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: