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BODY, PARENTAGE AND CHARACTER IN HISTORY.
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
Ready--New and Cheaper Edition, in great part Rewritten, 2/-
CHARACTER AS SEEN IN BODY AND PARENTAGE,
with a Chapter on
EDUCATION, CAREER, MORALS, AND PROGRESS.
A remarkable and extremely interesting book.--_Scotsman._
A delightful book, witty and wise, clever in exposition, charming in
style, readable and original.--_Medical Press._
Men and women are both treated under these heads (types of character) in
an amusing and observant manner.--_Lancet._
We cordially commend this volume.... A fearless writer.... Merits close
perusal.--_Health._
Mr. Jordan handles his subject in a simple, clear, and popular
manner.--_Literary World._
Full of varied interest.--_Mind._
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER, AND CO. LIMITED.
BODY, PARENTAGE AND
CHARACTER IN HISTORY:
NOTES ON THE TUDOR PERIOD.
BY FURNEAUX JORDAN, F.R.C.S.
LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER & CO. LIMITED,
1890.
Birmingham: Printed by Hall and English.
PREFACE.
In my little work on "Character as Seen in Body and Parentage" I have put
forward not a system, but a number of conclusions touching the
relationship which I believe to exist between certain features of
character on the one hand and certain peculiarities of bodily
configuration, structure, and inheritance on the other. These conclusions,
if they are true, should find confirmation in historic narrative, and
their value, if they have any, should be seen in the light they throw on
historic problems.
The incidents and characters and questions of the Tudor period are not
only of unfailing interest, but they offer singularly rich and varied
material to the student of body and character.
If the proposal to connect the human body with human nature is distasteful
to certain finely-strung souls, let me suggest to them a careful study of
the work and aims and views of Goethe, the scientific observer and
impassioned poet, whom Madame de Stael described as the most accomplished
character the world has produced; and who was, in Matthew Arnold's
opinion, the greatest poet of this age and the greatest critic of any age.
The reader of 'Wilhelm Meister' need not be reminded of the close
attention which is everywhere given to the principle of
inheritance--inheritance even of 'the minutest faculty.'
The student of men and women has, let me say in conclusion, one great
advantage over other students--he need not journey to a museum, he has no
doors to unlock, and no catalogue to consult; the museum is constantly
around him and on his shelves; the catalogue is within himself.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
NOTE I.--THE VARIOUS VIEWS OF HENRY VIII.'S CHARACTER.
Momentous changes in sixteenth century 1
Many characters given to noted persons 3
A great number given to Henry 3
The character given in our time 6
Attempt to give an impartial view 8
Need of additional light 14
NOTE II.--THE RELATION OF BODY AND PARENTAGE TO CHARACTER.
Bodily organisation and temperaments 15
Leading types in both 16
Elements of character run in groups 17
Intervening gradations 20
NOTE III.--HENRY'S FAMILY PROCLIVITIES.
Henry of unimpassioned temperament 21
Took after unimpassioned mother 22
Derived nothing from his father 23
Character of Henry VII. 24
Henry VIII., figure and appearance 26
NOTE IV.--THE WIVES' QUESTION.
Henry's marriages, various causes 27
Passion not a marked cause 28
Henry had no strong passions 30
Self-will and self-importance 31
Conduct of impassioned men 31
NOTE V.--THE LESS CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF HENRY'S CHARACTER.
Characteristics common to all temperaments 32
Henry's cruelty 33
Henry's piety 35
NOTE VI.--THE MORE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF HENRY'S CHARACTER.
Always doing or undoing something 37
Habitual fitfulness 38
Self-importance 40
Henry and Wolsey: Which led? 41
Love of admiration 43
NOTE VII.--HENRY AND HIS COMPEERS.
Henry's political helpers superior to theological 45
Cranmer 46
Sir Thomas More 47
Wolsey 49
NOTE VIII.--HENRY AND HIS PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT.
No act of constructive genius 51
Parliament not abject, but in agreement 53
Proclamations 54
Liberty a matter of race 55
NOTE IX.--HENRY AND THE REFORMATION.
Teutonic race fearless, therefore truthful 56
Outgrew Romish fetters 57
French Revolution racial 58
The essential and the accidental in great movements 60
Wyclif 61
Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Knox 62
Henry's part in the Reformation 64
No thought of permanent division 65
The dissolution of the monasteries 66
NOTE X.--QUEEN ELIZABETH AND QUEEN MARY.
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth much alike 69
Elizabeth less pious but more fitful 71
Elizabeth and marriage 72
Elizabeth's part in the Reformation 73
Elizabeth and Mary Stuart very unlike 74
Lofty characters with flaws 76
Mary's environment and fate 79
Bodily peculiarities of the two Queens 81
THE VARIOUS VIEWS OF HENRY VIII.'S CHARACTER.
NOTE I.
The progress of an individual, of a people, or even of a movement is never
up, and their decadence is never down, an inclined plane. Neither do we
see sudden and lofty flights in progress nor headlong falls in decadence.
Both move rather by steps--steps up or steps down. The steps are not all
alike; one is short another long; one sudden another gradual. They are all
moreover the inevitable sequences of those which went before, and they as
inevitably lead to those which follow. Our Fathers took a long step in the
Tudor epoch, but older ones led up to it and newer ones started from it.
The long step could not possibly be evaded by a Teutonic people. Rome lay
in the path, and progress must needs step over the body of Rome--not a
dead body then, though wounded from within, not a dead body yet, though
now deeply and irreparably wounded from without. Civilization must
everywhere step over the body of Rome or stand still, or turn backwards.
Two factors are especially needed for progress: brain (racial brain),
which by organisation and inheritance tends to be large, free, capable;
and secondly, circumstance, which continually calls forth capability, and
freedom, and largeness. All the schools of supernaturalism, but above all
the Romish school, compress and paralyse at least a portion of the brain:
if a portion is disabled all is enfeebled. If a bodily limb even, a mere
hand or foot, be fettered and palsied, the body itself either dies or
droops into a smaller way of life. It is so with a mental limb--a mental
hand or foot in relation to the mental life.
To the group of ever-present and subtle forces which make for progress,
there were added in the sixteenth century seemingly new and conspicuous
forces. The art of printing or writing by machinery sowed living seed
broadcast over a fertile soil; the "new learning" restored to us the
inspiring but long hidden thought of old Aryan friends and relatives, and
this again in some degree relaxed the grip of alien and enslaving Semitic
ideas which the exigencies of Roman circumstance had imposed on Europe
with the edge of the sword. New action trod on the heels of new thought.
New lands were traversed; new seas were sailed; new heavens were explored.
The good steed civilisation--long burdened and blindfolded and
curbed,--had lagged somewhat; but now the reins were loose, the spurs were
sharp, the path was clear and the leap which followed was long.
While our fathers were taking, or were on the eve of taking, this long
step, a notable young man, the son of a capable and wise father and of a
not incapable but certainly unwise mother, stepped into the chief place in
this country. A student who was in training for an Archbishop was suddenly
called upon to be a King. What this King was, what he was not; what
organisation and parentage and circumstance did for him; how he bore
himself to his time--to its drift, its movements, its incidents, its men,
and, alas, to its women--is now our object to inquire. The study of this
theological monarch and of his several attitudes is deeply instructive and
of unfailing interest.
The Autocrat of the breakfast table wittily comments on the number of
John's characters. John had three. Notable men have more characters than
"John." Henry VIII. had more characters than even the most notable of men.
A man of national repute or of high position has the characters given to
him by his friends, his enemies, and characters given also by parties,
sects, and schools. Henry had all these and two more--strictly, two groups
more--one given to him by his own time, another given to him by ours.
If we could call up from their long sleep half a dozen representative and
capable men of Henry's reign to meet half a dozen of Victoria's, the jury
would probably not agree. If the older six could obtain all the evidence
which is before us, and the newer six could recall all which was familiar
to Henry's subjects at home and his compeers abroad; if the two bodies
could weigh matters together, discuss all things together--could together
raise the dead and summon the living--nevertheless in the end two voices
would speak--a sixteenth century voice and a nineteenth.
The older would say in effect: "We took our King to be not only a striking
personality; not only an expert in all bodily exercises and mental
accomplishments; we knew him to be much more--to be industrious, pious,
sincere, courageous, and accessible. We believed him to be keen in vision,
wise in judgment, prompt and sagacious in action. We looked round on our
neighbours and their rulers, and we saw reason to esteem ourselves the
most prosperous of peoples and our King the first, by a long way the
first, of his fellow Kings. Your own records prove that long years after
Henry's death, in all time of trouble the people longed for Henry's good
sense and cried out for Henry's good laws. He was a sacrilegious
miscreant you say; if it were so the nation was a nation of sacrilegious
miscreants, for he merely obeyed the will of the people and carried out a
policy which had been called for and discussed and contrived and, in part,
carried out long before our Henry's time. Upwards of a century before, the
assembled knights of the shire had more than once proposed to take the
property of the Church (much of it gained by sinister methods) and hand it
over for military purposes. The spirit of the religious houses had for
some time jarred on the awakening spirit of a thinking people. Their very
existence cast a slur on a high and growing ideal of domestic life. Those
ancient houses detested and strove to keep down the knowledge which an
aroused people then, as never before, passionately desired to gain."
"You say he was a 'monster of lust.' Lust is not a new sin: our generation
knew it as well as yours; detected it as keenly as yours; hated it almost
as heartily. But consider: No king anywhere has been, in his own time, so
esteemed, so trusted, nay even so loved and reverenced as our king. Should
we have loved, trusted, and reverenced a 'monster of lust'? If you examine
carefully the times before ours and the times since, you will find that
monsters of lust, crowned or uncrowned, do not act as Henry acted. The
Court, it is true, was not pure, but it was the least voluptuous Court
then existing, and Henry was the least voluptuous man in it. While still
in his teens the widow of an elder brother, a woman much older than he,
and who was also old for her years, was married to him on grounds of state
policy. Not Henry only, but wise and learned men, Luther and Melancthon
among others, came to believe that the marriage was not legal. Henry
himself, indeed, came to believe that God's curse was on it--in our time
we fervently believed in God's curse. A boy with promise of life and
health was the one eager prayer of the people. But boy after boy died and
of four boys not one survived. If one of Catharine's boys had lived: nay
more, if Ann Boleyn had been other than a scheming and faithless woman; or
if, later, Jane Seymour had safely brought forth her son (and perhaps
other sons), Henry would assuredly never have married six wives. You say
he should have seen beforehand the disparity of years, the illegality, the
incest--should have seen even the yet unfallen curse: in our time boys of
eighteen did not see so clearly all these things." "Alas," the juror might
have added, "marriage and death are the two supreme incidents in man's
life: but marriage comes before experience and judgment--these are absent
when they are most needed; experience and judgment attend on death when
they are needless." "Bear in mind, moreover," resumes the older voice,
"that in our time the marriage laws were obscure, perplexing, and
unsettled. High ideals of marriage did not exist. The first nobleman in
our Court was the Earl of Suffolk who twice committed bigamy and was
divorced three times; his first wife was his aunt, and his last his
daughter-in-law. Papal relaxations and papal permissions were cheap and
common--they permitted every sort of sexual union and every sort of
separation. Canon law and the curious sexual relationships of
ecclesiastics, high and low, shed no light but rather darkness on the
matter. The Pope, it is true, hesitated to grant Henry's divorce, but not,
as the whole world knew, on moral or religious grounds: at heart he
approved the divorce and rebuked Wolsey for not settling the matter
offhand in England. All the papal envoys urged the unhappy Catharine to
retire into a religious house; but Catharine insisted that God had called
her to her position"--forgetting, we may interpose, that if He called her
to it He also in effect deposed her from it. God called her daughter Mary,
so Mary believed, to burn Protestants; God called Elizabeth, so Elizabeth
exclaimed ('it was marvellous in her eyes'), to harass Romanists.
"But the one paramount circumstance which weighed with us, and we remember
a thousand circumstances while you remember the 'six wives' only, was the
question of succession. If succession was the one question which more than
all others agitated your fathers in Anne's time, try to imagine what it
was to us. You, after generations of order, peace and security--you
utterly fail to understand our position. We had barely come out of a
lawless cruel time--a time born of the ferocity and hate of conflicting
dynasties. Fathers still lived to tell us how they ate blood, and drank
blood, and breathed blood. They and we were weary of blood, and our two
Henrys (priceless Henrys to us,) had just taken its taste out of our
mouths. No queen, be it well noted, had ruled over us either in peaceful
or in stormy times; we believed with our whole souls, rightly or wrongly,
that no queen could possibly preserve us from destruction and ruin. It was
our importunity mainly--make no mistake on this point,--which drove our
king, whenever he was wifeless, to take another wife. His three years of
widowhood after Jane Seymour's death was our gravest anxiety."
The newer voice replies: "You were a foolish and purblind generation. The
simplicity of your Henry's subjects, and the servility of his parliament
have become a bye-word. It is true your king, although less capable than
you suppose, was not without certain gifts--their misuse only adds to his
infamy. It is true also that he had been carefully educated,--his father
was to be thanked for that. It would seem, moreover, that quite early in
life he was not without some attractiveness in person and manners, but you
forget that bodily grossness and mental irritability soon made him a
repulsive object. An eminent Englishman of our century says he was a big,
burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced, double-chinned and swinish-looking
fellow, and that indeed so bad a character could never have been veiled
under a prepossessing appearance. Your King was vain, ostentatious, and
extravagant. With measured words we declare that his hypocrisy, cruelty,
sacrilege, selfishness and lust, were all unbounded. He was above all an
unrivalled master of mean excuses: did he wish to humble and oppress the
clergy--they had violated the statute of premunire. Did his voluptuous eye
fall on a dashing young maid of honour--he suddenly discovered that he was
living in incest, and that his marriage was under God's curse. Did the
Pope hesitate to grant him a divorce--he began to see that the proper head
of the English Church was the English king. Was his exchequer empty--he
was convinced that the inmates of the wealthy religious houses led the
lives and deserved the fate of certain cities once destroyed by fire and
brimstone. Did a defiant Pole carry his head out of Harry's reach--it was
found that Pole's mother, Lady Salisbury, was the centre of Yorkist
intrigue, and that the mother's head could be lopped off in place of the
son's."
The two voices it is clear have much to say for themselves. It is equally
clear that the two groups of jurymen will not agree on their verdict.
