Character as seen in body and parentage; with notes on education, marriage, change in character, and morals

I

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/characterasseeniOOjordrich

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.

/^■.2/

TCo

^r/^-^

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.

,»^''^,^,,^ I

"-"-""""'^-iJd^na*? „q) iT

S

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,

r^^

Fvyl.

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.

^imM

Fi^.

■3.

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.

M^I.

C)

I

^

\^^'^ r^

Fig 2.

(J

/'

:^^V^.

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

62 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

^ 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 —

76 EVIDKNCK AND EXAMPLES.

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.

78 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

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

80 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

— 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

EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 83

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

84 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

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

86 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

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

88 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

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

90 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

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

92 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES,

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

EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 98

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 •

94 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES.

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.

MARRIAGE . 97

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

EDUCATION. 103

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, .

CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 115

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 ]

Hall& English, Printers, 71, High Street Birmingham.

THIS BOOK IS PUB OK T^ ^-^ST DATE
^ STAMPED BELOW

AN «N'T.AL Fl^^OF f^.^,SiI?

WH-U BE ASSESSED ^O^/^^g ^HE PENALTY
THIS BOOK ON ^HE DATE DUE ^^^^^^

^I^^irT^^'.^ol on"- seventh OAV^

NOV 5 1884 4Dae^0BS

JAN 81 K

REC'D LD

APS 11 m |)E(;2 5«3-3PM

YH >'y^.v;

JJ

^(^'Oi/(/ic;s994

|*:.u SMuH

Y3J3Xf?3S.0.U

RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
TO^-^ 202 Main Library

LOAN PERIOq 1
HOME USg

^MH^

t

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS

Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date.

Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

DUE"
SEWfrONIU

H<VR05t997

AUG 1 *» 2004

U.C.B6RKELgt

SUBJECT TO RECALL
IMMEDIATELY

^252UW^P

Atrrr

;g.BEKsCL.

J^ECl) BIOS

SEfrroNiLL^''^19 UJ.400

\AN 1 6 1°^^

FEB 1 0,

LJOJl^

\C.BEX'^l^i.^ti

JUNi ?:

iiviMEDiATELY

O. DD6

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELE
BERKELEY, CA 94720

W ^Zb^\

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY