Character and temperament

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UNIVERSITY

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DEPARTMENT C

fVsychology

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Character and Temperament
8vo. 12.50 net

The Qualities of Men
16rao. $1.00 net

The Subconscious

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Fact and Fable in Psychology
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CHARACTER AND
TEMPERAMENT

BY

JOSEPH JASTROW

///
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY
UWIVERSITT OF WISCONSIN

NEW YORK AND LONDON

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1916

595290

19 iO - S4

Copyright, 1915, Br
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America.

©0 ®lf? JltttorBitB 0f SItHrottfittt

A PIONEER IN THE ACADEMIC
RECOGNITION OF PSYCHOLOGY

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INTRODUCTION TO THE CONDUCT OF MIND
SERIES

It is the purpose of the series to provide readily intelligible
surveys of selected aspects of the study of mind and of its
applications. In this self-conscious age, inquiring minutely into
the nature of the forces that direct the endeavors of men, psy-
chology has come to its own. Recent advances have made possi-
ble definite and enlightening accounts of the mental processes;
the psychological laboratory has refined, extended, and controlled
the data; the evolutionary conception has coordinated conclu-
sions derived from widely different sources. Particularly has
the psychology of the social relations been given a central posi-
tion in the practical world, where endowment, motive, and cir-
cumstance meet. The emotional as well as the intellectual, the
aesthetic as well as the moral, the occupational as well as the
relational impulses and expressions of men have been duly
recognized as part of the psychological endowment — as integral
aspects of human nature.

The desire to apply this knowledge reflects the stress of the
practical temper ; the need of adaptation of the mental equipment
to the complex conditions of modern life is insistent. Mental
economy enforces the importance of shaping career to capacity;
the conservation of mental resources enters vitally into the prob-
lems of national welfare. The varied liability of the mind to
defect and decay, to distortion and vagary, to degeneration and
reversion, sets in relief the critical importance of sanity, which
is a eugenic endowment exercised in a wholesome environment.
From these several sources there has resulted a sense of psy-
chological value by which to gauge the worth of the educational
and cultural provisions which society organizes for the mainte-
nance of its cherished ends. Furthermore, the ready intercourse
of mankind has conferred a cosmopolitan and an humanitarian
outlook, mingling and comparing, while yet contrasting, national
and local standards and ideals. The products of intellectual, as

vii

viii INTRODUCTION

of other achievements, are seen to belong not to one race or to
one era or to one order of culture. The beginnings of mind in
the animal world, the growth of mind in childhood and in the
race, contribute notably to broaden the conception of its mature
capacity and its potential future.

To set forth and interpret the significant conclusions within
this engaging realm forms the dominant motive of the present
undertaking. The project, if too ambitiously conceived, invites
failure. The practicable procedure favors the selection of a
modest aspect or phase of the psychological domain, and its
presentation as a concrete contribution upon which the larger
illumination of a comprehensive survey has been brought to
bear. The importance of principle is to be emphasized through-
out. In simple situations a shrewd empirical tact suffices; in
complex ones sound practice is more and more dependent upon
sound theory. Knowledge of principles is needed to offset the
limitations of experience and the narrowness of interests; the
corrective of application is needed to make principles real and
vital. The search for panaceas as for rules of thumb is futile;
yet the desire for a royal road to learning has a strange attrac-
tion for the direct democratic temper. Psychology, like all
science, exacts a patient analysis, which discountenances a too
ready leap at conclusions and hasty application. Yet science does
well to utilize the actual interests of men, to build upon them the
knowledge that makes for power. To supply the foundation in
principle for the guidance of practice is to be the consistent
motive in the several volumes of the series. To make that
guidance effective requires a judicious appeal to popular in-
terest, and an adaptation of the material to the needs of the
every-day reader with serious purpose.

To give the largest freedom in adapting the presentation to
the varied requirements of the several topics and the individual
bent of the contributors, it is proposed to permit the volumes to
assume such length, form, and construction as circumstances
determine. The singleness of purpose and unity of design will
appear in the support of each contribution to the general plan,
and in their common appeal to the popular interests in the
affairs of the world of mind, and in the regulation of mental con-
duct.

Joseph Jastrow.

PREFACE

The subject of this volume is the psychological sources of human
quality; this might well be its title or subtitle. The composite
term character and temperament has the currency of tradition;
the possibility of interpreting it for present-day psychology is an
inviting task. The course followed in this survey is substantially
without precedent; though there is naturally a considerable com-
munity of content with volumes bearing a similar title, and with
others that consider the analysis, the emotional basis, and the
social expression of human nature.

The historical phases of this venerable topic are variously in-
teresting.^ They reflect the persistent desire to penetrate into the
mystery of human personality, to seize its secret and direct its for-
tunes. A related practical motive, more scientifically guided, has
given rise to didactic methods of "character training-'^; a closely
related interest is the vocational one. In all there is the common
intent to understand and thus to sound impulse, gauge capacity,
direct endeavor, regulate the desires and energies of men. For
the whole of human conduct, as of civilization, follows the clew
of the endowment, needs, satisfactions, potencies, aspirations of
the human mind. As the individual and the social life develop
toward the consciousness of purpose, the cultivation of endow-
ment to secure cherished ends becomes the dominant interest, and
in its selective expression reflects the emphasis of native quality.

To bring maturing powers to effective expression is an art —
the art of living. Education is the comprehensive name for it;
moral education — if we include the schooling of experience — its
most universal phase and the most concrete. Art proceeds in a
practical temper; the perspective of its concerns is distinctive.
Such consideration is but slightly included in this survey, for the
reason that it requires and deserves an independent treatment.
More closely related is the art of "character-reading^^ not in its
crude, ambitious and as commonly false and irrelevant attempts —
but in the sober, painstaking, systematic study of the laboratory, to

1 They are briefly considered in an article in the Popular Science
Monthly y June, 1915.

ix

X PREFACE

determine individual fitness and take the measure of a man. In this
application likewise, in so far as the practitioner's point of view
dominates, it falls beyond the present confines. The principles
of diagnosis embody the common field of science and art; at every
step "character training*' and "character reading" depend upon
analysis. However to be applied, the underlying facts, relations
and principles of interpretation are the same. The limitation of
this volume to analysis and interpretation is deliberate, and makes
possible the unity of construction that determines its procedure.^

Beyond a modest insight, practice without theory is vain. The
tendency to proceed directly to action is inherent, and for many
types of occupation justified. The appeal of this presentation is
to those whose responsibilities include the guidance of conduct and
affairs for themselves and others through knowledge. Interpreta-
tion— like the curriculum of studies in which nominally the same
subject reappears with different elaboration in the common school,
high-school, college and university schedules — ^proceeds upon in-
creasing grades of thoroughness, perspective, detail. The psychol-
ogist's view of human nature is broad and general. It is his
function to correct as well as to direct the more specialized in-
terests in phases of motive, endowment, or expression, that prac-
tical pursuits entail. It is also true that theory without the cor-
rective touch of practice is bare. The issues of human quality
are firmly established — ^yet with the elasticity and progressiveness
of a living movement — in human institutions. The psychological
analyst in undertaking a survey of the issues of "character and
temperament" assumes a practical interest. The qualities of men,
which form the data of his study, are made real in the intricacies
of social relations, in economic development, in the genius of insti-
tutions and traditions, and the sway of belief.

The differences and contrasts, as intimately as the communities of
human kind, stand centrally in the interpretation : those of sex, of
race, of family strain, of one individual and another. The inequali-
ties of men are the interesting and the valuable expressions of en-
dowment. But as they come to the surface they are not biological
but sociological; the specialization of modem life imposes itself

iTo maintain the proportions of the several chapters, I have
placed corroborative and explanatory matter in the notes. For the
student these form an essential part of the presentation.

PREFACE xi

upon human quality; it is a part of the larger reconstruction of
original nature which civilization matures. The artificial environ-
ment acts after the manner of a natural one; it encourages and
discourages selected qualities, yet projects the stresses and strains
of original nature. The interpretation of such differences draws
upon the composite resources of the psychologist's equipment. It
involves excursions into the domain of the laboratory, into the
abnormal, into the economy of the nervous system, into the net-
work of the intimate and intricate personal life. The efforts of
the social organism to provide a place for and to utilize these
differences places them in the arena of human quality.

The ready assertion that human nature is ever the same ex-
presses a partial truth, and that imperfectly. It must be replaced
by a more discerning view that projects with some degree of il-
lumination the areas of fixity and the wider realms of
variable human traits: their hereditary conditioning, their rela-
tions to one another, their allegiances to the original and to the
acquired nature of man. The fact of evolution for the individual
and for the race demonstrates the plasticity, as the slowness and
the uncertainty of the process of civilization testifies to the fixity
of human traits. The enlightenment of "character and tempera-
ment" is to be sought in the mutual reenforcement of the several
aspects of the presentation. The foundations thus surveyed are
no less comprehensive than those of the science of psychology it-
self; nothing less will suffice to set in its true proportions the
sources of human quality. Psychology proceeds more technically,
after the manner of the plans and elevations for the architect's
and builder's use; the differently motived sketches of the student
of character and temperament present the "livable" construction,
the uses, the service, the values, the life of the edifice. By virtue
of this relation their appeal to the layman and to those who in
one calling and another come in professional contact with
the psychological traffic, is direct and pertinent. That the inter-
pretation must frequently proceed upon the level of description
reflects the inherent imperfections of our psychological insight,
but imparts a realistic touch to the presentation. If it contributes
to a truer appreciation of the indirect and difficult routes from
theory to practice, and of the necessity of the ampler study of
foundations, it will have served its purpose.

xii PREFACE

The several chapters indicate the generous use of the results of
fellow-workers. Attention may be directed to three works, in their
several fields the most suggestive and helpful of recent writings.
The one is Professor MacDougall's "Social Psychology," (1909), a
title in favor among the sociologists, but in this instance fully jus-
tified by the treatment. It seems proper to explain that the cen-
tral place of the emotions in relation to instincts there set forth,
and the closely parallel and more detailed analysis here elaborated
are in large measure independent. The outline of the present vol-
ume was sketched as early as 1908 before the contributions of Pro-
fessor MacDougall were known to me. His prior conclusions were
encountered in the preparation of a course of eight lectures on
"Character and Temperament," which I delivered at Columbia
University in 1910. In the same year I published a small volume
on the "Qualities of Men," which sets forth in a more literary
treatment the concluding considerations of the present volume.
Professor MacDougall's statement still remains the most effective
for sociologically-minded readers. With it may now be associated
Mr. Graham Wallas's "The Great Society" (1914), which likewise
recognizes in human traits the basis of the social structure. Next
is Professor E. L. Thorndike's "The Original Nature of Man,"
(1913), which is authoritative in its field and has sterling value
for many purposes, practical and theoretical. It is devoted pri-
marily to the quantitative aspects and approaches of the subject.
As the present study is decidedly qualitative in temper, the two
volumes apart from marked divergence of treatment and scope
are in a measure complementary, despite the fact that I cannot
share in equal measure the confidence of Professor Thorndike in
the potency of the quantitative instrument, and that he presumably
entertains a like scepticism of the value of the qualitative ap-
proach. The third volume in question appeared after the present
manuscript had substantially assumed its final form : Mr. Shand's
"The Foundations of Character." It is a thoughtful, compre-
hensive and richly suggestive treatise. It is conceived and exe-
cuted in a widely different manner and purpose than that which
sustains the present survey. Its appearance is a notable indica-
tion of the interest which the subject commands in contemporary
thought.

The University of Wisconsin : j^^^^^ Jastrow.

Madison, June, 1915.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I

PAGE

The Scientific Approach 1

A retrospective view and the idol of interest and of the
practical mind — The scientific approach as a general inquiry
into sources — Heredity and environment — The quantitative
and the qualitative study of human differences — Similarities
of nature and of nurture — The range, order and distribution
of human traits — Central and derivative traits — The individ-
ual as a composite — Variety and intensity of quality — The
nature of traits — Their place in character — Traits as instinc-
tive responses of the nervous system — Their biological import
and survival value — Original traits and derived pro-
ficiencies— Emotional sources — Functional reference — The
setting of traits — Their evolutionary status — Traits and the
level of their expression — The environmental imposed upon
the natural service — The esthetic endowment and its develop-
ment— The intellectual functions — Their analysis — Applied
proficiencies — The history of culture a record of the achieve-
ments of human traits — Their directive trends — Their orders
of expression — The principle of transfer — The transforma-
tion of traits — Community of acquired traits — ^Illustrations
of transfer and persistence — The system of application — Its
social determination — Complexes — The appraisal of quality
— Encouragement and discouragement.

CHAPTER II

The Sensibilities 58

The organic root and the special-sense root of sensibility —
Feeling and the growth of emotion — The pain-pleasure as-
pect— Its assumption of an esthetic status — Feeling value and
knowledge value — The role of the intellect — Sensibility as a
primary regulation of response — Illustrations in the several
senses — Feeling as enhancement — The acquisition of mean-
ing— Presentative and representative — Resume — ^Analysis and
derived sensibilities — Their refinement and elaboration — The
hygienic sensibility described — Higher levels of its expres-
sion— The "food" sensibilities — From feeding to dining —

xiv CONTENTS

PAGE

The social complications — Language sensibility and the com-
plexity of standards — Good taste and its sources — Impres-
sionism and reasoned distinction — Sensibility as tempera-
mental— The supporting sense, the functional service, and the
scope of development of sensibilities — The application to the
arts — The interplay of sensibilities — Regulation of conduct
by sensibility — The individual the sum of his sensibilities —
The molding power of sensibilities — Their support to careers
— Fine and coarse varieties — Sensibilities of a composite and
derived order — The moral sensibilities.

CHAPTER III

The Emotions and Conduct 104

The emotions as sources of human quality — Organic condi-
tioning and variety of expression. Irritability, anger, indig-
nation, lament — Functional service — Inlet, central diffusion,
and outlet — Primary situations — Fear as primitive emotion —
Emotion as spur to meet urgent situations, as zest of expedi-
ence, as motive to conduct — Emotions and sensibilities —
The motor aspect — Emotional regulation — Sex and food situ-
ations— The luxurious sensibilities and esthetic emotion —
The intellectual expansion — The primary emotions — The
analysis of fear — The expression of the emotions — The
facial and related miens — Expression as incipient response
— The classification of the emotions — The attitudes, the situa-
tions, the direction, the stages of emotional expression —
Illustrations from animal responses — The complexity of hu-
man emotion — Refinement of emotion and of its expression —
The facial language and its principles — Mien and gesture —
The varied sources of facial expression — The specialized ex-
pressions— Differentiation and transfer — Natural and ac-
quired expression — Manner and restraint — Emotion and its
object — The role of instinct — The complication and interplay
of the emotions — ^Attention, interest and curiosity — The
flexibility of emotion — The evolution of emotion — Presenta-
tive and representative stages — From pain to grief — Intel-
lectualization — Special bearings of the principle of transfer —
Gregariousness and sociability — Transfer in expression —
Emotional congenialty in transfer — The evidence of language
— Emotion central in human quality — Its sources and
their persistence.

CHAPTER IV

The Higher Stages of Psychic Control 174

Adequacy of man's original equipment — Its transformation

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

through intellectualization and socialization — The social
direction of the individual trait — Play and the evolution of
the socializing process — Jealousy as a social response — The
self -asserting and the self-withdrawing trends — The deriva-
tive issues as curtailed forms of original response — The de-
velopment of sympathy — From gregariousness to psychic
contagion, to sympathetic emotionalism, to altruistic sacrifice
— Sensitiveness to social esteem — The social self — The intel-
lectual routes of suggestion and imitation — The larger and
the transferred social loyalties — Their source in the family
and other social situations — The play of the courtship rela-
tion— The social dependence — Social cooperation — The com-
plete issue in the dread of solitude — Higher phases of es-
trangement— The uncertain hold of the altruistic trends — The
natural history of love — Romantic love and the intellectual-
ized emotion— The issue in the sentimental life — Sentiments
supply rationalized motives — They establish complexes and
regulate conduct — The psychology of pride and of humility —
Transferred prides and shames — The derivative fears and
apprehensions — Traits as the balance of sentiments — Self-
respect — Shame and the evolution of justice and punishment
— Ideals and systems of sentiments — The support of the in-
tellect in the guidance of response — The problem-solving
traits — Desire, energy, and determination. The quality of

action.

CHAPTER y

Temperament and Individual Differences .... 248

Temperament as original nature — Variation and normality
— Temperament a biological emphasis — The stages of growth
— The expressions of temperament — The types of tempera-
ment— The traditional distinctions — Emotional and intel-
lectual dominance — Mood, temperament, and the organic
economy — The temperamental ages of man — Temperament as
susceptibility to ranges of emotion — The somatic determina-
tion— The sensitiv e-SiCiive type and its varieties — The bent or
Anlage and the artistic careers — The stress of temperament
— Variability, adaptability, and originality — What men are
and what they do. — Temperamental qualities — The resulting
complexes — The analysis of the "miser" complex — Tempera-
mental proficiencies and community of traits — "Individual
psychology" and the measure of a man — The auditory equip-
ment as illustrative — Sense capacity and mental capacity —
The role of vision and of movement — Sense endowment, skill
and the higher expressions — The qualities of mental elabora-
tion— The limitations of the programme — Endowment

xvi CONTENTS

PAGE

and achievement — General intelligence — The laboratory tests
and the tests of experience — The environmental stimulus —
The factor of energy — Ardor and enthusiasm — Motive and
incentive — Command of resources.