It is commonly held and as a rule on good grounds, that the judgment of
immediate friends and neighbours is less just than the opinion of
foreigners and of posterity. This is so when foreigners and posterity are
agreed, and are free from the tumult, and passion, and personal bias of
time and place. It is not so in Henry's case. Curiously enough, foreign
observers, scholars, envoys, travellers, agree with--nay, outrun Henry's
subjects in their praise of Henry. Curiously too the tumult and passion
touching Henry's matrimonial affairs--touching all his affairs
indeed,--have grown rather than diminished with the progress of time.
Epochs, like men, have not the gift of seeing themselves as others see
them. Unnumbered Frenchmen ate and drank, and made merry, and bought and
sold; married their children and buried their parents, not knowing that
France was giving a shock to all mankind for all time to come. The
assassins of St. Bartholomew believed that in future a united Christendom
would bless them for performing a pious and uniting deed. We see all at
once the bare and startling fact of six wives. Henry's subjects saw and
became familiar with a slow succession of marriages, each of which had its
special cloud of vital yet confusing circumstance. So too the Reformation
has its different phases. In the sixteenth century it was looked on as a
serious quarrel, no doubt, but no one dreamed it was anything more. Then
each side thought the other side would shortly come to its senses and all
would be well; no one dreamt of two permanently hostile camps and lasting
combat. If personal hate and actual bloodshed have passed away, and at the
present moment the combat shews signs of still diminishing bitterness, it
is because a new and mysterious atmosphere is slowly creeping over
both--slowly benumbing both the armies.
An attempt must be made here to sketch Henry's character with as much
impartiality as is possible. But no impartial sketch will please either
his older friends or his newer enemies. Although Henry came to the throne
a mere boy, he was a precocious boy. In the precocious the several stages
of life succeed each other more quickly than in others, and probably they
themselves do not wear so well. When Henry was twenty-five he was little
less wise and capable than he was at thirty-five or forty-five. At forty
he was probably wiser than he was at fifty. The young king's presence was
striking; he had a fresh rosy complexion, and an auburn though scanty
beard. His very limbs, exclaims one foreign admirer, "glowed with warm
pink" through his delicately woven tennis costume. He was handsome in
feature; large and imposing in figure; open and frank in manners; strong,
active, and skilled in all bodily exercises. He was an admirer of all the
arts, and himself an expert in many of them. Henry had indeed all the
qualities, whatever their worth may be, which make a favourite with the
multitude. Those qualities, no matter what change time brought to them,
preserved his popularity to the last.
Henry was neither a genius nor a hero; but they who deny that he was a
singularly able man will probably misread his character; misread his
ideals, his conduct, and his various attitudes. Henry's education was
thorough and his learning extensive. His habit of mind tended perhaps
rather to activity and versatility and obedience to old authority than to
intensity or depth or independence. His father, who looked more favourably
on churchmen and lawyers than on noblemen, destined his second son for the
Church. At that time theology, scholastic theology--for Colet and Erasmus
and More had not then done their work--was the acutest mental discipline
known as well as the highest accomplishment. For when the "new learning"
reached this country it found theology the leading study, and therefore
it roused theology; in Italy on the other hand it found the arts the
predominant study, and there it roused the arts. Henry would doubtless
have made a successful bishop and escaped thereby much domestic turmoil;
but, on the whole, he was probably better fitted to be a King; while his
quiet, contemplative, and kindly father would at any rate have found life
pleasanter in lawn sleeves than he found it on a throne.
It would be well if men and women were to write down in two columns with
all possible honesty the good and the evil items in the characters (not
forgetting their own) which interest them. The exercise itself would
probably call forth serviceable qualities, and would frequently bring to
light unexpected results. Probably in this process good characters would
lose something and the bad would gain. From such an ordeal Henry VIII.
would come out a sad figure, though not quite so sad as is popularly
considered.
It is not proposed in this sketch of character to separate, if indeed
separation is possible, the good qualities which are held to be more or
less inborn from those which seem to be attainable by efforts of the will.
Freedom of the will must of course be left in its native darkness. Neither
can the attempt be made to estimate, even if such estimate were possible,
how much the individual makes of his own character and how much is made
for him. Some features of character, again, are neither good nor evil, or
are good or evil only when they are excessive or deficient or unsuitable
to time and place. Love of pageantry is one of these; love of pleasure
another; so, too, are the leanings to conservation or to innovation.
In thought and feeling and action Henry was undoubtedly conservative. His
conservatism was modified by his self-will and self-confidence, but it
assuredly ranked with the leading features of his character--with his
piety his egotism and his love of popularity. To shine in well-worn paths
was his chief enjoyment: not to shine in these paths, or to get out of
them, or to get in advance of them, or to lag behind, was his greatest
dread. The innovator may or may not be pious, but conservatism naturally
leans to piety, and Henry's piety, if not deep or passionate, was at any
rate copious and sincere. Henry, it has been said, was not a hero, not a
genius, neither was he a saint. But if his ideals were not high, and if
his conduct was not unstained, his religious beliefs were unquestioning
and his religious observances numerous and stringent.
