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CHARACTER-
AS SEEN IN "7| ""
BODY AND PARENTAGE:
WITH NOTES ON EDUCATION, MARRIAGE, CHANGE IN CHARACTER, AND MORALS.
THIRD EDITION.
FURNEAUX JORDAN, F.R.C.S.,
CONSULTING SIRGEON TO TIIK QUKKN'S HOSPITAL. BIRMINGHAM.
KORMI'IRLY PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY TO THE BIRMINGHA.M ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTISTS. AND LATE PROFESSOR OF SURGERY AT THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE.
HASTING'S ESSAYIST OF THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION FOR INQUIRIES INTO THE EFFECTS OF INJURIES ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
LONDON :
Kegan I'aul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
1896.
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PREFACE,
The conclusions put forward in the following pages do not pretend to explain the length and breadth of character ; they make no claim to be a system ; they simply aim at establishing a few truths and at stating them in untechnical language. But it is believed that these truths are important and that they affect a large range of character in every human being.
Character is not a chance collection of miscellaneous frag- ments : its items tend to group themselves in more or less uniform clusters. In the more impassioned character, for example, there is one cluster, in the less impassioned another ; though the contrast between the two is not necessarily a startling one. An endeavour is here made to show how true this principle of grouninj: is and, more than this, to show that certain special groups of character-notes are associated with certain special groups of bodily si,G:ns
Much in the following chapters has been rewritten and much has been added, but the views and principles they contain remain unchanged.
Some matters have been omitted from the closin j: chapter in the hope that they may appear more appropriately at another time in conjunction with other inquiries which bear on the r-I.-ticmship of human organisation to human problems.
A few of the ideas, and probably of the expressions, \n t his little work have appeared in other pages with or without t;i< author's name.
CONTENTS.
Chapter I.— Origin and Nature of the Enquiry.
PAGE
Aptitude for the study of character 1 —
Assaulted scolding wives 1
Their appearance and configuration : often young and pretty 2
Assaulted, unfaithful, or suspected wives* 2 ^
Their appearance and configuration 3
Ruskin on Bill and Nancy 3
Character similar in essentials in both sexes and in all classes 8 Difficult for one temperament to judge another ... 4 Two generic or fundamental temperaments . ... 6 The active and less impassioned nature : its group of charac- ter notes 6
The more impassioned and reflective : its group of character
notes 7
Brain power chief force in character 8
Probable number in each temperamental class ... 8
Chapter II.— The Character of the Active AND Less-impassioned Woman.
Tends to vivacity and quickness .... Character mainly influenced by brain and capacity If capacity slight occupied with little things . Considerable number devoted to cleaning Precocious, business-like ; often generous and kindly Jumps to conclusions or defers to authority . A mother's love and a father's love
In the domestic circle
Wishes to be good and do good, though captious In the social circle ; not ascetic ....
Shakspere's shi-ew .......
Extreme examples of the less and the more impassioned women 16
9 9 10 10 11 12 13 13 13 14 15
VI.
Chapter IIL— Character of the Impassioned Woman.
PAGE
Quieter manners except when unusual vitality . . .17 Not merely the opposites of the less impassioned . . .17 Whatever failings will never be a nagging woman . . .18 Character develops slowly. Less quick response to educational
measures 18
Fins responsible positions more rarely 19
Has greater power of intellectual detachment . . . .19
The impassioned woman as stepmother 20
' Shows to greater advantage in the domestic than in the social
circle . 21
Varieties of affectation 21
Greater uniformity in character . . . . , .22
Varying capability of self -judgment 23
More interested in thought and feeling than in words and
methods 2.3
The temperament ia early life 24
Chapter IV.— The Active and Less Impassioned man.
Similarity of unimpassioned males and females . . .26
Has the advantage of a larger sphere of life than the woman 26
Majority of great names of both sexes less impassioned . 26
Characteristics when intellectual power average or slight . 27
Self-confident and pushing 28
Quick to see opinion and lead parties. Not original . . 29
Public spirited : energetic 30
Prefers to influence and lead 31
Conspicuous in all spheres of life 32
His recreations 33
Chapter V.— The more Impassioned and Reflective Man.
35 35 36 36 37
Impassioned men and impassioned women much alike . Less restless but may have exceptional vitality and energy More given to approval than to censure Unemotional men may use emotional language Matures slowly. Early mistakes. Less conventional .
PAGE
The rapidly perceptive and the arts. The slowly investigating
and truths 38
Leadership an art 38
Religious leaders very typical of temperament ... 39 Leaders are not originators. Organisers. Combatants . . 40
Chapter VI. — Bodily Characteristics (Anatomy and Physiology) of the Two Leading Temperaments.
General conformation of figure determined by skeleton . . 42
Finer outlines and surface. Skin, hair, pigment, fat . . 42
Bodily characteristics tend to run in groups .... 43 Skin, hair, pigment, fat, and skeleton of less impassioned men
and women 43
Ditto in the more impassioned 43
Intermediate characteristics 44
Artists ideal of the female figure . . . . . .44
Reasons against precipitate judgment 45
Operation of special and not strictly normal causes ... 46
Inheritance. Marriage of cousins 47
Chapter VIL— Evidence and Examples.
Non-physiological opinion of character ....
All men and women alike : Mill and Buckle .
Brawling women and brawling men. Socrates and his wife
Lady Godiva. Fable and legend
Arthurs, Galahads, Lancelots, Guineveres
Caesar and Cicero
Henry VIII., Elizabeth, Mary, Erasmus, More
48 48 49 50 51 62 53
Chapter VIIL— Evidence and Examples Continued.
Napoleon 60
Nelson and Washington 63
Cardinal Newman . . .65
Spurgeon, Wesley, Bunyan 69
Mr. Gladstone 72
John Bright 77
Majority of men, great and others, put goodness before truth 79
VIU.
Chapter IX.— Evidence and Examples Continued.
PAGE
Voltaire, Goethe, Dr. Johnson 82
Thomas Carlyle. Mr, Ruskin . 83
Burns, Byron, Goethe 84
Nathaniel Hawthorne 85
Charles Dickens 86
George Eliot 87
Mark Rutherford 91
Some Novelists and their characters 92
Chapter X. — Marriage.
Neglect of temperamental point of view 95
Less impassioned man's unconscious or unformulated point of
view 95
More impassioned man's point of view 96
Less impassioned woman's view 96
More impassioned woman's view 96
Intermediate types 96
Note II.— Education.
Knowledge of inheritance by teachers and parents ... 98
Training common to all 99
Idleness, industrj^ reticence, volubility 100
Capacity and incapacity for study 101
^ Note III.— Change in Character.
Peculiarities of body and mind mainly duty to inheritance Ci^umstance and childhood .... Heredity or circumstance in character . Normal circumstance and abnormal- Evolution and character
Circumstance more potent in domain of morals " Homes" for neglected children : an illustration
103 103 107 108 109 116 117
Note IV. — Morals.
PAGE
'' Moral nerve'' 118
Separate, special, set-apart nerve 119
Moral nerve less stable 1 21
Progress is in the main progress in morals . . . . 1 23 Moral nerve and punishment or prevention of crime . .124 Why we are moral 126
PLATE I.
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PLATE I.
The followiner illustrations are purely diagrammatic and sug- gestive. They aim at demonstrating the union of one particular group of bodily characteristics with one particular sort of nerve structures, and therefore with one particular group of peculiarities of character. Every sane individual possesses both intellect and passion, and the peculiarities referred to relate simply to the pro- portionate dominancy of the one or the other. Faces are left blank to emphasise more strongly the difference between the two fundamental and characteristic types of skeleton con- formation. Marked examples of types only have been selected, but. these being given, we may readily picture for ourselves the happy possessors of less extreme, or intermediate, types of bodily structures, and therefore probably of the less extreme or interme- diate types of character. The need for caution against forming precipitate conclusions from bodily appearances is pointed out on pages 45 and 46.
Although every human being is concerned in the relative intensity of the emotions on the one hand, and the vigour of the intellect on the other, it must not be forgotten that it is the amount of intellectual endowment chiefly (whether alert or meditative) which tells on surrounding life, especially in its social and public sides.
Fig. 1 represents the less marked spinal curves and upward head-poise of the more impassioned type of character. Fig. 2 shows the stronger spinal curves and forward head-poise of the less impassioned and more active type. The artist has not given them an extreme form. Fig. 3 is a section of the thorax and back just below the shoulders. It shows the ribs projecting posteriorly beyond the spine, which lies here in a sort of transverse concavity. This conformation is associated with the straighter spine. Fig. 4 is a section, at a similar spot, which is found in conjunction with the more curved spine. It shows the greater posterior prominence of the spinal structures. The illustrations apply to both sexes. See the chapter on Bodily Characteristics.
PLATE II.
FigZ.
Figi.
Fig 4.
n.ATE II.
Figs. 1 and 3 give the spinal conformation and head -poise of Burns and Dante, who both, although widely different characters, had the strongly impassioned and meditative nature. It is possible to have much vitality and even energy without the ceaseless activity which often borders on unrest. The configuration of Dante and Hawthorne (see Plate III.) and others show how erro- neous is the popular idea that reverie and brooding are associated, with a drooping posture. All heads may droop at times ; but a naturally spontaneously erect head and spine belong to the pon- dering habit, and the naturally drooping and advanced head to the comparatively quick and vigilant habit.
Figs. 2 and 4, Newman and Napoleon, in aims and interests had nothing in common, but they both possessed in extreme degree the bodily configuration and certain of the mental peculiarities of the intellectually acute and less deeply emotional temperament. The mental acuteness and promptness of Newman's character lay in quick but specially directed thought, in instant and appropriate rhetoric, and in controversial skill. Napoleon's extraordinary mental activity was expended in a vast range of military and political affairs.
The difference in thought between the instantaneous and agile thinker and the slower meditative thinker is not one of power or amount ; it is not any difference in the subject with which thought is occupied ; it is a difference in mental habit and impulse. The majority of our great names in philosophy and theology and litera- ture, in whom we might naturally expect to find reverie rather than quickness, belong in reality to the alert order. The poetic fervour of not a few of our most eminent poets — of Matthew Arnold and of Newman, for example — is intellectual f-nd verbal, not emotional fervour.
PLATE III,
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Tig 2.
Fig 3.
Fig 4'.
PLATE III.
Figs. 1 and 3, Hawthorne and Byron, while differing in much else, had this in common —both were embodiments of profound passion ; both had its characteristic bodily signs. In some aspects of his life Byron would seem to justify the contempt which two singularly sane and gifted men had for strong feelings. Stuart Mill quotes with approval his father's view that the deeper emo- tions were allied to madness. In the deeply impassioned Dante and Hawthorne quiet contemplation, reverie, and even brooding were very conspicuous.
Figs. 2 and 4, Spurgeon and Wesley, have in marked degree the spinal curve and the forward and downward head-poise usually found in the extremely quick, active, and less deeply emotional* type of character. We find in both that tendency to verbal, not emotional, rhetoric, which is a frequent outlet of the mentally active temperament. They illustrate, too, the extreme self-confi- dence which, in combination with exceptional ability, is almost essential to the organisation of great and successful leaders. They were prepared to put all the world into their particular harness and drive it to their particular goal. The " nerve " which is found in such skeletons as those depicted in the figures of Burns and Dante and Hawthorne and Byron and Charlotte Bronte may illuminate or console or enchant ; it cares neither to lead nor drive. The world owes much to the eomhined efforts of the supremely active and the supremely meditative temperaments : if we had men of action only we should march into the desert ; if we had men of thought only we should drift into night and sleep.
PLATE lY.
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PLATE IV.
The figures in this plate may be taken to represent the male skeleton, or figure, equally with the female. The following remark* are also applicable to both sexes. It is easy to imagine the figures with short hair and in male garments.
Fig. 1 shows the flatter back, straighter spine, upward and backward head-poise, as well as the heavier hair-growth of the more deeply impassioned and meditative woman (or man). It is not very rare, however, in the less impassioned temperament for special causes acting on the hip joints, or lower spine, to throw the head and shoulders well back, but the hair-growth usually remains characteristic. In the group of anatomical characteristics belonging to the strongly emotional disposition there may be much variety of character, good or evil. There may quite possibly be bad temper or sullenness, or other serious faults ; but ceaseless restlessness and captiousness or nagging will not be found.
Fig. 2 is an example of the convex dorsum markedly curved spine, forward head-poise, and slighter hair-growth of the active, alert, and somewhat less impassioned woman (or man). Note that with backs and spines and head-poises, as with faces (and as with characters), there are no two alike. Note also that excep- tional causes may curve the spines of the most storaiily emotional temperament, but the heavier hair-growth would probably remain unaffected. The anatomical characteristics of the less profoundly emotional nature when united with high intellectual endowments are found in the large majority of women who, in educational, religious, social, and political spheres, fill responsible positions either as heads of institutions or promoters of movements. The woman delineated in Fig. 2 may or may not have faults of character, but she will not descend to the grosser levels of passion.
Fig. 3. There is not infrequently the danger of finding in con- junction with the convex dorsum, forward head- poise, delicate hair-growth, and associated nervous system— especially where the intellectual gifts are not high— a tendency to habitual though unconscious fidgetiness and captiousness. Fig. 3 depicts an extreme example of the hereditary scold in the person of a young woman still under twenty years of age
Fig. 4 represents practically the female figure as idealised by an artist of note. He intended it to embody energy and passion.
PLATE Y.
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Fig 3.
Fig 4-,
PLATE V.
Fig. 1 represents the anatomical peculiarities of the deeply impassioned nature as seen in Charlotte Bronte. Her eyebrows were strongly marked although not depicted here. We must remember that artists give a partially forward inclination to unusually erect heads in order to avoid ''stiffness of bearing," and lift heads that have a natural downward poise. Photographers strive but less successfully to gain similar effects. The impas- sioned (though not passion-approving) and contemplative Goethe, by the way, was said to " carry himself stiffly."
Fig. 2 represents the (temperamental) anatomical peculiarities of Queen Elizabeth who, while characterised by most laudable pro- clivities and immense capabilities, certainly had no deep feeling. Her hair-growth was slight, she wore a wig, and she possessed no eyebrows at all. The figures in these illustrations, Elizabeth's included, are those of mature years except Fig. 3 of Plate IV. ; the incipience of early life and the exaggeration of old age being alike avoided.
Fig. 3 represents diagrammatically an eminent lady novelist whose heroines evince a stronger bias for loving a man than scolding him.
Fig. 4 represents diagrammatically an eminent lady novelist whose most noted heroine displays a greater capacity for scolding men than for loving them.
Chapter I.
«
ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE INQUIRY.
There is probably some foundation for the remark that while a man appears better than he is to his spiritual adviser and worse than he is to his lawyer, his real nature is revealed to his doctor. The student of character (of some scientific aptitude but not neces- sarily^ of medical training) may certainly gain much and varied information in the hospital ward. The opportunity of gaining this knowledge was at one time freely open to me. The views I was then led to form have been, during many years, tested and con- firmed in the larger world of health and activity, not only by myself, but by other unbiassed observers, some acting at my suggestion, and many others who, since the first edition of this little work appeared, have given me the results of independent observation.
Several years ago I noticed that a very large pro- portion of the women who came into hospital suffering from injuries inflicted by their husbands had, as a rule, something peculiar in their per3onal appearance. The peculiarity or peculiarities seemed common to all of them. They certainly had not been assaulted because they were old or plain. We are sometimes told, as a danger of unbelief, that men would put aside wives who had lost their youthful looks. Many of these women were young, some were very pretty, and their husbands were believers. In truth it is neither ^ belief^ nor ^ unbelief,^ but certain congenital impulses of
2 ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE INQUIRY.
character, based in great measure on organisation, but influenced in no unimportant degree by environ- ment and training, which mainly determine the con- duct of men and women. As Carlyle affirmed, both the best men and women and the worst are found in all varieties of opinion and belief.
I came slowly to see that the skin of the assaulted women was often clear, delicate, perhaps rosy. Their hair-growth was never heavy or long, and the eyebrows were spare and refined. Their upper spinal curves were so formed as to give a somewhat convex appear- ance to the back and shoulders and a more or less forward pose to the head. This bodily conformation, by the way, is a favourite one with artists, one of whom states that, in a well-formed woman, a plumb-line dropped from the tip of the nose should fall in front of the toes. The friends and neighbours usually let it be known that these unfortunate women whom they brought had sharp tongues in their heads and an unfailing — unfailing by repetition — supply of irritating topics on which to exercise them.
A comparatively small number of injured and some- times even dead women were brought in of a wholly different character and different bodily organisation. Their injuries were much more serious. They had been assaulted not by merely provoked men, but by husbands or paramours acting under the impulse of uno*overnable and perhap-s well-foanded jealousy, and with clearly murderous intent. In nearly all cases the assailed women and the assailing men were women and men of but poor intellectual endowment. The women of the smaller class were impassioned, but usually weak pleasure-loving and self-indulgent also. The two classes of women possessed widely different
ORIGIN AND NATURE OP THE INQUIRY. 3
organisations — different in skin and hair and skeleton, and surely different also in brain and nerve. In the smaller and more impassioned class the spine was straighter, the head and neck and shoulders were held upwards and backwards ; the hair-growth was abun- dant and the eyebrows marked.
Mr. E/Uskin, in a few paragraphs of remarkable interest, declares that bishops should watch rather than rule ; that their place is at the mast-head — not at the helm. A bishop, he says, not only ought to know everybody in his diocese, he ought also to know why Bill and Nancy knock each other's teeth out. In strict truth bishops are not trained to understand Bill and Nancy, and for eighteen centuries they have done but little for them. Bill and Nancy are what they are chiefly from organisation and inheritance, and in great measure also, no doubt, from circumstance. When fully matured, however, a body-guard of bishops could not keep them straight, especially Bill, who is usually, and on physiological grounds, the greater sinner. Bill and Nancy will do better when we come to see that the improvement of educational, social, and moral methods have more to do with physiologists than with bishops.
Although there are features of character which make for riches or for poverty, and notwithstanding also that riches and poverty tell on character, yet there is no one feature which is confined to the poor or to the well-to-do. The unimpassioned tradeswoman who entreats a magistrate to protect her from a brutal husband, and the delicately born but erring (impas- sioned) lady who is. summoned to the Divorce Court resemble in organisation and proclivity their humbler sisters who are brought into hospitals with bruised bodies or with fatal wounds.
4 OlilGIN AND NATURE OF THE INQUIRY.
Neither is there any feature of character which is peculiar to one sex. The fidgetty and querulous wife who involuntarily provokes a foolish husband, is often in body, mind, and character, the counterpart of her fidgetty and querulous father. The quiet easy-going man is often the repetition of his tranquil and affec- tionate mother. The difference of sex is small and secondary when compared with the fundamental differences of character.
The potency of nerve organisation is not enforced here for the purpose of extenuating domestic cruelty, or excusing the domestic savage. But every truth, if it is a truth, explains other truths — for there is no truth glean- able by moral methods which ought not to be gleaned, and no sin greater (our scientific ethical teachers tell us) than the sin of forming judgments on insuffi- cient and untested data. Look at two men of average — certainly not strong — character and organisation. They may be much ahke in many ways. Both are but moderately wise and self-restrained. One marries a certain combination of skin, and hair, and bone, and nerve ; he is happy and content, and thinks that everybody else, if they were only as wise and virtuous as he, would also be happy and content. The other, marrying quite another sort of anatomical combination, finds life arid and burdensome and gradually turns to violence and folly. The first often does not know why lie is happy and good ; the second but dimly perceives why he is unhappy and bad. Both are to a certain degree the creatures of organisation and parentage. The first has usually no charity for the second ; per- haps he sits in a judicial, or editorial, or other chair of authority, and proclaims his own virtue by denouncing the shame of his neighbour. A change of place on the
ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE INQUIRY. O
marriage morning would have changed their lives and views. These sentences would need but little change if they began with the words ^^ Look at two women/^ and considered the matter from the woman^s point of view. If Mary Stuart^s first husband had been a Bothwell, much else in her life would have been different. The less impassioned men and women are perhaps not well fitted^ however willing, to judge their impassioned brothers and sisters. The more emo- tional also are too insensible to the merits of the active and less emotional.
Here, then, was a clue, not to every nook and corner, but still to a wide range of character. Mate- rial for observation is everywhere around us — in domestic, in social, and in public life ; in the school, in the committee-room, in parliament ; in the theatre, the law court, the church ; in history,, biography, and fiction; in all written and spoken words, and in all writers and speakers themselves.
With this clue, and after prolonged observation and with competent help, the following conclusions became clear to me. There are two generic fundamental biases in character, and, keeping this fact in mind, two types (three if the intermediate be included) of character come conspicuously into view — one in which the tendency to action is extreme and the tendency to reflection slight ; in another the proneness to reflection greatly predominates, and the impulse for action is feebler. Between the two extremes are innumerable gradations ; but it is sufiicient to point only to a third type — a fortunate intervening type, concerning which it is obvious that little need be said here — in which the powers of reflection and action tend to meet in more or less equal degrees. In an
b ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE INQUIRY.
intermediate class may also be placed the characters which tend to eccentricity or in which other, possibly abnormal, tendencies predominate over the emotional and non -emotional.
It is not at all unusual to hear the expressions '' s, man of action/^ or ^^a man of thought/'' but usually little definite and precise meaning is attached to the words, and they are never used in relation to nerve or bodily organisation. In these pages a deeper sig- nificance is given to the view that some men tend more to action and others more to contemplation. "^ Probably the most important classification of cha- racter is that which puts men and women into two leading divisions or two temperaments — the active or tending to be active, and the reflective or bending to be reflective. To many students of character this is in itself no new suggestion ; but much more is contended for here. It is contended that the more active temperament is quick, ready, practical, helpful, conspicuous, and — a singularly notable fact — less impassioned ; the more reflective temperament is quiet, less active, less practical, possibly dreamy, secluded, and — also a very remarkable fact — more impassioned. In the active and more or less passion- less temperament the intellect predominates and takes an unusually large share in the fashioning of life. In the reflective and impassioned temperament the emotions play a stronger part.