CHAPTER VI

Abnormal Tendencies of Mind 304

The abnormal as the assets and liabilities of specialized
temperaments — Psychic fluctuations — Organic condition,
mood, energy, and quality — Critical periods of unfoldment —
Minor fluctuations and major disabilities — Stresses, strains,
faults of maturing disproportions of development — The tem-
perament of defect — The temperament of excess — Anger,
choleric temperament, and mania — Sanguine temperament
and intoxication — The extreme liabilities — General paralysis
and the exalted personality — Excess of sensibility in the nerv-
ous temperament — The loss of "nerve" — The neurasthenic
temperament — ^Assets and liabilities — The intellectual aspects
— Its motor entanglements — The introspective trends — The
hysterical temperament — The overpersonalized responsiveness
— Intensity and irregularity of action — Emotional conflict
and impaired control — The varieties of hysterical types —
Contrast of masculine and feminine liabilities — By-paths of
hysterical expression — The views of Freud — The expressions
of sex interest — The invasion of the personality — The ab-
normal as the excessive dominance of primitive emotions —
Morbid fears — The pathology of anger, of jealousy, of grief
— The theory of shock — Intoxication and drug action —
Megalomania — The insanity of power — Loss of proportion as
the central abnormality — Degeneracy and perversion — The
criminal tendencies — Deviation from the normal as a social
handicap — Eccentricity and abnormality — The genius.

CHAPTER VII

The Psychology of Group-traits 365

The individual the point of convergence of hereditary
streams — Sex the supreme differentiation — The bodily clew —
The genetic clew — The communal clew — The pathological clew
— The differential traits of sex — Bodily contrasts of struc-
ture and function — Pathological liabilities — The nervous lia-
bilities— Masculine and feminine insanities — Masculine as
venturesome, variable, energetic, catabolic — Feminine as con-
servative, stable, affective, anabolic — The correlations of
sex traits — Derivative traits — Their expression and reen-

CONTENTS xvii

PAGE

forcement — The further derivative traits under environmental
influence — Primary situations and the traits emphasized
therein — The transfer of sex traits from the biological to
the sociological realm — Secondary traits as consistent issues
of primary ones — Slight contrasts and momentous issues — A
survey of masculine psychology — Greater variability ; vagrant
energies; venturesomeness ; objective interests; cooperation —
A survey of feminine psychology — Greater affectability; con-
servatism; mobility — Favored forms of responsiveness and
minor traits — The contrasted liabilities — The differentiations
of race — Organic aspects — Race a specialized adaptation to
condition — Uncertain source and meaning — The flag of color
— Racial differences and superiority — Community of racial
endowment — The argument from achievement — A critical
view — ^Achievement an uncertain evidence of endowment
— Rate of emergence and capacity for progress as
criteria — Practical consequences of slight differences —
Racial Status and primitive traits; in variability; in
precocity — Race, remote ancestry and immediate family — The
heredity of traits — The family strain — Genius — The criminal
trend as a group-trait — The environmental factor — National
formative influences tending to uniformity — The stamp of
vocation — The composite issue.

CHAPTER VIII

Character and the Environment 416

Environment as the biological setting — The potency of the
physical environment — Adjustment in primitive and in civi-
lized conditions — The establishment of control of the environ-
ment—Habitat, food-supply, vocation, and the artificial life
— Environment as natural, economic, sociological — The en-
vironment increasingly psychological — High-grade civiliza-
tions equalize environmental conditions — The transformation
of animal traits — Survival of original traits in domestica-
tion— The original and the transformed nature of man —
Psychic control — The group-mind as primitive mentality —
The mass consciousness responds to the concrete, the dra-
matic, the effective — Suggestion, contagion, and the lack of
initiative — The leaders supply initiative — Prestige — The
primitive fixation of belief — The cultural products of the
primitive mind — Tradition and institutions serve as an en-
vironment for the individual — Mores, conscience and the tend-
ency to conform — Fashions, taboo, and the tyranny of con-
formity— Survivals, folk-ways, and the ingredient of rational
sanction — The changing issues the focus of attention — Class
and mass — Conservatism and liberalism — The collective spirit

xviii CONTENTS

^ . . ^ PAGE

or Zeitgeist— The local genius — The assertion of individ-
uality— The dominant regulative systems — The attachment of
value — Ideals.

CHAPTER IX

The Qualities of Men 463

Analysis and appraisal — Civilization makes small differ-
ences count — The social environment makes the specialist —
Adjustment by special proficiency — The elevation of stand-
ards— Fine differences determine awards — Urgency sets the
earlier scale of value — Finer satisfactions determine in high-
grade levels — Slight differences estrange — Prejudice — The
social strata — Exacting vocations require nice adjustment of
quality — Environment reenforces selected traits — American
enterprise — Advertising — The susceptibility to derivative in-
fluences— The status of women and the play of ideals — The
military institution and the maintenance of human quality —
The transfer of quality — Progress implies the reconstruc-
tion of human quality — The upper-level qualities sensitive to
social favor and disfavor. Circumstance, endowment and
reward — Utopia as a refuge — The poietic mind — The kinetic
mind — Variability and originality — The position of democ-
racy— The pragmatic position — The service and dis-service
of ideals — The political temper — Social appraisal and the
systems of values — Selection and the recognition of talent —
"Mute, inglorious Miltons" — The disastrous effect of dis-
torted values — The conflict of standards — Cherished qualities
must be given an outlet in careers — Callings and the redemp-
tion of quality — Quickening of appreciation the step toward
progress — Careers as invitations to qualities — Social esteem
holds the balance of power — Standards of success — Responsi-
bility of leadership — The transformation of human quality.

Notes to Chapters 507

Index 591

CHARACTER AND
TEMPERAMENT

CHARACTER AND
TEMPERAMENT

CHAPTER I
THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

Mental traits and their varied distribution among all
sorts and conditions of men have ever engaged the attention
of the observant and the thoughtful. The systematic study
of the nature of the mind and of the sources and relations
of its qualities gives rise to psychology. The dominant in-
terests that direct the survey of the mental realm determine
its course. An old established interest is that in human
diversities and in the understanding and control of human
traits. To designate the bearing of the body of knowledge
thus resulting the composite term "Character and Tem-
perament" is serviceable. The term reflects the two per-
vasive molding forces : that of native endowment, and that
of acquired capacity in adaptation to circumstance; the
latter in relation to a composite world which is, in part,
the issue, in part, the field of operation of human qualities.
It carries along the traditional interest in the delineation
as well as in the training of character, yet is compatible
with the comprehensive restatement of the problem and its
mode of pursuit under the resources of modern psychology.

The standard survey of psychology, serving as an in-
troduction to the subject, presents an orderly sketch-map
of the mental domain, and dwells upon the detailed fea-
tures of the more important and familiar points of occupa-
tion. Its simplified topography is adequate for an un-

2 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

derstanding of the surface features of the psychological
landscape and for a moderate insight into the deeper,
** geological" forces to which they are traceable. The
present construction, hardly less comprehensive in scope,
is in the nature of an oblique section — a view from a differ-
ent angle. It builds upon the same foundations that un-
derlie the standard surveys, from which it differs mainly
in its perspective and purpose.

The subject has a venerable history [1] ; and from it
may be learned the futility of the several ambitious at-
tempts to seize and control the determinants of char-
acter and temperament, to solve the riddle by a happy
guess. They all involve the assumption that the problem
is in the nature of an enigma with a recondite solution.
The doctrine of the *' temperaments " was one such guess,
and a thoughtful one, placing the origin of distinctive hu-
man quality within the bodily nature ; the astrological solu-
tion was the most remote, placing the determination of
nature as of career in fatalist fashion, quite outside the con-
trollable orbit; physiognomy, ancient or modern, was
another hypothesis — an attempted decipherment of the
hieroglyphics of the face and head ; phrenology and palm-
istry were still others, and equally ambitious systems of
interpretation. Their common goal, variously and arbi-
trarily sought, was the determination of character; their
common attitude was an inclination toward some single and
complete revealing clew; their common search was for a
key to unlock the cabinet where psychological mysteries lie
revealed — a pursuit akin to that of the philosopher's stone,
the elixir of life, or the fountain of youth. Such quests
reflect less the discoveries of plausible clews to knowledge
than the urgency of a desire. They indicate the strong
practical motive to know and control fate, and by such in-
sistence misrepresent the nature of the realities of life.
A more mature insight recognizes that it is the aim of
science to propose significant problems as well as their solu-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 3

tions, to guide the thoughtful student to and through ac-
cessible and profitable approaches.

The turning-point of the inquiry was the recognition of
the nervous system as the embodiment of human traits,
whatever their variety and original nature ; equally pivotal
was the recognition that the nervous system, along with the
rest of the organic inheritance, has been continuously sub-
ject to and molded by the evolutionary forces of nature.
Before the supremacy of the nervous system and the master-
key of evolution were established, the study of character,
as of all mental functions, was open alike to discerning and
plausible speculation, and to imperfect and irrelevant,
though confident, solutions, sponsored by propagandists
lacking logical standards. While these false leads have
been abandoned, the tendencies that gave rise to them
persist, though in less disturbing fashion. They find ex-
pression in the overpractical and overdetailed questions
which popular inquiry addresses to the psychologist. It
was ever in part an impatience with the laborious processes
of unraveling the intricacies of nature, together with a false
view of their sources, that prompted the attempts to cut the
Gordian knot. The desire to find a short circuit from
theory to practice, though no longer inviting so crude a
stultification as phrenology and palmistry demanded, still
discountenances the patient analyses indispensable to a use-
ful and consistent interpretation. A like tendency is ap-
parent in the occasional rebellion against the slow and sure
procedures of science — in medicine, in education, no less
than in practical management — with a consequent recourse
to fads, systems, *'isms,'' and *'ologies,'* that offer large
promises of quick returns. This general tendency to de-
mand prescriptions and to disparage principles may be
called in Baconian fashion the idol of the practical mind;
its corrective is an appreciation of the necessary intricacy
and indirectness of the trail from theory to practice, of the
indispensableness of broad topographic surveys.

4 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

More defensible is the related idol of interest. Like
much that is legitimate and profitable within limits, this
attitude is apt to exceed such proportion. Obedient to
its important psychological function, interest indicates,
creates, and illuminates differences; in its absence or sub-
dued presence, the appearance remains vague or merges into
a confusion mistaken for a similarity. Chinamen look
alike to us in the casual impression ; which means that the
type is as far as our interest carries. To a Chinaman an-
other Chinaman offers the same measure of individuality
as the procession of faces in our streets presents to our ac-
customed eyes and interested minds. Through the very
steps by which science replaces impressionism, it trans-
forms the range of interests, as well as the standards of
their satisfaction. The ideal of the study of character is
the determination of traits and their values in the scheme
of nature, not in that of any one specialized range of human
applications. Yet the conspicuousness of traits, physical or
mental, that leads to their detection and emphasis, is itself
a significant quality. Analysis must correct impression-
ism by completing as well as by supporting casual ob-
servation; for traits have roots as well as blossoms. The
idol of interest applies peculiarly to the problem of char-
acter, in that a narrow personal appeal is apt to over-
shadow a broader intellectual inquiry. The fallacy be-
comes the specific one of overrating what is personally en-
gaging, and is allied to the too detailed interest as well as
to the irrelevant interest; it has a common counterpart in
the tendency to generalize from a few striking instances.
The observations falling within the individual experience
inevitably count too heavily; the individual considers too
lightly the limitations both of vision and of opportunity.
The insistence upon the seeing that is believing, though a
prudential virtue, may at times lead to a serious defect.
Verification is to be sought as sedulously as credulity is to
be avoided, but the overemphasis of personal experience, the

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 5

false value attaching to experience as ours, is responsible
for a larger range of logical defection.

The scientific interest is general where the personal is de-
tailed. This statement requires illustration. It is less
profitable to inquire why the particular flat stone which I
throw with a given fillip skims along the surface of the
water, makes so many ''skips" of such and such lengths
and then sinks, than to ask generally : Why do flat stones
thrown nearly parallel to the surface of the water skip at
all? But in this observation there is no personal interest
to disturb the attitude; the latter question is as acceptable
as the former. The detailed behavior clearly conforms to
the general law ; and its individual peculiarities, though not
removed from like accounting, hardly require it. They
may be referred to chance, in the sense of a variable detail
accidental in the larger consideration that is confined to
essential factors. Such a scientific attitude is not so readily
assumed and the ability to assume it not so widespread,
when applied to personally interesting traits. To one who
happens to have red hair, the origin of his peculiarity
seems a more real question than a general inquiry in re-
gard to the distribution of red hair in the races of men
or in his racial or family lineage; yet the latter is the sci-
entific inquiry. *'The child has its mother's nose but its
father's temper," is a more direct and engaging observa*
tion, seems more pertinent, than an inquiry into parental
influence upon the inheritance of physical and mental
traits. The strong personal interest in traits of character
both facilitates and obstructs an objective general interest
in their source and significance. That the latter is the sci-
entific view by no means argues that all interests should be
limited to systematic inquiries and general trends. It
urges only that the specific should be subordinated to the
general and reached through it. The laws of motion and
the principles of heredity are the stuff that science is made
of. Inevitably will their application be shaped to urgent

6 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

needs and to the perspective of natural and practical in-
terests, and rightly so. Even the problems pursued will
legitimately be directed by the same considerations, but
ever under the guidance of general principles disinterest-
edly established. To the practitioner the case is still a case
of this or that type, despite his sympathetic interest in the
peculiarities even in the personality of the patient ; just as
to the student of mechanics the "skipping" stone is but
a case of such and such laws of projectiles.

The bearing of these considerations may be reduced to a
brief if blunt illustration. If the solutions of the prob-
lems of character and temperament were in the custody
of a Sphinx disposed to speak, what inquiries would we ad-
dress to her? Shall we ask that she explain why A has
no sense of humor; or why B is fond of children; why C
is a miser, and D a Philistine ? Shall we ask to be enlight-
ened why one man is apt at languages and another not?
Shall we inquire why one man shows himself cruel, an-
other courageous, a third shy, a fourth impulsive, or a fifth
spiteful? "Why is E socially inclined, and his brother a
recluse? Why does history appeal to you, and psychology
to me? Or why do I collect pewter, and you postage-
stamps? Why does an overdose of alcohol make one im-
biber confiding and silly, and his neighbor solemn and
sick ? Why can one man get along with six hours of sleep,
and another require nine? Was F a born poet, and G a
born mathematician? Why are there no born steam-en-
gineers or proofreaders, and what would have become of
men of the same brain-organization had they been born
before the days of steam or printing? Are criminals born
or made ? Have they definite tendencies, the one to theft
and another to burglary? Shall we describe poverty or
bad taste as a disease, a sin, or a misfortune? What de-
termines whether one becomes a socialist or a suffragette ?

These questions in a measure are real ; they deal with the
actual differences of men as they come to the surface, in the

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 7

terms of current interests and circumstances. With proper
allowance and a little ingenuity most of the queries may
be referred to their proper domain, may be given a modest
place in the composite of human qualities, and brought
within the range of legitimate inquiry; others may be, (in
due course, will be) restated to make a more general and
significant appeal. But, as it stands, this motley ques-
tionnaire shows how easy it is to make nonsense of
psychology by asking wrongly put or too detailed questions.
Personal interest invites this fallacy. Its prevalence ac-
counts for the persistence of superstition: why it is that
men consult a palmist or a phrenologist or a medium to
learn character-traits already familiar, to have the known
past revealed, or to compare prediction with fulfillment
with a charitable negligence for failures, rather than read
a book upon Character and Temperament. It may be tedi-
ous and smack of the pedagogue to dwell upon these mat-
ters of logical attitude and procedure ; but the old and per-
sistent inclination to **read character'' rather than under-
stand its sources, shows their pertinence. It is a part of
the social and educational mission of science as well as an
aid to its advancement, to direct interest into profitable
channels. The first steps determine the direction of prog-
ress ; upon a proper approach, a fair and adequate concep-
tion of the problem and of the methods of its pursuit, de-
pends the success of the venture [2].

Accordingly the study of character and temperament
attempts an analysis of human quality, maintained as a
general inquirif. It uses all available resources, by no
means slighting the very impressionism at times to be de-
plored; it applies the broader to the narrower situation,
while equally detecting in the specific the clew to the gen-
eral. Throughout it proceeds upon definite principles ; the
constant purpose is to reach the data in their natural sig-
nificance, and not to be misled by the specialized interests
imposed by practical concerns. The science of character,

8 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

though in a large measure an ideal, presents a concrete
program.

The avoidance of the "idol of the practical mind," as
also of the "idol of interest," particularly of the too de-
tailed and the personally engaging interest, clears the way
for the consideration of human traits as natural realities,
as significant issues of natural processes. The secure foun-
dation for this view requires an interpretation of traits
primarily as functions of the nervous system. Such func-
tions are molded by evolutionary forces. The evolutionary
process is embodied in the continuity of living organisms
summarized as heredity; the structures and tendencies
which it conserves and continues are adjusted to the en-
vironment in which they operate. Heredity and environ-
ment stand as the two mighty shapers of human quality.
To the Greek mind, possessed of our knowledge, they would
have suggested heroic or divine forces, cosmic in their pro-
portions. The different spheres of their operation offer a
persistent problem; their separation, though inevitably in-
complete and uncertain, must be attempted. The distinc-
tion is that between the original nature of man and the
progressive modifications to which such nature is subject.
What are the original human traits and what the vicissi-
tudes of transformation that constitute their life-history?