The fiercer the light which beat upon his throne, the better pleased was
Henry. He had many phases of character and many gifts, and he delighted in
displaying his phases and in exercising his gifts. The use and place of
ceremony and spectacle are still matters of debate; but modern feeling
tends more and more to hand them over to children, May-day sweeps, and
Lord-mayors. In Henry's reign the newer learning and newer thought had it
is true done but little to undermine the love of gewgaws and glitter, but
Henry's devotion to them, even for his time, was so childish that it must
be written down in his darker column.
We may turn now to the less debatable items in Henry's character, and say
which shall go into the black list and which into the white. We are all
too prone perhaps to give but one column to the men we approve, and one
only to the men we condemn. It is imperative in the estimation of
character that there be "intellect enough," as a great writer expresses
it, to judge and material enough on which to pronounce judgment. If we
bring the "sufficient intellect," especially one that is fair by habit and
effort, to the selection of large facts--for facts have many sizes and
ranks, large and small, pompous and retiring--and strip from these the
smaller confusing facts, strip off too, personal witcheries and deft
subtleties--then we shall see that all men (and all movements) have two
columns. The 'monster' Henry had two. In his good column we cannot refuse
to put down unflagging industry--no Englishman worked harder--a genuine
love of knowledge, a deep sense of the value of education, and devotion to
all the arts both useful and elevating--the art of ship-building
practically began with him. His courage, his sincerity, his sense of duty,
his frequent generosity, his placability (with certain striking
exceptions) were all beyond question. His desire for the welfare of his
people, although tempered by an unduly eager desire for their good
opinion, was surely an item on the good side. The good column is but
fairly good; the black list is, alas, very black. Henry was fitful,
capricious, petulant, censorious. His fitfulness and petulance go far to
explain his acts of occasional implacability. Failing health and premature
age explain in some degree the extreme irritability and absence of control
which characterised his later years. In his best years his love of
pleasure, or rather his love of change and excitement, his ostentation,
and his extravagance exceeded all reasonable limits. Ostentation and love
of show are rarely found apart from vanity, and Henry's vanity was
colossal. Vain men are not proud, and Henry had certainly not the pride
which checks the growth of many follies. A proud man is too proud to be
vain or undignified or mean or deceitful, and Henry was all these. Pride
and dignity usually run together; while, on the other hand, vanity and
self-importance keep each other company as a rule. Henry lacked dignity
when he competed with his courtiers for the smiles of Ann Boleyn in her
early Court days; he lacked it when he searched Campeggio's unsavoury
carpet-bag. He seemed pleased rather than otherwise that his petty gossip
should be talked of under every roof in Europe. It is true that in this
direction Catharine descended to a still lower level of bed-room scandal;
but her nature, never a high one, was deteriorated by a grievous
unhappiness and by that incessant brooding which sooner or later tumbles
the loftiest nature into the dust.
Henry's two striking failings--his two insanities--were a huge
self-importance and an unquenchable thirst for notoriety and applause. I
have said 'insanities' designedly, for they were not passions--they were
diseases. The popular "modern voice" would probably not regard these as at
all grave defects when compared with others so much worse. This voice
indeed, we well know, declares him to have been the embodiment of the
worst human qualities--of gross selfishness, of gross cruelty, and of
gross lust. These charges are not groundless, but if we could believe them
with all the fulness and the vehemence with which they are made, we must
then marvel that his subjects trusted him, revered him, called (they and
their children) for his good sense and his good laws; we can but marvel
indeed that with one voice of execration they did not fell him lifeless to
the ground. He was unguarded and within reach. If the charges against
Henry come near to the truth, Nero was the better character of the two.
Nero knew not what he did; he was beyond question a lunatic and one of a
family of lunatics. Henry's enormities were the enormities of a fairly
sane and responsible man.
In order to read Henry's character more correctly, if that be possible,
than it is read by the "two voices," more light is needed. Let us see what
an examination of Henry's bodily organisation, and especially of his
parentage, will do for us. In this light--if it be light, and attainable
light--it will be well to examine afresh (at the risk of some repetition)
the grave charges which are so constantly and so confidently laid at his
door and see what of vindication or modification or damning confirmation
may follow. Before looking specially at Henry's organisation and
inheritance, I purpose devoting a short chapter to a general view of the
principles which can give such an examination any value. It will be for
the most part a brief statement of views which I have already put forward
in my little work on character as seen in body and parentage.
THE RELATION OF BODY AND PARENTAGE TO CHARACTER.
NOTE II.
It is unwise to turn aside from the investigation of any body of truths
because it can only be partial in its methods or incomplete in its
results. We do this however in the study of the science of character. It
is true that past efforts have given but little result--little result
because they ignored and avowedly ignored the connection which is coming
to be more and more clearly seen to exist between character on the one
hand and bodily organisation and proclivity, and especially the
organisation and proclivity of the nervous system, on the other hand.
Those who ignore the bearings of organisation and inheritance on character
are, for the most part, those who prefer that "truth should be on their
side rather than that they should be on the side of truth."
It is contended here that much serviceable knowledge may be obtained by
the careful investigation, in given individuals, of _bodily_
characteristics, and the union of these with _mental_ and _moral_
characteristics. The relationship of these combined features of body and
mind to parentage, near and remote, and on both sides, should be traced as
far back as possible. The greater the number of individuals brought under
examination, the more exact and extensive will be the resulting knowledge.
Very partial methods of classifying character are of daily utility. We
say, for example, speaking of the muscular system only, that men are
strong or weak. But this simple truth or classification has various
notable bearings. Both the strong and the weak may be dextrous, or both
may be clumsy; both may be slow, or both may be quick; but they will be
dextrous or clumsy, slow or quick, in different ways and degrees. So,
going higher than mere bodily organisation, we may say that some men are
bold and resolute while others are timid and irresolute; some again are
parsimonious and others prodigal. Now these may possibly be all
intelligent or all stupid, all good or all bad; but, nevertheless,
boldness and timidity, parsimony and generosity, modify other phases of
character in various ways. The irresolute man, for example, cannot be very
wise, or the penurious man truly good. It must always be remembered in
every sort of classification of bodily or of mental characteristics, that
the lines of division are not sharply defined. All classes merge into each
other by imperceptible degrees.
One of the most, perhaps the most, fundamental and important
classification of men and women is that which puts them into two divisions
or two temperaments, the active, or tending to be active, on the one hand,
and the reflective, or tending to be reflective, on the other. To many
students of character this is not anew suggestion, but much more is
contended for here. It is contended that the more active temperament is
alert, practical, quick, conspicuous, and--a very notable
circumstance--less impassioned; the more reflective temperament is less
active, less practical, or perhaps even dreamy, secluded, and--also a very
notable circumstance--more impassioned. It is not so much that men of
action always desire to be seen, or that men of thought desire to be
hidden; action naturally brings men to the front; contemplation as
naturally hides them; when active men differ, the difference carries
itself to the housetops; when thinking men differ, they fight in the
closet and by quieter methods. Busy men, moreover, are given to detail,
and detail fills the eye and ear; men of reflection deal more with
principles, and these lie beyond the range of ordinary vision.
The proposition which I here put forward, based on many years of
observation and study, is fundamental, and affects, more or less, a wide
range of character in every individual. The proposition is that in the
active temperament the intellectual faculties are disproportionately
strong--the passions are feebler and lag behind; in the reflective
temperament the passions are the stronger in proportion to the mental
powers. Character is dominated more by the intellect in one case, more by
the emotions in the other. In all sane and healthful characters (and only
these are considered here) the intellectual and emotional elements are
both distinctly present. The most active men think; the most reflective
men act. But in many men and women the intellect takes an unduly large
share in the fashioning of life; these are called here the "less
impassioned," the "unimpassioned," or for the sake of brevity, "the
passionless." In many others the feelings or emotions play a stronger
part; these are the "more impassioned" or the "passionate."
Character is not made of of miscellaneous fragments, of thought and
feeling, of volition and action. Its elements are more or less homogeneous
and run in uniform groups. The less impassioned, or passionless, for
example, are apt to be changeable and uncertain; they are active, ready,
alert; they are quick to comprehend, to decide, to act; they are usually
self-confident and sometimes singularly self-important. They often seek
for applause but they are sparing in their approval and in their praise of
others. When the mental endowment is high, and the training and
environment favourable, the unimpassioned temperament furnishes some of
our finest characters. In this class are found great statesmen and great
leaders. A man's _public_ position is probably determined more by
intellectual power than by depth of feeling. Now and then, especially when
the mental gifts are slight, the less pleasing elements predominate: love
of change may become mere fitfulness; activity may become bustle; sparing
approval may turn to habitual detraction and actual censoriousness. Love
of approbation may degenerate into a mania for notoriety at any cost;
self-importance may bring about a reckless disregard of the well-being of
others. Fortunately the outward seeming of the passionless temperament is
often worse than the reality, and querulous speech is often combined with
generous action. Frequently, too, where there is ineradicable caprice
there is no neglect of duty.
The elements of character which, in various ways and degrees, cluster
together in the more impassioned or passionate temperament are very
different in their nature. In this temperament we find repose or even
gentleness, quiet reflection, tenacity of purpose. The feelings--love, or
hate, or joy, or grief, or anger, or jealousy--are more or less deep and
enduring. In this class also there are fine characters, especially (as in
the unimpassioned) when the mental gifts are high and the training
refined. In this class too are found perhaps the worst characters which
degrade the human race. In all save the rarest characters, the customary
tranquillity may be broken by sullen cloud or actual storm. In the less
capable and less elevated, devotion may become fanaticism, and tenacity
may become blind prejudice, or sheer obstinacy. In this temperament too,
in its lower grades, we meet too often--not all together perhaps,
certainly not all in equal degree--with indolence, sensuality,
inconstancy; or morbid brooding, implacability, and even cruelty.