The elements of character are not a chance and mis- cellaneous collection — they run together in somewhat uniform groups. The less impassioned individuals, for example, are not merely active, quick, practical — they tend also to be changeable, fond of approbation, though sparing in their approval of others ; they are
ORIGIN AND NATUEE OP THE INQUIRY. 7
often self-confident and even self-important. When the mental endowment is high and the surroundings y^ favourable, the active and less-impassioned tempera- ment furnishes many of our finest characters — great statesmen and great leaders ; sometimes, especially when the mental gifts are slight, the character is less pleasing : love of change may become mere fitfulness ; activity may become bustle ; sparing approval may turn to actual censoriousness ; love of approbation may degenerate into a mania for notoriety. In the impas- sioned temperament, on the other hand, we find quite another group of elements — repose or even gentleness, quiet reflection, noiseless methods, tenacity of purpose. I'he emotions, good or evil, are deep and enduring. In this class also, especially when the intellect is powerful and the training refined, lofty characters are A^ found. In it, too, are found probably the worst and most degraded characters. In its lowest levels we meet too often with indolence, self-indulgence, morbid brooding, implacability, and possibly cruelty. ^..'^^^
The most important teaching, then, of these pages is, that a given cluster of characteristics run, in equal or unequal degrees, together in the passionless tem- perament, and that another given cluster run as uniformly in the impassioned. Next in importance is the conclusion that each temperament has its cluster of special, distinctive, bojjily signs. The more marked the temperament the mdfe marked are the signs.
The classification of men and women into the active and more unimpassioned, the reflective and more im- passioned, and the intermediate, does not claim to be, or to come near, a general or exhaustive classification of character. It has no direct bearing on many even of its leading divisions. It says nothing, for example.
8 ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE INQUIRY.
of the division of men and women into intelligent and dull, good and bad, wise and foolish, brave and cowardly, refined or coarse. We must never forget, moreover, that the force and impress of character depend mainly on the amount of brain and brain power. Nevertheless, in all probability, the whole range of character is gravely modified by the presence of unimpassioned or impassioned proclivities.
The active, ready, and less emotional or unim- passioned men and women form probably a large third of the community; the intermediate class is also a large third ; a small third only consists of the more impassioned individuals.
Other pages will deal more fully with the character of the less impassioned and more active men and women on the one hand, and the more impassioned and reflective on the other. The bodily or anatomical characteristics of each temperament will be described in greater detail but in quite untechnical terms. Illus- trations of the leading temperaments will be drawn at some length from history, literature^ and public life. In conclusion some comments will be made on the bearings of bodily organisation and bodily bias on education, on change in character, on morals, and on marriage.
Chapter II.
THE ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
Before we look more closely into matters of organisa- tion and parentage * it will be well to examine, with some detail, the character of the men and women whom, for the sake of brevity, it will be convenient to call *^^the active and less impassioned^^ on the one hand, and the ^^ reflective and more impassioned^^ on the other hand. Women will be studied first because their characters, while not less elevated and estima- ble, are more direct, spontaneous, and natural. We shall look first at their personal, intellectual, and moral aspects, and then follow them into domestic, social, and public life.
The nerve action of the less impassioned tempera- ment— with its forward head-poise and more delicate hair-growth — both in men and women, is marked by i^ activity, vivacity, quickness, and opportuneness rather than by persistence or consistency. In not a few men and women it is marked by strength also — in propor- tion to brain weight and organisation ; and these ^ tend to fill the more conspicuous positions of life in art, literature, religion, politics, and warfare. The careful student of character begins his inquiry by observing average men and women — the units who
* Some readers may prefer looking at the chapter on " Bodily Characteristics " before proceeding further.
10 ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
make up the multitude. Goethe points with truth to the need of greater insight into commonplace persons. The life of the unimpassioned woman of average j capacity^ and of all below the average^ is almost wholly occupied with little things. She goes farther than Lord Beaconsfield in the belief that the unimportant is not very unimportant^ and that the important is not very important. In reciting her ^^ trials ^^ she dwells — her grandmother (temperamental) did so, her grand- , children (temperamental) will do so — on the degenera- tion of tradespeople and servants : the very children ' are behaving worse every day. Her daily wonder is how things wo aid go on if she were not there to look after them. The nerve energy of a considerable number of ceaselessly active and less emotional women is expended in such manner as social position, ability, and circumstance may determine. She often gives invaluable services in public and social movements. The energy of not a few women usually, but not invariably, of slight endowments is spent on clean- liness and its methods. To these the chief end of existence, whether it be obtained by their own hands or by the hands of an army of servants, is to rub and scrub and brush and dust, to wash and scrape and shake. They unconsciously interpolate a clause of their own into the scheme of creation : ^^ Let there be houses and women and dusters;^' and then — not to be thought of without some asperity — '^let men enter the houses and submissively conform to the usages thereof.^^ The idealess, emotionless, restless, spotless woman is not a blessing. Fortunately there are less impassioned and active women of high capa- bilities and generous proclivities who confer inesti- mable benefits upon all who come within their sphere.
ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN. 1 I
The spirited, indefatigable, directing, and perhaps y^reproving lady is usually precocious as a child. While still in her teens she is smart, s elf- con Men t^ business- like ; she can travel, shop, confer, and advise. She is little less wise — and she may be singularly wise — at eighteen than sho is at twenty-eight or forty-eight. The field of vision of the unimpassioned woman usually wants range and depth, but it is clear from the first. The cleverer women, and these are not rare, take a high position in school life, for they are quick to apprehend and usually have good memories.
When surroundings are fortunate her tastes are usually refined ; and, indeed, notwithstanding her domestic peculiarities, her feelings are kindly ; she distributes flowers, visits a district, reads to the sick ; she is usually hospitable in her own house, and as a rule generous everywhere. Sbe would seem indeed to have two natures : with her superficial nature she judges (forgetful of being judged) her neighbours and friends ; but if these are overtaken by misfortune she is not less, possibly more, active in help than others.
Active, fitful, disapproving men and women are by no means all alike. Their personal, intellectual, and moral qualities vary and are variously combined. But in both sexes there is one unvarying essential charac- teristic— the absence of deep passion. Love is simply preference ; hatred is merely dislike ; jealousy is only injured pride. They have not the sustained enthu- siasm, but neither have they the periods of listlessness and despondency which too often belong to passionate natures.
The unimpassioned woman is more alive to the beauty of poetry than sbe is to its passion and pathos. jC, For her science has no mystic wonder. Her beliefs
12 ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
and disbeliefs are complete rather than strong. She has no convictions, but she has no misgivings. She does not believe, she adopts ; she does not disbelieve, she ignores. She never inquires and never doubts. If she is reminded of MilPs doctrine that no opinion is worthily held until everything that can be said against it has been heard and weighed, she replies that '^ it is very well to talk, but all that Mill said was not gospel.""
In large affairs she defers to authority; in small affairs she jumps to conclusions. In the detail of her own little world whatever is is wrong ; in the larger world outside — in society, in churches and chapels and parliaments — whatever is is right.
Even when possessing much capacity, and accessi- bility to abstract reasoning, she instinctively rebels against carrying the conclusions of reason into prac- tice. If the bishops and clergy were to sign a declara- tion saying they had come to see that there was no evidence in favour of supernatural interposition, and therefore they had resolved to resign their posts in a body, she might possibly admit they were competent judges on matters of theory but she would refuse to understand the propriety of their practice. She would go to church as usual the following Sunday morning, and if she found the doors locked she would exclaim, ^f Why could they not let things alone ? they were very well as they were.^^
Just as a microscopist stains a tissue with different dyes to bring into view its various constituent elements, so we shall learn much of character if we watch it unfold in domestic, social, and public atmospheres. If we look at the less impassioned woman at home, and then in society, we see two different and appa-
ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN. ] 3
rently incompatible characters. She often brings to married life bright counsels and wide serviceableness and genuine if not inordinate affection ;t^but in both active men and active women marriage is much influ- enced by ambition^ or a love of change, or obedience to well-recognised custom and a desire to be * settled in life/ or from a sincere wish to enter a greater sphere of usefulness.
It is popularly believed that a mother's love is greater than a father's. A mother's love is a telling figure of speech ; but it is more poetically telling than physiologically true. If the father is of an unim pas- sioned temperament and the mother is not, the mother's love is the greater ; but if the mother is unimpassioned and the father is not, then the father's love is the greater. Herein is another illustration of the fact that sex plays a minor part in the classification of character. Some men and some women are passionately attached to their children ; some men and some women are not.
It is in the domestic circle, and only here perhaps, that the least pleasing aspect of the active and passion- less and slightly gifted woman is discernible ; here, she throws off the disguises which she assumes in social life; here she indulges in disapproving and discon- nected comment. Even here gleams of sunshine may come, but no one can foresee when the sun will come and when the cloud. It is curious that although the busy unemotional woman is keenly self-conscious, she has little or no self-analysis. If she is plainly accused of habitual disapproval she is surprised and offended and intimates, quite truly, that she desires only the general good, ^^ but some people do not know what is good for them." She has one way of doing good to her family, and quite another way of doing good to
14 ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
society. The household must be managed, drilled, and made ready for social inspection. Society must be encouraged and propitiated. The great public, too, is kept in view ; its upper section must be impressed and its lower section kept in order.
If we follow her into the social circle everything is changed.^ The rose tree is one of stems and thorns in winter, and another of leaves and flowers in summer. Hom^ is her winter ; society is her summer. If the door but opens and a visitor is announced the trans- formation is instant.
V The less emotional woman is by no means given to asceticism ; respectability and orthodoxy do not de- mand it of her. The woman who is pictured here is fond of movement, recreation, change. It matters little whether the incidents of change concern her condition here or her condition hereafter. If well- to-do her busy day may open with a religious service, and close with a comic opera; she is an adept in combining the bustle of two worlds. She delights, above all, to entertain her friends and to be entertained by them. In society she finds not only her work and her happiness, but her rewards and consolations. If a son enlists, or a daughter elopes, or a husband takes to alcoholic solace, society tells her she has been a ^^ faultless mother '' and a " devoted wife.^^ She believes in society, and society believes in her.
In conversation, society^s pattern woman (the pat- tern woman is not oppressively clever) throws out little or no light. If unconventional men and women, taking life seriously, discuss some of its problems in earnest words, she thinks " they talk too much ; '^ and society agrees with her.
ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN. 15
Although the active unimpassioned woman of ordi- nary-intelligence is what she is from organisation and parentage^ it must not be supposed that she is beyond the reach of surrounding influences. No possible circumstance can transform a markedly active and unimpassioned into a markedly contemplative and impassioned nature, but poverty, misfortune, an un- quiet bringing up, a bustling husband and bustling children aggravate her special characteristics. Tran- quil circumstance, comfort, kindly training, and es- pecially restful companionship, tone them down.
Men and women who are capable of deep anger are never scolds. Shakespere, with all his marvellous insio^ht into character, made the mistake which our own lexicographers make, or, perhaps more correctly, the word ^' shrew ^' was once used more widely and vaguely than it now is by those who measure their words. The fundamental features of character are never changed; shrews are never changed into n on - shrews. Catherine was no shrew; she was precisely the reverse ; she was a passionate and rebellious woman. One passion may be changed into another, or its object may be changed, or its motive. Pas- sionate rebellion may be changed into passionate obedience.
If the somewhat less emotional woman possesses ex- ceptional capacity she is often able by reason and will, habit and circumstance, to reach a level of character which cannot be easily surpassed. In purely intel- lectual matters, indeed, the unimpassioned and the impassioned woman differ but little when both are highly gifted. It: is when the capabilities are poor that slight emotions, or strong emotions, tell so strikingly in character
16 ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
Looking at extreme examples, and they are not ex- ceedingly rare, two men surely deserve our sympathy : one is he whose (passionless) wife proves to be a sex- less, shallow shrew ; the other is the companion of a (passionate) weak, false, and abandoned woman. Two women no less demand compassion : she whose (pas- sionless) husband is an empty bustling buffoon ; and she who is mated to a (passionate) grovelling beast.
Chapter III.
THE CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
Curiously the more impassioned men and women of average gifts are altogether less striking personages than the unemotional and active. Their emotions, especially where endowment is higher, lie less near the surface ; their manners, save in the very foolish or intensely vital, are quieter ; their characters are altogether perhaps more difficult to read. The impas- sioned temperament should be studied from an inde- pendent point of view ; and again it will be well to look at women first. The more impassioned character is not merely the reverse of the less impassioned. It does not follow, for example, because one cleans and is clean that the other is dirty or tolerant of dirt; or because one is industrious and practical that the other is indolent and helpless. Neither does it follow that because one tends to be smart, respectable, conserva- tive, and orthodox, the other tends to be stupid, or vulgar, or democratic, or heretical.
It is not rare to find in an impassioned woman bad temper or impatience. Her occasional sarcasm, too, or criticism, or reproof, may easily pass the line of discretion. She may be afiecfced, or fond of show, or
18 CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
given over to pleasure ; but, whatever else she may be, she is not habitually fitful, or restless, or captious, or censorious. No circumstance can convert her into a nagging woman. When fairly capable she diffuses an atmosphere of repose, and unconsciously she con- soles and heals. Although she may be outwardly calm, there are underneath more or less deep emotions and perhaps impossible dreams.
The girl of deeply emotional temperament matures slowly. Slowly her reason clears, her emotions deepen, her judgment ripens. At eighteen she is open, simple, trustful, childlike. In insight, in keen-wittedness, in resoluteness she is another woman at twenty-eight. At thirty-eight — if circumstance be not unfavourable — every charm of character is heightened. It is difficult to say when her best days are over. In her old age the weary find refuge in her quiet and experienced grace. Even if not highly capable or educated, she frequently does good by doing nothing save being quiet and sympathetic
When women (and men) of the two temperaments have equal capabilities, the slower development of the contemplative and more impassioned woman puts her at a disadvantage. The active and less impassioned woman gives apter response to educational measures ; she is quicker to apprehend and her memory is better — less turned aside by feeling ; she has a quicker instinct to see what the teacher wishes to impart and what the examiner wishes to extract. She gains academic distinctions much more easily, and therefore is more frequently selected to fill high, supervising, directing, and responsible positions. As a rule, she fills them with distinction and advantage. It is not always so. Sometimes high position causes her to ^ lose her head,^
CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN. 19
and exaggerated self-importance demands the sacrifice (committees being much tried thereby) of subordinates who are becoming too popular, or who are, it may be, inadequately deferential. The active temperament is perhaps the more readily spoiled by high position because, while it has possibly more of acute intellec- tual apprehension, it has less of that intellectual detachment which secures to contemplative natures a more impartial judgment of themselves and of others.
It is a significant circumstance that by far the greater number of head mistresses, matrons, and lady superintendents generally, are women of curved upper spine, forward head-poise, and limited hair-growth. Here and there may be found perhaps a straighter spine, a backward head-poise, and abundant hair- growth. The hospital matron of forward head- poise and delicate eyebrow keeps everyone up to the mark every moment of the day; the matron with strongly- marked eyebrows spares an hour to play at lawn tennis with the resident doctors.
It is not easy, if indeed it is- possible, to say which physiological bias — the impassioned or the un- impassioned — furnishes the finest characters ; at any rate, it would seem that the worst characters are found among the more impassioned women. Let u^ enter the domestic circle and look at the impassioned woman as a step-mother. The cruellest step-mothers are usually impassioned. It is a physiological incident of extreme interest. They are women who, in ordinary circumstances, make the most afiectionate wives and mothers. But their emotions are strong, it may be disproportionately strong, and the reason, whether weak or strong — it is not by any means always weak —
20 CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
is weaker and is held in subjection. She loves too much perhaps ; certainly hates too much ; and most certainly reflects too little. Made to love, she loves her husband ; but because she loves him, and because there is constantly before her eyes the evidence of her
husband's love for another, she — slowly or quickly
flings reason, and judgment, and duty, and compassion to the winds. What matters it that the other mother no longer lives ? She does not stop to think ; she feels only, and she is lost. Jealously she broods and ever broods until, step by step, the once open, affec- tionate, warm, sympathetic woman becomes something worse — something much worse — than a wild beast. An innocent child, unwitting of offence, possibly not very well behaved, possibly not very tractable (the second wife^s child would seem full of faults in the eyes of a third if the second could but think of this), a child made for caresses, is left naked and hungry, is pinched and beaten, is burnt and scalded, is imprisoned in dark closets or driven into the outer cold. Some- times by a savage impulse it is suddenly slain. Some- times with greater cruelty it is killed inch by inch. It is the darkest hour of life to contemplate these things.
It is quite otherwise with the less impassioned step- mother. Here, at any rate, the absence of deep passion has immense compensation. Her more unbi- assed feelings, and her habitual deference to respecta- bility, stand her in good stead. She does her duty. She treats her own child and her step-child alike. She trains them with equal care ; dresses them with equal propriety; greets and dismisses them with an equal kiss.
Happily in the great majority of impassioned women
CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN. 21
the emotions are not only deep, but they are also on the side of justice and mercy. Their morality itself is associated with deep feeling. It may take a pro- foundly-reasoned and independent course ; possibly it will not always fit itself to social or conventional standards. It will not be an imitation or a submis- sion ; not a bid for reward here or hereaftei'.
It is in the domestic circle that the difference between the less impassioned and the more impas- sioned woman is most clearly seen. The less impas- sioned, it has been said, puts on her leaves and blossoms in society, and shows her bare stems and thorns at home : the more impassioned tends rather to reverse the proceeding; the wealth of her nature is reserved for her own hearth. Here she unfolds herself; here are her joys and sorrows ; here her gains and losses; here also, alas ! much depending on intellectual capacity and environment, her faults and weaknesses are seen — perhaps slowness to forgive, or implacability, or sullen ness, or anger, or jealousy, or even, though rarely, the still deeper degradation born of uncontrolled passions. In one partly domestic, partly social aspect of life she sometimes contrasts unfavourably with her unimpassioned sister. She is less apt to think of the comfort and welfare of the absent. Too charmed with the moment, its companions, its incidents, she is disposed to forget others and forget time.
In women of both the fundamental types something of affectation is not rarely met with, but with a differ- ence. The less impassioned woman is sometimes singularly imitative and she often puts her imitative faculty to good use, and selects the best models. If Mrs. Monmouth has a good accent, or Mrs. Montgomery
22 CHAEACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
laughs musically^ or Mrs. Somerset dresses with taste, she will talk like Mrs. Monmouth, laugh like Mrs. Montgomery, and dress like Mrs. Somerset. So little given to introspection is the markedly active tem- perament that she is but dimly conscious of her imitations. The more impassioned woman^s affecta- tion (if it be affectation) is less an imitation than a pronounced change of manners and speech with changing shades of thought and especially of feeling. And here is another illustration of the similarity of character in men and women. The extremely active, voluble, and quickly-apprehending man is especially given to imitation, and it is sometimes amusingly easy to guess who is his favourite politician, or who is the preacher he ^ sits under. ^
The more impassioned woman tends however to be the same in all circles. How she acquits herself in social or in public life depends partly on her emotions but possibly even more on her capacity, her training, health, experience and years. She may be witty, entertaining, instructive, brilliant; she may also be silent, or dogmatic, or self-willed, or neglectful, or dull.
At home or elsewhere she is, as a rule, not difficult to please. In both domestic and social life she spon- taneously appreciates, congratulates, praises. She can soothe the mentally bruised and encourage the unsuc- cessful. In her there is compassion for all weak things — two-footed or four. When at her best she is deeply sympathetic; to adapt the words of a dis- tinguished writer, she rises to the high and stoops to the low ; she is the sister and playmate of all nature. Like George Eliot, she can judge the unjust leniently, sympathise with narrowness, and tolerate intolerence.
CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN. 23
Very curious and significant Lo the physiologist are the judgments which men and women pass upon them- selves. Distinctly correct self-judgment is a sure test of high intellect^ whether with or without the deeper emotions. Captious temperaments often believe them- selves to be sweet-tempered ; the kindly often fear they are impatient and harsh. Frequently gentle natures believe themselves to be rough, and rough natures believe themselves to be gentle.
The unresting less contemplative woman, especially if more or less educated, is often given to readiiig. Respectability does not demand reading, but neither does it forbid it. Deferring to authority in one half of life, and jumping to conclusions in the other half, leaves a woman (at least a well-to-do woman) con- siderable leisure. She must, however, have persons and action in her books as well as in her life.
The active and less impassioned individual, man or woman, tends more to be interested in the words and dates and methods of an author ; the more impas- sioned and contemplative seeks rather to get at his inmost thought and deepest feeling. One looks at the paper, the type, the binding of a book and puts it on the shelf unread ; the other reads and re-reads his book — not knowing perhaps whether the paper is hand- made or not — marks it freely, and turns down its corners : the turned-down corners remain old and easily-accessible friends.
I have learnt from many sources that the two generic biases may be detected in quite early life. Even at birth certain physical characteristics are dis- cernible in the more extreme examples. Let us look at two young girls, one with delicate eyebrows, taking after a less impassioned parent (father or mother) ; the
24 CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN.
other, with conspicuous eyebrows, taking after a more impassioned parent. The first tends to be the more active, mobile, bright, and helpful ; she is perhaps the greater favourite ; the second tends to have more of quietness, of greater tenacity of purpose, it may even be of comparative dulness.
Let us turn now and look at two boys — young, but strong and active and firm on their feet. Say we are travelling with them in railway carriage or boat. Everybody has met them. One never rests a single moment. No human power could keep him still. He runs blindly hither and thither; he turns, and twists, and wriggles ; one moment he climbs, another moment he tumbles ; he babbles, and shouts, and laughs, and cries in turns. Perhaps an unimpassioned mother, the parent he takes after, is with him. She, too, is unrestful ; she scolds and threatens and chides, and now and then she caresses. It is all in vain. They may be better or worse from circumstance, but both are obeying irresistible anatomical construction and physiological proclivity. The other boy is quiet in body, intent in mind, steady in eye though possibly obstinate, and possibly subject to paroxysms of violent temper. He sees and notes and moves and speaks with an object in view. Perhaps an impassioned but tranquil mother gives patient replies to his queries. Now and then she may need to give a word of firm reproof. Both mother and child have their failings, but they also, in fundamental matters, are the creatures of organisation and inheritance.