The force of heredity may be variously conceived. It
represents the traits to which the race, the species, breeds
true ; it is the continuity of the germ plasm ; it is the com-
mon denominator of the traits shared, and is measured by
degrees of resemblance; it is the convergent expression of
ancestral forces in varied connection and opposing meas-
ure; it is the directive set of potencies released by the im-
petus of the environment; it is the limit imposed upon the
transformation of the environment and the goal of desire;
it prescribes the values of the factors expressed in our sev-
eral personal equations. However viewed, heredity forms
the material for the molding forces of the environment and

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 9

equally their limitation. At each stage it embodies the ir-
revocable past leading to the inevitable present, and pro-
jecting the presumable, if unpredictable, future. It in-
volves an inherent developmental course, yet one not rig-
idly set; nature is a possibility as well as a reality. The
hereditary process must be reconcilable with a material sub-
stratum; the inheritance is containable in the germ. The
mental heredity is similarly conditioned, is part of the same
fact. The uncertainty of the mode of its operation need
not lower our confidence in the process; nor can we avoid
some statement, however conjectural, as to the nature and
scope of the inheritance. What do we inherit: general
tendencies or specific traits? What order of traits do we
possess by original nature ? To what extent, in what man-
ner, do they receive their determining set through the modi-
fying play of the specialized environment? Which of the
inherited traits are due primarily to race, which to remote
or to immediate ancestry? What is a ^'unit" trait?
These are the more general inquiries, the answers to which
must fundamentally affect every view of the source and
significance of the qualities of men. The temperamental
represents the inherited phase of qualities ; character relates
to the issues of environmental stress, and to the available
channels of expression under given ranges of incentive.
The psychological analysis of traits considers them as the
embodiment of the hereditary equipment and of its varia-
tion and direction under natural and artificial environ-
ments.

A definite approach leads through the gateway of statisti-
cal data. The illuminating principle sets forth that the de-
gree of community of endowment may be tested by the
degree of resemblance among the individuals affected by it.
Conversely, degrees of resemblance of traits may be used
as a test of community of origin; provided that such re-
semblance of traits is not due to environmental influences.
The principle is thus broadly formulated by Thorndike:

10 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

'^Men are mentally like one another and unlike dogs or
horses because men spring from a presumably common re-
mote ancestry which was not the ancestry of dogs and
horses. Men, dogs and horses are more alike than men,
dogs, horses, worms and clams are, because presumably
men, dogs and horses spring from a common ancestry which
was not the ancestry of either worms or clams. Certain
men, for example the American Indians, springing from a
common ancestry which was not the ancestry of Europeans,
may be expected to be mentally more alike one another than
like Europeans, if their common ancestry differed mentally
from that of Europeans." For the fundamental traits of
our common elementary psychic endowment, this argu-
ment is decisive. It emphasizes the massive community,
the generic resemblances of human mentality under any
and all conditions; it indicates the permanence in the ag-
gregate of the basic qualities of men as of their more
generic types and variations. This broader view is essen-
tial to correct the impression of the magnitude of the dif-
ferences between men in their detailed variations, favored
by the enlarged scale of the psychological ground-plan here
to be followed. We shall presently be absorbed in tracing
the significance — the very large significance for our inter-
ests— of the diversities of human endowments. It is well
to consider how far this contrast reflects the scale adopted
for their contemplation: whether under another order of
perspective they would be reduced to slighter, truer pro-
portion. Interest and practical import magnify; but the
result will not disturb our conclusions if the source of the
appearance is recognized. We continue to inquire with
one motive or another why and how you and I are alike
or different; but our inquiry will be profitable only in so
far as we understand the general principles that govern the
origin and distribution of traits, in so far as we determine
the sources of likeness and unlikeness.
What is significant as well as commonplace is the general

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 11

likeness of human nature. Humanity implies the partici-
pation in the common humaji inheritance. Such com-
munity has a place in human consciousness, and to this like-
wise there attaches a practical import. The * * brotherhood ' '
of man is limited by the felt resemblances, the kindred
impulses, the sympathetic expressions of men; racial and
other prejudices are indications of its limitations. Di-
vergent environments and interests estrange, just as com-
mon traditions amalgamate despite racial diversity. Blood
relationship is the true brotherhood, however variously it
enters into the conscious assimilation, however subject to
growth and decline under artificial stimulation, neglect, or
opposition. The sense of relationship furthered by na-
tional pride (or hindered by racial prejudice) cannot be
accepted as a true index of community. On the one hand,
the tendency to magnify differences which our interests
make conspicuous, and on the other, the superficial resem-
blances due to likeness of acquired culture, are apt to dis-
tort our comparisons. The mathematics of measured re-
semblance confers a true objective gauge of likeness, which,
though not at all decisive for regulation of conduct and
career, is authoritative in determining the range and scale
of human diversities.

It must be admitted that such differences, however ob-
jectively determined, rarely bring with them an adequate
allowance for the degree of community (or differences)
for which a common (or a divergent) environment may be
responsible. Men may be like one another by original na-
ture; and men may also come to be like one another. As
a rule we must be content to exclude any very marked equal-
ization or differentiation through the environment, and
thereupon interpret the differences as having a natural
basis. When — as is the common case — ^the environmental
play, though influential, is presumably equally operative
upon the entire range of traits, or at least not notably fa-
voring any one set, the actual distribution of the traits

12 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

studied may be accepted as a true measure of resemblance
or difference.

Basal resemblances lie deep ; blood is thicker than water.
The statistical argument remains, though its application is
often difficult. Considered individually, it is obvious that
of the traits which an individual presents, some are his
by virtue of his ancestral inheritance, and others by virtue
of a common environment ; it is also pertinent to remember
how naturally the common inheritance develops a common
environment. The relative degree of a trait which an in-
dividual presents (by virtue of its distribution in his racial
or ancestral strain in comparison with its distribution in
other strains) becomes significant as a factor in his mental
make-up. To be a member of a superior race, of a gifted
stock, of an exceptional family, may well be the most im-
portant factor in one's nature as well as in one's career.
Yet the statement is but partial; its complement follows
upon later considerations.

It is of fundamental importance to know whether the
differences of men or of groups are of one order of magni-
tude or another; whether, for example, races (and conse-
quently all groups allied by a common ancestry) present
quite distinct grades or types of mental traits ; or whether
the differences are slight, with large overlapping areas and
a broad resemblance. The general trend of the conclusions
favors the latter view. Such a result opposes the natural
impression that these differences are large, which is due to
the interest in their minute variations, which makes them
important; brothers, even twins, are to our eyes different
because we view them closely, and unrelated Chinamen
alike because we do not. This consideration requires also
the separation of the problem of the degree of the inherent
differences from the values of the achievements for which in
a measure these differences are responsible. In the discus-
sion of the psychology of group-traits this principle is
basal. It favors the conclusion that the intellectual ca-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 13

pacity of man has presumably changed but little within
historic periods, and that other orders of forces must be
responsible for the large diversities of achievement which
the history of civilization records.

In all such considerations the quantitative argument is
directive. It is so likewise in another order of problems;
namely, whether the range of variation due to or correlated
with one set of differences is greater or less than that pre-
sented by another. The orders are set by nature ; they are
in terms of sex, race, kinship, individuals, etc. Whether
the differences of traits — in this respect or that — between
men and women, between white, black and red races, or
again between men of the same race, are the greater ones,
is an important consideration in determining how far ob-
served composite differences may be due to sex, to race, to
kinship, to individual endowment. The conclusions seem
to indicate that the widest variations are the individual
ones; that white men of comparable ancestry and environ-
ment differ from one another in morals, in mathematical
or musical capacity, or in whatever the trait measured, by
more than the average difference in any one regard be-
tween the mass of men and the mass of women of compara-
ble ancestry. The several *'Tom Browns, '' *'Dick
Joneses," and "Harry Robinsons" differ more among them-
selves in any one direction, such as musical ability, despite
their converging heredity and circumstance, than their
average capacity in that respect differs from that of the
group composed of their sisters, or of Toms, Dicks, and
Harrys, or of Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons of other
stocks or persuasions. The individual variation (in cer-
tain directions) overbalances the sex factor, and, it may be,
the racial ''group" factor as well. Just what this fact
means and to what extent it applies or how it applies, is
another matter. The present purpose is to indicate how
quantitative considerations, especially under the technique
of recent methods, affect conclusions of fundamental im-

14 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

portance to our views of the nature and perspective of
human differences.

Before proceeding to the problems in which qualitative
methods and interests dominate — the problems central in
this volume — we may pass in review certain aspects of traits
in which both quantitative and qualitative relations enter;
for there is no conflict of conclusion or purpose between
the two methods of approach. They are different instru-
ments of research, adapted to somewhat divergent interests
and pursuits; they answer different ranges and types of
questions. Their common reference is to the question:
What do we inherit ? For this includes the content as well
as the extent of the inheritance. Both aspects are implied
in the formulae which the study of character aims to reach
and interpret. The selection of the terms necessarily in-
volves a differentiation from other terms, and a quantita-
tive implication of possible units or degrees of resemblance
and difference. Detailed consideration will in due course
be given to the interrelation of traits, to their several
spheres of influence, and particularly to their status as cen-
tral or tangential to the psychic nature. The psychological
studies of human diversities seem thus to divide according
as the interest is centered upon the degree or upon the
nature (and significance) of human differences. While
each bears upon the other, and while particularly the in-
terpretation of the latter must ever consider the conclusions
of the former, they for the most part pursue their several
ways. For the studies of degrees and distributions of re-
semblance, it is often fair to assume that, within limits, the
selection of the traits whose variations furnish the basis
for the conclusions, is, if not indifferent, at least fairly
equalized. The essential relations will appear, despite un-
certainties of significance or accidental choice of terms and
units. In the qualitative studies the interest centers upon
the type, the range, the bearing of the traits.

There is a common interest in the assumptions of the

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 15

formula; for the view that the individual temperament
(and character) is a concrete combination of such and such
traits involves some assumption as to the nature of such
standard component traits. The formula, however abstract,
requires a definite conception of its terms [3] ; for these
must inevitably be concrete. Let us proceed to an example.
The human iris contains a variable pigment; eye-color is
thus a variable trait. Whether or not it is a unit-trait in the
Mendelian sense may be left undetermined. It is clearly
related to other traits, being part of the fact — indeed is ac-
cepted as an index — of pigmentation, correlated in some
measure with the allied traits that give rise to blonde and
brunette in hair and skin. For researches into degrees of
resemblance and the mode of operation of hereditary
processes, eye-color forms an acceptable test — its conclu-
sions to be considered along with similar conclusions on the
basis of other traits. Yet its selection is due to its conspic-
uousness; and that is not without significance. The shape
(together with other properties) of the human blood-crys-
tals is also a variable trait ; and so, we may add, are height
or finger-print patterns, or shape of skull, or other physi-
cal traits amenable to measurement or classification. These
may equally serve for the determination of degrees of con-
sanguinity or hereditary community. It is when we turn
to the part that traits play in the functional life, that we
are disposed to draw distinctions. If the sexes were so
constituted that eye-color especially and pigmentation in
general played the chief role in determining elective affini-
ties— not too extravagant an assumption, since odes have
been written to blue eyes, as well as to blonde hair, red
lips and white cheeks^ — the significance of this trait would
be altered, though the manner of its carriage in the hered-
itary process would remain the same; it is a type of trait
not subject to cultivation but only to selection. If strength
of arm or shrewdness of wit were the decisive factor, they
could be both selected and cultivated to the neglect of other

16 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

qualities. Since all sorts of factors actually enter in many-
sided competition in the selective process, the decisive traits
are subject to a varied and ever fluctuating emphasis. The
shape of the blood-crystals is removed from direct play in
selection; although it is conceivable that this trait in some
obscure manner conditions other traits which come to the
surface and thus influence selection. Unquestionably are
eye-color and shape of blood-crystals carried along in the
germ through determinants of comparable status. In all
studies in which that factor is decisive, the two traits may
enter on a par.

The problem becomes more uncertain and more complex
in regard to mental traits. It is hardly plausible though
not impossible that musical ability, like eye-color, is a fac-
tor absent or present through the absence or presence of a
factor in the germ ; a still more extreme assumption would
be necessary to consider mathematical proficiency or a keen
moral sense as thus conditioned. ( The supposition need not
be summarily dismissed; it is, however, far too conjectural
to play a part in the present view of character-traits.)
Since musical ability is directly conditioned by a delicate
functional responsiveness of the minute structure of the
internal ear, it stands closer in one aspect to a definite
basis of physiological inheritance ; mathematical ability and
a moral sense require a much more complex interpretation
to bring them within the formula of the hereditary mechan-
ism. Yet such marked deviations as feeble-mindedness
(quite as conspicuously as eye-color or color-blindness)
show a parallel application of the same laws of heredity
as obtain in the case of definite physical characters. Once
again is it clear that the traits basal to our study are sub-
ject to the same biological laws of hereditary transmission,
and subject also to quantitative formulation in so far as the
definiteness of the data permits. Yet the point of em-
phasis is equally that in many respects the data of the
mental life cannot be brought under this conception with

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 17

sufficient certainty and without violence to their natural
status; and again, that the problems of central significance
to our purpose are of other nature, and demand other meth-
ods of investigation.

The quantitative implication remains in the formula of
composition of traits. Each one of us has more or less of
musical ability, a mathematical aptitude of this or that or-
der, a moral nature of a certain degree of susceptibility and
control. The considerations are rarely of absence or pres-
ence of traits, but of strength or weakness, of slight, mod-
erate, or marked degree. It is the rule that among indi-
viduals, qualities alike in kind show very unlike distribu-
tion in degree. The distribution, when subject to natural
forces (which implies no more than the composite influence
of a very large number of factors, no one of which has in
itself a very marked effect), follows the *' probability " or
''frequency" curve. This curve shows how the relative
number of persons presenting degrees of excess or defect
of any given trait decreases decidedly and in a law-abiding
manner with each such degree. The number of persons
(or better, the proportion relative to the whole group con-
cerned) who are one centimeter taller (or shorter) than the
average (or have an ic-degree more or less of musical abil-
ity, of general intelligence, or of moral sense, or of what
you will), will be relatively large in comparison with those
who deviate from one to two such units from the average ;
and these again far more numerous than those deviating
from two to three such units, and so on. The curve repre-
sents the relative frequency of deviation of any given
amount of deviation. Stated more generally, it gives a
pictorial survey on the pattern of an accurate outline, of
the distribution of degree of one or another trait. It makes
it plain that the largest number of men possess a near to
average degree of any given trait [4] — indeed, that,
roughly speaking, is why such degree is the average;
further, that there will be a very considerable number of

18 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

men of moderately more, as likewise also of moderately
less, than average intelligence, let us say; a markedly
smaller number of distinctly more than average intelligence ;
that with each such successive increase in the degree of in-
telligence, the number attaining that degree will rapidly
diminish until we reach the upper degrees of the few ex-
ceptionally brilliant men, and still more removed, the rare
men of genius. The curve of distribution is significant in
part and as a whole in comparison with other curves of
similar origin. If the variations of the trait, within the
group measured, are slight, the curve will be tall and nar-
row; if very considerable, the curve will be extended and
flattened. Relative homogeneity and heterogeneity of dif-
ferent groups may thus be pictured to the eye ; and devia-
tions from normal distribution, resulting from mingling
of data differently centered or from other disturbing cause,
may be graphically revealed.

Such are some of the useful quantitative conceptions that
we carry over to the field of qualitative analysis. Even
when they cannot be applied, their theoretical pertinence
controls and corrects our views. Nor need the fact that in
many cases there are not available definite and equal units
— like inches or centimeters for measuring height — to meas-
ure degree of deviation, interfere with the generic applica-
tion. The bearing of the conception is clear; it yields a
consistent view of the distribution of human traits; in par-
ticular, of the relative infrequency of marked deviations,
of the growing rate of elimination as we raise the standards
which are to be met, up to the more exacting reaches, and
finally to the extreme limits of the scale [5]. The individ-
ual application is direct, though it may not be adequate for
all our purposes. It sets forth that one's place in musical,
mathematical, moral or other type of proficiency is indi-
cated by one's position in the curve with reference to
inferiors and superiors — ^what proportion surpassing, by
what proportion surpassed. Such quantitative aspects.

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 19

standing in the background of our survey, influence the
course of investigation and the interpretation of results.
Their apparent retirement is due only to the occupation of
the foreground by the qualitative relations central to our
analytical and expository purposes.

The question recurs: What is a trait 1 A positive de-
termination would be equivalent to a decipherment of the
alphabet in which natural deviation is expressed. Such a
possession we cannot claim. As we use the term, it is an
algebraic symbol on occasion converted into a quasi-arith-
metical expression. At times an x of unknown value, it
may under certain assumptions be assigned a value of a or
& of determinate range. A primary uncertainty arises
from the question already asked: "What do we inherit,
general tendencies, or specific traits? The argument from
animal psychology distinctly favors the view that animals
inherit definite conduct-reactions to specific stimuli; it is
this fact that underlies the conception of instinct. An in-
stinct is such a specific trait, a definite responsive tendency
of the nervous system. To prevent misunderstanding, let
it be added that such a tendency need not, commonly is not,
rigidly bound to a single inciter; it is more serviceable to
render the organism responsive to types of stimuli. ' ' Thus
instead of a number of fears of special enemies, such as
cats, hawks, skunks, etc., chicks have a general alarm at
strange and impressive objects." (Thorndike.) Simi-
larly, the early responsiveness of the human inheritance as
it appears in the infant, is little more than a bundle of in-
stinctive specialized reactions and tendencies thereto: to
cry when uncomfortable, to suck when the lips are invited,
to cling when the palm is touched, to struggle when held,
to reject unpleasant stimuli, to blink when light strikes the
eye, and so on. At this level a functional trait seems little
more than the strength and direction of an instinct. But
even in infant life such regulation soon becomes inadequate.
The variability of the excitants modifies situations and re-

20 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

sponsiveness alike ; the responsive tendencies develop inter-
relations and conflicts of tendency; and yet more deriva-
tive variations ensue through the large range of environ-
mental appeals in the psychic life of an organism of any
degree of complexity.

