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.
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]]
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]]
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.