Early and undeveloped impassioned life when of high intellectual inheritance is apt to be dreamy, unprac- tical, and sometimes to be injured by excess of reverie and castle-building. Girl and boy have been told that
CHARACTER OP THE MORE IMPASSIONED WOMAN. 25
beyond the stars other stars follow each other without end ; but often, when perhaps they ought' to be asleep, they cannot help asking, ^^ What comes after the last star ? '' They have been told that time had a begin- ning, and they marvel painfully on what was before it began. Their field of vision is wide, but it is hazy ; the figures in it are shadowy and they move with indis- tinctness. In moments of high health however and exaltation, which are often never forgotten, the figures, ideals, imaginary creations, and what not, come more distinctly into focus, and move with greater precision.
Chapter IV.
CHARACTER OP THE ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN.
In the various notes of character men and women have much in common, although the less pleasing features of the unimpassioned are not so conspicuously visible in the more complex lives of men. And herein, indeed, is a powerful argument for enlarging and enriching and, so to say, complicating the lives of women. Even those who do not object to candid comment, or who, it may be, admire it, would probably prefer to have it in small fragments and spread over a large surface.
The majority of leading names in the various fields of human endeavour have been men and women whose emotions were neither deep nor tempestuous, and whose minds were of the active and wakeful rather than of the pensive or dreamy order. While very few examples of the deeply emotional sort come readily to mind, there come quickly a varying host of the alert and less emotional. Against the names of Burns, Byron, Hawthorn, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot, one quickly pits the names of Erasmus, More, Queen Elizabeth, Bunyan, Gibbon, Johnson, Wesley, New- man, Napoleon, Jane Austen, Gladstone, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Arnold. Other memorable names come to mind which belong to neither extreme. The names in each group have but little in common save that the
ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN. 27
emotional nature is more dominant in one and the intellectual nature in the other.
I do not in the least aim at detracting from the merits and services of the great leaders of men and causes if, in the following paragraphs, I dwell at some length on the peculiarities of the unemotional tempera- ment in its more extreme forms, and especially in men of average or less than average intellectual power.
The markedly passionless man, like the woman, is fitful and uncertain in temper and behaviour. He is given, in equal or unequal degrees, to petulance, to fuss, to discontent, and censoriousness. He disap- proves of everything of his own time or his own place. If his bishop has written a notable book — the bishop^s chaplain collected the material. If a physician puts forward a new healing power — the Germans have long been familiar with it. If his neighbours and friends would compare themselves with their fathers and mothers, or if they knew anything of their French or German compeers — they would hang their heads with shame. If Goethe and Cromwell had lived in England in the nineteenth century — Carlyle would have thought less of them.
In all his moods the censorious man is well satisfied with himself. His judgment is often at fault and his projects often fail^ but he never ceases to place un- bounded confidence in both. Sydney Smith, speaking of a conspicuous statesman of his time, said he was ready at any moment to command the Channel Fleet or amputate a limb. Much more may be said of the extremely active, self-confident, unemotional man : if he had sunk half a dozen fleets, he would be ready to take command of the seventh ; if he had taken off six limbs and lost six lives, he would be quite ready to
28 ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN.
amputate a seventli limb. He has an incisive formula for everything that is put before him — and there is much to be said for it : either the thing is not true^ or everybody knows it already.
In the world of the busy passionless man there is not room for two Alexanders : in his sky there is not room for two suns. Seeing, however, that other Alexanders will thrust themselves not only into exist- ence but also into notice, and that other suns insist on shining, he has a curious sense of martyrdom. He may fill a high position, but he believes his merits fit him for a higher.
The unimpassioned man — so by organization and- inheritance be it always remembered — matures early, but not quite so early as the woman. He is brisk, near at hand, ready in suggestion, and practical in performance. He is fond of administration and of afiairs of any kind — he is often an admirable public servant. His interests are often wide. At the com- mittee of his charity he is as much interested in the selection of its washerwoman as in the election of its chairman. In company he is usually alert, to' the point, witty, and apt at retort. Experience helps him, and he insists on getting experience. He resolutely, con- fidently, and constantly shows himself. He would rather be the known chairman of a committee of three than the unknown benefactor of a nation. When he is less gifted he is probably not less self-important. Is he busy ? He believes himself to be energetic. Is he sly ? He believes himself to be diplomatic. Is he loquacious ? He believes himself to be eloquent.
In contrasting the male with the female it will be seen that physiological restlessness and fitfulness appear to descend more deeply into his nature — at any
ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN. 29
rate they find a wider scope. They show themselves not only in his manner and speech but also in his opinion, policy, action, and sometimes even in his religion and politics. The woman disapproves of small matters mainly, the man disapproves of every- thing small and great. The acid comment of the woman becomes petulance, caprice, waywardness, or actual discourtesy in the man. Circumstance no doubt explains much: if their spheres were changed, and especially if they were both of the extremer sort, the man would become a domestic scold and the woman a social mountebank.
The very mistakes of the slightly impassioned man arise from deficient feeling. His intellect sees an O opportunity of striking a sensational blow; his feelings do not step in and say, '^ the blow is needless, or reckless, or painful to others, or dishonest.^^ The woman is kept from grave errors by her instinctive and instant concession to social demands. She also would like to be talked about, but she must be respectable ; the man would like to be respectable, but he must be talked about.
Even the abler man of action rarely puts forth new ideas, or opens new paths, or sheds new light ; but he is quick to follow, to seize, to apply, to carry out. He does not create atmospheres, but he most usefully con- denses them into solid benefits.
The unimpassioned man, more than the woman, is exposed to divers collateral religious and political forces, but like her, his natural tendency is to ancient, or at least accepted, forms of belief and policy. Special circumstances may sometimes lead him to contemplate with admiration the audacity of his own heresy. Opportune openings too for personal ambition may take
30 ' ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN.
him a long way from his natural bias. Not rarely the less emotional intellect is so lofty and commanding that no disturbing influence can hinder the formation of broad and just views in all the provinces of life. While, on the other hand, let it be fully noted, that in emotional men and women the narrowest views and coarsest prejudices are only too common.
The life of the unimpassioned individual is usually characterised by morality, truthfulness, and high prin- ciple; sometimes his determination to produce imme- diate effect however leads to later trouble which the boldest strategy cannot always turn aside.
The public-spirited man of affairs displays much pertinacity (the pertinacity is too visible to be called dexterity) in getting on to platforms and in keeping rivals off. If, in public assembly, adverse fates have given him nothing to do — nothing to propose, or second, or support, or amend, or oppose — he will rise and ask for some window to be closed to keep out a draught, or, which is more likely, that one be opened to let in more air; for, physiologically, he commonly needs much air as well as much notice.
Whether on or off the platform he is especially prone to do what he is not asked to do — what, perhaps, he is not best fitted to do ; nevertheless he constantly believes that the public see him as h3 wishes them to see him, as he sees himself — a sleepless seeker of the public good. His plans are cunningly devised : he puts others in his debt and he cannot go unrewarded. The really able and fluent unimpassioned speaker is often of great use on the platform. He may, by well-chosen language, move his audience although he is not moved himself. He is probably quick to understand his time, or at least his party ; he sees its wants, expresses its
ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN. 31
opinions, warns it of impending evil, organises its forces, deals smartly with its opponents.
The desire to be noticed is found in many varieties of character. The impassioned and slowly-maturing man, especially in early life, may go to absurd lengths in his desire to impress his fellow- mortals. Young Burns was the only young man in his neigh- bourhood who tied his hair and wore a peculiar plaid in a peculiar manner. I believe it will be found that, while the more impassioned individual is content to make his mark, the active man desires something more — position, influence, leadership. Now and then the passionless man has quite a craze for sheer notoriety. He is full of projects and prophecies and bustle, but, unfortunately for his reputation, he never knows when to rest. When approved projects and bustle are exhausted, foolish projects and bustle begin. Society must be pleased if possible ; if it will not be pleased it must be astonished; if it will neither be pleased nor astonished it must be pestered and shocked. It is difficult to put a limit to the pranks of the more select and extreme performer. He meets us everywhere — in the pulpit and on the platform; in law, in medicine, in arts, in literature, in journalism, in politics, in warfare. He is given to do " big things,^^ sometimes useful sometimes useless — swimming a channel, or crossing one in a balloon, or sailing an ocean in a cockle-boat, or riding across a continent, or traversing a deserb, or cutting through a jungle. Our heroes of the extremely pas- sionless type (of forward head-poise and sparing hair- growth) are very fitful yet singularly self-confident. Their courage is beyond question. The adventurous and unemotional man frequently remains single, and
32 ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN.
wisely so. His genius fits him much more for life on the camePs back, or in a boat, or in a balloon than for life on the domestic hearth or in the study. He may possibly bring happiness to domestic life by worthy ideals and helpful service, but too often he is an impostor as a husband and his marriage is a fraud.
The journalistic performer has great advantages; not only can he perform his pranks but he can print them. He is full of crazes, and calls upon the nation to suspend its avocations, resolve itself into a com- mittee, and consider them. Here is a suggestion of the sort of craze to which he is subject : — Old women in great numbers are being systematically thrown into the Thames. Not a moment is to be lost. Consider what might happen to our own dear grandmothers ! Does a cold-blooded generation ask for proof ? An old woman^s corpse is secretly bought from the " shady '' porter of the nearest parochial " dead- house ; '' secretly thrown into the Thames ; it is fished up again with much publicity and many flourishes. Dignitaries of the Church, after secret consultation, publicly testify to the zeal and good intentions of the fisher. Let scoff'ers beware ! Have they not them- selves toppled an old woman or two over the Embank- ment on a dark night ? Besides if they do not keep quiet the saviour of old women will name them. The unimpassioned are given to be saviours. The acknow- ledged saviour is probably not ill-pleased with himself. We can of ourselves do nothing right — but we can believe in hitn, dream of him, thank God for him, and ask him to address us.
Mr. Ruskin, being himself unscorched — though sometimes using scorching words — by the fire of
ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN. 33
passionate devotion to causes, believes that all men who seek high position are influenced by love of admiration. He cannot understand a man who cares more for a cause than for the delight of writing " M.P/^ after his name ; or a bishop who cares more for a principle than to be addressed as '^ my lord.^^ Yet William Shakspere, who was not of extremely impas- sioned temperament, valued the success of the Globe Theatre more highly than the fame of being known as the author of Hamlet — a production which he never expected to be printed. The deeply impassioned Lloyd Garrison gladly hid himself from the public gaze after the downfall of slavery. The intellect, if predominant^ is careful of name and fame ; it garners them '^ like golden grain," while passion, if predomi- nant, '^ flings them to the winds like rain.-^^ History, too, is disposed to take care of tbose who take care of themselves. If the unimpassioned throw themselves unduly into view in our own day, they have assuredly , thrown themselves unduly into the pages of history. Men were in the past what they are now, and he who would read dead brain must first read the living.
The very recreations of the active passionless man are uneasy. He is unhappy in repose and rests nowhere long. After a busy day he must have a pun- gent evening. He is found in the theatre, or concert, or church, or the bazaar, at the dinner, or con- versazione, or club, or all these, turn and turn about. But these yield him no real contentment. The woman delights in social stir, in the visit, the tea-table, the dinner, "a little music," the "at home." The man delights in oflScial position, in committees, sub- committees, deputations, councils, boards, parliaments. He is business-like and punctual. If he misses a
34 ACTIVE AND LESS IMPASSIONED MAN.
meeting a telegram announces a more ostentatious call.
The teachings of physiology modify all judg- ments ; they touch all the width and length of life. Perhaps at some remote future time a council of physiologists will select selectors, rule rulers, and inspect inspectors. They will say of one statesman, ^^ he thinks too much ; ^^ of another, ^' he does too much.^^ They will take from this inspector's praise so much discount — so much from that inspector's blame.
Chapter V.
THE CHARACTER OF THE MORE IMPASSIONED AND REFLECTIVE MAN.
The impassioned man is a sort of masculine version of the impassioned woman; he is much more like her than he is like his passionless brother. Sex^ it may be said again^ is a less important factor in distinguishing one character from another than the possession of cer- tain endowments and propensities.
The more impassioned man is not necessarily the reverse of the less impassioned. He may spend his evenings in pleasure from a genuine love of it ; but his pleasures do not change every hour, and he is not driven to them by mere restlessness. If he takes part in public work he is probably invited to do so from some special fitness ; or it may be that he has at heart some movement — beneficent or mischievous — which, he wishes to promote; for he is not wiser and not; more foolish than the less impassioned public servant. He may be a person of quite exceptional vitality and therefore, it may be, of unusual ambition. He does not wear so well, however, as his less emotional brother. When his work is done he willingly retires. He is able to see what others can do better than he ; and he would rather that his cause, should prosper in other hands than fail in his own. He has a hearty word of • praise for his fellow-workers. Probably he errs in „ estimating too generously the merits of those around
36 MORE IMPASSIONED AND REFLECTIVE MAN.
him : one is on his way to a bishopric ; another should grace the woolsack; a third will one day lead the House of Commons.
The impassioned man is never, and indeed cannot be, an habitual scold. There are however as many scolds among men as among women, only we give them finer names. We are but too ready to call a sharp-ton gued woman a scold, while, with the same breath, we call the scolding man a ^^ thinker,^^ '^ seer,^^ *^ prophet.^^ Praise is usually flat, while clever scolding, with tongue or pen, is always interesting and impres- sive. Herodotus, it seems, is held in less esteem than Thucydides. Herodotus was given to genial praise, Thucydides to disapproval. Goethe remarks that the German language (it is probably true of all languages) contains more words for the expression of blame than of praise. In every field of human performance he comes to the front who throws strong vitriol with a strong hand ; he is thrust aside in his turn, but only when a stronger hand throws stronger acid.
There is much, very much, around us and within us which deserves scolding; but there is much also that does not ; hence the exalted genius who scolds every- thing, evil and good alike, occupies a singular position : the wisest man does not speak wiser words than he ; the greatest fool does not utter greater folly.
No times have produced more effective scolds than our own. It may be repeated here that vigorous, stirring, repeated speech is often most marked when passion is least intense. It is quite possible too that the slightly emotional speaker or writer may perchance utter the language of love and hate with more cogency than an individual of deep feeling but of restricted powers of speech.
MORE IMPASSIONED AND REFLECTIVE MAN. 37
It is of little use to argue either with the habitual approver or the habitual censor. Physiological organi- sation makes them what they are ; hence it would be well for the approved not to be too elated, and the scolded not too much cast down. It is curious to note that the detractor puts the golden age in the past while the appreciator puts it in the future. It is in both a creation of the brain .
An acute observer of life has said that youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, and old age a regret. The remark is especially true of the slowly maturing, impassioned, and contemplative individual : his youth is tenfold a blunder, and therefore his old age a tenfold keener regret. From blundering to morality or immo- rality is not a long step. The moral code and the moral practice of the two ruling temperaments are probably not materially dissimilar if a general balance be struck. Goethe is strangely severe in his judgments on action and on men of action. It may perhaps be true, as he states, that action is easy, and thought, as he understood it, difficult; but is it true that men of action have no conscience ? They may not indulge in the habit of taking their conscience to pieces and showing all men the fragments and the process, but nevertheless they surely have one. Would it not be more correct to say that the busy energetic man adopts a ready-made society conscience, while the leisurely pensive man constructs or rather shapes his own ? At root, all over the world, conscience is a social need and a social product ; but is it true that the article of private manipulation is always superior to that fashioned by society and more or less common to all ?
The union of physiological fitness and the avocations
38 MORE IMPASSIONED AND REFLECTIVE MAN.
of life have so far been little considered : perhaps it would not be well to put, too Exclusively, all the brisk and adroit minds into one group of callings and all the leisurely pensive minds into another group. Alertness of mind moreover and reposefulness of mind are tem- peramental peculiarities — not occupations, not vocations, not missions, not careers. When the choice of vocation is spontaneous and natural, it may well be that the vigilant and less impassioned natures turn to the arts, that is to execution ; and the great majority of vocations appertain to art. Art demands the rapid, clear, and accurate perception of truths and the concrete embodi- ment of them for human purposes. That the higher arts appeal to the feelings — this is their physiological, primary, and therefore unexplainable essence — and that art producers are as a rule not overburdened with feeling is a seeming anomaly which cannot be con- ^ sidered here. The contemplative and emotional natures may be expected to turn to the slower acqui- sition, and all-round testing, and methodising of truths — which is the essence of science : and here, at first sight, but only at first sight, the emotions do not seem to be so needful.
The leadership of men and movements is art in one of its purest forms ; it consists in the confident seizure of truths which have been slowly produced by^ not one, but many, contemplative minds and giving them shape, acceptability, and potency. It is not sur- prising to find that the greater number of known names belong to the energetic and less emotional class. Many of these have been artists, many have been leaders in the various domains of life, politi- cal, social, religious, or otherwise. In the domain of religion — which, by way of example, may profitably
MORE IMPASSIONED AND REFLECTIVE MAN. 39
be studied for a few moments — contemplative and emotional natures are no doubt found, characters, too, of high capability and distinction, nevertheless they are not its leaders, certainly not its popular leaders. The religious leader is active, controversial, pugnacious; he defends with vigilance and attacks with confidence. Contemplation wanders, undermines, disintegrates ; action consolidates and confirms. What is called religious contemplation is not contemplation at all ; it is, strictly speaking, either adoration, or stupefaction, or ecstasy. Famous religious leaders have had high qualities, but they have had more of energy, self- confidence, self-importance, and censoriousness than of love, or pity, or hate, or anger, or scorn. How different the life-outlook, and the life-outcome, of perhaps the most active and least emotional men in history — Becket, Laud, Bunyan, Wesley, and Newman from the life-outlook, and life-outcome, of the most emotional of known men and women — Dante, Burns, Byron, Hawthorne, George Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte. It would seem that action — in the form of speech — and the outer life, have that charm for some religious leaders which contemplation and the inner life have for some poets and some novelists. Bunyan was probably the niost affectionate of the religious leaders just enumerated, yet he trampled on the ten- derest domestic affections in obeying a physiological impulse to rhetorical activity which he mistook for a call from God. Wesley only escaped domestic em- broilment, so far as he did escape it, by travelling yearly thousands of miles and preaching thousands of sermons — compelled thereto by irresistible organisa- tion. Newman, whose affections, his sister remarked, were slight, declared that God had called upon him to
40 MORE IMPASSIONED AND REFLECTIVE MAN.
remain single. A significant feature of the extraor- dinary self-importance of the more active religious characters is the belief that they are singled out for notice, guidance, and employment by *^ the Ruler of thirty million suns.^^
As a genuinely self-important, rather than a self- confident, man Thomas Becket stands probably without a rival. He had crazes — which are not passions. Crazes, cranks, and fads are mental not emotional peculiarities, and are mostly met with in the less- emotional natures. No hint is given that he was licentious in early life, or impassioned in any of the passions. He was a busy, loud, ostentatious, self- important courtier who, without any change in the essentials of character, became a busy, loud, ostenta- tious, self-confident ecclesiastic. The position of the church in relation to spiritual life and another world did not trouble him : his one sole care was for the importance of the church and its primate in this world.
That leaders are as a rule organisers and combatants and not originators admits of little doubt. Students of religious history need not be told that Luther con- tributed no single view, no single method, to Protes- tantism ; Wesley not a principle or an observance to Methodism. Nevertheless the fame of great reli- gious leaders, as of other leaders, is as a rule built on substantial foundations. It was their achievement to dig out of the chaotic confusion left by purposeless or, as Matthew Arnold would have said, '^ disinterested^^ thinkers such system and such pabulum as the epoch and the multitude were groping after.
Men of profound feeling and illimitable pondering tend to suspense or even hesitation ; they are never
MORE IMPASSIONED AND REFLECTIVE MAN. 41
the founders of religions ; never leaders of religious movements; they neither receive nor deliver divine messages. They are moreover never so supremely confident as to what is error that they burn their neighbours for it ; never so confident that they possess infallible truth that, although not wanting in courage, they are prepared to be burnt in its behalf.
Chapter VI.
BODILY CHARACTERISTICS
(ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY) OF THE
TWO LEADING TEMPERAMENTS.
The skeleton gives to the human figure its height and general conformation. The external appearance of the body is determined by the skin with its varying degrees of pigment^ covering hair, and underlying fat — fat being a distinctly cutaneous appendage. Which is the more attractive, a beautiful skin and complexion, or a good figure, is a question of perennial interest. The Northern King in Tennyson^s ^' Princess " declares that men hunt women ^ for their skins : ^ some men prefer to hunt them for their bones. So far as general configuration is concerned, muscle or flesh plays a slighter part.
I have endeavoured to show that there are in both sexes two leading groups of tendencies in character. I venture to affirm that there are also two general tendencies in the grouping of bodily characteristics. Neither bodily nor mental characteristics are miscella- neous collections of fragments ; they run together in more or less uniform clusters. With one particular kind of skeleton and skin there will be associated a particular kind of nervous organisation, and therefore
BODILY CHARACTERISTICS. 43
one particular kind of character. In the active and less impassioned bias the skin tends to be rosy or less pigmented; the hair growth is slighter — slighter on * the head and eyebrows in women ; less extended or, if extended, more sparingly distributed on the face in man. Mr. Havelock Ellis, in his able work on ^^ Man and Woman,^^ remarks that women, as regards hair growth and other matters also, have gone beyond men in the path of evolution ; if this be granted, the less impassioned woman, especially when endowed with high capacity and refined feeling, has travelled furthest from our remote ancestors. In the active tempera- ment the spinal curves of dorsum and neck are markedly developed, giving, with some change in ^ the position of the ribs, a distinctly convex or round or even globular appearance to the back.
In the more impassioned and less active tempera- ment, on the other hand, it will be found that the skin is more opaque, and rosiness, if present, will be less transparent or even, though not unpleasingly so, <^ muddy. The hair growth of head and eyebrows, and in men, of the face, is longer and more thickly planted. The construction of the skeleton too is different : the spinal curves are less marked and therefore the head is carried more or less upright — it may be defiantly and inartistically upright ; the dorsum or back has a flat or even concave appearance between the shoulders — the concavity being percep- tible through closely fitting garments in both sexes. The ribs seem to throw themselves backwards, pro- jecting posteriorly on both sides of the spinal column as if striving to embrace it; in the less impassioned figure the ribs and thorax generally tend to fall for- wards away from the spine. The upper limbs, being
44 BODILY CHARACTERISTICS.
attached to the ribs, stand, with them, either back- wards or forwards.
It is curious that with the pinker skin and more y curved spine there is a somewhat greater tendency to obesity. Since making this statement in the earlier editions of this book I have, as an observer, been not a little gratified to meet with an observation of Goethe^s that "brown skins rarely grow fat.^^ It must not be forgotten however that alcoholic drinks it may be even in small quantities tend to produce fat whatever the temperament may be.
I have so far kept marked examples only in view ; but in all classifications, of either bodily or mental characteristics, sharp lines of division do not exist. Intermediate — often happy intermediate — gradations are constantly met with.
It is interesting to note that the stronger spinal curves of the less impassioned figure are more in favour with artists — often indeed exaggerated by them — than the more, and possibly ungracefully, erect pose of the impassioned. It has been already re- marked that one authority in art states that in a well-formed woman a plumb-line dropped from the tip of the nose should fall in front of the toes. A marked cervical or neck curve, although it involves a slight stoop, gives greater fulness to the front of the neck, which artists consider to enhance a woman's beauty. Strong curvature of the neck bones (vertebrad) shortens the neck and also throws the head forwards ; marked obesity gives the a'pjpearance of a short neck.
In women it is perhaps somewhat easier to judge of the nervous organisation and character from the nature of the hair growth, while in men the skeleton gives, it may be, the more reliable information. Baldness of
BODILY CHARACTERISTICS. 45
both scalp and eyebrows is common and frequently- early in men of both temperaments ; the face growth is more persistent. In the less impas- sioned man the face hair is often irregular or patchy, and tends to be more abundant on the upper lip and chin and perhaps the margin of the jaw. But not very rarely the individual hairs though not thickly planted are of large diameter, and if evenly distributed may give the delusive appearance of some- what massive growth. Nevertheless, even in these cases, the hair-area less frequently extends so far upwards along the cheek or so far downwards along the neck as in the more impassioned. Probably a baby which takes after a more impassioned parent will have, even at birth, a more marked head of hair than its brother or sister who takes after a less impas- sioned father or mother.
For various reasons precipitate judgment is unwise. Not only is early baldness of head-hair and of eye- brows common in men, and may, though much less frequently, occur in women, but certain states of health occasionally thin or remove the hair. Very fine hair, especially if also of light colour, in a woman^s eyebrow or on a man's face may easily give the impression that the growth is more sparing than it really is. On the other hand, an erroneous judgment may easily be formed, because, when the hair-growth is not thickly planted it may nevertheless seem to be so if it is uncut and un cared for, or if the individual hairs are of large diameter and there is no tendency to baldness. It is the relative numbers, and area, and vigour of growth, not the size of individual hairs which ' chiefly indicate a given variety of nervous organisa- tion. The man whose face is kept in order by shaving
46 BODILY CHARACTERISTICS.
twice a week lias distinctly less impassioned nerve tlian he who needs to shave twice a day if he spends his evenings in society.
In judging of the figure^ or skeleton-structure, still more caution is needed. It is important to note that carrying weights habitually in early life^ early exhaust- ing habits, or labour, or ailment, or injury, and of course advancing years, tell unequivocally on the bony frame- work. Slight rickets in childhood increasing the spinal curves of boys and girls is not at all rare. More or less dorsal convexity and stoop is frequent in hereditary lung trouble. When marked skeleton curves are associated with abundant hair growth it will usually be found that one of these causes has been at work. It is well to note here what seems to me an important diflference between the convexity left by rickets and that belonging to phthisical proclivities : in the latter there is no change in nerve action, no lessened intensity of passion ; it is quite otherwise with the curves of rickets, for these are often associated with diminution of feeling. The explanation is obvious. Certain chemical elements are identical in bone and in nerve substance; if, in early life, they are deficient in one they are deficient in the other — hence arises a thwarted transmission of parental traits of character. I have observed one compensation in the slightly ricketty conformation : slow ossification leaves a large frontal skull and larger corresponding brain, and with them frequently an unusual intel- lectual agility.
Now and then the whole body is inclined forwards from the hip— a posture which must not be confounded - with the true dorsal curve. It must not however be . supposed that the characteristic dorsal convexity.
BODILY CHARACTERISTICS. 47
(vertical and transverse) is as a general rule due to mere debility. Its subjects, generation after genera- tion, frequently possess robust health while even the most stiffly erect individuals, and their forerunners, are often ailing.
Throughout these pages it is taken for granted that bodily organisation and character are, in the main, matters of inheritance ; that we are human beings because our parents were ; that we are what we are mainly because they and their forerunners were what they were. Many causes however may interfere before birth with the purity of transmission ; after birth, too, organisation, affecting subsequent cha- racter, is frequently modified by ailment, accident, and general surroundings. It may be remarked that, while most children inherit something from both parents, they usually take much more after one only. It is worth noting, by the way, that two cousins may be much alike, or totally unlike, according to the lines of parentage they follow. Whatever may be the pro- priety of marriage between cousins closely resembling each other, no intensification of any family peculiarity can follow the marriage of markedly unlike cousins who take after the collateral rather than the direct lines of parentage. The newspapers, not long ago, contended that a child recently born of the two grand-parents, Ibsen and Bjornsen, ought to be a prodigy of genius : quite possibly there may be little of either in his composition.
Chapter VII.
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
If men and women, however diverse in individual character, fall naturally under one of two broad tendencies, examples of both should be readily found in history, biography, poetry, fiction, as well as in daily life around us. Many and unequivocal examples do actually present themselves. Artistic representations of the human figure, that is, of the build and pose of the skeleton, are in some degree misleading, because unfortunately, painters, sculptors, and photographers, have a habit of imposing their own ideals on the objects of their art. The man who stoops is told to hold his head up ; the naturally erect man is directed not to look as if he had swallowed a poker. If easy, habitual, undirected positions were given they would tell in favour of the views here put forward. Verbal descriptions of bodily characteristics by competent observers have a value which cannot be exaggerated, and happily these are not entirely wanting.
It was once commonly believed, and the belief has by no means disappeared, that peoples and persons are inherently and potentially alike. Men, deservedly of great eminence in literature, among them Mill and Buckle, have seemed to favour this conclusion. It is not the view of students of the living body, of those only who can speak with authority — anatomists and physiologists. It is not the view of those who teach either children or adults. No possible training or antecedence could extract Shaksperian art or Newtonian discovery from
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 49
Puegian skulls. Yet if the difference between a Puegian and a Goethe is one of anatomy and physiology, so also is the difference between Socrates and King David, between Ca3sar and Nero, between Milton and a Court fool, between Cardinal Newman and Lord Byron, between George Eliot and Joanna Southcott. If at the moment of birth John Wesley could have been placed in Eobert Burns^s cradle and circum- stance, could he possibly have become an impassioned singer and an ardent lover ?
In Hebrew writings we are told that it is better to live on a house-top than with a brawling woman. Nothing is said of brawling men, yet fhere is no single r type or feature of character which is peculiar to one sex. There is nothing of nerve-organization, and therefore nothing of character, which a woman may not transmit to her son, and nothing which a man may not transmit to his daughter. But the Hebrew ideal of woman was not high. How different the women — ideal and real — of the old Saxon heathen. They were true in affection, devoted in help, capable in counsel. Very character- istically our own Caedmon gave to Eve a much higher character than did the Hebrew writers.
The wife of Socrates has been handed down to us as a shrew — perhaps justly so. Socrates is rightly regarded as one of the world's loftiest characters, there are good reasons however for supposing that he himself was also a shrew. He was never at rest : he gave others no rest. He questioned and lectured everybody in season and out of season. To him notoriety was life, and when tired of life he courted the crowning notoriety of an ostentatious death. Probably not a few martyrs have been men in whom the passion for life was feebler than the ceaseless and loao^ indulofed and abnormal
50 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES,
desire for personal notoriety. A singular incident is recorded of Socrates. One morning, in a public place, he struck an attitude of profound reverie as if a new- problem had just presented itself to him. This attitude he maintained all day and all night — a whole twenty- four hours — when he offered a prayer to the sun-god and went his way. At noon public attention was excited; the crowd grew, and a band of observers remained out all night to watch him. Now no human strength can endure for twenty-four hours one position of abstract thought without movement, or food, or drink. Socrates was not solving a problem. Was he not seeking distinction by conscious and more or less painful effort ? The great moralist little thought that he was revealing to a distant generation the story of his body, his inheritance, and his physiological proclivities. Let us consider for a moment another notable fiofure of another race — whose life and passions show that he was emphatically the reverse of shrewish — King David. In conformation of skeleton, in nervous organizatic»n and in hair-growth, we may picture for ourselves the differences between them.
Fable and legend bequeath to us isolated incidents which attain significance as time goes on and know- ledge grows. The legend of Lady Godiva, for example, is a lesson in physiology. Two facts are recorded of her — recorded by those who saw, and foresaw, no connecting link between them : Godiva^s hair was a marvel ; Godiva^s compassion has become a proverb. It was scarcely necessary to tell us of the Queen^s luxuriant hair. Pity deep enough, passion deep enough to throw convention and custom, and it may be wisdom, to the winds are not independent of anatomic form. We may be quite sure that Godiva^s
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 51
eyebrows were abundant ; that she was of spare figure ; that her spine was straight, her back flat, and her head upright.
Poetry and myth came before prose and reason because the emotions develop earlier than the intellect. ^^ Love and faith '' came long before knowledge. Men may never reach knowledge, but no creature is born quite devoid of love and faith. Before men thought and questioned they sang; anatomists say, indeed, that the human larynx was once purely a singing organ — such singing as it was. Happily however, men do not cease to sing when they begin to think ; they sing the more melodiously when brain joins in with heart.
Even in the romance and poetry of older times we recognise the two generic temperaments. Prince Arthur, high-souled and brave, was a passionless man ; so was Sir Galahad. For my part, I can draw their portraits — their scanty beards, their pink skins, and their characteristic skeletons. The sadly erring Lancelots and the Guineveres were impassioned — passionate not in one only but in all the passions. Their anatomical configuration was doubtless of quite another sort. We can only deplore their fates and their failures, and reflect how much better the world would have fared if the Lancelots could have wedded the Guineveres, and, if the Arthurs and the Galahads had according to their several capacities ruled over monasteries or scrubbed monastic cells, how much happier wedded life, how much purer monastic life would have been.
Probably the majority of the illustrious names in history have been of the less impassioned and more active temperament. They are, with a few marked exceptions, the leaders in warfare, religion, politics.
52 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
and social movements. The reflective impassioned and more or less indolent thinkers have been indirectly helpful, but are necessarily less known. Within each of the two great classes, and between the two extremes, there is a remarkable range and variety of character.
The two great Romans, Caesar and Cicero, were widely different characters, but they were both exam- ples of the active type : Cicero was much the more marked example both in bodily figure and mental organization, and well illustrates the association of a given skeleton with a given brain. Caesar was proba- bly not far removed from the strictly intermediate type. Both were men of notable parentage; both possessed extraordinary genius ; the dominant impulse in both was to action and public life, and not to brooding, contemplation, or seclusion. In public life, rhetoric and action are almost convertible terms. As a rhetorician Cicero had no rival ; in the more reflective domain of philosophy he completely failed. Both were alert and untiring, witty and eloquent; both were on the whole, as the active temperament so frequently is, generous and placable; both were of high character; Cicero^s personal purity was especially marked, for having no passions he knew no fierce tempta- tion. Both loved power, but Caesar probably loved it more as Cromwell did, because it made easier the secur- ing of the public well-being. With so much in common the difference between them was vast. In intellectual power, in moral impulse, in conduct, and certainly in achievement, Caesar was unquestionably the superior. There was at least something of repose in one; the other was an extreme example of emotionless unrest. Rhetoric demands no emotion — profound emotion in- deed is a distinct check on the flood of even impressive
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 53
words. Cicero like all active and highly endowed men was clear, rapid, and efifective, but he had nothing of the restraint and patience and wisdom which are not rarely found in the active mind. An immensity of self showed itself in both, but it took more the form of self-confidence in Caesar, while in the orator it took the form of almost insane self-importance — nay, or even of childish vanity. He besought a popular historian of his time not to adhere too closely to fact, but to invest Cicero with as much glory as possible. Caesar^s mind was naturally questioning and sceptical ; he sang no Te Deums, but praised his legions ; Cicero, credu- lous and superstitious as well as censorious, was always praising God and scolding men. The description of Cicero^s bodily conformation is of the deepest interest and significance : his dorsal skeleton was strongly curved, and his head carried much in advance of his shoulders; as one writer expresses it, '^his. neck seemed too weak for the weight of his head.-*^ Caesar^s busts and reliefs suggest a skeleton of more inter- mediate construction.
There is perhaps no period of history in which character is more clearly revealed . to us than in that conflict of two parties and two ideals which cul- minated in the sixteenth century. We know more of Henry VIII., of Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, than we do of any other king or any other queen, and few if any great figures are better known to us than Erasmus and More. Henry happened to be king when the great Reformation storm burst over these islands; he happened also to marry six wives in succession. Had he married one wife only at that eventful period he would have been less known to us ; had he, at a quiet epoch, married as many wives as
54 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
King Solomon, few would have cared to study his character. Not long before the Pope had given an Irish King leave to have six wives all at once^ and that King lived and died in the odour of sanctity.
It is a salutary exercise in the analysis of a char- acter to draw up a tabular view of its good and evil and neutral features. As a rule this method, if dis- passionately carried out, would probably show that the bad are a little less bad and the good a little less good than is commonly supposed. Out of this columnar method Henry would certainly emerge a sadly be- smirched figure. The items in the good column are few : he was surely a capable man, holding his own in the European crowd of capable men ; he was sincerely pious ; he was a friend of all the arts — the art of ship- building practically began with him ; he was beyond all doubt popular with his people who believed them- selves to be better governed and more prosperous than any other people; strangers, scholars, travellers, reported well of him ; he was frank, sincere, accessible. In public and in private character he was superior to any other European monarch. It is a short list and the black column is long. He was fitful, capricious, bustling, petulant, disapproving ; his love of conspicu- ousness and admiration, his ostentation and his extrava- gance exceeded all reasonable limits ; his vanity was colossal and swallowed up all dignity and pride ; his self-importance and self-will were little short of insani- ties ; the popular voice of recent time (not, curiously, of his own time) declares that he was also ^^ a monster of lust.^^ If a fickle and easily impressionable man (facile impressionability is not deep passion) who, guided by self-will only in sexual matters, takes and dismisses one wife after another is a monster of lust.
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 55
Henry assuredly was one ; he was probably not such a monster if the term implies a furious and over- mastering passion which tramples down every obstacle and all self-control. If the views put forward in these pages have any basis of fact, Henry^s portraits and the descriptions of him tell us that he was a man of th0^ active and less impassioned temperament. He was fat,\ big, of markedly pink skin and scanty face hair ; his spinal curves were marked, his neck short, his head so advanced that his chin rested on his chest.
No sane man is ever the embodiment of a single passion, and the passions, however restrained some or unrestrained others, run more or less together. Henry, it is significant to note, had not a single deep passion — neither deep love, nor deep hate, nor deep pity. The defections of Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard wounded his self-importance, not his affections. He was peevish and petulant and undignified enough, but never profoundly angry ; not when fanatics burst into his privacy and rated him in God's name ; not, to the surprise of historians, when the result of the long drawn out Oampeggio inquiry was told to him. King David indeed would not have waited seven years for a commission to decide upon his dealings with Bath- sheba and her husband Uriah. No impassioned man — no average man — could witness unmoved, as Henry did, the death of a wife and a young mother in giving birth to a son — especially a long wished for dynastic heir. Three weeks after Jane Seymour^s death he was intriguing for a continental marriage from motives of state only, not of passion. In fact, monsters of lust, crowned or uncrowned, adopt quite other methods than those of changing wives. Henry, I repeat, was the embodiment of fitfulness, of fussiness, of self-will /
56 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
and self-importance; these qualities do not imply, indeed they are often inimical to coarse self-indulgence, and the embodiments of these qualities are never the victims of ungovernable passion. Two boys pass by an orchard : one cares for apples, not excessively, but it may be that his desire is stronger than his control over his desire ; the other boy has quite a passion for apples, but he may also have an inherent and passion- ate sense of self-control. Which is the more likely to rob the orchard, to eat half an apple, throw the other half away and rob another orchard the next day ?
Mary and Elizabeth were strongly marked examples both in mental and in bodily features of the two funda- mental and opposite types of character. Elizabeth was almost an exact copy of her father. Both had, in
/ an unusual degree, capacity, courage, the sense of public duty, and the desire for the welfare of their subjects ; both were changeable, uncertain, domineer- ing, vain ; in both, love of movement, pageantry and personal predominance was excessive. Elizabeth was
- less pious than her father — less in inner feeling and outer ceremonial — she, unlike her father, had not been trained to be an archbishop, but she had much more sagacity and tact than he. She had, perhaps, not all his self-importance, certainly not his self-confidence and therefore she was even more fitful. She was a •busy, bustling woman, and these, like busy, bustling
/ men, are never deeply emotional. She most certainly had neither the maternal nor the wifely instincts. She was always doing something, but she, curiously, hated doing things that could not be undone. Naturally, too, a queen niight not change husbands so easily as a king might his wives- She would probably have lopped off a goodly number of heads, if only heads
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 57
could have been put on again^ and the execution of Queen Mary^ because it could not be done and undone at will, was beyond doubt the chief trouble of her reign.
It was a remarkable circumstance which pitted against each other two such striking extremes, bodily as well as mental, as Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. Nevertheless the points which are common to every human being are much more numerous than those which are peculiar to the individual. There was not only this common basis of human nature in Elizabeth and Mary, there was something more : both were singularly capable, brilliant, witty and brave (Mary being the braver and her bravery being the more tried). The two queens were both educated to the then highest ideal of female education ; both, too, had much experience of life — the larger and the less ele- vating share falling to Mary^s lot. But in all else they were extreme contrasts. What in Elizabeth were slight though shrill rivulets of love and hate and anger and scorn, or of pity or gratitude, were mighty torrents in Mary. The impassioned Mary had her paroxysms of fierce anger, but she had nothing of fussiness or captiousness or fitfulness.
Because of her deeply emotional nature the Scottish Queen had to fight against some sadly troublous elements ; to those elements and to that conflict Eliza- beth was a stranger. It is true that in the block of human nature out of which the ever-pathetic figure of Mary was carved, there came to light undoubted flaws ; but it would be unjust to forget that she lived in a time when life was held to be less sacred than it now is. Popes, Kings, Henry, Elizabeth, and Mary among others, sanctioned or forgave murder : the moral differ- ence between murder for greed and murder for passion
58 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
may not be considered here. ^^ The great soul of the world is just ^^ and it has kept Mary within the territory of its favour. Both had, perhaps, the worst fault of the two temperamental extremes : Elizabeth had no affec- tions ; Mary^s affections were turbulent and escaped control. Mary was indeed a beautiful if somewhat terrible lioness. What might she have been if mated to a less feeble and foolish lion ? Elizabeth was little more than a magnified though splendid wasp. And now it is interesting to observe that the two queens were not less strongly contrasted in bodily characteristics than in mental. Elizabeth was of large frame, of pink skin, scantily endowed with hair, the eyebrows being , almost absent, of well curved dorsal spine and for- wardly and downwardly poised head. Mary was slighter, her spine less curved and her head erect ; her eyebrows were marked and her head-hair long and abundant. No woman of Mary^s bodily characteristics has ever been a scold, no woman of Elizabeth^s has ever tumbled headlong into the turbid pools of passion.
Two memorable figures of the Tudor epoch were More and Erasmus. The two friends were very marked and very noble examples of the active and less impassioned temperament, and both had the character- istic anatomical framework which gives lodgment to the spontaneously up-and-be-doing nerve as distinguished from nerve which sometimes needs the spur. There was nothing pensive or dreamy or sluggish in either of them. Both were self-confident, especially Erasmus^ and not without some sense of their own import- ance. In neither of them, however, was there the least trace of self-seeking. But to Morels high qualities were added undoubted traces of a disapproving and
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 59
contradictory if not of an unduly self-confident temper. All religious persecution rests on self-con- fidence^ and More in his later years presided over the rack. His first action in public life was one of petu- lant self-assertion — let alone ingratitude — considering the remarkable and disinterested kindness which Henry VII. and Cardinal Morton had shown to him. A little later Wolsey, no doubt on good grounds^ told him that he never approved of anything. When orthodoxy was defiant he opposed it : when heresy in its turn became defiant he defended the older faith, Erasmus, brilliant, quick, clear, witty, yet wise, was the foremost figure in Europe — and he was himself quite conscious of the fact.
Chapter VIII.
EVIDENCE AND EXA.M.FLES—Gontinued.
If we turn to more recent history we still find, and naturally so, that its prominent characters belong to the markedly active type. The most conspicuous figure of modern time is certainly that of Napoleon. The more conspicuous because his career was in fact, from first to last, marked by strange deviations from modern ideas and methods. His family and his early life are of deep interest. He was born while his parents were still in their teens, hence probably some delay in the ossification and union of the bones of his skull which favoured, although not on strictly normal lines, the extraordinary expansion of his brain and the relative smallness of his face and skeleton generally. A peculiar congenital organization was indicated by some nervous malady which his physicians strove to con- ceal. Like many other famous men he took wholly after his mother and even shared her dislike of the language and manners of the French people. His father was an Italian of good birth and of a quiet, retiring, gentle nature. His mother, who sprang from a commonplace Corsican family, was coarse, loud, self-asserting, ener- getic and discontented. Should the time ever come when children are named after the parent they mostly resemble, the Corsican hero will be renamed Napoleon Ramolini. I venture to think a still greater name would be changed : Shakspere^s mother and her family were of intellectual and refined disposition ; it was not
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 61
SO on his father's side. When the students of Shaks- pere^s antecedents and lineage give the time and research to the Ardens which has hitherto been wasted on the Shakesperes, we shall hear more of William Arden and less of William Shakspere.