The central bearing of this body of facts is that the ele-
mental reactions in which the instinctive adjustment is
commanding, furnish the clew to the nature of primary
traits; this principle will find due recognition. A trait
comes to mean a more generic reactive tendency, related
closely or remotely to a specific natural situation, and re-
taining at all events a direct functional significance. The
term acquires a variable meaning, and gets its value from
the actual range of its application. Such is always the
case in regard to products of evolutionary forces which in
one direction hark back to elemental origins, in another
reflect the environmental adjustment, and in yet another
embody the issues of conflict, amalgamation, and complica-
tion with other tendencies of like status. At the level at
which it is profitable to present the analysis of human qual-
ities, traits appear as generic reactive tendencies or as
partial modifying factors of such tendencies, yet reflect the
setting of the specific reactions in which they had their
source [6].

Traits are issues of original and definite responsive ten-
dencies of the nervous system; they represent functional
trends or aids, and get their meaning from the part which
they play in natural situations and the complications both
naturally and artificially arising from them. Traits as they
come to be recognized and named owe their selection to
their conspicuousness, which reflects the interest in observ-
ing them — the interest itself reflecting their practical im-
port in human conduct. Practical efliciency and psycho-
logical insight develop together. The psycho-analytical
bent is favored by the practical need of referring action,
attitude, and motive to their source — introspectively for

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 21

ourselves, objectively and inferentially for others. A
world-wise experience with familiar situations however com-
plex, brings about an adjustment to them on the basis of
previous facilitation in meeting simpler situations of allied
nature. The differences of men appear as affections and
dispositions to response, in the main, to original primitive
situations, but even more to the supporting, modifying,
partial factors that both extend and complicate their scope
and expression.

If we return to our motley questionnaire under the guid-
ance of these principles, we observe how the traits assem-
bled may be given a place and a meaning in the general
scheme. A considerable number of the medley of quali-
ties belong to the emotional group and indicate the relative
strengths and kinds of feeling aroused under common situa-
tions in human intercourse ; such are the qualities described
as *^ cruel," '* courageous, " "shy," ''impulsive," "spite-
ful." These traits are exercised dominantly in one's re-
lations to others, in which relation the maintenance of self-
esteem is a natural and primary impulse. They imply the
object of consideration which completes the situation; in
such a trait as "love of children," this is named. An-
other group specifies the manner in which dependence upon
physical organization comes to the front — such as the nec-
essary hours of sleep, or the manner of succumbing to in-
toxicants. A further group of traits refers to proficiencies
as exercised in actual pursuits upon the basis of a native
keenness of the intellectual powers — a grasp of relations;
a gift for mathematics, psychology, history, or engineering
is a variant and high-grade expression of such insight,
which has developed far away from the original field of
the parent trait. For the rest — the most miscellaneous
group — we are dealing with still more remote, still more
accidental or incidental applications of combinations and
offsets of qualities derived from divergent phases of our
nature. Thus a sense of humor is a complex issue of an in-

22 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tellectual keenness, a sense of proportion, and an emotional
sensibility to incongruities between aim and result; to de-
scribe it adequately would demand an essay. And the like
is true of such a sophisticated term as '' Philistine, ' ' which
required the social-philosophic criticism of the complex re-
constructive nineteenth century to establish. For the sake
of completeness a reference must be made to the moral
traits (miserliness, criminality), and the esthetic ones (bad
taste), and to their complication with intellectual convic-
tions (socialistic trend, etc.). They, too, represent issues
of conflict between tendencies in shaping attitude and ac-
tion, as well as native powers of resistance. By such varied
routes, long and short, direct and circuitous, may qualities
as superficially noted be brought back to natural orders of
traits, and to derivative issues and modifying factors of
such traits. The traits are thus placed in an artificial sys-
tem, yet carry an implicit reference to the natural situa-
tions of their origin. That we describe and detect them in
the terms of the markedly modified situations and applica-
tions of our own lives is as natural as the persistent simi-
larity of the traits through all varieties of situations.

The functional aspect of traits must be more closely con-
sidered. Functions are not of one order only ; yet the in-
dividual, the embodiment of the function, survives as a
whole. Supreme in the natural order are reproduction and
survival; the latter comprise the food-getting, mastery, and
enterprise activities. The mental life no less than the
physical is surrounded by condition; in the control of con-
dition it finds its object. With increased complication the
drama of life becomes endlessly variable, the acts and scenes
recurrent yet not stereotyped. Traits acquire a place ac-
cording to the roles that they play, primary or support-
ing to the chief movements. They are carried in, and by
the organism which must embody all the traits essential to
the operations of life. The mental equipment is in this
sense but a derivative complement to the physiological one.

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 23

Functions commanding in the latter aspect will inevitably
condition the former. Divergent natural functions will de-
velop divergent mental traits. A given group of men and
women as alike and equally human, likewise members of
the same stock and generation, have a cumulatively and
convergently common inheritance; by virtue thereof they
present the largest community of traits. Still more nar-
rowly, a man and his sister should be and are compre-
hensively alike; yet they differ as a man and his brother
do not, and must so differ if the one is to be a normal man
and the other a normal woman. Men and women will be
alike by virtue of common heredity just so far as they are
not different by virtue of differentiated natural function,
despite that community of inheritance; and men will re-
semble other men by virtue of functional community de-
spite their divergent ancestries. The factor that determines
sex carries with it an endless series of remote issues, affect-
ing a large range of mental endowment ; it is as such issues
that the psychologist encounters them and traces them to
their source. Thus the manner of differences of traits be-
comes clear in virtue of the import of the difference. The
same applies to the degree of difference in common traits.
Differences small in their quantitative statement may be
efficiently large. Races like sexes may in certain respects
differ little because slight differences are adequate to the
differentiated functions or situations. Or again, variation
may be slight because a larger variation would be incom-
patible with functional normality. Traits and the differ-
ences of traits in their manifestation among individuals or
groups must so far as possible be brought back to a func-
tional reference, to determine their true and natural sig-
nificance. The enormous modifications resulting from the
artificial significance which traits derive from the foster-
ing or discouragement of the environment is a further and
a vitally important consideration ; the effect of civilization
is to make small differences count. This influence af-

24 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

fects mainly the upper-level, derivative qualities, but may
extend fairly deep; its interpretation belongs elsewhere.

Traits are selected not only as conspicuous and interest-
ing, but as central in survival value in one respect or an-
other; nor does superiority belong unreservedly to one
degree or order of quality. There may be several types of
adjustment, compensating and conflicting vantages, so that
the battle may be at one time to the fleet, at another to the
strong, at another to the cunning. Traits are interpreted
as they are estimated, according to the manner of their
participation in conferring vantage and disadvantage in the
recurrent situations. It is this service that directs atten-
tion to them, makes them conspicuous in the mental life,
leads to their cultivation in practice, and in the analytical
view determines their status. Once more let it be noted
that the individual survives or prevails as a whole, with
the sum total of his traits; with their advantages and dis-
advantages, virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses.
They are all comparably carried forward in the heredity,
though variably molded by the social pressure; they stand
in different relation to the survival values. Stature,
strength, fleetness, endurance may all be of vantage and of
different vantage; clearly of different service. Quickness
or slowness of perception, susceptibility to fear or anger,
resoluteness or despondency, prudence or shiftlessness, are
yet more variably involved, and in so far as they are more
derivative in scope are thereby open to environmental modi-
fication. The observed traits as they engage our interests
are all fairly derivative; they have been carried forward,
away from their primitive source and situation, by the ma-
turing of the mental life and its artificialization. The ulti-
mate consequence is this : that we can study and test func-
tional capacities far more readily than true traits in the
deeper sense. These it is difficult to refer to any precise
range of service; they stand as issues of development un-
der the combined influence of natural endowment and en-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 2^

vironmental adaptation. It is even difficult to determine
just what range of powers in relation to other powers —
with these in turn to be referred to traits set in their nat-
ural service — a given facility involves. The psychologist
measures acuteness of vision for distance, for illumination,
for color, for form; of hearing for range of audibility or
of pitch, for bare differences of tone and for accuracy of
musical intervals ; he measures quickness of response to sig-
nals, and both quickness and accuracy of distinction, span
of memory, and rate of acquisition; he soon reaches tests
where appraisal and judgment replace or modify measure-
ment, and thus gauges liveliness of imagination, creative
or problem-solving ingenuity, associative play of ideas, com-
plex comparisons, judgments of "value," and the like.
Even these (falling largely within the intellectual sphere
of fairly definite distinctions) are more amenable to exact
reduction and comparison than are qualities of large emo-
tional play ; the latter are more readily referred to a place
close to natural function. Such tests may be said to oifer
a gauge of partial factors of derived products of the in-
definitely complex psychic endowment. They measure them
differentially, comparatively in so far as the factors are
subject (under certain assumptions and with reservations)
to a quantitative reduction ; for the rest they yield a quali-
tative appraisal of the relative development of this or that
phase of mentality and disposition, picture (the bases of)
the preferred responses, the favored inclinations, consti-
tuting the measure of a man.

In such measure we are inclined to return to the primi-
tive perspective in which the emotional appeal is the mo-
tive force of conduct, and qualities are intimate as they
stand close to feeling and desire. In this perspective a
man's character, as a reflex of his nature, is determined by
what he desires, what he cares for, in what he finds satis-
faction, what annoys, pains or grieves him, in his sympa-
thies rather than in his opinions, in his sensibilities and

26 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tastes rather than in his knowledge and skill. The strength
of motive, the appeal of situation, as the original forces,
continue to mold conduct, however complex, and to de-
termine attitude, however subtle. The natural directness of
relation between desire and the conduct which is its satisfac-
tion, has indeed been so overlaid by the fabric of reason —
considerations at first plain and homespun, but ever more
elaborate and fine spun, as they become conventionalized
and systematized — as to conceal the mental anatomy, which,
like our bodily functions, through excessive reserve we are
loath to recognize. The instruments of diagnosis must in-
deed be refined to meet the delicate and intricate relations
in which emotions suffused with principles and beliefs, scru-
ples and inner conflicts, standards and ideals, confusedly
and indirectly find expression. Yet such is the problem
of the psychological interpretation of character. The
present equipment of the psychologist is confessedly inade-
quate to the task. For interesting or important individ-
uals the biographer attempts a selective impressionistic
portrayal ; or the novelist or dramatist attempts it yet more
freely, according to the license of his art, presenting ideally
constructed types and situations in the psychological novel
or drama. The psychologist, however, need not and should
not relinquish the prerogatives of his calling. The prin-
ciples of analysis of the art are one, however different the
training and capacities required for their divergent ap-
plications. On the basis of his attainments, the profes-
sional psychologist — if his tastes and ambitions incline him
to such a task — may attempt to penetrate directly into the
vital moments of endowment and their part in disposition
and achievement on the basis of a general insight into the
interplay of psychological forces at the high-level stages
of their operation. He has, indeed, with a kindred pur-
pose extended the psycho-analytical method — which in its
current application brings to record trends that evade the
search of consciousness or through inner conflict are re-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 27

pressed or distorted — to the interpretation of actions,
achievements, failures, complications, of men great and
small, individually or in groups and types. So considered
and analyzed, one's work and one's career become a confes-
sion— assuming, if we may, that the psychological equip-
ment is equal to this sacerdotal office. Yet however im-
perfect the interpretation, it illuminates the significance of
careers as of the qualities that direct them, and brings a
large range of accredited psychological principles to bear
upon problems too exclusively considered from without.
This domain represents the uppermost levels of analysis,
for the most part beyond the prescribed limits of this es-
say, though subject to the bearings of its conclusions [7].
In resuming at closer range the consideration of traits as
components of character, we have still to determine the con-
struction of the projected composition before we can, as it
were, put brush to canvas. Like other psychological terms,
a trait is a working concept — a logical product — but also
corresponds to a reality, since through it psychological
analysis aims to project the actual structure and operations
of the mind. At best the result is a rendering in which
one set of values replaces or represents another. Accord-
ingly the question: What is a trait in the sense of is this
or is that a trait, or what types and orders of traits
are there, or how are they defined? becomes subsidiary
to, and indeed is answered by, the tracing of the natural
history of traits, in the general manner here attempted.
In this process justifiable assumptions enter ; we may speak
of traits as typical, of centers or foci of traits, which in
turn involve a composite orbit or sphere of influence. To
attempt a chemistry of the mind is indeed vain; but to
reach some understanding in regard to the logical adjust-
ment of the problem to the necessities of the pursuit and
to our present knowledge is indispensable. Clearly it is
against a logical economy to assume an indefinite number
of traits of coordinate value. Such a conception would

28 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

make each individual endowment a mosaic composed of
substantially like minute fragments, significant only in the
ensemble, would ignore the organic setting in which the
traits develop and the relations between them of prece-
dence, dependerice and interaction. It would carry no
clew to the motive of the composition. Such a clew is fur-
nished by the genetic conception of traits as primary and
subsidiary functional products of an evolutionary order.
As a consequence a trait, revealing its nature through its
expression, will vary according to its original or derivative
status, central or tangential place, as well as to its level of
expression and mode of supporting the ensemble; it takes
its definition and likewise its rating for practical ends from
the evolutionary level at which it is considered. Thus re-
garded, a trait has a biological, a psychological, and a prac-
tical aspect.

The biological reference is direct and paramount at the
lower levels of the great trunk-lines of traits, that maintain
the organism in its environment. It places the trait ac-
cording to the trend, the contribution of its survival value,
its part in conferring vantage in one phase or another of
the situation-meeting reactions. In situations above the
simplest, a directive factor in the operation is of that dis-
tinctive type for which we have no other properly compre-
hensive term than psychological; it indicates that the
process of adjustment — now in the nature of the solution
of a problem — proceeds as the mental elaboration of an
underlying biological trend. From the outset the environ-
ment reacts upon the trait and coiiditions its expression;
for life as we know it and live it, the environment is largely
artificial; traits .are exercised upon objects and purposes
having a place in that artificial system. An artificialized
function replaces a natural one. The world of practical
values develops a complex elaboration and transformation
of traits, equivalent to new varieties thereof. The rich vo-
cabulary of psychological terms refers to the finer distinc-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 29

tions within the upper levels of expression. As com-
positely biological and psychological trends are directed
more particularly to one set of objects or situations (or-
dinarily artificial upon a natural basis) ; or as they repre-
sent different interactions (combinations or conflicts) of
responsive tendencies with a varying dominance of one
trend or another, they receive distinctive names. Thus
pride, conceit, vanity, haughtiness, dignity, confidence, and
so on, are varying high-level expressions of the same self-
assertive trait, which psychologically projects the influence
of attitude upon conduct, and biologically becomes part
of the combative equipment of aggression and defense.
Jointly the terms reflect a complicated social world, offer-
ing a wide range of situations for the application of such
traits and a varied series of achievements of practical im-
port in that world, of which one may be proud, conceited,
vain, etc. Such traits are differentiated because of their
practical import. The term '* practical, " though it sug-
gests but one aspect of the complication, is acceptable be-
cause it is neutral ; it indicates that the high-level expres-
sion of traits is shaped predominantly by the system of
values current in the environment in which the traits
operate. The ^'real'^ and psychological differentiation
refers to the mode and type of elaboration of traits thus ex-
ercised, to the qualities of mind thus resulting. As we
view a trait predominantly as a biological, as a psycho-
logical, or as a practical product, its perspective alters ; the
trait describes a different orbit. The study of character
and temperament considers the whole as a unified product,
and traces the unitary course of unfoldment — the relations
developed in the growing complications of the mental life.
The largest considerations will be given to the high-level
expression of traits because of their practical import, of
their intimate appeal to our interests at that level, and of
the fact that there alone appears in full richness of growth
the mature products of character. The due consideration

30 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

of the earlier stages has a notable service to perform.
Just as our perspective of the historical past is apt to be
illusory — the earlier centuries condensed and bare and the
nearer ones expanded and detailed, because of our larger
interest and closer appreciation of the times nearer to our
own — so the psychological perspective of the natural his-
tory of our mental past needs the corrective of a scientific
study of origins. The study of history makes the centuries
distinct and real ; psychology must be content with a more
general and more problematical illumination of the story
of the stages of mental expansion and conquest.

