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]]
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.