It has been said that the chief characteristics of a good family stock are gentle manners, cultivated tastes, and honourable principles. Letitia Ramolini could not transmit what she did not possess, and her son had but little of gentleness, or loftiness of aim, or honour. A man of gentle nature does not by habit toss his hat into the corner of the room ; or in fits of mere petulance — not of anger — throw his watch on the floor, or dash the nearest vase into a hundred fragments. Naturally refined natures are not the monopoly of any station in life ; but high principles — truth, honour, justice — were all as foreign to the Corsican woman's son as were gentle manners.
Good and evil are, it may be, not very unequally distributed among the various types of character, but both good and evil are naturally more conspicuous in individuals of the active type. Napoleon is, perhaps, the most brilliant and the least pleasing example of that active and less impassioned temperament which, ^ in other notable examples, has given to the world invaluable service. Brilliant genius and brilliant opportunity met in him : but these are not enough, for, while intellectual nerve was weighty, moral nerve was lacking, and the final results to the man and to his adopted country were not brilliant : he left France a little less than he found it.
He had, in extreme degree, all the anatomical or 1 bodily signs of the busy and less deeply emotional temperament. In every portrait his head is advanced
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^ and sunk downwards on his breast. The mental char- acteristics of the man of action were equally striking — many of them in their most unwelcome forms. He
•- was precocious, alert, petulant, censorious, fitful. His thirst for pre-eminence was not a passion — it was an insanity. He was a stranger to all the profounder emotions. He knew nothing of deep love, of genuine anger — loudness and petulance and imperiousness are not anger — nothing of fierce hatred. He had no moral scruples and was indifierent to all restraints, yet he certainly was not a licentious man ; he was indeed, to adopt the expression of a leading novelist, ^^ not sensual enough to be affectionate.'' He rewarded without love and destroyed without hate.
In either temperament one or two elements may
] dwarf all others. Sensuality may dwarf the finer
emotions in the impassioned ; the activities which
make for self-elevation may dwarf the finer activities
in the active. Napoleon^s abnormal demand for pre-
f dominance stands alone in its activity, its intensity, its defiance of every moral impulse, either personal or national, and in its transitory success — a success that was of necessity transitory because it was not based on any principle of natural growth. In contemplating his career we are carried back to a dreamy past. A sort of human mastodon moves across the stage of modern life, and brings before us extinct ideals, extinct morals, and the need of almost extinct adjectives.
Napoleon^s intellect was not a normal reasoning-out power ; not a faculty which looked round life with an equal as well as a capable eye (for this implies wisdom which he did not possess) ; he was incapable of calm, -impersonal, and detached contemplation. His vast capacity showed itself in taking, at any moment, a
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 63
marvellously rapid and clear view of a field in which >^ he himself was the central figure ; in a marvellously rapid conception of methods and results — as far as they affected Ids position ; in an unrivalled rapidity of con- "^ verting conception into action^ as far as action tended to put, and keep, himself at the summit of human affairs.
It is well known to anatomists that the bodily giant is simply an over-grown but under-developed infant (the dwarf being under-grown and over-developed) ; the huge bones, which determine his size, retain to the last an infantile unformed immaturity. Intellectually, though not morally, Napoleon was a sort of giant — an over-grown infant, immense in dimensions, but raw in development. Fortunately in not a few self-confident individuals, self importance seems to have been a de- tachable quality and to have been thrown from the man into his cause or his movement or his ideal. Caesar and Cromwell thought more of their countries than of themselves. Bunyan and Wesley and Newman trans- ferred their importance from themselves to their religious ideals. The importance of Napoleon^s person- ality was to him the one absorbing. importance.
Of the few impassioned natures who, from whatever cause, have been called to the field of action. Nelson and Washington stand most clearly out — they both had in very marked degree the anatomy of the impassioned. These had little thought for themselves; their whole ^, thought was of duty and of an object outside them- selves. At any moment in their career they would, as far as matters of self were concerned, have gladly returned to private life. It was extremely interesting to me, to learn from Jefferson^s estimate of him, that Washington's judgment, wonderfully sound as it was.
64 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
was slow in its operation^ and if put out by events, was slow in readjustment. It will be founds in all de- partments of active life, that, whatever formalities may be gone through, the great impassioned natures are called to the front and kept at the front by others ; these are few in number. The great active natures march of themselves to the front, called by their own imperious organizations ; these no doubt, happily for the world, are not so few.
The Duke of Wellington had a markedly curved upper spine (and resulting position of head and neck) which, in advancing life, became so extreme that a light mechanical apparatus was needed for its rectification. The portraits of General Gordon, who was a remark- able though somewhat eccentric embodiment of the extremely active and unimpassioned type, reveal an extremely forward and downward poise of the head. Both men had many of the mental and moral character- istics which, it is here contended, run with their peculiar anatomical frames. Wellington and Nelson, so different in bone and nerve, were also singularly different from each other in one significant aspect of character. Wellington's nerve (and skeleton) could not praise his soldiers; Nelson's could not refrain from passionate admiration of his helpers.
The active and less impassioned temperament seems to take the lead in many callings — certainly in warfare, in politics and, curiously at first sight, in divinity ; not rarely it fills high places in literature and the arts, in science the more contemplative bias probably finds a more natural field. In divinity, as in much else, the champions and controversalists necessarily come to the front. It will be helpful in these inquiries to consider with some care the most notable religious figure of this
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 65
century. Cardinal Newman was a brilliant and an extreme example of the more energetic^ vigilant, and ^ distinctly less emotional nature.
Newman^s greatness was based on a massive brain, though a massive brain is not the peculiar possession of any one type of men and women. His head reminds us of the heads of Csesar, Shakspeare, Scott, Burns, and Goethe. Oarlyle was physiological enough to say that two fools never produce a wise child, and, it may be added, a large head never comes from two small ones. Excellent churchmen have not been rare — men of high spiritual ideals, blameless lives, cheerful obedience to authority, men too of eloquence and argu- ment who have compelled the attention of a church or a party ; only one churchman has compelled the atten- tion of a people. A thousand churchmen have had Newman^s propensities, only one has had his endow- ments. In Newman^s mother there probably lay the potentialities of her great son. In natural gifts and proclivities, though not in detailed opinion, which is much more under the control of environment, he appears to have taken mainly after his keen-witted self- confident mother. Her vision was clear and untroubled, but it was neither wide nor deep in its grasp. His father^s eye swept a larger field, but with less intensity and less self-confidence. His mother strove to see, and therefore saw, a world tossed to and fro between supernatural forces — between divine guidance and diabolical machination. His father saw a world made up for the most part of natural good and evil, and his judgments were based on grounds of strictly human justice and human charity.
Cardinal Newman had many of the notes of character which, it seems to me, cluster together in the active
66 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
V temperament. He was alert, ready, quick to compre- hend, to defend and attack. The intellect took an unduly large share in the fashioning of his life. Like most great religious leaders, he was undisturbed and unstained by tumultuous passion. His sister remarked that he was ^^not incapable of affection/^ but that it was reserved for his followers. If he had in some degree the failings of the unduly active and intellectual nature he escaped those of the unduly impassioned tempera- I ment : he was the direct opposite of all that is morose, brooding, fanatical, self-indulgent, implacable, or cruel.
Newman^s failings, if they were failings, were dis- tinctly those of the temperament of which he was so illustrious an example. He had something of fit- fulness, something of censoriousness and petulance ; his self-importance and self-confidence were colossal, but they sat well on the shoulders of colossal genius. Eussell Lowell advises neglected poets not to be too sure that they are great poets because Wordsworth was long neglected, and it does not follow that every self- confident youth will become a leader of men because his self-confidence is derided by his fellows. Newman was so derided in early life. At school a certain guild was talked of, but young Newman must be its leader or it should come to nothing: it came to nothing. A school journal was started ; Newman must be its editor or it should be shattered: it was shattered. A little later he visited his home and announced himself to be the recipient of a supernatural message. He was not a little resentful when his divine mission was doubted. But if Newman was not to be a leader of boys he became a leader of men. He put no limit to the extent of his leadership. He knew his own power
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 67
as other men have done in every time. Erasmus wrote ^' my works will live for evcr/^ Lord Chatham exclaimed ^^ I can save this country and no one else can/^ Thomas Carlyle said in effect ^^ with health and peace I could write the best book of this generation/^ The earlier Newman looked on the world as something to be saved by the church, and the church as something to be saved by John Henry Newman.
Now all these men are striking examples, in hodily as well as in mental organization, of the ceaselessly active and alert type. They were not markedly gentle or quiet or dreamy ; they were not inordinately affec- tionate ; but they were all honourable and courageous souls and in no one of them was there the least dash of the self-seeker or the charlatan.
Newman was effective in disputation, in exposition, in narrative and in strategic by-play; he was not original except in subtlety of controversial methods. The active temperament tends to look back, to defer to authority, to consider all questions closed. The reflective temperament looks more to the future, con- fronts all authority, and declares every question open. Newman was of the strongly active bias, and therefore conservative. His greatest evils, as is well known, were two — liberalism in religion and liberalism in politics. When pressed by liberal admirers for one liberal crumb of comfort, he replied: '^liberty, yes, the liberty to choose good leaders,'^ meaning thereby the liberty to choose leaders whom he, Newman would have approved. The Romish Church in somewhat like manner permits one act of private judgment — the act of embracing the Romish Church. Certain moderns, Newman being one of them, finding that reason fails to sanction their preconceived views, generously permit us to prove by
68 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
means of reason that reason is inadequate and mis- leading. Carlyle said of another of the conservative immortals, Dr. Johnson, that ^' he aimed at the im- possible task of stemming the eternal tide of progress, of clutching all things, anchoring them down and bidding them move not.^^ Newman^s conservatism was deeper still : he would have rolled back ^^ the eternal tide/^ and have clutched all things down to some (to him) beautiful long-past pre-Reformation era.
The name of our first churchman (I do not say our first theologian or our first scholar) brings to mind the names of two other great churchmen, Becket and Laud. None of these men were of the strictly contemplative order. They were apostles of authority, and thought undermines authority. They were men, too, who were supremely confident of the importance of their mission, their church, and of themselves as defenders of their church. Supreme confidence forbids aimless, useless, and drifting contemplation. Their acute intellects, especially Becket^s and Newman^s, saw quickly and vividly their own strong points and the vulnerable points of the enemy. They were truthful and truth-loving men, but their first aim was not the desire for truth. They were above all champions of causes . Truth-seeking is based on doubt; while championship is based on belief.
We can best judge of Newman's greatness by con- trast. But before we compare him with other religious teachers, it may be well to ask what constitutes a great man. May he not be briefly described thus? A great man is one whose impress is of the deepest, whose impress is made on the most capable minds, whose impress is therefore the most enduring. The
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 69
merely popular man (popular for good or evil) impresses the multitude. His impress is not deep^ not oil leaders and not enduring. Mr. Spurgeon has unusual gifts but he was not great, although, in this century, no one in any province of human effort has come near to him in the mere number of listeners and readers. He was an extreme example in character, and in skeleton, of the active and less emotional nature. He had many of the mental and moral qualities which are found in the active — self- confidence, a spice of acrimony, untiring activity, and a lack of deep feeling. He was even petulantly con- servative of accepted ideas. These he put forward and defended with effectiveness ; he helped none into day- light and relegated none to twilight. But there are no sharp lines in nature, for between greatness and popularity there are links of continuity and combina- tion. Bunyan and Wesley in their different ways were immensely popular, and both came near to if they did not achieve enduring greatness. Brain weight (and construction), more than temperament, determines the depth of a man^s impress, and while in Spurgeon this was not inconsiderable and still greater in Bunyan, it was most remarkable of all in Newman.
The depth, the quality, the enduringness of a man^s impress is of extreme interest and significance, but may not now be further discussed. It is here intended to show that, notwithstanding variety of character and degree of greatness, Bunyan, Newman, Wesley, and Spurgeon — the list might be greatly extended — were all men of the distinctly active and of the less deeply emotional class. In all of them the material framework was markedly indicative of the fundamental type of character to which they belonged. Not one of them had r,he spinal pose of Kobert Burns.
o
70 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
In studying the character of these leaders and of the majority of the leaders of movements^ certain i'eatures of the active temperament are very marked. Bunyan and Wesley were said to be singularly earnest men. Such earnestness as they displayed is often said to be " passionate earnestness/^ But frequently repeated^ prolonged, and even impressive speech like ^^rousing- ness '^ of speech, often misleads ; frequently it is associated with a remarkable absence of deep emotion. It is not an artifice, not a contrivance ; it is the involuntary inevitable physiological unfolding of rhet- orical nerve and nerve bias. Rhetoric is the form which action often takes in active and unimpassioned persons. Unlike the occasional and specially caused outbursts of truly passionate earnestness, it is quite consistent with undisturbed appetite, digestion, and sleep. Twelve months of John Wesley's life, or of Gladstone's at his busiest period, would have put a Robert Burns, or a Nelson, or a John Bright, or a silent seclusion-loving Hawthorne, or a George Eliot, or a Charlotte Bronte, into the grave. The unemo- tional, although stirring and persuasive, rhetorician may last his eighty or ninety years or more.
The self-confidence and not rarely the self-importance so frequently found in the group of characteristics which tend to run together in the more active type of human nature are curiously manifested in the popular religious leader of all degrees of social or religious importance. He (or she) believes himself to be the special object of supernatural guidance as those are prone to do who mentally seize and dwell on single positions. The broadly reflective nature which examines many positions finds it more difficult to believe that he (or she) is singled out as the
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 71
bearer of a divine message to his fellow mortals. Mr. Spurgeon believed that God sent him a message through the medium of a shoemaker who posted up a text of scripture on a shutter which the eminent preacher had occasion to pass. It is almost laughable and certainly significant to discover that the favoured recipients of divine messages usually have a skeleton formation quite different from the skeleton formation ofthe impassioned bearers of purely human messages, — certain poets and novelists.
It is interesting and not irrelevant in a study of the bearing of physiological truths on men and movements to look, for a few moments, at the relative strength of inherited organization and the play of circumstance in well known lives. Circumstance led Gladstone to be a politician, but he has never lost his bent for religious discussions. Cardinal Manning who, unlike Newman, was not wholly free from a tinge of the popularity hunter, was by circumstance a theologian : from natural proclivity he would have been, as he said, '' the mem- ber for Marylebone.^^ Bunyan, Wesley, Newman, and Spurgeon were diverse, distinct, and well-marked individualities, but they possessed in common certain fundamental endowments and proclivities. These re- mained unchanged however circumstance might chaage. Wesley and Newman were a little more fitful in early life; Bunyan and Spurgeon tended to be more petulant. Bunyan had no rival as a caller of nicknames : ^^ stink- breath^^ was a mild example. All were conservative, although they did not conserve the same things ; all deferred unhesitatingly to authority but, through cir- cumstance, their choice of authority was different ; all were singularly active, but not in the same way ; all were of blameless life ; in not one of them was there any trace of the stronger passions.
72 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.
The influence of external circumstance in changing nerve organisation^ and consequently character^ is most powerful^ but it may be easily over-estimated. It has probably been so in Bunyan^s case. He himself, in obedience to the Puritan habit, now gone out of fashion, of self-accusation, described his early life as that of the vilest of sinners. In reality he was a youth of naturally high character — honest, truthful, chaste. It is true that he swore with so much pungency, that the old women of Els tow, who had no notion of Charles Kingsley 's interjectional theory, were terrified ; but he had not the faintest idea of calling down a curse on anybody or anything. He had in a marvellous degree the gift of expression, but behind this there lay ex- traordinary capacity and an extraordinary impulse to action. Youth passed, and other ideas and impulses came. Capacity, expression, action, all had to be un- folded— how unfolded, circumstance, locality, and the time decided. He first swore with eloquence and impressiveness, and afterwards preached with eloquence and impressiveness, but his nature was not radically changed ; he was a good lad and a good man.
If we turn to the political world we have the advantage of a fairly ample knowledge of its leading figures, which includes both their mental and their bodily character- istics. I shall, here and elsewhere, avoid dwelling on living persons with one or two exceptions, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Ruskin — whose characters and bodily con- figurations teach us so much. Of the two overuling temperaments, Mr. Gladstone* has both the bodily and intellectual characteristics of the active and less
* These notes were written before Mr. Gladstone's retirement from parliamentary life, and I have thought it best to retain the present tense.
EVIDENCK AND EXAMPLES. 73
impassioned temperament in marked degree. Of all popular errors, it cannot too often be repeated, this is perhaps the greatest — that incessant action and rousing rhetoric betoken an impassioned nature. It may be well to note also that clear cold restrained reason is not infrequently compatible with deep feeling.
Of the elements which combine to form a strong character, intellectual power is the first in importance — not energy, not persistence, not will. It is this power which determines the depth and enduringness of a man^s impress on his fellows, and this power is always associated with weighty and well-organised brain. Brain is fundamental; in Mr. Gladstone it is a large foundation, and on it is built a lofty edifice. Added to his unusual mental gifts are ceaseless activity, never-failing rhetoric, a self-confidence and especially a self-will rarely equalled. Above all, there is an over- mastering desire for predominance, but a desire which is always linked with earnest striving for his ideal of the public good.
A man^s endowments are more or less beyond the control of the will ; in his propensities volition plays, or seems to play, no little part. .Mr. Gladstone's en- dowments are, in immense degree, intellectual power, activity and speech. Most strong natures express themselves in but few propensities, and these usually in unequal strength. There are first and second and perhaps third propensities. Mr. Bright's foremost propensity was to advance the social and political good of the less fortunate classes. Beyond all doubt Mr. Gladstone's first propensity is for religion. In any possible conflict with the world, or the flesh, or the devil, Mr. Gladstone's religion would come out triumph- ant— with the flesh, indeed, the incessantly active temperament has but little difficulty.
74 KVIDENCK AND EXAMPLES.
The religious propensity (avoiding psychological deeps) rests mainly on two factors — veneration and an ideal. Circumstance has much to do with the (super- natural or natural) ideal. The religious man clothes this ideal with his inherent goodness and veneration. In one man reverence predominates ; in another good- ness. Mr. Gladstone's goodness is a large item, but his veneration, in its extent, is quite colossal. Hence it is that his religion savours more of the older scrupulous observance and precise formula than of the newer philanthropic and social effort, or of the still newer metaphysical religion which, by an act of reason, professes to be independent of reason. Where the instinct of veneration is excessive that of conservatism is never slight. Mr. Gladstone's deeply-rooted con- servatism may be hampered and dwarfed in politics, but unquestionably it revels in religion. He lives in- deed in two worlds ; in one he believes and reveres ; in the other he harangues and guides.
It is sometimes said, and on obvious grounds, that Mr. Gladstone would have been more effective as a bishop than as a politician. It is true that in the other world he will be more at home in the society of Becket and Laud and Newman than in that of Walpole or Pitt or Bright ; he would moreover at any time be happy in writing an essay on '^The Precession of the Holy Ghost,'^ and unhappy in leading an attack on the church in Wales. Nevertheless he lacks the reticence and prudence and moderation which the English bishops of our time so fittingly possess. One is tempt- ed to think that he has missed not only his vocation but his century and his country also. He would have gained las ti rig fame as a bishop — say in Alexandria or Constantinople — in the fourth or fifth centuries. Gibbon
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 75
would have devoted a chapter to him. In those times ecclesiastics practically ruled the world and the rulers of the world. Religious controversy was then the only occupation of inquisitive and earnest minds. It was too often marked by bloodshed rather than by discus- sion, but the noble enthusiasm of a Gladstone, had he been there, would have frowned on sanguinary settle- ments of questions relating to the Incarnation and the Trinity ; he would himself indeed have proclaimed final and infallible judgments on Athanasian, or Arian, or Eutychian, or Monophysite themes. But while Mr. Gladstone is a saint first, and it his sainthood mainly which fascinates the multitude, he is a political artist second. His genius is not for political philosophy, as with the reflective temperament; it is altogether for execution. He does not go out of his way to seek truths ; he instinctively, as is the bias of the active temperament, seizes those which lie in his path and converts them into parchment clauses. Conservatism in religion is rarely divorced from conservatism in politics. A few, but very few, indomitable thinkers — Mr. Gladstone is not one of them — have reasoned them- selves into seemingly inconsistent positions. Hume and Gibbon were conservative in politics and innovative in religion. Mr. Gladstone at heart is deeply conserva- tive in all directions, not so much from training and circumstances, as from a nervous organization, which is unchecked by a too leisurely contemplation, or by a too strenuous introspection.
How comes it then that a man who, above all others, reveres precedent and defers to authority is leader of the party of innovation and freedom ? The answer is on every tongue : ^^ Mr. Gladstone must lead.^' From peculiar nervous organization, and not from passion —
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he has no strong passions — he must lead; must lead the party which offers itself, it matters little which; must lead somewhither, it matters little whither : only one reservation must be made ; the direction must not be against his own religion ; against MialFs dissent, or Colenso^s heresy, or Huxley^s agnosticism is quite another matter. Has he then no principles, no con- victions, no conscience ? The answer was given years ago by Thomas Carlyle : " Gladstone's conscience should be his monitor; he has converted it into his accomplice.^'
A popular leader must possess three qualities in sur- passing degree — capacity, activity, eloquence. Mr. Gladstone has them all in exceptional amplitude. Leading constitutes nine-tenths of his happiness ; the whole ten-tenths would be his if the multitude, con- fessing its manifold sins, would only turn round, beseeching him to turn round also and lead them along the ancient paths of Church and State.