At this juncture illustration will best serve our purpose.
Let us consider a trait to which we attach a high-level mean-
ing— the esthetic trait. At first blush it seems strained to
trace so highly developed a trait to a biological status ; yet
such is the principle of a ''physiological esthetics" [8].
The trait reaches back to the pain-pleasure aspect of con-
duct-regulation, to the stage at which the pain or pleasure
is no longer the chief determinant of the reaction, but less
gross, less direct, supplies the added zest or the minor de-
terrent. Esthetic, though at its lower level of expression,
is the direct sensory joy in color and sound ; it is a stimulus
to activity, a contributory aid to selection of response
through enhancement or modification of the organic tone.
Whether we regard the song of the bird to its mate as an
esthetic joy or as a compelling organic impulse — singing
because it must — will depend upon the level of the trait
at which we hold the term ''esthetic" to become appropri-
ate. Denying this quality to the bird, we indicate that in
our definition the trait implies a more mature develop-
ment ; that it must affiliate with meaning, lose its too direct
organic stimulus, and acquire a place in a preferential
psychology. The song may be a preesthetic expression —
something in line for promotion (in an organism capable
of such development) for the esthetic status. The infant
begins with the physiological pleasure of strong color^

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 31

a psychogenic stimulus — but soon attaches meaning to its
preferences, and finds things exciting, and joyous, and in
due course pretty, because so complicatedly attractive.
The physiological flavor has retired ; the psychological im-
port becomes the central, almost the complete content of
the experience. When matured in practical endeavor, the
esthetic sensitiveness leads to the fine arts. Objectively
these are shaped by the conditions of the material, the
mastery of a technique; but more intimately they reflect
the nature of the traits which the art-products satisfy. The
pleasure of sensory tone is variously complicated by nat-
ural associations and artificial meaning before it becomes
a musical expression; the joy of music must be in the
soul before it finds outlet through the voice or hands. It
may appear in this illustration that the notion of use —
which the term *' practical" suggests — is foreign to the na-
ture of the esthetic ; but it is the application and develop-
ment under actual circumstance for material ends that is
the essential part of its meaning, which is here, as else-
where, relevant. The ministrations of the esthetic order
are in this sense comparable to those that more directly
serve the vital needs, in the regulation of conduct. Also
let it be noted that such a vital situation as courtship is in
part esthetically directed — predominantly so, it may be, at
its higher stages ; and in this affiliation lie the deeper roots
of the esthetic life. The inner antagonism that has at
times made morality suspicious of art is a (high-level) testi-
mony to the reality of this deep-seated connection. It in-
clines to assume that because the roots of conduct directed
by pleasure and by duty are distinct, every development
of quality and career dependent upon the former must at
all levels be antagonistic to the latter. Thus arises at least
one aspect of the divergences of careers — the alternative of
the cloister or the hearth — and of the misunderstandings of
men.

The same line of analysis is applicable within high-level

32 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

stages of the esthetic expression. If we visit an ethno-
logical museum and survey the arts and crafts of the
Alaskan Indian or of the South Sea Islander, we realize
that the study of the decorative and representative motives
there assembled requires a very different attitude and con-
sideration than we carry to the study of Greek sculpture
or Eenaissance painting in a representative museum of
Classic art — the existence of the museums furnishing a
convincing tribute to the continuity of the esthetic interest.
Yet in the psychological perspective — which is vast, like
the geological one — these variations are substantially of
limited range, fall within one order. The essential nature
of the esthetic trait, the needs which it satisfies, the ave-
nues which it creates for its expression, and the arts that
result therefrom are of a nature all compact. They are all
high-level products ; those of highest level, touching our in-
terests and traditions most intimately, are, indeed, in the
enlarged scale in which we present them, of a very differ-
ent cultural order. For students of the most evolved
forms or levels of esthetic expression, considering the traits
that make possible modern music, modern love of nature,
modern drama, the term ''esthetic" would necessarily ac-
quire a different range of reference and the subject a
wholly different method of pursuit than attaches to the
term and the trait as a factor in the general psychology of
character and temperament. Yet it remains true that were
it not for the place of the esthetic in man 's original nature,
these several phases of the fine arts would not have de-
veloped. Once they appear in association with the varied
qualities of men subject to similar evolution, they mature
under varied influence of the aggregate human endow-
ment and are played upon by all the conditions of human
life — by religion as well as by economic struggle, by social
condition as well as by racial inheritance, by ideals and
standards drawn from all phases of experience, until the
esthetic becomes one of the most comprehensive expres-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 33

sions of the human ''psyche." The esthetic traits have a
venerable history which affects our conception of their na-
ture and function. Psychologically the essential complica-
tion enters early, close to the primitive stages of its develop-
ment; the rest is but refinement. True, such refinement
becomes important in its issues because these issues lie so
close to our living interests and appreciations ; because to at-
tain them we laboriously seek a critical training. Essen-
tially, primitive man is as truly an esthetic being as the
schooled modern artist or connoisseur ; the fields of applica-
tion and the levels of expression to which the common trait
attains, place them poles apart. In each case the esthetic
trait as a component of character, as a partial factor in the
equipment for appreciation and control of experience, ex-
ercises comparable function; it is at once allied by the
common and separated by the varied worlds of thought,
feeling, and social relations to which it is applied. Man
from first to last is an esthetic creature.

This illustration projects the general course of our pro-
cedure. Having brought to bear upon the esthetic trait
the entire range of considerations that constitute its life-
history (in which its function in ministering to the psy-
chological nature of man remains central), we may confer
upon any one of a hundred contributory traits or separate
attitudes or partial factors in the composite of a quality,
the distinctive type and value needful for its comprehen-
sion in this aspect, by calling it esthetic. The trait at once
acquires a reference to its mode of participation in the en-
semble, and needs but the further specification of the man-
ner of its participation and the level of its operation. The
trait is thus placed, classified, defined. The same process
applies to all the great trunk-lines of traits that have a
parallel place in human nature. They, in turn, divide into
major and minor branches and secondary radiations, all of
which are equally entitled to be enrolled as traits — the
vocabulary enlarging with the increased scale and conse-

34 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

quent refinement of the delineations and analyses. Such
sub-traits or partial modifiers of traits emerge at all the
higher levels of expression, grow out of the increased com-
plication and specialization of the social life. In this essay
the general psychological function, rather than the detailed
expression, is directive.

Brief as must be their consideration, the great intellectual
phases of human nature must be touched upon together
with their momentous development constituting the history
of the mind's rationality. The intellectual trend conforms
to the general evolutionary course and takes its direction
close to its source. Its function is to differentiate situa-
tions: to perceive, to compare, to relate, to interpret; it
achieves the nicety of adjustment of response to situation.
In complex applications the variety of demand upon the
intellectual powers leads to such differentiations of quali-
ties as intelligence, wisdom, insight, reason, of one type
or another. So long as situations are relatively simple and
clews obvious and gross, the adjustment is easily reached;
yet a specific intellectual process of recognition and refer-
ence intervenes before the stimulus excites an appropriate
response, calls into associative play some organized group
of motor mechanisms. Conduct becomes more complexly
selective by variable association with variable situations
more minutely analyzed; it expands into a vast intricate
network of relations in which experience and discernment
are needful for guidance. Yet in the intellectual as in the
esthetic development, the maze-like complexity is but an
enrichment and refinement of a pattern-type that has re-
ceived its distinctive stamp at relatively early stages of its
unfoldment. Man exercises the essential qualities of his
rationality in the early steps of his life-history, racial and
individual. Substantially the entire range of powers re-
sponsible for the abundant wealth of the intellectual life
enters near the simple beginnings of intelligence and cul-
ture. Far as we may travel along the highways and by-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH S5

ways of science, complex as may become the equipment for
further progress, the essential endowment remains in type
the same as that which directed the first tentative and un-
certain steps. We have added endless knowledge, records
of experience, profits and losses of trial, refinements of
procedure, but no new inherent powers. Truly these pow-
ers find very different orders of expression and are applied
to different and vastly more complex ranges of data; and
for the intellectual progress of humanity these refinements
are all important. So fundamental is this perceptive trait
that we develop a close interest in its many and minute
contributory and subsidiary processes, giving each par-
tial function a name, examining its detailed mode of
operation, testing its diversified efficiency. Thus emerges
the psychology of the rational life — always commanding
and at times too exclusively dominating the conception of
human nature; it is familiarly the favorite definition or
vaunt of man, that he is a rational animal. Memory, im-
agination, association, perception of relations, judgment,
and the like — the essential endowments are not many-— are
distinguished and their varieties carefully scheduled, to
gain an insight into their specific functions, if possible, a
control and direction thereof to our set purposes. In all
these respects men differ by dower of birth as well as by
cultivation; in respect to them each has his measure. In
all this the biological reference is not difficult to discern;
for intelligence makes the struggle for existence a battle of
wits rather than of valor and strength. Intelligence ap-
pears as resourcefulness in meeting situations, a perceptive
keenness of observation in recognizing their nature, an as-
sociative reference that is accurate and ready, a skilled
direction of response. Our psychological cunning picks the
situation to pieces and distinguishes the several con-
tributory processes converging upon the solution of the
problem [9]. Practically it does more than this; for the
issue of it all is that situations may be tried out in thought,

36 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

may be prepared for before they happen, and reflected upon
after they have occurred. The scope of experience is
vastly enlarged and the attitude toward response elabo-
rately altered. The presentative life gives way to the rep-
resentative ; the grasp of the mind spans past, present, and
future ; experience is integrated, and limitations of time and
space lose their confining restrictions. Mens agitat molem.

The intellectual traits, by reason of their varied scope and
manifold applications, are likely to be described in terms
of a special psychological aptitude, or, still more narrowly,
of a practical proficiency. The latter presents an easier
path to their examination. The processes of learning and
knowing become systematized in and through their appli-
cations. It would be a useless circumlocution to speak of
such and such mental traits as find application in mathe-
matics or in language or in engineering; it is simpler to
speak of a mathematical gift, a linguistic gift, a construc-
tive gift of this or that order. Just how far or in what
manner the qualities thus expressed overlap, or in what
directions they diverge, it is not easy to determine. In the
more general view such proficiencies whether exercised in
meeting the simpler *'play" situation of childhood, the
problem-solving attempts of primitive peoples, or our own
elaborate difficulties, are of a common nature. They de-
pend upon and express an intellectual development of one
level or another, involving the exercise in different com-
bination and emphasis, of the fundamental powers de-
veloped primarily as a biological equipment to meet simple
recurrent and urgent situations, and conveniently called
intellectual.

The further analysis of the intellectual traits leads in
one direction to their intimate psychology, and in another
to their specialized applications in the arts and occupations.
There is a limit to profitable specialization in either case.
The former pursuit occupies the technical studies of psy-
chology, particularly in its experimental phases; the psy-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 37

chological laboratory attests the recognition of its impor-
tance. Research lays bare the mechanism of perception,
memory, imagination, association, inference, in themselves
and in their support of the combined processes which they
serve, and reveals individual differences in their command.
On the practical side we cross-divide differently, noting the
diversity of aptitudes down to minute variations. In one
respect we observe a sense of detail, an aptitude for con-
struction, the power of abstraction; in another we observe
that one person is adept in the learning of languages and
another quite without facility; that one has an aptitude
for speaking and another for understanding; one for vo-
cabulary and another for construction ; one for French and
another for German; that one has a mechanical, another
an exploring, a third a ruminating type of mind. Need-
less to say that we cannot assume these variations to have
independent existence as ''faculties" in any sense. They
represent a compromise between our practical interests and
our psychological expertness. By virtue of the familiarity
of the applications of such proficiencies, we use them as tests
of capacity; their presence directs the course of psycho-
logical experiment, which by its practical conditions must
always deal with the concrete. But the collateral require-
ment is that they shall be analyzed in terms of the processes
which they embody. This is not an easy task ; the element
sought is a general process or type of mental procedure;
the test applied measures a specific familiarity. In reach-
ing conclusions there is no other resource to depend upon
than a critical insight and the offset of one result by an-
other. Similarly from the point of view of occupation, we
may find it of practical importance to distinguish and to
detect an aptitude for banking or clerking, for manufac-
turing or trading, for advertising or organizing, but do not
suppose that these represent either divergent or independ-
ent proficiencies. In so far as these applied proficiencies
determine the course of study, the analytical psychologist,

38 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

while not wholly retiring, is ready to give way to the prac-
ticing psychologist — the vocational psychologist — as soon
as he appears to claim his own.

Yet another mode of combination of process and applica-
tion finds its embodiment in the vocabulary of traits. Such
terms as '' common sense," ''originality," "shrewdness,"
"foresight," indicate the selection of a common factor in
a recurrent situation differing constantly in detail but true
to its type, and a certain generalized proficiency in meeting
such situations; this constitutes, or at least designates the
trait, whether applied to one set of problems or occupations
or another. In such a term as "judgment" we have both
usages: that of process and application. The psychologist
applies it to a special process in reasoning; the quality is
practically rated as poise, as a balance in weighing the
pros and cons of impulse or policy. Naturally all these
proficiencies and the traits which they embody may be ex-
pressed at different levels of complication, applied to the
large or to the small concerns which a complex society re-
quires for its maintenance. They are here introduced only
to indicate how qualities ordinarily recognized are circum-
scribed by the circumstances growing out of the natural his-
tory of the mind. The difficulty of defining a trait results
inevitably from the criss-cross of influences that affect its
course, and from the consequent varieties of its embodiment
and appreciation that different interests develop.

To trace the several levels from low to high at which
the human traits thus founded and conditioned find ex-
pression in securing a partial control of natural forces and
materials, in shaping the organization and the management
of affairs, in developing an insight into relations of cause
and effect, would require nothing less than an outline of
the story of intellectual achievement and the culture-history
of mankind. Civilization represents the diversified issue of
the play and sway of human qualities of low or high de-
gree ; it represents compositely the issues of the productive

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 89

traits of human nature that combine with and modify
profoundly the functions intellectual; for it is the latter
that in developed stages assume the directive role. No less
would an account of the step-by-step advances by which the
naive mentality of the child grows to the mature wisdom
of the adult reflect the levels of operation of the intelli-
gence; it would show how the standards of belief, of evi-
dence, of explanation and interpretation that satisfy,
change with mental growth; the scope of memory, the
profit of experience, the curb of the imagination, the con-
trol of desire, proceed through the ages of man as the
mind matures to its adult stature. Vast as may be the ul-
timate achievements — like a great literature — the elements
of which it is built are — ^like an alphabet — relatively sim-
ple. In this sense the whole of life is an educative process
and an educational product. Within its course it is often
of moment to distinguish between the growth in strength
and control of the intellectual processes — which we may
call wisdom — and the larger acquaintance with the data to
which they are applied — which we may call learning.
With either notably in defect, there appears ignorance or
folly — not the same, though akin. A firm grasp of simple
situations secures adjustment ; a groping, uncertain man-
agement of large enterprises invites failure. Situations de-
manding intellectual solutions vary considerably as the data
to be assembled and coordinated are more concrete or more
abstract. The former find reenforcement through sensory
impression; the latter depend upon construction in terms
of intangible ideas and elusive concepts. The former is as-
sociated more particularly with executive skill and the man-
agement of men or affairs; the latter with the exploring
and pioneering ventures in ideas and principles. But as
we leave these differentiations of intellectual quality, it is
well again to recall that the individual combines and * ' com-
promises" the several orders of proficiency which an
analytical interest distinguishes. Viewed psychologically.

40 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

individuals — particularly notable ones — are marked in
character as in achievement by the emphasis of their quali-
ties, some becoming predominantly men of thought, others
men of feeling, and others men of action. All, great and
small, exercise and express the composite grouping of the
complex but common elements of human nature.

By carrying the conception of levels of expression back-
ward instead of forward, we reach the types of function
which are regulated less and less by psychological considera-
tions and more and more by physiological adjustments.
Automatic action and reflex action are the current names
for such orders of responsiveness, serving primarily the
bodily rather than the mental economy. A large measure
of illumination lies in the basis supplied by these processes
for the understanding of the intellectual responses and of
their supporting traits. Common to all are the factors of
sensory distinction and motor coordination which condition
the entire intellectual life. We are sense-bound, however
we subordinate bare sensory discrimination to the high-
level elaboration in terms of which we conduct the mental
operations; and we are helpless in bringing such products
to expression except through some form of motor control.
It is true that the former has lost its simpler direct value
as a sensory clew, and has become merely a symbol to in-
dicate the abstract situations which for the most part we
encounter. Our situations are substantially intellectual
ones, yet with an imbedded sensory nucleus or core ; and the
very nature of the situations, so largely of our own making,
no less than the attitudes and sensibilities, the interpreta-
tions and insights, which we have developed for meeting
them, reflect the original schooling in the more direct inter-
course of sensory appreciation and motor control.

The relation is a parallel one and equally significant on
the side of expression. The direct simple messages of sense,
couched in natural terms, yield to the indirect elaborate
ones of artificial language. Throughout situations are ex-

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 41

ercises in reading meanings. The response, at first simple,
direct, protective, immediately serviceable, becomes intri-
cate, delicate, skillful, versatile, yet continuously significant
by virtue of the meaning that enters into and fashions the
common motor expressions that serve responses of low or
high degree. The backward extension from the intellectual
level toward the physiological emphasizes the specific ele-
ment in adjustment — as embodied in the conception of in-
stinct— which continues in some form and enters into the
content of the higher adaptations. In parallel manner it
points back to the subconscious stages, urging that impulses
are often truer than reasons, that the psychological is
broader than the explicitly conscious, that mentality is in-
herent in orders of responsiveness that have not emerged
into the reality of consideration and control. It there
bridges the intellectual and the emotional life, converging
toward the regulation of action by feeling. Within the in-
tellectual field it gives rise to the conception of intuition or
insight — a conception prone to be mystically and inconse-
quentially developed, but capable of proper inclusion in the
developmental scheme; on its expressive side it is allied
to the quality that is known as tact. The physiological
regulation stands as the lower limit of the psychological,
with the boundary broad and shifting. It is important not
only because it persists in and through all upper levels, but
equally because responses (conduct) early achieved and re-
currently exercised in early mental situations tend to lapse
back into a quasi-physiological regulation. These closely
imitate the patterns of nature, though actually second na-
ture. They constitute mental habits, the foundation for
the upper intellectual life through the automatic security
of the supporting processes. So generally do we recognize
the importance of fixed mental habits — acquired on a nat-
ural basis — that they are inevitably included in the make-up
of character. Indeed in a more intimate sense such deep-
seated habit-traits represent issues of endowment, whose ef-

42 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

f ects reach well up to the levels at which reflective con-
sideration operates. Their influence is felt rather than
traced; they enter into the complex of temperament, as an
emphasis of natural trends, born and bred in natural situa-
tions.

