We have spoken throughout of man as a mosaic of character, and we must modify this statement. A mosaic is a static collection, whereas a man has character struggles, balance and overbalance. Really to know a man is to get at the proportionate power of his various trends, to understand his harmonies and disharmonies.
Character development is the story of the unification of the traits or characters. Disharmony, disproportion of traits and characters may be progressive and lead to disaster and mental disease, or a balance may be reached after a struggle and what we call reform takes place. Though our social life tends to narrow and repress character, it also tends to harmonize it by the preventing of excess development of certain traits. The social person is on the whole well balanced, though he may be mediocre. On the other hand, the non-social person usually tends to unbalance in the sense that he becomes odd and eccentric.
What are the chief disharmonies? I mean, of course, glaring disharmonies, for no one is of harmonious development, with intelligence, emotions, instincts, desires, purposes in cooperation with each other. This I propose to consider in more detail in the next chapter, on some character types, but it will be of use to sketch the great disharmonies.
Character is dynamic, and a fundamental disharmony, even if not noticeable early in life, may progress to the point of disruption of the personality. Thus an individual who is strongly egoistic in his purposes and aims may succeed if at the same time he is determined intelligent and shrewd. But let us suppose he has a son who is as strongly egoistic, is as determined, but lacks intelligence and shrewdness. Not becoming successful, this person ascribes his failure to others and develops ideas of persecution.
Again, a true poet is a person of keen sensibilities, but he must possess at the same time imaginative intelligence and the power of words. Let these be joined in proper proportions, and his verse becomes ours and we hail him as a poet. But let him lack the power of words, and though he sweat with a desire to write he is a failure or a hack poet, making up by industry what he lacks in beauty. Suppose there is a man deeply passionate, thrilled by the beauty of women and desiring them with a fierce ardor, and yet he has strong inhibitions, great purposes which hold him steady. Then throughout life he seems calm, chaste and controlled, and no one knows of the turmoil and battle within him. We may suppose that old age[1] or a sickness lowers his inhibiting qualities, and a startling change in conduct results, one that we can scarcely believe and which we are inclined to call a complete transformation of personality. In reality, a disharmony has occurred, some trend has been released, and conduct, which is a resultant, changes its direction.
[1] Sexual misdemeanor is not uncommon in old men who have hitherto been of hallowed reputation.
Inhibition control, may develop later than it should, as I have already mentioned. At adolescence sex desire comes suddenly into play, but usually in one way or another there are checks upon its effects already established. But often there is not, and the boy or girl plunges into a sex life that brings them into violent conflict with themselves and society. Despite their efforts the non-ethical conduct continues; despite their tears and vows to reform they are swept by "temptation" into difficulty. Then suddenly or gradually, perhaps long after every one despairs of them, the inhibition appears, and they settle down to a controlled life. What has happened? We cannot say in anatomical terms, but from a psychological standpoint the function of inhibition, delayed in its appearance, finally comes on the scene. We see this delay in other phases of character; there is often delay in sex feeling, in the interest in work, in love of the beautiful, in control of anger, etc. Take the last mentioned: an irascible child grows into an irascible adolescent and even into a similar adult, flaring up under the least provocation, to the dismay and disgust of others and himself. "He can't control himself," so say others, and so thinks he. He vows reform, but nothing seems to help. Then like a miracle comes the longed-for inhibition; anger is still there when his will is crossed or his opinion scouted, but a firm hand is on it, and he maintains a calm he had despaired of reaching.
Man is a bundle of disharmonies, as the great Eli Metchnikoff pointed out, physically, psychologically and sociologically. When these disharmonies are within average limits we do not notice them; when they are greater in degree they bring about conduct that at once claims attention. Sometimes a disharmony is merely an excess development of some ability, in which case, if the ability is socially valuable, we have the talented person or the genius. This is often the case with the artistic abilities and also with the physical powers. If the disharmony involve an instinct, an emotion or certain phases of the intelligence, we are brought face to face with the abnormal.
There is, of course, disharmony through ordinary defect as in feeble-mindedness, as in absence of some essential emotion or instinct. These are hopeless situations and belong in the grim field of psychopathology. Often what seems to be a defect is a "sleeping" quality, and one that will awaken under appropriate circumstance. Conspicuously, maternal love is of this nature. One sees a girl who has no interest in children, considers them bores and nuisances, who marries with the hope she will be childless, and with the first baby becomes a passionately devoted mother, even fiercely maternal.
In the following pages I shall sketch some prominent character types. This has been done by such masters as Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, La Bruyere, Stewart, Ribot, Mill, etc., but with a different purpose and starting point than mine.