We must not forget that in itself the desire for leadership is a natural and honourable instinct, and has animated the loftiest natures ; in Mr. Gladstone's desire there is no trace of the ignoble, or mean, or sordid self- seeking. He seems indeed to say, *^ I, of all men living, am a born leader. Having no rival in genius, in experience, in knowledge of the public needs, it is the plain duty of this empire to entreat me to lead it, and it is my plain duty to yield to that entreaty." Mr. Gladstone has, in effect, openly confessed that a political leader should be merely a pipe for the multi- tude ^' to sound what stops it please," but doubtless he considers that the pipe should be a certain pipe which is well-seasoned, melodious, and many-toned.
Deeply passionate men of great political power appear from time to time for limited periods, or special
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 77
objects^ but it is difficult to discover an enduringly successful Statesman among contemplative and im- passioned natures. John Bright was a political . thinker and philosopher rather than an active states- man. He gave from time to time outbursts of long pent-up impassioned and unrivalled oratory — in im- passioned exposition and impassioned appeal^ but he had no aptitude for debate and none for leadership. He and Mr. Gladstone well represent the two radically and temperamentally different types of character — which neither circumstance nor volition can change. The more emotional and the more active men do not necessarily entertain different opinions^ but they arrive at them^ hold and feel them differently, express them differently in speech and conduct. It was not only that Mr. Bright — the individual — differed from the individ- ual Mr. Gladstone : they are notable examples of two radically different biases. We have among us a multi- tude of minature Gladstones and minature Brights. In pointing out that Mr. Bright was not a distinguished figure in the field of activity, it must be noted that there is a marked difference between activity and practicalness. A reflective/ nay, eyen an indolent man may possibly be highly practical, and an active bustling man may be quite the reverse. Bright, as is usual with the passionate and slower temperament, was not brilliant in instant repartee and quick wit. He did not excel in rapid and opportune attack or defence. He was not a debater. The born debater can see one thing clearly while he is talking pungently of some other thing. The impassioned speaker cannot do this. His aptitude was for the creation and awakening of public opinion ; Gladstone's is for the transaction of the public business.
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Bright was incapable not only of intrigue but of stratagem. He would have resented being called ^* an old parliamentary hand ^^ as a blot on his moral nature. Religion and morals do not necessarily run abreast . they do not shrink together or expand together. Bright's religion was nebulous ; his morality was adamantine. Two leading factors, it has already been remarked, go to make up religion — reverence and an ideal. With Mr. Gladstone there is more of precise formula in his ideal than of passion in his reverence. In Mr. Bright the reverence was impassioned — the ideal unfocussed. In another aspect of character they were strangely unlike. The difference is fundamental; it is the root difference between the naturally conservative and the naturally liberal nature. Mr. Bright by tem- perament thought his own way to his religion and wished that others should think their way : this is liberalism. Mr. Gladstone's religion was imposed upon him, and by temperament he would willingly, had it been in his power, have imposed it on others ; those who accept from their fathers with the least hesitation impose on their children with the greatest confidence : this is conservatism.
We can no more define the charm and solace of poetry than we can the charm of music or painting or sculpture (these are ultimate facts in the physiology of nerve), but the three elements of poetry — expression, thought and feeling — are possessed in full measure by the selectest souls only — by a Shakspere or a Burns. Byron had poetic expression and poetic passion in much larger degree than poetic thought. George Eliot had the passion and the thought in excess of the expression. The crowd of minor poets have musical expression only. Many men and women have deep.
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 79
if latent, poetic feeling — all the stronger perhaps be- cause it is not wasted in the struggle for expression — which sweetens their lives mysteriously and almost unawares. John Bright had immense poetic feeling. Mr. Gladstone is not only devoid of any one of the three elements, but even religion, which takes to itself the poetry of so many excellent souls, seems to assume in him the form of dogmatic finesse rather than of , spiritual aspiration.
The negative aspects of character are not necessarily faults. Nerve force is a sum -total and all high quali- ties cannot be found in one nerve organisation.
Truthful and good as they are, neither Mr. Glad- stone nor Mr. Bright put search for truth in the first place. Coleridge remarked that of the men he met, nine out of ten preferred goodness to truth. A few rare natures, differing in many things but agreeing in one — a Stuart Mill, a George Eliot, a Clifford (not to \. speak of the living) — have put the resolve to obtain true views of life in the first place. Voltaire laboured hard in the cause of truth, but he strove still more earnestly to make odious the curses of injustice and in- tolerance, succeeding too, as Mr. Lecky well says, in greater degree '' than any other of the sons of men.^^ John Bright sought first of all the good of his fellow- creatures. Chalmers declared that Thomas Carlyle worshipped earnestness (it was his ideal of good) in preference to truth. Matthew Arnold, whose foremost propensity was art — literary art— was content if trath was not far off; Mrs. Truth might be useful in the kitchen while he flirted with Miss Lucidity and Miss Urbanity in the drawing-room.
Another striking contrast between Gladstone and Bright — between the types of character they represent
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— is seen in the subtlety and ambiguity and prolixity of the one, and the directness and openness of the other. The emotional man cannot easily be tortuous; the. unemotional man could not have written ^^John Anderson^ my Jo/^ The mighty men of action and leadership and predominance are impelled to be unlike other men, and therefore they must, even in well-worn fields draw new distinctions and frame new definitions : these, to be new, must necessarily be marked by superfine delicacy.
It must not be supposed that the contemplative temperament is without ambition or desire for applause. Its methods and manners differ, but it is not at all rare for it to be found in public life, and not rare to find the active intellect in seemingly quieter fields of philosophy and literature. It is only when the more reflective man possesses unusual bodily vitality that he achieves a fair success. The very emotion which animates him too often also destroys him by hindering and disturbing bodily functions. The exigencies of public life drove Mr. Bright, although physically a robust man, into seclusion for a lengthened period. Nelson had from time to time to be carried on a litter from indirectly emotional exhaustion. The active man sleeps and digests at will — Mr. Gladstone is a well known example of this. I have already remarked that, as might naturally be expected, our great warfaring men, our soldiers and sailors are, as a rule, men of the more active and less impassioned type. One very notable exception is seen in Nelson who was of the deeply impassioned and quiet nature, and whose bodily con- formation was strikiDgly illustrative of the emotional framework. It is significant that he was frequently laid aside by the passion he unconsciously threw into
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 81
his duty, and repeatedly entreated that he might be allowed to retire into secluded life.
I have dwelt somewhat on the two figures, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, because they are known to every one and because they are fine and strik- ing types of the two temperaments which underlie all others. The relative value to mankind of the two, and of the intervening types will always be estimated differently by different minds. Probably the active and less deeply emotional can be least spared. The reflec- tive mind, if gifted, may extend, or add to, or light up existing thought ; but the active, if also gifted, mind will quickly see and pick out the fitting thought awaiting actional embodiment; pick out too sometimes and destroy the evil or obsolete thought awaiting disembodi- ment and destruction. The dreamy thinker helps to devise the standard ; it is the clear-eyed self-confident man who carries it aloft in the field of action ?
Chapter IX.
EVIDENCE AND. EXAMl^LES—Gontinued.
Almost all leaders of men and movements are energetic, unquestioning, self-confident men, men not disturbed by emotional tumult. In the thought and construction of movements, less conspicuous, less con- fident natures play an important part. Where then shall we discover the markedly reflective, the passionately brooding natures, save where it is natural we should find them, where contemplation and passion and crea- tion find their natural outlet — in poetry and fiction. It is not a little significant that the most impassioned poets and novelists have a special combination of skeleton and skin and hair-growth, with as I believe a special and allied nervous organisation, quite different from that of the great names of literature outside their circle, who are for the most part of the active tem- perament. Near to each other in time were the less impassioned Voltaire and the more impassioned Goethe. Neither were of the extreme variety, but Voltaire's bodily characteristics clearly tended to be of one sort, and Goethe's as clearly of another. Both were im- mensely capable, observant, reasoning; but Voltaire's bias was to wit, banter, to an activity verging on bustle. His emotional nature was not deep; Goethe had more of reverie, creation, and passion. Dr. Johnson was an extreme example of the unemotional and active type, both in genuis and in body. He was always alert and troubled by no pensive hesitation. Carlyle devotes
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some of his most vigorous speech to show that Johnson^s inherent tendency was to action^ and laments (thinking too of his own bias probably) that a blind world fails to find as fitting arenas for its (potential) doers of deeds as it finds for its ^^ ejectors of futile chatter/^ ^^ Johnson^s genuis " he exclaims, ^^ tended to action rather than to speculation. But to no man does Fortune throw open all the kingdoms of this world and say : ^^ it is thine, choose where thou wilt dwell ! '^ To most she opens only the smallest cranny or dog-hutch and says, not without asperity : ^^ There, that is thine while thou canst keep it/^ Thomas Oarlyle, whose anatomical characteristics (his hair growth was rough and unkempt, i but probably not thickly planted) were distinctly those of vigour and sfcir, was in temperament the least reposeful of the giants. He exhibits in almost startling degree one characteristic often met with in the active and less impassioned character. Although in force of thought and language, and as a provoker of thought in noble fields, he has perhaps no rival, yet by inherent, involuntary, irresis table organisation he was unable to approve — to approve at least of the men and movements of his own time. He openly declared he could ^^ re- verence no living man/^ Mr. Lowell pithily remarks that he went about with his Diogenes^ lantern ^^ pro- fessing to seek a man but inwardly resolved to find a monkey .^^ In truth, it was not so much that he would not find a man as that, by temperament, he could not. He had no doubt much seeming passion — seeming anger, for example, but his anger was merely petulance on a magnificent scale. His fury was intellectual fury. Mr. Ruskin, like Carlyle, is a splendid scold, but he scolds in more mellifluent tones. Not only do men, things, and events come in for castigation, but the
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forces of Nature herself: the sun does not shine as it once shone^ nor the rivers sparkle^ and modern winds so distort foliage that artists cannot draw it. The man who (in every age) declares we are shooting Niagara, and the woman who (in every age) says that servants are not what they were in her grandmother^s time, will be found to have well-curved upper spines and limited hair growth.
It is, as has already been remarked, when we come to the poets that we find among them men who in their lives and in their writings exhibit most strikingly the various passions. Of the profoundly impassioned nature of certain poets it is needless to speak. They also were what they were, and wrote what they wrote, by a compelling intellectual organisation, although not by any means uninfluenced by the ^^ thwartings and furtherings of circumstance.^' It is remarkable that among the poets we find the more upright spine, the flatter back, the longer neck, and the backward poise of the head. By no possibility could the artists who draw them bring the refractory and defiant figures of Burns and Byron and Goethe (we may be sure they tried to do so) to curve in any degree similar to the curves of Ruskin, or Newman, or Johnson, or Napoleon. By no possible furtherings of circumstances could one of these latter not unpleasingly curved spines have written ^^ To Mary in Heaven ^^ or ^^ The Dying Gladiator.''
In physical construction and pose the more im- passioned novelists (or their impassioned characters whose bodily appearance is made known to us) resemble the impassioned poets. We have unquestionably poets and novelists of great power and distinction who are not deeply emotional. Neither Cardinal Newman nor
ETIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 85
Matthew Arnold, wlio were genuine poets, nor Jane Austen, nor Dickens, nor Stevenson, were consumed by feeling. High intellect can, now and then, in some degree, understand emotion, can sympathise with it, borrow its language, and don its vestments.
It is not always easy to pass judgment on the men and women either of fiction or of poetry. Many are not drawn from life, and frequently bodily characteristics are either not given or not given with sureness of touch. The reflective, brooding, impassioned Hamlet in real life would in build and pose be, I believe, quite different from Serlo in Goethe^s ^^ Wilhelm Meister^^ — the quick, confident, unresting Serlo, who was always demanding praise for himself, but never able to give any to others. Is it too much to say that Rochester had a skeleton and a hair growth unlike those of Mr. Spurgeon, and that in actual life a Jane Eyre^s bodily peculiarities would not be those of Jane Austen ?
Fortunately we are not without some reliable know- ledge of the physique not only of a few leading novelists whose lives and actions are known to us, but also of their most interesting and striking characters. Nathaniel Hawthorne, both in anatomical characteristics and in temperament, was of the more impassioned and less active order. His genius tended to reverie, to pathos, and to smouldering passion. Arthur Dimsdale was no scheming hypocrite in his unlawful passion for Esther, and in his passion for the eternal welfare of his fellow creatures : he was led by two headlong and con- current impulses. His portrait is not, I believe, drawn for us, but we may be sure that in his bodily backbone there was more of Robert Burns than of John Wesley. Of one anatomical feature of Esther Prynne — the most pathetic figure in fiction — we are
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not left in the dark : her luxuriant hair is particularly and frequently dwelt upon^ and in the vividly drawn forest scene it played a transforming part. From the character of her hair-growth, I venture to imagine with some confidence what were the characters of her skin, and bones (and brain).
Roger Chilling worth^s character is not a little curious. Probably he was not drawn from life, but invented, or in some degree distorted for artistic pur- poses. He was—passionless in the affections, but inconsistently passionate in vindictiveness. If Chilling- worth ever existed in the flesh he was probably an example of abnormal or degenerative change. Patho- logical states are probably the only explanation of certain historical and in some senses inexplicable characters : Dean Swift was one of these. Who would not rejoice if there existed a providence which joined the Arthur Dimsdales to the Esther Prynnes, and handed over the Eoger Chillingworths to the Dodson sisters.
It would be difficult to discover two writers more strikingly opposed to each other than Hawthorne and Dickens. By no possible training, under no possible circumstance could the delineator of Skimpole and Micawber have delineated Esther Prynne and Arthur Dimsdale. Scantiness of face hair-growth, marked dorsal curves and forward poise of head marked Dickens as belonging to the active and less impassioned order of beings. In his life and habits, in his artistic labours, although endowed with marvellous gifts of observation and description, of wit and humour, he nevertheless distinctly lacked the deeper emotions. No writer of clear vision and direct expression is wholly without pathos; but it may be, and Dickens^s pathos was, an
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 87
intellectual product. He was sometimes pathetic when he did not know it ; when he wished to be pathetic and passionate he was theatrical and affected. He was unceasingly active, often indeed actually fussy, given to detail, fitful and self-willed. At Gad^s Hill he ran a tunnel under the highway to a plot of land on which he erected a Swiss chalet. His incessant changes there, his additions and demolitions, his con- structions and reconstructions were a standing joke among his friends. When completely worn out his method of resting was to take up private theatricals and be at once stage-manager, carpenter, property- man, prompter, and chief actor. Costumes, too, and scenes — nay, even the band and the play-bills were under his direct control.
Few poets, and fewer historians have come near our leading novelists in the recognition and delineation of character: among these George Eliot stands perhaps without a rival. Her writings are a rich mine of material for the student of the psychology and physiology of character : this, I believe, is the opinion of no less an authority than Mr. Herbert Spencer. It is well known that the two families and the two groups of characters in "The Mill on the Floss ^^ were drawn from life with which the author was in familiar contact. The individuals of the Dodson family, though not by any means alike, have a character which is vital, homogeneous, and consistent. It is so also with the entirely different Tulliver family. Huskin tells us that George Eliot^s men and women are the scourings of a Whitechapel omnibus. They are not that, although in the work under discussion, they are not possessed of the gentlest manners or the most cultivated tastes. They are not even, with perhaps one exception, pleasing examples
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of the types to which they belong. There are admirable men and women of the less impassioned class^ but the Dodsons were not quite admirable. There are not unpleasing persons among the impassioned^ but the Tullivers had serious failings. In one of my readings of the volume^ undertaken at the time with no special purpose^ save perhaps that of obeying Carlyle^s teaching that we should keep ourselves in contact with powerful minds^ I was struck with the confirmation it gave to the views put forward in these pages. The confirmation is the more remarkable because George Eliot was simply an artist — she had no theories to air^ she was not an advocate^ or a partisan, or a ' missioner^ (although all these may write novels of instruction and interest). The special value of the book is this : it gives, and gives vividly, the bodily as well as the mental aspects of its various characters.
In bodily features the two families described were strongly contrasted. The Dodsons were of plump dimensions, they had pink skins, sparing hair growth, and a not too aggressive straightness of spine. The Tullivers were spare, spinally straight, pigmented in skin, of massive hair growth. In character the con- trast between the two families was no less striking. The Dodsons were full of self-approval, but had little approval of others. They had no opin- ions and did no deeds which were not sanctioned by usage, especially the usage of the Dodson ancestors. They were also peevish, carping, frankly acrimonious with each other, and especially so with the less suc- cessful Tullivers. They, believing themselves to be the salt of the earth, were surely its mustard and pepper also. But they were not quite alike in less essential matters. Mrs. Tulliver and Mrs. Pullet were feeble
#
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 89
inconsequential and monotonously voluble. Mrs. Deane was possessed by the cleaning demon : lier door mat was kept clean by a deputy mat ; in wet weather no doubt deputy umbrellas were used to keep the silk ones from getting wet. Mrs. Glegg, the ablest of the sisters^ was also the chief scold ; but while the most censorious in speech, she was perhaps the least ungenerous in behaviour. The whole family was poor in intellectual gifts, but lack of ideas may occur in many types of character. The most conspicuous feature in all its members was the absence of deep feeling ; they knew nothing of either love or hate ; their hearts were little, however great their hoards. One of the chief items in Mrs. Tulliver^s happiness, in her happier days, was the circumstance that she had some exceptionally suit- able sheets in constant readiness for laying out her husband^s corpse whenever he might chance to die.
The keynote of the TuUiver family was passion. It was certainly inordinate. It dominated with sad ejBTect the lives of father and daughter. It was Mrs. Tulliver's consolation and boast that there was nothing of the Dodson in Maggie, whose brownness and straightness and unmanageable hair (and unmanageable emotions) were a constant offence to the Dodson eye. She was in fact a true daughter of the man who had brought the Dodson name and linen and plate to a bankrupt's end. But the Tullivers also were by no means alike. Tulliver himself was headstrong, obstin- ate, brooding, implacable, violent. Two passions absorbed almost all his nerve force — his love for his daughter and his hatred of Wakem. When sudden ruin fell upon him his one craving was for the girPs immediate recall from boarding school. When nearly unconscious his eye never left the door until her arrival, a
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little later still hers was the only presence he recognised. The patient, quiet Mrs. Mosses emotional nature was wholiy expended in her domestic affection. The heroine, Maggie herself, was no fine lady, but she was surely one of nature^s gentlewomen. By unusual capability and by opportune circumstance, she rose high above the little world in which she lived. Two verdicts will always be passed on her. No impassioned nature will think of her without tears or profoundest pity; the con- ventional would not call upon her if she chanced to be a neighbour. Powerful though reticent impulse led her to the gipsy^s tent ; powerful impulse led her to kiss Philip Wakem. An impulse foreign to the (un- reticent) Dodson blood drove her to step into the boat with Stephen Guest. She yearned for her brother^s love '^ as sun-scorched summer earth yearns for rain/^ She did not know that his bones could not support and his skin could not cover the measure of love she thirsted for. To a Kobert Burns she would have been something akin to Paradise, but to a John Bunyan, or John Wesley, or John Ruskin, something more akin to Hades. Had Burns, or Byron, or Shakspere, or Goethe begun life mated to a woman of her overwhelming affection, especially if linked with her endowments, the world might have gained something in saintliness, and probably lost something of tragic incident, some- thing of poetry.
No possible training, I venture to suggest, could have developed a tornado of passion in Mrs. Glegg^s anatomy, nor the shadow of shrewishness in Maggie Tulliver^s.
In the ^' Autobiography of Mark Rutherford '' we get a significant glimpse of character in both its bodily and intellectual features. A woman of clearly impassioned temperament is telling, under the pressure of deep
EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 91
emotion, the story of her married life. It is a melan- choly phase of the general order of things which puts marriage at that period of life when experienrce and judgment are most wanting, and wanting especially in the slowly unfolding impassioned nature, while ex- perience is ripe enough where it is least needed, on the brink of the grave. The teller of the story, full of affection and poetry and perhaps visions, is wedded to an unintellectual, unemotional, arid, trivial, but highly respectable member of her fa therms denomination. She is intensely wretched. At a little gathering of friends the conversation leads to her reciting a favourite poem and her whole nature is thrown into the task. The last word is scarcely off her lips when the husband turns to a guest to ask after the welfare of her cat. It was a straw ; it was not quite the last straw, but the last came quickly, and she slid by night out of a presence to which she never returned. To her a diet of straw for life was more than she could bear ; to her it was not the beautiful bearing of a cross, it was a lasting degradation and therefore a constantly growing deterioration of body and soul. Her listener obtains a glimpse of a miniature portrait taken at her marriage : significantly enough it revealed a straight spine, and consequently a head which was '' thrown back with a kind of firmness. ^^ The hair and eye-brows were also probably marked more by decision than by softness.
It is beyond question that fiction is at the present time, whether for good or evil, an immense social force. It is a steadily growing and, in prospect, an illimitable force. The widening of all boundaries, or as some would say, the bursting of all bonds, seems to be its special aim. It assumes that all views, all principles, all beliefs are doomed which are so fragile that they
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cannot or will not hear the other side. Character^ earnestness^ trnth, morality, especially morality in its highest form of kindliness, appear to be in no danger : for never in our history, so much as now, have men and women been so eager to know what is true, do what is right, and feel what is merciful. It is in the ^^sex^^ question particularly that ancient boundaries are being widened (or needful bonds burst). Fer- mentation is still in active operation ; the clearing, or settling down, process has not yet begun. To me at least one thing is clear : the writers who — it is a welcome sign — are mostly women will, I believe, be found to be divided into two typically representative temperamental schools. In one the writer has a larger congenital capacity for scolding a man than for loving him; in the other the capacity for loving him is the stronger of the two. Both groups of writers have their uses, for assuredly all men deserve to be scolded and some wish, if they do not deserve, to be loved. It is not a little remarkable to find that the social scolds in books (and on platforms) have one sort of bodily conformation and hair-growth — >the less im- passioned sort of these pages — while another sort is found in the advocates of an era in which the emotions are to have a more unfettered play. One word of precaution, however, may prevent grave misleading : certain writers, mostly men perhaps, have so little depth of emotion that they use words, and phrases, and put forward proposals with an almost reckless freedom because they are insensible to the deeper meaning which such words and ideas carry to the more im- passioned temperaments. Neither in language nor in conduct is license necessarily synonymous with passion. In studying the bodily conformation, as seen in their
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portraits^ I cannot but think that certain supposed advocates of greater freedom in sex relations prefer in reality to startle the public by audacious and extreme proposals, than either to advance a cause which they have not deeply at heart, or to favour the broader founding of marriage on affections and impulses which they do not profoundly feel. True and enduring progress is effected (in accord with physiological law) by growth or steps only and never by revolution.
