon them in order to elucidate a particular point,

the variations of character.

In cases of alternating personality we may consider either the

physiological changes, which are rather obscure, or the intellectual

changes, which have been referred, on the whole, to the memory, or

the emotional changes, which have been somewhat neglected and in

some observations omitted altogether. It is these last alone which

interest us, because they may be summed up as alternations of

character.