I contend then that certain features of character, it may be in very
varying degrees of intensity, belong to the more active and passionless
temperament, and certain other features attend on the more reflective and
impassioned temperament. If it can be shown that there are two marked
groups of elements in character--the more impassioned group and the less
impassioned group--and that each group may be inferred to exist if but one
or two of its characteristic elements are clearly seen, why even then much
would be gained in the interpretation of history and of daily life. But I
contend for much more than this; the two temperaments have each their
characteristic bodily signs; the more marked the temperament, the more
striking and the more easily read are the bodily signs. In the
intermediate temperament--a frequent and perhaps the happiest
temperament--the bodily signs are also intermediate. The bodily
characteristics run in groups also, as well as the mental. The nervous
system of each temperament is enclosed in its own special organisation and
framework. In my work on "character as seen in body and parentage," I
treat this topic with some fulness, and what is stated there need not be
repeated now. It may be noted, however, that in the two temperaments there
are peculiarities of the skin--clearness or pigmentation; of the
hair--feebleness or sparseness, or closeness and vigour of growth; of the
configuration of the skeleton and consequent pose of the figure.
If the conclusions here put forward are true, they give a key which opens
up much character to us. They touch, as I have already said, a great range
of character in every individual, but they make no pretension to be a
system. They have only an indirect bearing on many phases of character;
for in both the active and reflective temperaments there may be found, for
example, either wisdom or folly, courage or cowardice, refinement or
coarseness.
It must always be remembered, too, that besides the more marked types of
character, whether bodily or mental, there are numberless intervening
gradations. When the temperaments, moreover, are distinctly marked, the
ordinary concurrent elements may exist in very unequal degrees and be
combined in very various ways. One or two qualities may perhaps absorb the
sum-total of nerve force. In the passionless man or woman extreme activity
may repress the tendency to disapprove; immense self-importance may impede
action. In the impassioned individual, inordinate love or hate may
enfeeble thought; deep and persistent thought may dwarf the affections.
As I have said elsewhere: 'For the ordinary purposes of life, especially
of domestic and social life, the intervening types of character (combining
thought and action more equally, though probably each in somewhat less
degree) produce perhaps the most useful and the happiest results. But the
progress of the world at large is mainly due to the combined efforts of
the more extreme types--the supremely reflective and impassioned and the
supremely active and unimpassioned. Both are needed. If we had men of
action only, we should march straight into chaos; if we had men of thought
only, we should drift into night and sleep!'
HENRY'S FAMILY PROCLIVITIES.
NOTE III.
If there is any truth in the views put forward in the foregoing chapter,
and if history has at all faithfully portrayed a character concerning
which it has had, at any rate, much to say, it is clear that Henry must be
placed in the less impassioned class of human beings. When I first called
attention to the three sorts of character--and the three groups of
characteristics--the active, practical, and more or less passionless on
the one hand; the less active, reflective, and impassioned on the other;
and, thirdly, the intermediate class, neither Henry nor his period was in
my mind. But when, at a later time (and for purposes other than the
special study of character), I came to review the Reformation with its
ideas, its men, its incidents, I saw at once, to my surprise, that Henry's
life was a busy, active, conspicuous, passionless life. He might have sat
for the portrait I had previously drawn. Markedly unimpassioned men tend
to be fitful, petulant, censorious, self-important, self-willed, and eager
for popularity--so tended Henry. The unimpassioned are frequently sincere,
conscientious, pious, and conservative--Henry was all these. They often
have, especially when capable and favourably encompassed, a high sense of
duty and a strong desire to promote the well-being of those around
them--these qualities were conspicuous in Henry's character.
How much of inherited organisation, how much of circumstance, how much of
self-effort go to the making of character is a problem the solution of
which is yet seemingly far off. Mirabeau, with fine perception, declared
that a boy's education should begin, twenty years before he is born, with
his mother. Unquestionably before a man is born the plan of his character
is drawn, its foundations are laid, and its building is foreshadowed. Can
he, later, close a door here or open a window there? Can he enlarge this
chamber or contract that? He believes he can, and is the happier in the
belief; but in actual life we do not find that it is given to one man to
say, I will be active, I will be on the spot, I will direct here and
rebuke there; nor to another man to say, I will give myself up to thought,
to dreams, to seclusion. Henry never said, with unconscious impulse or
with conscious words, "I will be this, or I will not be that."
Henry VIII. took altogether after his mother's side, and she, again, took
after her father. Henry was, in fact, his grandfather Edward IV. over
again. He had, however, a larger capacity than his mother's father, and he
lived in a better epoch. Edward, it was said in his time, was the
handsomest and most accomplished man in Europe. Henry was spoken of in
similar words by his compeers both at home and abroad. Both were large in
frame, striking in contour, rose-pink in complexion--then, as now, the
popular ideal of manly perfection--and both became exceedingly corpulent
in their later years. Both were active, courteous, affable, accessible;
both busy, conspicuous, vain, fond of pleasure, and given to display. Both
were unquestionably brave; but they were also (both of them) fickle,
capricious, suspicious, and more or less cruel. Both put self in the
foremost place; but Edward's selfishness drifted rather to
self-indulgence, while Henry's took the form of self-importance. Extreme
self-importance is usually based on high capacity, and Edward's capacity
did not lift him out of the region of pomposity and frequent indiscretion.
Edward IV. was nevertheless an able man although less able than Henry.
Like Henry he belonged to the unimpassioned class; he was without either
deeply good or deeply evil passion, but probably he had somewhat stronger
emotions than his grandson. In other words Henry had more of intellect and
less of passion than his grandfather. Edward's early and secret marriage
was no proof of passion. Early marriages are not the monopoly of any
temperament; sometimes they are the product of the mere caprice, or the
self-will and the feeble restraint of the passionless, and sometimes the
product of the raw and immature judgment of the passionate. Edward
deserves our pity, for he had everything against him; he had no models, no
ideals, no education, no training. The occupation of princes at that time
brought good neither to themselves nor anyone else. They went up and down
the country to slay and be slain; to take down from high places the
severed heads of one worthless dynasty and put up the heads of another
dynasty equally worthless.
The eighth Henry derived nothing from his father--the seventh,--nothing of
good, nothing of evil. One of the most curious errors of a purely literary
judgment on men and families is seen in the use of the epithet "Tudor." We
hear for example of the "Tudor" blood shewing itself in one, of the
"Tudor" spirit flashing out in another. Whether Henry VII. was a Tudor or
not we may not now stop to inquire. Henry VIII. we have seen took wholly
after his Yorkist mother. Of Henry's children, Mary was a repetition of
her dark dwarfish Spanish mother; the poor lad Edward, whether a Seymour
or a Yorkist, was certainly not a Tudor. The big comely pink Elizabeth was
her father in petticoats--her father in body, her father in mind. Henry
VIII. in fact while Tudor in name was Lancastrian in dynasty, and Yorkist
in blood. No two kings, no two men indeed could well have been more
unlike, bodily, mentally, and morally, than the two Henrys--father and
son. The eighth was communicative, confiding, open, frank; the seventh was
silent, reserved, mysterious. The son was active, busy, practical,
conspicuous; the father, although not indolent, and not unpractical, was
nevertheless quiet, dreamy, reflective, self-restrained, and unobtrusive.
One was prodigal, martial, popular; the other was prudent, peaceful,
steadfast, and unpopular. He is said indeed to have been parsimonious, but
the least sympathetic of his historians confess that he was generous in
his rewards for service, that his charities were numerous, and that his
state ceremonies were marked by fitting splendour. Henry VIII. changed (or
destroyed) his ministers, his bishops, his wives, and his measures also,
many times. Henry VII. kept his wife--perverse and mischievous as she
was,--till she died; kept his ministers and bishops till they died; kept
his policy and his peace till he died himself.
Henry VII. is noteworthy mainly for being but little noticed. The scribe
of whatever time sees around him only that which is conspicuous and
exceptional and often for the most part foolish, and therefore the
documents of this Henry's reign are but few in number. The occupants of
high places who are careful and prudent are rarely popular. His
unpopularity was moreover helped on in various ways. Dynastic policy
thrust upon him a wife of the busy unimpassioned temperament--a woman in
whom deficient emotion and sympathy and affection were not compensated by
any high qualities; a woman who was restless, mischievous, vain,
intriguing, and fond of influence. Elizabeth of York had all the bad
qualities of her father and her son and had very few of their good ones. A
King Henry in feminine disguise without his virtues was not likely to love
or be loved. Domestic sourness is probably a not infrequent cause of
taciturnity and mystery and seclusion in the characters of both men and
women. It was well that Henry was neither angry nor morose. It says much
for him moreover that while he was the object of ceaseless intrigue and
hostility and rancour he yet never gave way to cynicism or revenge or
cruelty.
With a tolerably happy marriage, an assenting and a helpful nobility, and
an unassailed throne, it is difficult to put a limit to the good which
Henry VII. might have done and which it lay in him to do. As it was he
smoothed the way for enterprise and discovery, for the printing press and
the new learning. He was the first of English monarchs who befriended
education--using the word in its modern sense. It is curious that the
acutest changes in our history--the death of a decrepit mediaevalism, the
birth of the young giant modernism--happened in our so-called sleepiest
reign. Surely the "quiet" father had a smaller share of popular applause
than he deserved, and as surely the "dashing" son a much larger share. But
in all periods, old and new, popularity should give us pause: yesterday,
for example, inquisitors were knelt to, hailed with acclamation and pelted
with flowers, and heretics were spat upon, hissed at, and burnt, but
to-day's flowers are for the heretics and the execrations are for the
inquisitors.