I have not considered it necessary to dwell on the intermediate temperaments where there is a more equal combination of (emotional) contemplation and (less emotional) action. A study of extremes implies a knowledge of the less extreme. Where blood and judgment are well commingled, we may from a physio- logical point of view be content simply to admire. Some of our greatest names are found in the inter- mediate camp. The appraisement of the relative intensity of the several nerve powers in any tempera- ment is never an easy task. It is most difficult where the powers are nearly of equal strength. In Shakspere impassioned contemplation and less impassioned activity were both immense, but contemplation was probably the more potent. Both were present in Caesar, but in him action was probably the stronger. Cromwell, too, and William the Silent, both had reflection and energy in nearly equal degree, but energy weighed perhaps a little heavier in the scale. Luther^s temperamental forces of character were, in relative degrees of intensity, those of Cromwell, but they were expended in theo- logical warfare. In both Cromwell and Luther the active element seems disproportionately strong, because circumstances called them into pugnacious fields. Circumstances put the sleepless Erasmus into a quieter •
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field^ but in reality he was more of the alert and less impassioned temperament than Luther. Passing from the relative to look for a moment at the absolute quantities of emotional^ or intellectual, or ^ actional^ outcome, we are brought to the consideration of brain mass and construction. Quite possibly there may be present in some intermediate, but largely massed and happily endowed nervous organisations, more of passion, and in others more of action than in some more purely passionate or more purely active organisations where nerve mass is limited and endowment poor.
The careful observer of medals, busts, and portraits will find that in vertebral pose and in hair- growth where this is depicted, Caesar, Luther, Shakspere, Cromwell, and others, of very diverse character in detail, who possess the less extreme temperaments have also intermediate or less extreme bodily character- istics.
Chapter X.
NOTES ON MARRIAGE, EDUCATION, CHANGE IN CHARACTER, AND MORALS.
Note I.
If the active and less impassioned men and women know little of the violent forms of love or hate or jealousy, they frequently possess genuine and elevated affection. They, especially women, readily enter into the marriage compact. It is a curious fact, by the way, — one difficult to explain and not to be discussed here — that the less impassioned women, more than the deeply passionate, tend to have large families.
The growth of unconventional opinion on the mar- riage question is of deep significance. It is sheer folly to discuss the matter, as without exception it is dis- cussed, and ignore ok overlook the existence of two widely different temperamental biases — different in those who marry and different in those who are so ready to criticise love and marriage.
If any success has attended the endeavour in these pages to furnish certain anatomical and physiological data indicative of underlying temperament, one boon at any rate will follow. The choosers in marriage will be less blindfold in their choice. In the choosers and in the chosen, even within the limits of two broad tendencies, there is endless variety. Let us consider, by way of example, two men ^and two women of the extremer sort. One man may say, ^^ I cannot be troubled with foolish and oppressive sentiment. I
96 MARRIAGE.
prefer an active, well- ordering woman (a high-flying body of innovators may call her coventional if it pleases) who will guide, with distinction^ me and my household through the mazes of social life/^ Another man may say that to ^him life devoid of deep affec- tion— given and received — is of little value : he pre- sumptuously wishes to worship and be worshipped. One woman may say, ^^ I prefer a husband who will not burden me with inordinate affection ; one of high principle, of public spirit and untiring in good works ; one whose light — I do not hesitate to confess it — shall be seen of all men.-^^ Another woman^s ideal world would be one in which — if it were possible — stainless Launcelots were mated to stainless Guineveres. The Galahads and the Arthurs might, in her opinion, be set to scrub or rule monastic cells according to their several capacities.
Perhaps the majority, of men and women would prefer to select — as far as facility of selection is permitted to them — their life-companions from the intermediate, or at any rate, from the less extreme temperamental types. Unfortunately, however pru- dent their wishes may be, the opportunities of grati- fying them are somewhat limited. Putting aside the personal, social, and conventional hindrances to free- dom of choice, it is to be remembered that not more than about a third of our population belong, it has been already remarked, to the intermediate class; a large third belong to the less impassioned, and a small third to the more impassioned classes.
It is fitting to remark in this note, and to remark with some emphasis, that it must not be assumed that passion necessarily implies, or is necessarily associated with, affection. In every individual there is a sum- total of passion-nerve and therefore of passion or feeling.
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If the passion be wholly expended in one direction it cannot be expended in another. Intellectual nerve, moral nerve, and circumstance, in some degree control its expenditure. It may be spent worthily on worthy objects ; or it may find altogether ignoble outlets. ,The man or the woman given over to sensuality, for I example, is frequently devoid of affection ; while very possibly the whole feeling of a somewhat less im- passioned individual may be devoted to loyal, persistent, and unselfish afiection.
In previous pages I have pointed to, as they seemed to me, the teachings of organisation and heredity on the question of the marriage of cousins : when such marriage is, and when it is not, open to objection. I have also on another page ventured to give a hint to the widower who, wishing for a wife, though pro- ■ fessing that he desires " to find a mother for his chil- dren ^^ often brings to them a bitter and cruel enemy. Faithful and admirable service to children can be obtained, as can all other service, for monthly or quarterly wages. I believe it to be possible however for him to choose a second wife who will bring to his children, and to him, genuine friendship and punc- tilious duty. It is too much to expect of a woman of defiantly erect spine, of heavy eyebrows, and whose thick-hair descends to her waist, who idolises a man, to look with favour on that man^s children by another woman.
Note II. — Education.
In this, and in the following notes, I refer to heredity and organisation in their general bearings rather than in their relation to temperamental bias. G
98 EDUCATION.
If character is for the most part a product of organi- sation and parentage it follows that education is mainly a physiological art. It is an art which should aim at strengthening feeble, repressing exuberant, and correcting perverted nerve.
The first duty of the physiological educational artist who accepts the teachings of physiology and who will in future come to be the one supreme, confidential ^^ Father confessor/^ is to study the character, that is the endowments, proclivities, conduct, the gifts, defects, and eccentricities of the parents. A child usually takes after one parent or one parentis family. But both sides should be studied. A child sometimes turns back to one of the father^s family if it takes after the father, or to one of the mother^s side if it takes after the mother ; it is probably so when the offspring appears to resemble neither of the parents. A son may take after the father^s side or the mother's; a daughter after the mother's side or the father's. How often we find the disappointing son of a great father to be the image of a maternal nonentity. Often, on the other hand, the son of a paternal dullard displays unexpected power — he takes after a mother of high capabilities. Edward I., a sagacious ruler, was the son of a male fool and the grandson of a male knave ; hence we infer that his mother, Eleanor of Provence, had those high qualities which, in her son, changed so much in the course of English history. The mothers in history have been strangely neglected: in this matter a large field of enquiry lies open to the histo- rian of the future who will need to have physiological as well as literary training.
Self-searchings and self-confessions would have for parents themselves, at a time when they greatly need
EDUCATION. 99
it, the highest educatioaal value. The task of parents and teachers must always be difficult. Hereditary material for the trainer's guidance may not only be colourless — it may be disguised, or falsified, or mis- reported, or misread, or wilfully withheld. And moreover, sad to say, disease and accident are always on the watch to injure nerve and lower character. They are especially prone to step in when, in father or in mother, high nerve struc- tures are in early married life tensely and unrestingly strung. It is justly contended that the young wife, and possible mother, should not be subjected to undue mental or bodily strain, but the young husband's health, mentally and bodily, also needs careful con- sideration.
Much training must of course be common to all young nerve. All must be taught cleanliness, exercise, / and care of the body. All must be taught to love right, hate wrong, and be ashamed of ignorance. Health, cleanliness, inquiry, truth, gentleness — these are, in themselves, an entire system of physiological morality — they are the continually thriving product of a million years. To these should be added, in due time, disciplinary and acquisitional methods. Some methods fortunately combine both training and know- ledge— the thorough study of one science at least does this. Stuart Mill looked on physiology as effecting this double purpose very completely. On all grounds it is strange that we should hesitate to place first the study of our own framework — its structures and actions, its powers and limitations. There must often be a compromise between the kind and degree of discipline as well as of acquisition on the one hand, and organisation, endowment, proclivity, and imperious
100 EDUCATION.
circumstance on the other. It would be well for many parents to remember that for the practical purposes of life, health, above all health of nerve, includes all the restraints ; truth includes all the fidelities ; kindliness includes all the graces of life.
What more can be done for the individual that is not done for all, will depend on special, personal, inherited nerve. Nerve is paramount, but education can do much. It is true a young bone can be bent more easily than a young brain can be radically changed ; but a young bone can be bent if taken in time by suitable and untiring methods. Idle nerve cannot help being idle, hence punishment is barbarous and coarsening. But idle nerve should not be lightly given up ; it may come to this in the end, but it should come with kindliness and resignation rather than with despair or anger. Frequently idle nerve may be helped by patience and watchfulness. Some- times it is merely a stage in nerve development which passes away. Sometimes it is an ailment for which the physician can do more than the formal moralist or the too eager schoolmaster. An industrious boy can- not help being industrious. Now and then, indeed, industry is excessive, and is a nerve-ailment ; add to this ailment an extensive curriculum, numberless examinations, an exacting and exhausting university (the London University for example), and the result is life-long disaster — life on a lower nerve level. I am strongly of opinion that the reflective temperament does not bear educational high-pressure as well as the active temperament : it unfolds more slowly, sees and retains less quickly, and must be given more time. Goethe intimates moreover that, where there is much to unfold, the slower is the unfolding. It is true that in all
EDUCATION. 101
mental work millions of grey cells are left unused; but these cells are not independent, self-sustaining, self-acting cells. Nerve force, pure blood, oxygen, form a definite and limited sum -total, not in the young only but in all ages. It is not thinking only that exhausts thinking nerve ; the convertibility of nerve force goes much further. Powerful emotion destroys thought; deep thought destroys emotion. Excessive muscular force (notwithstanding that motor nerve- centres are more or less isolated centres) impairs both thought and feeling.
What then (the question comes home to everyone) is a given individual nervous organisation capable of doing ? Let us look first at nerve inheritance. If no tendency to nerve ailment is inherited, and especially if none exists on the parental side which the individual follows, if no accident has intervened in the trans- mission of nerve or in its training, the child may be set to work — the adult to hard work — so long as this is free from emotional worry. But not otherwise. Nothing approaching to strain must be put on the brain which inherits trouble or weakness, or which has been subjected to unfavourable circumstance. The outward bodily appearance is altogether misleading. To stout limbs and red cheeks there may be joined a nervous system quite incapable of efibrt. While within a pale skin and delicate frame there may be a brain which close and continued labour cannot easily injure.
A knowledge of hereditary and physiological pecu- liarities is of incalculable benefit and in many ways. One boy (or girl) inherits silent nerve ; he should be encouraged to make little speeches. Another boy inherits voluble nerve ; he should be taught, in some
102 EDUCATION.
measure, to ask his questions aud express his thoughts in writing. Eeflecting nerve should be taught to act. Acting nerve should be taught to reflect.
The close observer of body, parentage, and proclivity (the physiologist in fact) can give great help when the time comes to choose a vocation. It is an amazing fact, by the way, that teachers are rarely consulted touching the character, capabilities, and fitness of those whom they teach, whom they are able, most impartially, to judge and understand. For when nerve failings have been corrected and nerve overflow checked, nerve endowments and proclivities have still to be reckoned with. Is it well, for example, to make a barrister of a young fellow who takes after a speech- less parent? Or a science student of a garrulous youth who inherits no faculty either of observation, or reflection, or inference ? Why put to a calling which demands abstract thought one who inherits a prefer- ence for detail and action ? Why put to affairs the counterpart of a pensive and poetic parent ?
To find out the sort of training and circumstance which makes better nerve will one day be our first care. Some of the circumstance we can reach and change, some we cannot. Education and marriage are in some measure within reach. Marriage is, for good or evil, the most potent nerve changer ; it stands foremost in either blessing or cursing men, women, and children. Yet physiology, which teaches all this, is the one knowledge which we, led in the past by theologians and by purely literary persons, have ignored and jeered at. A few generations of, quite accidental, fortunate marriages, in which good and helpful nerve qualities (often silent qualities) come together, and in which bad and hindering nerve is left
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out, have given us our greatest gifts, our geniuses, our Shaksperes and Newtons. But, alas ! the race of Shaksperes and Newtons is not kept up : less for- tunate marriage, less fortunate nerve step in and bring again the commonplace.
Note III. — Change in Character.
It has already been said that a man is a human being because his parents were human beings, and that he is what he is mainly because they were what they were. He is what he is chiefly because he pos- sesses a particular sort of brain or nervous organisa- tion ; and his brain is what it is because the brains of his fathers and mothers were what they were. What his nervous organisation is, so, in essentials, will his character be. Other factors (which we call circum- stances) tell on character by telling on brain or nerve. But the brain which is acted upon will not only remain brain ; it will remain one particular sort of brain — one in its form, construction, dimensions, weight, and composition ; one in its forces ; one in the visible manifestations of its forces which we call character.
If circumstance does not alter the fundamental qualities and properties of nerve (violent circumstance^ may do this), it nevertheless exerts considerable influ- ence upon them. Its influence begins early and it never ceases. It operates on the father and mother as it did on innumerable fathers and mothers before them.
Very forcible circumstance, in the form of injury, probably occurs in early childhood with unsuspected ' frequency — a frequency unlikely to be revealed by careless or incompetent attendants. Fortunately, in the
104 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
young, the power of repair from injury — from shaken, or stunned, or bruised, or compressed brain is quite remarkable. Injuries may be either sudden or slow in their infliction ; they may occur from the operation of material or non-material causes ; they may affect the brain directly, or indirectly through the body.
The more slowly operating injuries are probably the graver though the less striking : among these are pro- longed insufficiency of food, or air, or light, or warmth. Serious injury to nerve and character follows pro- longed exposure to excessive heat ; or, which is much more common in our climate, to excessive cold. In early life the skull is thin, it does not wholly cover the sensitive brain, and very inadequately pro- tects it from thermometric extremes. For one death or enfeebled character from excess of heat there are a hundred deaths and a hundred enfeebled brains from the prolonged action of cold. Toxicologists tell us that cold is the only poison which acts on every organ and every structure, on brain and muscle and bone and skin and blood. It poisons adults too, w^ho resist it however better than children. Every winter sees uncounted deaths from the open windows of rooms and railway carriages and other vehicles, and not a single death from shut windows. It is well that air should be pure ; it is imperative that it should be warm. It would be wiser if the women who send their children into the outer air with bare legs, were themselves to go into the streets with naked limbs and cover up their children's. Diseases, which are strictly speaking injuries having subtler causes, and which affect the brain (and ultimately character) directly or indirectly, suddenly or slowly, are fortunately less common and as a rule more easily recognised. Rickets have been
CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 105
already referred to as modifying brain, skeleton, and character. The children of parents who were subject to severe rickets in early life occasionally suffer from more or less inadequacy of nerve and inadequacy of character.
The more the brain matures and with it the intellect and the emotions, the more it becomes subject to injury from non -material suddenly acting causes, and especially those producing intense fear or, though loss frequently, intense pleasure. The larger, and more precocious, and more active the brain, the graver are the effects of powerful emotions. Probably the emo- tional elements of the nervous apparatus are chiefly acted upon in, what is called, mental shock. Neither children nor adults are likely to be terrified by any purely intellectual message however startling, while fear, or joy, or anger may be so sudden and so extreme as to change character-nerve for a life-time or even to arrest those nerve functions which are essential to the continuance of life itself. When non-physical causes of shock are not fatal their less immediate results are similar to those which follow the operation of physical cause. They act, as I have elsewhere stated, on the higher nerve functions in the order of their importance and dignity : first the will is impaired or enfeebled, then the ideas, then the emotions, then the sensations. After quite early years have passed, the immaterial or non -physical causes of nerve-trouble, and therefore of character-trouble, are more frequently met with and, in so far as frequency is concerned, are more serious than the more suddenly acting immaterial and material causes combined : such causes are, not infrequently, enfeebling habits or occupations or recreations, and the group of directly and indirectly
106 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
enfeebling influences which together make an unfa- vourable environment.
The various influences which tell on character, by- telling on nerve, tell on it in one or both of two ways : they either prevent the natural unfolding of its traits, or they modify those traits at some period of their unfolding.
With the growth and maturity and decadence of brain is associated growth, maturity, and decadence of character. Whatever dwarfs or favours or perverts health of nerve, dwarfs or favours or perverts character.
The progress of brain development and brain action, if undisturbed by exceptional mischief — injury or disease — will be determined by inherited organisation.
It is important to note that, while organisation in its leading features is perhaps most frequently derived from an immediate parent or parents, it is also not at all rarely, by a process of reversion, derived from remoter parentage. If, according to the carefully pre- served lineage of certain domestic animals there appear, in our time, bodily peculiarities which have not appeared before since the days of Queen Elizabeth, it may well be that, in the human body (and character), traits reappear after disappearance during many centuries. I believe it is not very unusual for a child to take mainly after a grandparent in organisation and cha- racter, and for this incident to happen during several known generations : in fundamental features, of course, all the generations are much alike. Where the rever- sion is to remote and unknown or unremembered parentage, it may, though rarely, be difficult to say to which line of parentage a child belongs. It has already been remarked that the family line passes sometimes
CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 1 07
through the man and sometimes through the woman : hence the futility of the method, so frequently adopted by historians and biographers, of trscing the lineage of good qualities or bad qualities, of genius or of crime, through the men only. It is unusual for characteristic qualities to be transmitted through one sex only for more than a very few generations.
The question is often asked — which is the more potent factor in the formation of character, heredity or circumstance ? By heredity we mean, and can only mean, organisation and particularly organisation of nerve. We call the special group of a man^s character- istic peculiarities his idiosyncracy, and idiosyncracy is, at root, a question of organisation, that is, of inheritance.
The inherited nervous organisation stands apart as the most elaborate, complex, and highly organised of known things ; the thing through which all other ^ things and events ^ are known — so far as they are known. All nature is merely the aggregate of messages — -for the most part muffled and imperfect messages — which come from without to central nerve : what the central nerve of the individual can manufacture out of the message-material is that individuals universe. Grant- ing, within certain limits, action and reaction between central nerve and circumstance, the question arises : is the shaping, and in effect the creating, thing less potent than the shaped, and in effect created, world of things and events or circumstance around him ? In strict truth thunder is silent and the cannon does not roar : is the nerve less important than the wave- impulse (or circumstance) which it converts into sound ? The sun and stars are black : is the nerve less potent than the solar and stellar circumstance which it converts into light ?
108 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
To ascend from these fundamental though relevant and indeed^ in this discussion, essential matters to the level of practical life, it becomes clear that we must divide circumstance into violent and exceptional on the one hand, and average or moderate on the other. I have already spoken of violent circumstance such as certain diseases_, and material and non-material injuries as well as of certain abnormal surroundings. Exceptional circumstance may not only prevent, or dwarf, or pervert the normal unfolding of nerve life and of character, or actually change already unfolded character; it may in the form, say, of a bullet put an end to both nerve and character in a single moment. , No broad line separates ordinary from extraordinary \ circumstance ; but they who believe that circumstance has more to do with character than organisation have in view, as a rule, the average environment of not strikingly eventful life. And indeed the circumstance which encompasses the vast majority of men and women is not specially remarkable — is not in fact abnormal : it certainly affects character in some degree but affects it within such limits that beyond all doubt long-inherited organisation mainly dominates its fea- tures.
No doubt, from the evolutionist^s point of view, circumstance has very materially controlled human and all other character because it has, under the physiological law of infinitesimally slight steps of change, controlled all bodily and nerve organisation. But what does this imply ? Not the fallacious idea that circumstance has at any time impressed itself upon and changed organisation and character : but that, during incalculable time, tJie organisation and
CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 109
therefore the character which was best fitted * for its environment ultimately survived — a wholly different matter. The Bushman, as Mr. Spencer argues, has stronger eye-sight than the European; but circum- stance, that is, distant danger to be shunned, or food to be secured, did not strengthen his vision ; he, and such progeny as took after him, survived because they had stronger vision than their fellows. The trees on which the giraffe feeds do not elongate its neck and tongue; the giraffe which had the longest neck and longest tongue was fittest to survive. Now change of circumstance, I venture to say, could no more change human ^ nerve ^ and character in one, or many, genera- tions than, during one or many generations, short trees could shorten a giraffe^s neck or tall trees lengthen it. f The evolution argument is altogether in favour of the L dominant potency of organisation and heredity; for it ^ is improbable that the ' nerve ^ and character of many millions of years admit of material change in a single generation. Speaking broadly, and keeping aloof from detail and from psychological refinements, we may look on character as compounded mainly of endowments and propensities. The endowments ori natural gifts of nerve lie at the foundation of character :' circumstance and volition can add but little to these and can take but little from them. The propensities comprise the uses, including methods and aims, to which the endowments are put; undoubtedly these are much under the influence of circumstance and volition, but they are based on the endowments which lie behind them. Village Hampdens, mute inglorious
* The most felicitous phrase of our epoch, '* survival of the fittest," we owe to Herbert Spencer. It applies as much to the world of morals as to the world of intellect and feeling and action.
110 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
Miltons^ and bloodless Cromwells do not sleep in the graves of the rude forefathers of the hamlet. Burns was not a peasant ; his father was a reading contem- plative recluse ; increasing knowledge shows that his ancestors filled high and responsible positions. The burial-place of Thomas Carlyle contains numerous heraldic evidences of distinguished forerunners.
We may with advantage draw illustrations from bodily organisation and actions. Of two men, appa- rently similar in physical conformation and size, one is capable of great athletic feats^ the other is not. Cir- cumstance, even in the form of training, has compara- tively little to do with the adequacy of the one and the inadequacy of the other. The explanation is, that the two men possess by inheritance two wholly different skeletons ; their bones are differently formed and are differently put together. In one man, as in women generally, the bones are more or less smooth, conse- quently the muscles are attached to them with less firmness, and act on them with less power. In the other man^s rougher bones numerous projections spring out, as it were, to meet their appropriate muscles, and so give to them an efficiency which normal circumstance might modify but which it cannot materially add to or take away. The brain and its powers and properties are not less determined by inheritance than are bone and muscle. It is with man as with animals : no circumstance could give marked swiftness to the hereditary cart-horse and its progeny, or slowness and strength to the hereditary racer.
The unreflective observer may easily mistake the natural succession of the phases of character which attend the growth, ripening, and decay of nerve, for
CHANGE IN CHARACTER. Ill
the effects of circumstance. The successive revelation of the several phases is full of interest and possibly of surprises^ especially if the family history is either unknown or ignored. The phases may begin to unfold early or late; they may follow each other quickly or slowly ; they may differ from each other slightly or CKtremely. Infancy sometimes disappears slowly or not at all ; traces of senility may arrive quickly. Circumstance may operate somewhat powerfully on one organisation and very slightly on another. Jacques declared that a man plays many parts : at one time he is a sighing lover (his capacity little or much of sighing like a furnace is assuredly determined by his organisation) ; then he seeks the bubble repu- tation; later he is full of wise saws and instances. The astute Gracian was in his most cynical vein when he described a man as being a peacock at twenty ; at thirty, a lion ; at forty, a camel ; at fifty, a snake ; at sixty, a dog; at seventy, an ape. The essayist John Foster believed that the successive epochs of a man^s character differ so widely that, if the epochs could be represented by several men, and those men were to meet they would quarrel and part from each other, not caring to meet again. Shakspere and Gracian and Foster were speaking of what they con- sidered to be the natural unfolding of character. Although treating expressly of character they seem indeed strangely oblivious of the influence of circum- stance. A very different view of the potency of environment was held by the Khalif Omar : he de- clared that a man is more like his neighbours than his fathers. The saying is plausible ; there is some truth in it but still more of untruth. Does not a man give out as well as receive neighbourly forces ? Are his
112 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
neighbours all alike ? Do they themselves resemble one another more closely than they resemble their parents ? Passing over these significant questions^ two matters need to be noted : in the more essential and stable features of character, individuals resemble their parents ; in the less essential or less stable they resemble one another more or less. What a man is in intelligence or stupidity, in courage or timidity, in tenacity of purpose or fitfulness, in strong moral sense or feeble, in gentleness or roughness, in honour- able instincts or shiftiness, he is by virtue of a long line of fathers and mothers. No doubt in manners and dress and speech, nay even in opinion and belief and superficial morals, he is to a considerable degree under the control of his neighbours. Tailors, dancing masters, grammarians, teachers, preachers, and poli- ticians tend to give a certain, often a deceptive, uniformity to the surface of society and its component units.
Few persons now deny that to organisation, in other words to inheritance, is mainly due the existence of criminals, paupers, drunkards, lunatics, and suicides. Here again, as everywhere, the occurrence of con- tinuity meets us, seeing that a number of individuals are constantly hovering over the lines which divide these unfortunate individuals from each other and from the more fortunate classes. On the ^ hovering,^ uncertain, and weakly organised individuals circum- stance undoubtedly exercises considerable influence : it cannot make them strong or self-sufficing ; never- theless to these, especially in their childhood, the promoters of practical education, morals, economics, and health cannot be too zealous in their attention. The more clearly such promoters recognise the operation of
CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 113
physiological hereditary law the more effective their zeal will be. In spite of all or any change of circum- stance the vast majority of our population are average ' individuals because their parents were average indi- viduals ; their children also will certainly be average individuals. The vast majority of each generation of human beings, no matter how extreme the changes, or diverse the varieties, of encompassing circumstance, are more or less uniformly honest, kindly, and indus- trious because the preceding generations were fairly honest, kindly, and industrious. On these terms the very existence of society is based — based on the dominancy of oi'ganisation over the possibilities of circumstance. Even ^hoverers^ over dividing lines follow ^ hovering^ parents and beget ^ hovering ^ chil- dren.
If twelve boys of different parentage were, during early infancy, placed, say, in a monastery (the same might be said of twelve girls put into a convent) and were to spend their lives in one uniform routine of circumstance, is it conceivable that they would not in essential matters — in gifts certainly, in proclivities probably — unfold into twelve different men ? Or, dis- carding alike both time, and race, and individual parentage, is it conceivable that by any common en- compassment the old Greek artist, the law-contriving Eoman, the Chinese pedant, the dreamy Hindu, and the Scandinavian sea-dog could have been moulded to one and the same pattern ? In Goethe and Charles Spurgeon, in Dante and Charles Dickens, four quite different skeletons supported and protected four quite different nerve centres : could any possible similarity in the play of external forces have imposed Spurgeon^s character on Goethe, or Dante^s character on Dickens ?
114 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
Universal experience and observation justify the state- ment that if all men were alike in organisation and inheritance they would be practically alike in character despite any diversity of circumstance. The converse statement is equally true : if men differ in organisation they will differ in character no matter how complete may be the sameness of environment. If, to-morrow^ the units which compose society were to become in all ways and permanently alike^ the advent of some form of socialism would be inevitable; so long as the units continue to be unlike^ pure socialism will continue to be a dream.
It is not difficult to understand how the idea of the predominance of circumstance arose seeing that it does actually affect and modify^ in some degree^ all or- ganised life and not organised life only ; not only does an apple rush to the globe but the great globe itself travels a short distance to meet the apple. The impression is the stronger because of the frequent confusion of normal and average circumstance with that which is abnormal and violent. H, adopting scientific methods, we observe life directly rather than^ in obedience to purely literary methods, reflect on it in arm chairs, several matters will come clearly into view. While fundamental alteration in character (and nerve) from normal circumstance is extremely rare, grave modification does happen in a number of in- stances from abnormal circumstance : the change is chiefly in the moral elements of character and moral nerve structure, and is therefore the more conspicuous in its manifestation, as it is also the more serious in its results. Its commonest cause is the saturation of the nerve structures with alcohol — the moral struc- tures being the first to suffer. In a few instances, .
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where indulgence is due rather to abnormal influ- ences than to inheritance,, there may be change for the better (intellectual nerve helping) induced by hope of good, or, more commonly, fear of evil. Un- happily it is much more frequent to meet with growing intemperance, growing disorganisation of nerve substance, and growing degradation of character. Alcoholic intemperance, and intemperance in certain drugs, may be called violent circumstance — sometimes indeed as fierce and destructive, if more slowly so^ as a pistol shot. So terrible is the train of evils contingent upon it that , I for one am tempted to ask — the question is a startling one — if it would not be better for the individual, for his family, and for the community that the third fit of drunkenness should prove fatal to the drunken individual ?
It is in the less stable elements of character, in weak character generally, and in the weaker periods of life, that we most frequently meet with change. If we find our clean, truthful, and honourable neighbour has become dirty, or untruthful, or shifty, we conclude with rarely erring accuracy that he has ^ taken to drink.^ No one, whatever may be his theories touching circumstance and organisation,' expects to hear of radical change of the stabler elements in the course of normal circumstance ; he never expects to hear that the dullard has become a wit, or that the taciturn recluse has turned into a chattering cheap-jack.
In assuming that the moral elements of character are more unstable, I do not for a moment imply that they are less important — that they are less than of parapaount importance. Neither do I imply that with a minimum of physiological change there is a maxi- mum of ethical change : it is a greater facility, not a
116 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
slighter amount_, of change ; and this greater facility of change in the moral nerve element is^ I venture to think, perhaps the most significant fact in the whole range of biological science. Circumstance is certainly more powerful in the domain of morals, but the powder is restrained within given limits ; the circumstance is exceptional and a comparatively small number of individuals are affected. Intellectual nerve is much more stable, and therefore intellectual change — chano^e in endowment — is not to be looked for. But the very plasticity of moral nerve, and the resulting greater capacity for change in moral conduct, is as certainly hereditary as the non-pliancy of intellectual nerve and the narrower sphere of intellectual change. Evolutionary exigency demands that the nerve appa- ratus which appertains to right and wrong, touching as it does the foundations of social existence and well- being, shall be submissive obedient nerve. One law of our existence is that it is easier to make a man good than to make him clever. Stupid, if morally submis- sive, men may possibly give help to a community ; the morally disobedient are always a hindrance. In other words, and to put the matter into a nutshell, the natural fool cannot be made wise nor the natural coward brave; but within certain limits, circumstance may transform the bad fool into a good fool and the bad coward into a good coward.
Society, it may be said again, is based, as a whole, on the stability of inherited adequate organisation and on the stability of more or less normal circumstance. There are groups of individuals who are not adequate and there are abnormal currents of circumstance. Neither the groups nor the circumstance can be more than hinted at here. One group inherits, and pos-
CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 117
sesses it may be, average intellectual nerve power conjoined with insufficient or distorted moral nerve power : these gravitate towards the gaol. A con- siderable group is characterised by weakness or insufficiency of intellectual and moral and often of bodily power : these tend to the workhouse. Of necessity the groups are here spoken of in a broad sense ; and, let it be added, we must not forget the inadequate ^ hoverers ^ over debatable lines. It is to be remarked that more can be done by circumstance for the weak than for the distinctly good or the distinctly bad.
During recent years praiseworthy efforts have been made to ^ rescue ' a number of the weak and neglected children of weak and, in their time doubtless, neglected parents ; to train them in " Homes ^' for a lengthened period; and finally to place them under the super- vision and guidance of Canadian farmers ; to place them, in fact, in grooves where natural and congenital weakness would be least exposed to the trial of complex and adverse circumstance. Probably there is no more fruitful field for the exercise of philanthropic effort. The children of the vast majority of human beings are fairly and congenitally good and cannot easily be made bad ; the congenitally bad children of the few bad cannot easily be made good although with them, as with their elders, fear of pain, derived from the intellect and from sensation (intellectual and sensory nerve), may do something to restrain actually evil deeds. The progeny of the weak, let it be empha- tically repeated, are much more open to the influence of good and evil circumstance.
And yet the children who are taken to ^' Homes '' afford a striking illustration of the irresistible pressure of
118 CHANGE IN CHARACTER.
parentage and organisation. Allowing for rare exam- ples of physiological ' reversion/ it may be said that they do not come from any adequate^ self-sustaining, self-directing stratum of society ; they cannot be lifted — the ^ Homes ' do not profess to lift them — to any high self-sufficing level. While writing this note two interesting items of news reach me : one is that some, if not all, the officials in these admirable institutions declare that *^ there is nothing in heredity/^ Following closely on this item comes the intelligence that Cana- dian opinion is calling for greater care in the selection of boys. Greater selective care means, and can only mean, the need of greater attention to organisation — fchat is, to heredity. The ^' Homes ^^ claim that cir- cumstance is enough, and all that ^ circumstance '' can do the ^^ Homes '' have done. The inherent endow- ments of weak children — as of other children — cannot be radically changed; but the propensities of weak, in greater degree than the propensities of other, children can be acted upon with good results. Some knowledge of the character of the parental line — now the father now the mother — which each boy mainly follows would be of great value to those officials (and to others) who are capable of using such knowledge.
Note IV. — Morals. In the first edition of this little work (1886) I used the expression " Moral Nerve '' in a very special sense. By ^ nerve ^ I mean an aggregation or assemblage of Innumerable grey nerve cells with their still more linnumerable communicating threads. I need not dwell on the word ^ moral.^ Broadly speaking, our moral sense — our sense of right and wrong — is clear, clearer
MORALS. 119
indeed than our intellectual^ emotional, or bodily senses.
Physiological moralists, who alone seem to have any solid foundations to stand upon, believe that moral states correspond with ^ nerve ^ states, and that with moral change — moral thought, moral impulse or voli- tion, moral action — there is associated molecular or nerve change. But I ventured to use the phrase ^ moral nerve ^ in a still more special sense— in the I sense that it is separate, independent, set-apart nerve- apparatus. The moral nerve cells, like all nerve cells, have innumerable links of communication with each other and with all the vast and complex masses of cells which, together, make up the nerve centres. How instantaneous this communication is, the following incident (illustrative of an endless number of such incidents) will show. A lady, of quite average nerve structures and nerve capabilities, came suddenly into the presence of a beautiful prospect ; her eyes instantly filled with tears. Now what happened ? Broadly this : one cluster of cells (vision cells) lighted up the prospect; another cluster (intellectual cells) took in the view ; another cluster (emotional cells) was startled at the beauty of the view; another cluster still (secretion cells) induced the formation and flow of tears. The filaments of communication were so numerous, and the nerve force so rapid, that all the processes seemed merged into one. So, in the same way, I cannot but think that the moral cells have immensely wide and immensely rapid communication with intellectual, emotional, sensational, motor, and other bodily cells. Moral nerve and intellectual nerve are constantly appealing to each other — sometimes helpfully and sometimes the reverse.
120 MORALS.
I cannot but think that the evidence in favour ot separate special nerve for moral purposes is exceed- ingly weighty. We know that there are definite masses or strata (the form which collections of nerve cells take is quite unimportant — it is merely a matter of convenient package) of nerve cells for movement, for sensation^ and for the special senses. The un- doubted tendency of increased knowledge of the nervous system is to the localisation of nerve func- tions. For example an injury, limited to one spot in the brain, arrests the power of speech. Is it probable that while there is one mass of cells expressly for vision, another for hearing, and another for smell, that the more elevated processes of intellect and morals have each only a share in a common nerve mass ? Is it conceivable that a mother forgives an erring child or grieves over a dead one with the same ^ nerve ^ that she uses for adding up her butcher^s bill? If one mass of nerve substance, having diverse functions, were concerned in the causation of intellectual and moral effects, we should naturally expect those effects to be of more or less equal value in any given individual. It is repeating a commonplace however to say that in one individual the intellect predominates over the moral sense, while in another individual the intellect may be feeble and the moral faculty fairly strong. This difl&culty, and I venture to say most diflficulties, vanish if we infer that the relative amounts of separate intellectual and moral nerve differ in different indi- viduals ; that in fact one person has a large amount of intellectual nerve and a small amount of moral nerve ; in another, moral nerve is ample and intel- lectual scanty. The effects of injuries and diseases of the brain seem to me to furnish almost conclusive
MORALS. 121
evidence : certain injuries of the brain have been known to enfeeble the moral sense and leave the intellect little if at all the worse^ while other injuries have impaired the intellectual faculty and not the moral.
If there are separate, set-apart, and specially appro- priated clusters of nerve cells, it is easy to understand what otherwise would be inexplicable, — why the intel- lect, under certain circumstances, may undergo im- provement or deterioration or distortion, and the moral faculty remain unchanged; and why, on the other hand, the morals, under other circumstances, may be elevated or lowered or perverted, while the intellect may remain fixed and uniform.
Probably the most significant characteristics of moral nerve are its mobility, pliancy, and greater facility for change as well as its perhaps narrower range of action. Intellectual nerve power wanders over vast and illimitable and diverse fields ; moral nerve power, less wandering, less vague, lights up a more restricted area. It has been pointed out in a preceding note that the intellectual endowments permit of only limited increase or diminution. It is otherwise with the moral endow- ments. Intellectual nerve is more or less stable; moral nerve is more or less unstable. Intellectual nerve is capable of great and prolonged effort ; moral nerve, well-doing nerve, temptation-resisting nerve, is more easily exhausted. Well-inherited, well- nourished, well- trained, massive moral nerve will it is true tire slowly if at all. It is the reverse with poorly- inherited or scanty or ill-nourished or ill- trained nerve. A clerk of, perhaps, congenitally inadequate moral nerve, or nerve already in some degree spoiled by, say, alcohol, can still, through the instrumentality of his
122 MORALS.
intellectual nerve deal with complex figures for some hours consecutively. When he goes home in the evening he passes through one, it may be two^ streets of drink-shops ; in the third street his moral nerve^ in spite perhaps of much help from intellectual and emo- tional nerve, is exhausted and he passes through the tempting door.
It is impossible to be too strenuous in obtaining true views of morals in relation to the nervous organisation, either of individuals or of races, in order to understand, and interpret, and correct, individual or racial charac- ter. Deeply interesting too are the questions touching the origin and the growth and adjustability of morals in ail sentient life ; but their discussion would be out of place here. A few brief, and perhaps not very sys- tematic, remarks must bring this note to a close. Closely and constantly bearing on the origin and development of the moral faculty are the pleasures which attend on doing right and the pains (always more operative) which attend on wrong-doing. The efiects, to consciousness, of such benefits and penalties are at first, near, instinctive, unformulated ; slowly their power becomes more remote, wider in range, reasoned out, formulated. Of all the faculties the moral faculty is, and always must be, the first in im- portance, the strongest, the clearest ; it is the most essential to animal life. Psychologists frequently ' speak of the pre-social stage : such stage never existed. Men always, in and before their present form, lived, even as apes live, in communities. Intel- lectual capability, moral capability, and bodily capa- bility, when normal, and under normal circumstances, keep, not always abreast of each other, but never far apart. All through the range of animal life, the
MORALS. 123
greater the intelligence is, the higher are the morals. Very significantly progress in the moral life is more \ visible and measurable than it is in the intellectual life. Hence the test of human progress is not so much that the intellect becomes more acute as that the moral faculty becomes more sensitive and more imperative. And, may we not say, if the test of pro- gress is morality, the test of improved morality is increased kindliness — kindliness to the body, to the opinion, to the feeling, to the property of others. It is true that veracity is the heart of morality but kindliness is its crown. The degrees of our intellectual power, as well as the amount of our intellectual acqui- sition, are not on a par with the rightness of our conduct, because they are not so needful to life. Our. achievement in the moral world is greater than our achievement in the intellectual and bodily worlds. To expand a saying of Goethe^s, it is easy to behave properly ; it is difficult to think correctly.
Moral nerve or moral tissue is present, it may be 1 repeated, in all living things. Morality is more of the negative sort in the lower forms of life, and more of ' the positive in higher forms. The immoral wolf, the wolf of less moral nerve, of nerve less submissive to the well-being of the pack, is driven out. The ele- phants, having ampler intellectual nerve, and ampler moral nerve, have also a sort of reasoned-out and more positive code. In marching the males go to the front and put the females and young in the rear. The morally indifferent and morally disobedient elephant is expelled from the herd. Ejected wolves and elephants, as do all sentient creatures, suffer the penalties of insufficient, or perverted, or non-adjustable moral nerve.
124 MORALS.
The three faculties of man — the mental, moral, and physical — although not always keeping exactly in step, began life together in a small way, and have continued to live and advance together within one skin, and on fairly equal terms.
Moral science, although based on the wide under- lying science of physiology, is open to the investigation of all. Men have indeed elucidated sciences as complex as moral science, and practised arts as difficult as the moral art. The importance and universality of moral science and art are no doubt incomparably greater ; but just as the science of grammar consists of infer- ences or laws drawn from the methods of speech of the best speakers — speakers endowed with fine intellectual nerve ; and, furthermore, as the art of grammar is the application of these laws to daily speech — so, in like manner, is the science of morals a body of inferences or laws drawn from the moral conduct of the best- conducted men — men endowed with fine moral nerve. The art of morals is nothing more than the application of these laws to all those actions of life which relate to riglit and wrong.
It is sometimes objected by those who, too frequently, permit predilection to tamper with veracity, that to place immorality and crime on a physiological basis is to regard the criminal as an irresponsible agent, and the punishment of crime as a useless and an unjust proceeding. But, assuming the physiological basis to be the true basis, is the inference a correct inference ? May it not be that, taking a large view, and ascribing all mental, moral, and bodily phenomena primarily to nerve states, we may contrive physiological methods of repressing crime which shall be more efficient than current methods born of ancient ignorance and modern
MORALS. 125
sentimentality ? From the point of view of organisa- tion, and for penal purposes, we may divide criminals into two classes. In one, and perhaps the larger, class, although there is insufficiency or abnormality of moral nerve, yet mental nerve and sensory or cutaneous nerve are not materially wanting. The criminal of this class, who has no moral conception of crime, as such, no repugnance (possibly the reverse) to it in prospect, and no remorse after its commission, has nevertheless an intellectudl conception of crime and a sensitive skin. He knows that his fellow-men have a hatred of it which, to him, is inexplicable ; he knows that its detection brings bodily and possibly intel- lectual discomfort. He possesses, in fact, a sort of substitutional or artificial morality, built on mental and skin foundations. This would, indeed, seem to be the only moral outfit of a not inconsiderable number of seemingly respectable men and women. A vivid and widespread impression that the lash, discreetly but freely used, would certainly follow evil deeds, especially all deeds of violence, would operate on this class more powerfully than all other methods combined. But you will completely demoralise hina ? He cannot be demoralised ; he is congenitally demoralised ; by organisation or by injury he is devoid of moral nerve. But you merely drive crime under the surface ? It is an admirable result ; it is all we can hope for. For the other class, in whom intellectual as well as moral nerve is more or less inadequate, and in whom cutaneous sensation itself is often torpid, there is nothing left but restraint. Surely this, on every ground, ought to be of life-long duration. Would that / legislation could so contrive that neither class should reproduce its like.
126 MORALS.
Finally, to return for a moment to the more special consideration of morals^ it is often asked — Why are we moral ? The question is not more reasonable than would be the questions — Why do we think ? why do we move our bodies ? Intellectual nerve which is living, healthful, and awake, must think — cannot help thinking; the body, supplied by living healthful motor nerve, must move — cannot help moving; moral nerve which is alive, healthful, and normal, must yield — has no alternative but to yield moral conduct : these are physiological first principles ; we cannot go behind them or underneath them. On these foundations the ethical systems of the future must assuredly be built. In digging out these foundations, huge psychological systems of ethics will be undermined and will tumble to the ground.
[For Index see full Table op Contents ]
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