We have been considering the psychic products at the
different levels of expression ; we turn to certain conditions
presented by the process itself. It has been seen that the
great trunk-lines of traits spring from the provisions for
adjustment to fundamental, vital situations; and that de-
rivative traits are likewise determined by their place in
such a whole, viewed as a genetic series. The process by
which a primitive status of a trait gives way to a more com-
plex and elaborate one has not received an accredited name ;
it may be referred to as the "overlay" of quality. The
general conditions of its operation may be presented di-
rectly as general conclusions.

First, the original trait persists in and through its trans-
formation ; its original bearings and mode of operation are
never lost; the root vitalizes (and thus survives through)
the process at whatever level.

Second, the primitive direction or trend of the trait is de-
termined by considerations of its uses. Such use or func-
tion applies to its role in meeting a situation, to its place in
a biological order of adjustment. This aspect of the trait
at whatever level may be spoken of as its directive trend.

Third, in consequence of the evolutionary stages the trait
flnds a larger and more versatile order of expression. It
expands from the primitive situations to others allied to it,
though in standard relations departing from it but slightly
in type of service.

To illustrate these relations in detail would unduly an-
ticipate the purpose of the succeeding chapters ; their bear-
ing may be briefly suggested. By virtue of the first prin-
ciple the unity of the trait is preserved; which means that
it is not the case that an old form of adjustment disappears

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 43

and a new one takes its place, but that the old is continued
in the new with additions and transformations; not that
the infant, for example, is at first impelled toward vivid
colors by their direct psychogenetic attraction and later
replaces this by another order of preference, but that the
former physiological factor continues in the esthetic re-
actions, though overlaid and overbalanced by considera-
tions of later acquisition. It continues up to the highest
forms of color-combination, contrast, or conflict, because it
remains as a part of the basis of selection. Our tastes may
and do change ; we may find distasteful what once we liked
or accepted. Much of this is due to convention, to acquaint-
ance with other standards (for taste like everything else
takes its direction from the patterns and standards to
which it is exposed), to freedom of expression, far more
than to any real change of esthetic sensibility. The essen-
tial endowment is the original one that carries through to
the highest forms of expression; the sciences make their
appeal to specialized interests developed from a lowly and
irregular curiosity. Similarly the learning that is teach-
able depends upon the native keenness of perception that is
not; the latter persists through and conditions the former.
It finds new and more complicated fields of application but
never dispenses with the original quality. The spark
carries by virtue of the original power of discharge ; it be-
comes the flash of insight — or of inspiration, it may be, at
the highest — no differently than it bridges the gap between
conclusion and premises, between stimulus and response in
simpler situations. Owing to such persistence, emotional
antipathies retain something of the quality of physiological
aversions, and sentiments grow about a core of physiological
attraction. In social intercourse, however formal and
elaborate, may be traced the persistence of aggressive and
defensive reactions that hark back to primitive relations.
The fact that the veneer may be thin and easily worn away
exposes the persistence of the inherent grain that at all

44 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

times shows through. The principle is important when
practically applied to the emotional life in that it shows
the value of transformation, of finding new and more ap-
propriate outlets for old impulses, as against the policy of
repression or extermination. The evidence from mental
pathology illustrates not alone the tendency under lowered
control to lapse back to the persistently primitive, but at
times also the cost of blocking or thwarting the natural out-
lets of emotion.

The directive trend has been sufficiently considered in
reaching a working conception of the nature of traits. It
maintains the unity of the trait (not as the principle of per-
sistence which directly continues it) but in terms of its
function, its role, its Tendenz, its metier. It makes the com-
mon factor the type of service, both generically in the
larger psychological adjustment-mechanism and yet more
specifically in the manner of its contribution. A fair ex-
ample is offered by the emotional factor in conduct, the at-
titude that begins with attack or retreat, aggression or de-
fense, and shows this alternative trend in its most remote
issues. The facial and bodily expression retains it in the
contrast of smile and scowl, threat and caress, joy and
grief. Within the group a common directive trend affili-
ates the several varieties and contributory traits from sim-
ple emotion to complex sentiments. Thus disgust, antip-
athy, shyness, fear, dread, even awe are affiliated as
psychic dispositions to withdrawal and recoil [10]. The
principle is not always clear in its application because the
process follows the complication of product. Its bearing is
central in classification, defining a trait primarily in terms
of what it tends to accomplish or facilitate, while not neg-
lecting the instrument that it uses for the purpose.

The third factor emphasizes the milieu, indicates that
traits are bare of meaning until exercised; that in turn
from such application the trait derives its richness of qual-
ity and acquires it specifically in the order of expression

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 45

which it reaches. In fact many traits carry with them the
natural implication of their setting; yet others leave it in
doubt. Courage more naturally applies to physical valor,
but may refer to moral courage, and is no longer quite the
same trait in the latter reference; yet the evolutionary
relations of the two are close. We may properly speak of
pride as a quality and of a proud man as exhibiting it,
without stopping to specify the manner or the object of his
pride. Yet it is implied that the pride has a mode of ex-
ercise and an object. ''Purse-proud" and "vain" suggest
the expression more explicitly. The principle carries a
genetic reference, allying while yet differentiating the pride
of low from that of high degree; of child and adult, of
prince and peasant, of savage and civilized man. That
these have different objects of their pride is no more and no
less characteristic than that the pride displayed is a variant
order of psychic expression. What is true of pride is
equally, though differently, true of shrewdness. The prin-
ciple emphasizes the unity and continuity throughout the
series of the common functional response and of the satis-
faction which its exercise brings with it; it establishes the
conception of a trait in accord with a functional psychology.
Turning to another aspect of these principles, we note
their common reference to the process of transformation
of traits in the evolutionary series, to the common circum-
stances attaching to the trait and its expression. As a fur-
ther consequence, our several characters expressive of such
traits present a considerable community amid diversity.
Our personalities individually and collectively illustrate the
persistence of the original trend and value — the nucleus — of
the trait ; the original mode of appeal and of operation re-
mains and functions as a part of persistent and common na-
ture. But in the mode of exercise of our traits, the direc-
tive trend — the application — reflects equally the largely
parallel conditions to which they and we are subject. We
become complex as individuals through the growing com-

46 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

plexity of situations which we both meet and create, but
become similarly complex withal ; each of the several large
components of our psychic nature continues to serve about
the same range of functions, to develop comparable modes
and degrees of elaboration. It becomes largely a matter
of the perspective and of the detailed nature of our in-
terests whether the communities or the divergences are the
more striking. There can be no doubt that the influence of
largest scope in thus maintaining our traits and their exer-
cise in like orders of expression is the social and institu-
tional environment. A membership in a given people or
nation or community at a certain stage of its development
becomes the largest determinant of the manner of expres-
sion of one 's traits. This fact is so important as a principle
that it merits illustration at this juncture. It will serve to
set in clearer relief how the environment acts upon the raw
material of the common inheritance.

If a Kaffir infant were to be adopted by American foster-
parents and given an American education, the entire set
of objects and occupations upon which he would exercise
his endowment would be of a strikingly different content
and range than would have been the case had he remained
among his own people. We need not go so far as to
eliminate wholly the influence of race by assuming that he
would become indistinguishable from an American of ac-
credited ancestry, nor assume that the American infant
transferred to the Kaffir environment inevitably would re-
main at the average level of Kaffir culture. That the or-
ders and levels of expression of their several traits would
be enormously altered by an interchange of institutional
and social environment is clear, and for illustration de-
cisive. In corroboration we have only to observe how
rapidly the amalgamation of peoples of divergent origin —
the Americanization of foreigners — proceeds; how quickly,
though partially, they enter upon the national heritage;
how comprehensively they express their traits through the

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 47

American medium, in the American manner, and direct
them to the objects of pursuit current and prized in Ameri-
can civilization. By a still more subtle and delicate proc-
ess, the American child grows to be American in character,
and the French child French, and the German child Ger-
man, while yet their social status and opportunities are so
largely the same. The perspective of value of the com-
mon elements in their overlapping pursuits remains dis-
tinct and divergent in their mature characters. Ad-
mittedly the contrast is of a more refined order, but no less
illustrates how the milieu leaves its impress upon the order
of expression of traits. Similarly we do not suppose that
had an individual of about our psj^chic nature and endow-
ment been born in Italy in the fifteenth century, he would
have been substantially different from the men of that time
and community. His social environment then as now would
determine his career and the divergent scope of expression
of traits in themselves (assumed to be) comparable. These
illustrations enforce the importance of the environmental
factor in securing apparent and real community and di-
vergence of traits, particularly in their mode and level of
expression. Their pertinence for the moment relates to
the part that they play in the transformation of traits, and
consequently in the natural history of character.

In the process of the elaboration of traits, which forms
the focus of consideration, several varieties of procedure
enter. To one of these there attaches a special importance ;
it may be known as the principle of transfer of service or of
application. The most direct application relates to the
transfer from the physical to the mental, the literal to the
figurative. The clew of expression is significant: we ex-
press by the signs of pain the emotions of grief, and by the
signs of the welcome accorded to physically pleasant sense-
stimulations the varieties of joy, though we cultivate the
psychic expressions to a far more elaborate and refined de-
gree than is possible or necessary for the original type.

48 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Similarly moral punishment replaces physical punishment,
and social preferment and honors and dignity are as effec-
tive as material prizes, and more so. In the higher stages
of such transfer the operation continues by extending as
well as transferring the personal and social value of one
order of responsiveness to others ; the trait changes both in
nature and value; the transfer is from what is in itself a
derivative yet early situation to other more derivative and
more complex fields of operation. [11] An apt illustration
is found in the important trait that makes us sensitive to
the esteem of others. We like to be well thought of, and
through such expression on the part of others, we receive
a welcome stimulation of our self-esteem; the varieties of
self-esteem in their upper level extend the trait and its
expressions. Self-esteem can be only socially maintained.
A prominent and early, though probably not original, as-
pect of this trait is aroused by the relations of courtship
and is still exercised (another example of persistence) with
a peculiar zest and flavor in that or its derivative situations.
Men react to the compliments and flatteries of women, and
women to the attentions of men, quite differently than to
similar tributes from their own sex. The sensitiveness to
esteem was, if not born, at least matured and intensified in
a sex relation, but has been transferred to other relations,
where it confers a general sensitiveness to the esteem of
others, and becomes a social force of the first magnitude,
naturally not in itself alone but in common with other
forces that have undergone a similar transformation in
their high-level expressions. The sensitiveness to esteem
thus transferred enters into a variety of sentiments, affects
the code of behavior and etiquette, the conception of honor
and fame, and all the varied insignia of worth and station
by which society seeks to express its rating of men. The
subtle intrusion or re-introduction of the parent (or foster-
parent) quality of the trait in undertakings apparently
foreign to its nature is suggestive. The knight-errant

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 49

sought adventure and displayed prowess as a tribute to
his lady love; the bull-fighter elevates what might readily
assume the appearance of butchery to an act of chivalry
by dedicating the doomed animal to a chosen dame; and
the flower of the land assemble to witness the exhibition of
prowess. When an author dedicates his book or the sports-
man names his yacht or his horse in honor of one esteemed,
the token of regard has a different flavor when the recipient
of the honor is of the opposite sex. The token of esteem, re-
flecting its transformed quality as a general ' ' social ' ' atten-
tion, returns to its earlier sphere, and assumes the composite
quality of both sources. The transfers of traits in their
applications may be mutual — an interaction and reciprocal
influence; traits acquire their finer varieties through such
blending and composite application — a process limited to
high levels of expression. Such a complex sentiment as
honor, which reflects the complexity of the acquired sensi-
tiveness to shades and grades of insult, slight, and disre-
gard, owes its subtlety and complexity to its derivation from
a variety of sources. In complex individuals honor touch-
ing the relations of courtship is of one kind ; touching one 's
debts or business dealings or promise or reputation, yet an-
other. The duel may have originally been a contest in the
form of a challenge for a lady 's hand ; so considering it, we
can readily see how it may be transferred to all contentions,
even to the journalistic thrusts of Parisian critics. The
evolution of traits through transformation and transfer
does not stop here; its further course will be considered
later.

Inasmuch as the principle takes on a distinctive aspect
with each particular application, it may be well to add an-
other example. The trait called *' curiosity" will serve.
Its origin may plausibly be placed in the alertness to nat-
ural situations — a power of observation — vital in the pur-
suit of food, the contest much sharpened by the fact that
the quarry presented a psychology of its own. Such

50 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

proficiencies as wood-lore and hunting shrewdness approach
the primitive type of the quality. When transferred it be-
comes an interest and an occupation in problems for their
own sake — an inquisitive bent and an inferential habit. A
notable and widespread product thereof appears in the
game, the riddle, the puzzle — the occupation of the mind
with something to solve; incidentally and negatively, it il-
lustrates the displeasure of mental vacuity. The ingenuity
in inventing situations and the diversity of outcome — as in
the game of chess — ^become absorbing mental interests, in
which another vital factor, that of defeating an adversary,
is not absent, though it may be represented by nothing more
tangible than a score ; for this factor, likewise, is a transfer
from combat to friendly sport. Similarly the emotional
trait developed in the same situation which we call "being
a good sport, *' has a natural history by virtue of which it
retains a place in the composite of character. The original
quality, combining curiosity with ingenuity in natural sit-
uations, developed more specifically into an artificial con-
test of intellectual shrewdness. Even in primitive society
the wise man was honored as well as the hero of exploit,
and the solver of profound riddles as well as the performer
of arduous labors, as classic myth records — recording also
that by either method have fair ladies been won. Applied
in other ways, the specialized intellectual acuteness gave
rise to science. Men study, explore, experiment, record, in
field and laboratory, because in the primitive situations of
life, the qualities thus exercised^ — however extended, re-
fined, transferred, in later pursuits — had a part to play.
The product is never the issue of a single or simple root;
the complexity of the product often appears as the mixed
motives in our present pursuits, reflecting compositely the
original types of situations. Thus curiosity and daring
both enter into ventures, possibly allied with the spirit of ro-
mance, as the plots of popular novels illustrate. It is or was
a favorite discussion whether polar expeditions were more in

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 51

the nature of sporting or of scientific ventures, whether the
mantle of science was thrown about them to confer a more
accredited type of glory. The traits to which the venture
appeals may well be complex ; and the popular approbation
will ever reflect the type that has an early and strong place
in the evolution of human nature. The discovery of ra-
dium or the invention of quaternions may well require the
rarer gifts, but does not evoke the like applause of men.
Such applause goes out to achievements more allied to the
situations in which the qualities concerned arose, to quali-
ties in such situations more readily appreciated. The
principle of transfer obtains, but the transferred exploit
does not carry with it the intense and direct qualities at-
taching to the nearer-to-nature situations. It thus appears
that traits become complex by complication of condition;
such condition, however, is itself matured in the process of
following the lead of the more developed, specialized and
refined traits. The trait changes in regard to the range of
the pursuits which bring it satisfaction, and concomitantly
in the nature of the satisfaction itself.

A further and all-inclusive transformation that affects
the life-history of traits and conditions their high-level
evolution is their absorption and formulation — explicit or
implicit — into a system. The most readily described of
such systems is that of the several intricate orders of senti-
ment which the social organization evolves for its own pro-
tection, but is capable of evolving only because they have
a hold upon, and a place in individual character. The sen-
timent of honor is a subtle, complicated and variable re-
straining influence to adapt the individual impulses to
social ends, and equally to maintain the individual ef-
ficiently and fairly in the protecting social organization.
In such service the sentiment of honor does not stand alone
but combines with other sentiments — such as those of jus-
tice, tolerance, reasonableness, truthfulness, chivalry, loy-
alty to clan or country — ^which have similarly crystallized

52 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

into a system of attitude, belief, principle, and faith — all
vitalized and maintained by the emotional warmth carried
over from the earlier stages of their common development.
Such systems are significant in that they concentrate and
harmonize the several contributory motives of action and
attitude — esthetic, intellectual, moral, spiritual — and carry
them jointly to their highest consummation. Their nature
changes as they express more dominantly the one or the
other factor in their composition and support, their source
and natural history; and these are the varieties that give
distinction to the social products of different civilizations.
The sentiment of honor changes from class to class, from
age to age, from country to country, because of the varied
emphasis of one factor or another in its social expression
and more or less conscious formulation. Custom, practice,
convention, tradition, are the more objective deposits and
records of such systems of sentiment; and institutions and
measures are the means adopted by society for their safe-
guarding. Clusters of systems within systems cumulate
and interact, and together constitute the social-psychological
environment.

