_Are all normal characters mutually equivalent?—Attempt at classification according to their value—Marks of abnormal character: absence of unity, impossibility of prevision—Class I. Successive contradictory characters: anomalies, conversions; their psychological mechanism. Alternating characters—Second class: Contradictory coexistent characters. Incomplete form: contradiction between principles and tendencies. Complete form. Contradiction between one tendency and another—Third class: Unstable characters. Their physiological and psychological characters—Psychological infantilism._
In the works already quoted—those of Perez (1892), Paulhan (1894), and Fouillée (1895)—and in the preceding chapter, the various forms of character have been classified, described, traced back to explanatory principles. In spite of divergent interpretations and differences of nomenclature, there are types universally accepted: the active, the sensitive, the apathetic. But are they equivalent? Such is the question put in the first instance when we pass from normal to morbid characters. It seems to be implicitly admitted that, each type having its qualities and defects, its advantages and disadvantages, they ought to be placed on the same level. The writer who confines himself to classification and description may, by going no further, avoid the difficulty. But as soon as we enter the region of frankly morbid characters, we are led to ask, in the first place, whether the characters reputed normal are all so in the same degree, or whether some are not, by their very nature, nearer to pathological forms, and more apt to undergo a retrogressive metamorphosis; in other words, we have now to establish, not a classification, but a hierarchy, a valuation often disputed, and difficult to fix.
A Russian anthropologist, N. Seeland, is the only writer, so far as I know, who has taken up the question from this point of view. In fact, the ancient authors, when classifying temperaments, and consequently characters, only divided them into strong (the choleric and melancholic) and weak (the sanguine and phlegmatic).
This division (recently accepted by Wundt) is not at bottom very clear, and might give rise to numerous objections. Seeland has once for all broken with tradition and abandoned the quadripartite division; he “does not look upon all temperaments, as having the same value, some approximating more to the idea of perfection, some less.”[249] His classification is, therefore, in fact a hierarchy; and, beginning with the most perfect forms of character, may be briefly stated as follows[250]:—
I. The _strong_ or _positive_ temperaments, including—
1. The gay temperament, a type of which the classic “sanguine” is only a variety; it comprehends three species: (_a_) the strong sanguine, vegetative life predominant, reactions rapid but appropriate, adapted to their end, without agitation; (_b_) the weaker sanguine, resembling the preceding, but with a mixture of the nervous type, the reactions are less moderate and controlled; the French and the Poles belong to this division; (_c_) the serene temperament which stands midway between the strong sanguine and the phlegmatic, uniting the advantages of both.
2. The _phlegmatic_ or calm temperament never rises above medium intensity, and presents a singular uniformity; it is a mass whose movement can neither be accelerated nor retarded: but calm does not exclude the possibility of strength; on the contrary, it presupposes it. As nations, the English, the Dutch, the Norwegians belong to this type.
II. We descend a degree lower with the _medium_ or _neutral_ temperament, “unknown to science, though that of the majority of men.” It corresponds to the “balanced natures” of Paulhan, and to those whom elsewhere we call the amorphous, because they have no definite characteristic peculiar to themselves.
III. Lastly, we descend another step with the _weak_ or negative characters. “Their reaction may be quick or slow, but what characterises them is the irregularity, the superfluity, and even the perversity of their manifestations. There are three varieties: (_a_) the pure melancholic, distinguished by sadness and apathy, without nervous symptoms, or at any rate, without dominant ones; (_b_) the nervous, versatile, with alternations of normal activity, and dejection, or excitement; (_c_) the choleric, which is not a genus, is tolerably rare and distinguished by irascibility, and may be combined with the melancholic or the weaker sanguine; the serene and the phlegmatic are incompatible with it.”
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Footnote 249:
“It has been asserted that every temperament is equal to every other, and that all are equally necessary to the progress of humanity: I do not believe this.”
Footnote 250:
“Le tempérament au point de vue psychologique et anthropologique,” a paper published (in French) in the _Bulletins du Congrès International d’Anthropologie_, iv. St. Petersburg, 1892, pp. 91-154.
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In support of this classification follows a long anthropological inquiry, drawn up in six tables. Its subjects were 160 men and 40 women belonging to the four principal types, gay, phlegmatic, neutral, and melancholic. It includes comparative statistics of stature, chest measurement, neck and arm measurement, cubic capacity of the lungs, respiration, pulse, temperature, dynamometric pressure, cephalic indices, state of the senses, etc. The results are decidedly favourable to the gay and unfavourable to the melancholic temperament (see especially Table V., p. 114), the latter being ascertained to have less strength and less delicate senses, except as regards sensitiveness to pain. In women, the nervous group, which takes the place of the melancholic group in men, is the only one presenting any anomalies.
In his conclusions, this writer combats the “rooted tendency to seek the essence of the temperaments in the phenomena of the circulation and its satellite, the activity of tissues.” Eight soldiers in good health, four of whom belonged to the gay, and four to the melancholic type, were kept by him on the same diet and carefully watched for three days: the result of the analysis of weight, secretions, and excretions “does not show that a more rapid change of tissue took place in the case of the sanguine than in that of the melancholic subjects.”
Can so limited an experiment, and one of such short duration, be called decisive?
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.
