Departing more and more from simple, clear, and definite forms, we come at last to a group of what I have called the _substitutes_, or equivalents for character. The shortest and most suitable appellation for them seems to me to be “partial characters.” Their formula is: amorphousness _plus_ an intellectual disposition, or a well-marked affective tendency. The complete character expresses the whole individual; the sensitive, active, and apathetic are respectively sensibility, energy, apathy to the backbone; all their reactions, or failures to react, show it. The partial character only acts on one point; but on this one point the reaction is energetic, invariable, consistent with itself, foreseen. In all other ways, he thinks, feels, and acts like the rest of the world. He is an imitator, a copy, an impersonal product of his education and environment. This state of being takes the place of a character in many persons, and many take it for such.
The partial characters resulting from intellectual aptitudes are the simplest. If we suppose an innate aptitude for mathematics, mechanical arts, music, painting, etc., it tends to develop itself and to mask all the rest of the character, to become the mark of the individual as a whole, and to produce the illusion of a character which, after all, does not exist, _i.e._, is impersonal. Current speech applies to this sort of hypertrophy an expression borrowed from the phrenologists: “He has such or such a bump.”
Partial characters of an affective form consist in the exclusive predominance of some one passion—_e.g._, sexual love, gambling, avarice, etc. Anything which excites this, whether near or far off, causes an energetic and identical reaction. Outside this ruling passion there is either slight reaction, or indifference. It should be noted that this form of partial character has not much stability, because it is in the nature of passion to extend its influence, gradually to invade the whole individual, and to bring about in him a pathological transformation.
Lastly, as nature is fertile in combinations, and we must try not to forget any, we find composite forms—_e.g._, an amorphous character _plus_ an intellectual aptitude and a passion.
However incomplete, the classification just detailed may have seemed over minute. I have no apologies to make for this, my aim being to follow the natural method—viz., carefully to distinguish the dominant from the subordinate elements, to descend from the general to the particular by an uninterrupted derivation, adding new characteristics as we proceed. Is this a practical method? can it serve to guide us amid the multitudinous manifestations of character? If not, it ought to be rejected.
What, at any rate, is apparent from this classification is the diversity and heterogeneity of those individual modalities which we designate under the collective name of character. The unity of the word disguises the multiplicity of the cases. This permits us to reply, in conclusion, to a very important question frequently debated from the practical point of view: Is character immutable?
Two opposite answers have been given, both equally sweeping.
Some think that character is acquired, and, consequently, indefinitely transformable by appropriate culture. This is the theory of the _tabula rasa_ transferred from the region of the sensations to that of the tendencies and feelings. It was held by some of the eighteenth century philosophers, and is implied in the views of all who have blind faith in the omnipotence of education.
Others look upon character as innate and immutable. All acquired gradations are borrowed garments, or a superficial and fragile coating which falls off at the least shock. With a vast superfluity of metaphysical distinctions, Schopenhauer has maintained this view with much spirit and vigour.
The problem, therefore, seems to be reduced to this dilemma: innate or acquired. I cannot, however, accept it under this form; it is not so simple. Character is an abstract entity—there exist only _characters_. For this ambiguous term, which has only an abstract and factitious unity, let us substitute the multitude of species and varieties already described, and perhaps forgotten. Let us place at one extreme the clear and definite forms which I have called the pure types. Nothing modifies them, nothing impairs them; good or bad, they are solid as the diamond. At the other end of the scale let us place the amorphous, who, by their very definition, are plasticity incarnate. Between these two extremes we may arrange _seriatim_ all modes of character, so as to pass by imperceptible gradations from one end to the other. It is clear that, as we descend towards the amorphous, the individual becomes less refractory to the influences of his environment, and the proportion of acquired character increases in the same ratio. This is equivalent to saying that _true_ characters never change.