That this play of influences is primarily a psychological
one will be abundantly illustrated in later considerations.
There is, however, one special aspect of this aggregate
transformation that brings forward its inner foundation
and warrants a specific term. The term adopted, though of
general application, has a special relation to certain abnor-
mal developments of mind. In such a system of delusions
as that of " persecution, ' ' the victim absorbs all experience
through the medium of his dominant motive and convic-
tion. He is convinced that every act and incident, every
attitude and approach, is significant as the expression of
a widespread social hostility aimed at his discomfiture and
undoing. He cunningly orders his regimen and his be-
havior to thwart these imaginary and insidious plottings;
and his thought and his brooding rarely depart from the

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 53

contemplation of his unfortunate state. Objective interests
and occupations are unable to maintain themselves against
the absorbing demand and insistent presence of the dan-
gers that surround him. That, objectively considered, the
situation is fictitious, the conspiracy imaginary, and the
precautions needless and absurd, has slight bearing upon
the reality of the fact that the "system" exists vividly and
vitally for his mind. He is laboring under the delusion
of a ^^ complex" of persecution and suspicion. The sub-
jective view of the * 'system" is a '^complex" in this sense.
If we extend the term to include the normal exercise of the
body of sentiments, motives, appreciations, reasons, which
guide and pervade attitude and conduct, we reach a very
useful formulation of the ultimate expression of traits of
character modified by situations. The case of Hamlet, the
case of (EdipuSy becomes a "complex," and a more or less
typical one in the composition of character and the vicis-
situdes of experience. The intermediate ground is also
well occupied; and in it fanaticism, asceticism, overween-
ing and vainglorious self-assertion (megalomania) as well
as Quixotic enthusiasm find their varied representation.
The least as well as the greatest of us expresses his per-
sonality, his allegiance to the dominance of traits central
in human evolution, in a "complex" which summarizes
the perspective of impulses and of values in his socialized,
systematized responsiveness.

A consequence of this complexity of development is the
difficulty of unraveling the thread once the web has been
spun. The difficulty may be somewhat too simply indicated
as that of determining the trait or the traits from the man-
ner of their expression, at times of distinguishing the one
from the other. But the actual problem is far from simple.
There is the general underlying fact that comparable sys-
tems of regulation are differently composed; that different
formulae of combination arise from substantially similar in-
gredient traits. And yet despite these inherent perplexi-

54 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ties the standard situations and the standard endowments
brinof about standard relations of character, standard
ranges of temperamental endowment. The difficulty that
must be more specifically faced is of a somewhat different
nature; it is the consideration that capacity must be in-
ferred from achievement, and quality of endowment from
its quality; motive from action, and trait from expression.
There is the further fact that what reaches expression is
not any trait in its purity, but the resultant of interactions
of mutually supporting, modifying, or antagonizing traits.
Expression thus becomes the indispensable and yet the
perplexing index of quality — the seal as well as the key of
the record of original and acquired nature. The formula
of completed conduct contains several constants and vari-
ables; with the failure of one or another term the whole
issue lapses or is altered. It may be that a combination
of traits is necessary to action; in the lack of either the
other fails. Failure may be due to incapacity or to lack
of desire, reasons, or impulses; hence the common misun-
derstandings of unsympathetic natures. Furthermore, like
traits are directed to unlike objects, and like stimuli arouse
to responsiveness unlike traits. If we inquire whether
primitive peoples have a sense of shame, or of honesty, or of
self-restraint comparable to our own qualities, we are likely
to go astray in our conclusions unless we discover the situa-
tions in their lives in which such traits are likely to be ex-
pressed— unless we enter as best we can into the complex
of their psychology, the spirit of their attitudes, and in-
terpret action and motive, achievement and capacity, traits
and their expression in their mutual relation. Even with
far slighter divergences of training and outlook than obtain
between savage and civilized man, the interpretation is be-
set with uncertainty; and the practical approaches of men
are fraught with danger of constant misapprehension.
These inherent difficulties of the pursuit will go far to
excuse the vagueness and uncertainty of the presentations.

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 55

Their presence affects all further considerations; they are
here pertinent in that the source of the difficulty of in-
terpretation is itself an issue of the relations that must be
analyzed and considered in a scientific approach to the
problem.

It has become apparent that two dominant attitudes ob-
tain toward the traits of human nature: that of under-
standing their source and relations, and that of appraising
their value in the practical life. At some stage in the de-
velopment of the argument, the point of view must shift
from aiialysis to value. There is constant danger of the
intrusion of the latter upon the former; yet it is fair to
observe that the appraisal of human quality is not foreign
to the discovery of sources and relations. It is evident
that use and application themselves condition the manner
of complication. In the main the two interests diverge,
while yet they correct one another. What is focal in the
one consideration is remote from the other, and vice
versa; their perspectives are different. The present essay
is devoted to the problems of analysis. It would be ap-
propriate to follow it by a similar consideration of the
values of traits as demanded and exercised in the situations
of present-day life.

The appraisal of quality becomes in practice the attempt
to direct it to desired ends and purposes. Such ends are
embodied in the organization of society, and lead directly
to standards and ideals that control conduct and the train-
ing of character; these in turn are matured and developed
as systems of principles and influences, acting practically
as social forces. The two most prominent of such sys-
tematized ideals are those introduced by morality, enforc-
ing the distinction of right and wrong, and by the allied
purpose of education enforcing the desirable and the sanc-
tioned in the mode of life, and the differentiations of truth
and error. Traits are thus encouraged or suppressed, fos-
tered or eliminated by attaching to them profit and honor

56 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

(or their opposites) as values. The method is that of na-
ture herself ; for nature selects and stamps in or weeds out
by attachment of value. The distinction is mainly between
values in terms of the natural and of the artificial environ-
ment. To a large extent the latter is an unfoldment while
yet a transformation of the former. In the process the
modifiability of traits, later the plasticity of character, is
a factor of peculiar moment upon which the environmental
influences play, without which qualities would be too defi-
nitely stereotyped and adaptation retarded. In the course
of civilization ideals change, and with them the direction
and stress of training. The sanctioned ranges of conduct
reflecting the divergences of ideals and standards which
determine them, are under different systems of civilization
surprisingly different. Even in the intellectual domain it
is found that arguments which carry conviction under one
system of thought and belief are quite ineffective under an-
other— the two closely related historically. The reconstruc-
tion of values which results from the process and progress
of culture indicates that value in the higher reaches is both
an uncertain and a relative term. Remembering this and
remembering also that the practical trend of traits forms
part of their nature, we observe that we both analyze and
appraise according to the parts that traits play in minister-
ing to purpose; it is only as artificial ends replace natural
function, that we are forced to assume the educational at-
titude and make our goal the training of character. It is
the aim of the diagnostic study of character and tempera-
ment to restore the proper perspective by interpreting the
entire range of the psychical equipment, and thus giving to
the word ''practical" a broader meaning and a larger wis-
dom. The longest way round may be the shortest path to
the goal, both in the natural and in the artificial life [12] .
Indirection and complication are inherent, when once the
immediate stress of urgent need is overcome. A superficial
practicality must be offset by a far-sighted wisdom or give

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH 57

way to the intermediate outlook of prudence; the value of
human traits justifies the most painstaking inquiry into
their sources.

The practical aspect of character dominated by the at-
tachment of value confers an illumination upon every stage
of the pursuit. It shows that human nature is ever set in
circumstance, and makes the study of circumstance the spe-
cial object of investigation. The most comprehensive con-
sideration is that which summarizes to what extent man has
developed the environment that shapes his ends. The in-
sistence that human nature is ever the same, is but an em-
phasis that the original traits persist despite the modifying
influences of circumstances; therein we recognize the com-
munity of traits. Yet human nature forms the sole ma-
terial for the medium of control of traits, which we call
education, and which constitutes the practical problem for
each generation. The profit of experience, the pursuit of
ideals, the formation of standards are all examples of the
changes of human nature. The variability and the ver-
satility of human nature are all that we have to work upon,
all that we have to work with. It is this plasticity and its
limitations that set the problem and offer the resources
upon which the reformer must rely. That in this pursuit
a knowledge of first principles may serve as a compass for
whatever goal may be set by one venture or another is the
fundamental conviction that guides the course, the approach
to which has been traversed.

CHAPTER II

THE SENSIBILITIES

A SURVEY of the qualities conditioned by sensibility [1]
offers a favorable introduction to the study of the sources
of our common psychology. Sensibility depends directly
upon nervous organization ; it represents the primitive form
of reaction of living organisms. The process within the
nervous structure may be pictured as a wave of irritation
flowing through organized protoplasm and disturbing its
equilibrium, which, through the removal of the irritation
or by motor readjustment, is again restored ; or, it may be,
a favorable excitement emerging above the even flow of
the physiological or psychological stream of which life con-
sists. The process presents two varieties: the one is re-
sponsive to stimuli from within the body and regulates the
bodily economy ; the other responds to forces playing upon
the organism from without and regulates worldly inter-
course. The inwardly directed response develops charac-
teristically to the status of feeling spreading to emotion.
The outwardly directed response reflects the environment;
the adjustment to the physical forces of nature conditions
the avenues and expressions of the mental life. From the
beginning sensation reports the be .lly needs and their satis-
faction; the developed senses serve as alert sentinels of the
mind ; in both aspects they guide the living and moving in
which we have our being. Primarily the sensory routes
determine the highways of the mind's journeyings. In
common with other organisms man develops a responsive-
ness to such of the forms of energy that play in the world
about him as it profits him to notice. He is assailed through
eye and ear and skin and nose by a medley of impressions,

58

THE SENSIBILITIES 59

which, as they yield to analysis, are interpreted as signs of
situations bearing upon his welfare. Certain situations,
because of the satisfactions which they bring to and through
his nervous system, he seeks; and others by reason of their
opposite effect, he avoids. He seeks and avoids because he
feels and distinguishes. Action is guided by sensibility;
feeling underlies conduct.

The contrast of function between the inwardly and the
outwardly directed sense-feelings points to the organic and
the special-sense roots of the sensibilities. These mature to
different service, yield a divergent yet allied range of
quality. The composite function of each developed sense
carries the qualities of both sources. Organic sense-feel-
ings may be specific, like hunger or thirst, with specific
modes of satisfaction ; or they may be more or less generic,
vague, massive, like fatigue, nervous tension, nausea,
malaise. These, as disturbing, yield to gradual relief;
other varieties, more constant and positive in type, con-
tribute to and merge with the tone of responsiveness, with
the quality of feeling [2] as a stimulus to motor expression.
The impeding, thwarting orders of *' feeling" are more
marked and extensive than the furthering varieties; the
negative toning is more pervasive and explicit than the
positive. Pains are naturally assertive; but the normal
state is a moderate, adjusted well-being or euphoria. Such
normal experiences, conveying the milder organic pleas-
ures of positive tone or the fairly neutral sense of adjust-
ment, support the constructive service of the sensibilities.
Positive and negative organic feelings contribute jointly to
the general affective (emotional) course; but whether or-
ganic and body-informing, or sensory and world-informing,
the feelings regulate reactions : we respond only to what we
feel or perceive.

The special senses are specialized toward distinction, yet
carry the original affective factor along, or are carried by
it. The affective element varies widely in kind and degree ;

60 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

it persists even in the senses of sight and hearing, which have
traveled farthest from the organic type. The principle of
overstimulation accounts for a limited but significant range
of sensory distress; it indicates why blinding lights and
deafening sounds are painful; why also, though less in-
tensely, such maladaptations as flickering flames and
*' beating" tones are unpleasant. Both violate the natural
and favorable mode of functioning. The displeasure of
harsh discords and garish color-combinations presumably in-
volves kindred infractions of slighter and subtler play;
their mode of operation reaches over to the derivative
sphere of esthetics. The stimuli acting upon taste and
smell convey no less distinctive information, yet function
predominantly as direct ''feelings"; as such they yield a
not inconsiderable variety of attractive or repugnant im-
pressions. Yet the pain-pleasure quality in odors, flavors,
tastes, is not a simple or pure response to functional ex-
citation, but shows esthetic complication, though of a primi-
tive, organic order. The remaining field of touch and
movement — the pains and pleasures of the skin and tissues
and of the muscular (including glandular) functions — is
rich in organic quality ; is, indeed, the reference-map of the
ills that flesh is heir to. The categories of pains par-
ticularly are described in tactile and motor terms : burning,
pressing, pinching, pricking, itching, straining, stretching.
The vast areas of tissue exposed to outer contact and to
inner stimulation offer an equal area of potential pain.
The principle of overstimulation applies; in terms of tem-
perature, things too hot or too cold hurt — that is, pain and
harm. The principle of maladapted stimulation may ac-
count for the disagreeableness of the ''feel" of sandpaper
or of chalk. The positive phase of the esthetics of touch
and movement is recognized in the demand that knobs, han-
dles, and feelable surfaces shall be smooth, or that the
luxury of silk and velvet shall have a tactile as well as a
visual token [3].

THE SENSIBILITIES 61

The more prominent citation of the pains than of the
pleasures of organic sensibility and of the allied ingredients
in the special senses, is due to their readier illustration of
the principles of service. Displeasures, gross or fine, pro-
nounced or slight, arise from interferences with natural
function, constitute minor vital drains or losses; the state
of neutral equilibrium or bare indifference implies their
avoidance. Such a zero is largely an abstraction; adjust-
ment is a positive rather than a negative condition, and in-
volves a more or less advantageous set or balance of func-
tion. The lesser, derivative, furthering varieties of stimuli
bring their contributions constantly though unobtrusively;
they form the minor vital profits. Both support the argu-
ment for a physiological esthetics, yet present the esthetic
reaction and its far-reaching issues as a complex super-
structure in which the foundations are commonly concealed
or disguised.

For human quality these relations are fundamental.
They indicate that the psychic life of each of us is expressed
by the sum of his sensibilities, by the aggregate of the re-
actions that confer pleasure or pain, by the system of vital-
ized responsiveness through which adjustment is sought and
found. To curtail the range of sensibilities is to restrict
and impair psychic vitality. The deprivation of a sense,
carrying with it the sensibilities based upon it, is more than
a loss of convenience as a guide to situations; it is an ex-
clusion from a share of the world of the affective life. For
the moment questions of value are premature ; whether the
valued quality lies in the sense or in what we build upon it
is important only in that it emphasizes that a given de-
velopment of sensibility is not conferred without effort by
the mere presence of the sense that conditions it. Many
who have eyes to see are almost immune to the esthetics of
color and form [4] ; but obviously, the blind, however tem-
peramentally endowed, are cut off from this heritage ir-
retrievably.

62 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

The maturing of the range of sensibilities as the issues
of sense is the central theme; its pursuit proceeds upon
the natural history of the senses. A matured special
sense, acting through the specific feelings which it arouses,
may be regarded as a device of nature for making the or-
ganism definitely and profitably responsive to pertinent
happenings in the environment — to noises and colors and
forms and odors and movements. The feelings aroused in
the more primitive phases of such responsiveness lead to
pleasures that attract and pains that deter, and in more
developed phases to the esthetic satisfactions and aversions.
But the leading factor of the response is directed outwardly
to the situation in quest of recognition by way of distinction
— the what and where and how of the intellect — the knowl-
edge that is power. The primary condition of sensibility
for distinction lies in the nervous organization. Cases of
gross defect are convincing but not illuminating; the blind
see not and the deaf hear not; and their mental develop-
ment is not only handicapped but is deprived of its full
consummation. More suggestive is the fact that some per-
sons with seemingly normal vision prove on examination to
be color-blind; and that others properly responsive to
sounds are obtuse in the distinctions of the musical scale;
they are moderately tone-deaf. This inherent deficiency de-
pends upon some minute abnormality of the sense-ap-
paratus. We cannot specify it, but are convinced of its
existence through its psychological revelation; such imper-
fection of knowledge is typical of the relation of mental
qualities to '^nervous" condition. If we substitute for
defect the minor variations within the normal range, we
reach the familiar individual differences of sensibility which
apply, though not in the same terms, to esthetic and to in-
tellectual distinction and enter into the personal equations
of our natures. Persons gifted with a delicate musical ear
are sensitive to fine distinctions, to tones out of tune, to
discords and subtle deviations in shades and grades of

THE SENSIBILITIES 6^

harmony, that wholly escape those of modest musical ca-
pacity. The condition implies an innate difference of nerv-
ous organization, indefinitely minute and defying precise
detection, but real, and for quality decisive. The potential
musician requires more than average tone-sensibility. Like-
wise there are those (not color-blind, for this is a specific
type of defect) whose color sensibility is subnormal, who
perceive the coarser color-distinctions adequately, but for
whom delicate blend and play of contrast and gradation of
values are non-existent. It is important for the sequel to
recognize such nature-set barriers of the nervous organiza-
tion. The artist in color or tones, yet more literally than
the poet, is born and not made ; for all alike, training has* a
distinct service to perform. Many an insensitiveness to
distinctions — to intellectual ones especially — ^yields to an
improved attention to their alphabet, to an increased in-
terest in their message. Promotion from one class to an-
other, and elevation as well as direction of sensibility are
vastly facilitated by education. Yet fundamentally the
status of individual sensibility is conditioned within fairly
rigid limits by organic structure and function. We find
rather than make our sensibilities ; but we cultivate them to
our great benefit, and particularly so as we leave the pro-
ficiencies most closely bound to sense, and approach those
subject to the complications of other ranges of endowment.
We have not yet adequately disposed of the reactions
within the organism in terms of which impressions are
registered. These are the psychological first-things in con-
sciousness; their direct function lies in their feeling- value
as pain or pleasure. The grosser, more organic pains in-
volve direct injury, interference with function, lowering of
vitality ; the pleasures accompany relief 'of needs, satisfac-
tion of impulses, exercise and furtherance of functions.
But attraction and repulsion are neither absolute nor of one
order; grades and shades of invitation or recoil develop.
Enhancements of sense-pleasure and complications of sense-

64 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

pain appear in manifold variety, of moderate degree;
they modify and accompany sense distinction, and af-
fect the careers of the sensibilities. In principle both
orders of effect — feeling-value and knowledge-value —
are attached to every variety of sense-impression, but
this actually in very different degree. In some sensory
qualities (taste, smell, even, in part, color) the feeling-
value predominates, and the knowledge-value remains slight
or undeveloped; in others (forms, the sounds of words) the
reverse relation holds, and the feeling-value is submerged,
transformed, or detached. The intermediate status is com-
mon, with the two orders presenting separate contributions
blended in a common impression.

The sense of smell affords an instructive illustration: it
shows strong, positive, quasi-organic reactions of attrac-
tion and repugnance. The significant quality of an odor
is its agreeableness or disagreeableness. In terms of func-
tion it incites to and directs action without recourse to the
by-paths of knowledge. From the blossom's lure to the in-
sect, to the mating instincts of high and low degree and the
subtler attractions and aversions of sex and race in human
kind, it ministers mainly to an organic service through spe-
cialized sensibility [5] . Considered in the regulation of ap-
petite, the nose protects and guides, accepts and rejects by
verdicts of agreeableness and disagreeableness, variable yet
not capricious, subject to habit and condition and idiosyn-
crasy, yet normally holding to its types and serviceable to
primary needs. Throughout it is capable of cultivation, is
prone to assume a modest esthetic bearing, and thus re-
fined, to yield a delicate index of preference, while in its
course it advances also in the realm of distinction. Its
feeling-tone remaifis strong; its affiliation remains closer to
the emotional than to the intellectual qualities. Its status
is near to sense. To express this quality we specialize the
neutral ** sensory" to the more explicit "sensuous," or with
closer reference to the organic pleasures, ''sensual" — a

THE SENSIBILITIES 65

term attaining its most salient application in the sensory
gratifications of sex [6]. In this field individual differ-
ences are directive; natures disposed to strong sensory re-
actions will inevitably shape their lives differently, de-
velop a different perspective of qualities from those of na-
tures weakly endowed in this direction. The sensory re-
actions thus conditioned determine inclinations, which ma-
ture as phases of character. As a group-trait, favored by a
common nurture as well as nature, they may present the
contrast of the richer, more joyous responsiveness of sunny
climes and luxuriant environment, with the colder reserve,
the harsher condition of less hospitable lands, as well as of
the different traditions and standards thus fostered. Con-
sidered individually a strong sensory responsiveness in the
primary realm of the * ' food ' ' situation may incline to the
coarser satisfactions of appetite — after the manner of the
glutton, the gourmand — or, if otherwise supported, to the
refined appreciation and special sensitiveness to flavors and
savors, characteristic of the epicure — the gourmet. Psy-
chologically the artist in tastes and aromas is exercising a
function comparable to that of the artist in color or tones.
The esthetic rating of the art, and, by implication, its
ethical status may be markedly different in the two cases;
the psychological evolution is similar. The reason why
the pleasures of eye and ear are held above those of the
palate concerns the different ranges of quality which they
serve ; this in turn, harks back to the zest and service of the
primitive sensory stimulation. Similarly the disposition
toward the satisfactions of the life of sex profoundly affects
the tone and order of living directly and indirectly, and
demands large regulation through counteracting qualities
of character.

The principle of the inverse relation between the feeling-
value and the knowledge-value of sensory service is im-
portant. The closer the connection with the primitive or-
ganic needs, the more restricted remains the eventual in-

66 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tellectual range. It is because what we see and hear — in
contrast to what we taste and smell — affects the slighter
profits and losses of bodily feeling less directly and less
decidedly, that sight and hearing become available for the
higher, less use-full service. The predominantly or ob-
trusively useful senses are too limited in range, too closely
bound in indispensable function, to yield the freer and
more versatile type of responsiveness requisite to the higher
calling. They must in a measure be released from the one
service to qualify for the other. Despite easy gradations
between them, needs and luxuries are opposed. For this
developed, complicated, overlaid order of sensory quality,
we require a specific word, and find it by an appropriate
return to the Greek esthetic. The esthetic responses are
distinctive and momentous for the development of the sen-
sibilities toward the psychology of endowment.

Proceeding to selected details drawn on a larger scale,
we recall that the constant issue of responsiveness is con-
duct ; we feel and perceive differently that we may act dif-
ferently, or be disposed differently toward action. If feel-
ing and action are joined in a quasi-organic bond whereby
the instinctive feeling passes over effectively to impulsive
action, the end is accomplished. But even at the lower
stages distinction supplements feeling in a fusion of im-
pressions; recognition accompanies, quickens, and de-
fines responsiveness on the way to becoming the condition
thereof. What we see or feel or taste mingles with the how
of the impression; we recognize as we shrink or approach,
are attracted or repelled. The discrimination itself be-
comes a subtle and complex ingredient in the esthetically
guided response. At the higher levels of sensibility, the
reverse relation obtains; recognition dominates, absorbs,
and re-directs the affective factor; the esthetic element is
merged, but not lost, in a critical recognition.

The subdued, retired quality of the feeling-tone of a
sense-impression becomes a condition of its advance in in-

THE SENSIBILITIES 67

telleetual status ; it clears the way for the variety and de-
layed considerations of knowledge. The esthetic thus rises
to stages of service extending vastly beyond the mere sen-
sory. Yet, in part, colors and tones retain their original
feeling-values; some noises are physiologically intolerable;
the ''red rag to a bull" finds its analogy in the exciting or
depressing effects of color on the human sensibilities.
While the senses continue to awaken painful and pleasura-
ble feeling, and thereby give headway to action, their com-
prehensive service consists in arousing recognitions, to
which associatively aifective values are attached directly or
indirectly in endless variety. Eventually the recoil from
or attraction toward particular sensory experiences is far
more a derived than an original aversion or preference.
The complexity of sensory quality arises as the surplus and
extension and overlay of seiisihility, particularly through
its infusion with meaning. The end is ever the same — ^the
regulation of conduct; but the means of impression, the
channels of employment are various. The most profitable
route follows the interests set by the intellect, making
shorter or longer excursions among the highways and by-
ways of knowledge. Typically, the form-perceptions of the
retina — the visual situations — acquire meaning through ex-
perience and association with the reactions proper to their
appreciation and control. The meaning may be dominantly
esthetic or dominantly intellectual. The former appeals
to artistically sensitive natures ; and they more eagerly turn
to such experience because of the deeper satisfaction, the
stronger interest, the more varied responsiveness which
their nature offers for that phase of sensibility. That fun-
damentally the sensibility is conditioned by the structure
of the eye or the ear or other sense-organ will not be over-
looked ; nor will the more significant factor of the degree of
sensibility available. The common contrast is that of those
normally, those subnormally, and those supernormally
sensitive to tones, to colors, to sensory nuances, to any of the

6S CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

refinements and issues of trained sensibility. In minister-
ing to the higher psychic development, the leading senses
are sight and hearing; as between the two, the auditory
(musical and related) function involves the stronger sen-
sory dependence ; it leans more directly upon natural en-
dowment, and develops more largely, more primarily, by
the support of the inherent affective response; it makes
less explicit and less extensive excursions into the intellec-
tual domain.

In one aspect the contrast may be regarded as that of
the presentative and the representative service — the carry-
ing of a message more directly by what the sensation is
or incites, or more distinctively by what it means. In their
advanced stages sensations (reversing the original relation)
become but secondarily stimuli and are predominantly
signs or clews — signals not for bodily but for mental re-
sponse. Consequently the representative scope of a sense
goes far to determine its status in our mature "psychol-
ogy. ' ' Sight is the intellectual sense par excellence by vir-
tue of its availability as an avenue of perception. We com-
pose pictorially, associate, combine, compare, contrast, anal-
ogize and elaborate in terms of obsei'ved resemblance; we
reason in diagrams, find sermons in the appearance of
things, books in the operations of nature, and good and
bad in everything visible. The preferred material of mem-
ory and association in direct presentation is the image com-
posed of form and color. On this basis we acquire a com-
prehensive photographic sense and a system of eye-minded
experience. While the visual impression may be crudely
developed and repeatedly retouched, possibly vague and
blurred, and above all, desultory and defective, it is yet in
type graphically presentative — a sketch to recall the orig-
inal. More momentously for intellectual assimilation,
vision becomes the preferred instrument of representative
thought, not literally reproductive in temper, but at once
constructive and analytic, working with images selected

THE SENSIBILITIES 69

from situations and transferred to other situations by anal-
ogy of mental relation, by simile and metaphor.

The contribution of sight is commanding, but by no
means exclusive in this service. Moreover, it is explicit;
and this explicitness confers the largest availability of the
visual material for the abstract construction that we call
thinking. Sound and touch, smell and taste, and notably
the sense-experience of movement — alike in skill of mem-
ber and expression of muscle and exercise of vigor and
agility — all enrich the presentative aspects of the mental
life, and diversify and extend the mind's representative
excursions. Yet in the larger contrasts they occupy posi-
tions of lesser scope — ^though in part of comparable status —
than those attaching to the elaborations of the visual field.
Consistently this difference finds explanation and compen-
sation in the more direct presentative hold of sound and
gesture and touch, by virtue of which their service lies
closer to the affective nature and makes a stronger appeal
to the feelings. For sound : the plaintive voice, the cry of
distress, the sigh, the groan, the laugh, the shout, the song
of joy, the paean of triumph, the dirge, the wail ; for move-
ment: the dance, the quickening march, the stirring gal-
lop, the tragic stride, the broken step of sorrow ; for touch :
the grasp of the hand, the pat on the shoulder, the sooth-
ing stroke, the fondling caress, the kiss, the embrace — all
are infused with affective quality, express complex emo-
tional relations, yet would be meager of content and bare,
if not enriched, as is ever the case in mature imaginations,
hy representative items and associative values of visual
origin. Through such affiliation of sound and gesture and
^contact with the scene, the mimic accessories of the dra-
matic art arouse a picture or a story even in detachment
from the spoken word or appropriate setting [7], which,
if present, they supplement and support.

If we return to the sources of sensibility and view them
from a different angle, we may divide them according to

70 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

their service to the more urgent phases of response — the
things that one must see and hear and feel and smell in
order to do the things that one must do to live adequately —
or to the slighter profits and more leisurely benefits of the
refinements of life. Thus barely stated the division seems
artificial, for the one order of appreciation merges into and
with the other; but it is this very distinction that enters
into and determines the psychic products of greater com-
plexity. The sensibilities enlisted in urgent regulation are
the same as those available for esthetic appreciation; we
sense danger and beauty with the same organ. As an evo-
lutionary process the organ is shaped by the urgent service,
and it is its unemployed energies that are drafted to the
esthetic ministrations. Thus considered the sensibilities of
the esthetic type form a secondary, even an adventitious, or-
der; they may be said to be an offshoot from the central
trunk at a higher level, a by-product developed to noble
and extensive service. The relation appears in the fact that
this secondary service has a lesser, though not a negligible,
play in animal psychology, where urgency occupies a larger
place, and ''luxury'' a more limited scope. It is in this
connection a suggestive and a plausible speculation that the
esthetic sensibilities owe their being to the sex relation.
The enhancements of display and attraction in courtship
would thus form the original, as they continue to be the per-
sistent and elaborate playground of esthetics. The inci-
dents of sexual selection would become the media of sensi-
tizing the psyche to the preferential responses which find
their highest expression in the esthetic life. The song of
birds, the exhibition of plumage, the graces and charms of
movement are thus all of one significance. That by-prod-
ucts of other ranges of activity — of the play and construc-
tive tendencies notably — contribute to and enlarge the scope
of the esthetic is evident; and the root from which they
spring may be an independent one. However established,
the pressure of each of the origins or the centers of growth

THE SENSIBILITIES 71

of esthetic sensibility reacts upon the others. The com-
posite humanized esthetic sensibilities embody them all and
mature through the persistent vitality of their several roots.
The esthetic life takes its complexion jointly from the sensi-
tizing developed in sex attraction, in food preferences, in
bodily care, in constructive craft, in the social relations.
The conclusion has large bearings upon the nature and
careers of the emotions thus furthered, and in the consid-
eration of that high-level product will again be encoun-
tered.

By way of resume, it appears that genetically the earlier
forms of the responsiveness of sense are more closely allied
to the organic in type, to the stages at which sensation serves
bodily welfare and yields simple feelings of agreeableness
or the reverse. When this phase of the responsiveness is
less urgent and more diversified, it makes for the indirect
attractions and aversions of the esthetic life. The scope of
the esthetic is broad, and comprises many varieties of feel-
ing-values. Nearly co-extensive with the organic and sense-
feeling (which matures as the esthetic development) is the
function of sense as distinction or recognition. The two
factors are in a measure opposed ; the stronger feeling-tone
may solve the situation without awakening the delayed con-
sideration of reflective distinction; the latter in turn is
drawn upon and left open to, or requires, intellectual con-
sideration. The sense must be released from the immedi-
ate, obtrusive, useful service to qualify for the more indi-
rect, versatile [8] elaboration. Characteristic is the dif-
ferent status in these respects of the several senses — sight,
hearing, touch, movement, taste and smell — as contributors
to the life of the mind, both in the nature and range of
their contributions and in the manner of bringing them.
At each stage of human development varieties of sensibility
sprout and blossom; and one's personal equation is repre-
sented by the individual values which the several orders of
responsiveness assume in this composite. These form a sig-

72 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

nificant, possibly the central group of the qualities char-
acteristic of our individual and of our common natures.

The interest of analysis is centered in the sources and
varieties of sensibilities; the practical interest centers in
their refinements and elaborations. The latter enter with
the pragmatic consideration of the conduct and attitudes
which the sensibilities regulate in part or in whole. For
when we turn to the field of the sensibilities as actually
operative in their full-fledged maturity and varied embodi-
ment, we realize how far we have left behind the simpler
regulation of direct sensory stimuli and readily adjusted
response. Yet the clew to the later complexity is found in
the earlier relation ; the situation never departs wholly from
the natural model. The fitness of sensibility to serve ad-
justment persists; precise and ready orientation in the en-
vironment is the normal issue, however true it be that life
begins as a ''big, buzzing confusion," or would so appear
were its manifold appeals attended to. The avoidance of
misery and the pursuit of happiness of however modest
proportions proceed upon simple feelings of pain and
pleasure; their inducing occasions or signs are recognized,
and on this basis the mental life is established. The in-
strument of adjustment has instinctive yet plastic tenden-
cies ; so that the process is guided, but not rigidly, by bent,
and is matured by that response of impulse to occasion
which we call experience. The range of the sensibilities is
conditioned by the normal scope of the senses and of the
familiar stimuli that confront them. With this native
alphabet and the tendency to put it to use, the sensory
language is acquired and a vast literature of experience
made available. The book of nature — ^the human version
of it — and the revised, transformed reconstructions which
generations of men have created is entered into and pos-
sessed. The wonder and the mystery of it are as patent
in the primer as in the encyclopedia. The world of things
emerges ; and the routes among them become familiar as the

THE SENSIBILITIES 73

mind makes its home therein. Such is the normal life of
sensibility enjoyed by normal man. By feeling, tasting,
smelling, hearing, seeing, he gains control of conduct and
directs knowledge to purpose, mindful of profit and loss,
of bareness and richness of living. Sensory alertness con-
ditions it all, no differently for the fool and the genius,
and the many grades between. Things are different as we
have sensibilities to distinguish them; the sensibilities of
each make the world of each; and the similarities of our
sensibilities make the common world of our understanding
and intercourse. All this is not omitted but rather as-
sumed in the course here pursued. The great trunk-lines
of endowments are not slighted on the map ; they underlie
the finer contours here traced over them and by them.
For the most part the sensibilities serve lowly and familiar
purposes ; they make us at home in the world of daily life.
We carry them with us in all our journey ings, however in-
tricate or remote.

None the less our present psychological along with
our practical interests lie in the refinement and elabora-
tion which the sensibilities acquire at the upper levels.
The process is one of transformation; the composite reac-
tion is shaped in direction and quality by its intellectual
phases, including both its presentative and representative
scope. It points backward to sense as its source and clew;
it reaches forward to intellectual procedures in which sense
is subordinated to meaning and becomes woven in the net-
work of mental elaboration. The response may remain
dominantly an esthetic expression and present the relations
distinctively; for the term esthetic refers to a situation in
which the feelings serve the intellect rather than the reverse,
but ever in varying degrees and relation. In esthetic mat-
ters one must feel rather than reason one's way, though
feel intelligently, and for the more technical phases of
esthetics, analytically and consciously. The term, when
applied to a complex preference, carries two further im-

745 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

plications: it indicates that the sensibility no longer op-
erates in terms of direct sensory stimulus, though such
sense-stimulus is carried along in the developed status and
may at any moment assert itself; and it indicates that the
order of sensibility rests more and more upon the products
of (artificial) refinement. Such refinement, is a complex
and combined issue of sensory stimulus, esthetic impres-
sion, and intellectual distinction; it summarizes the concep-
tion that we carry over, with an appreciation of its psycho-
logical lineage, to all derived aspects of human qualities.
The sensibilities become the exemplars of our most com-
plex orders of appreciation. We may accordingly employ
the term sensibility in its secondary sense for the direction
in a unified order of service of types of responsiveness —
through any and all avenues of sense — conducive to the
more refined regulation of conduct.

We proceed by selecting a few types of sensibility for
detailed consideration. The hygienic sensibilities (the
name apposite to the higher stage of their development)
are rich in suggestiveness. They cover an extensive range
of application, yet from low to high present a unity of
type, traditionally recognized in the acknowledged kinship
of physiological cleanliness to spiritual godliness. The
personal quality concerned, when marked, may be called
fastidiousness. Its direct service is to keep one clean or to
avoid contamination [9]. But cleanliness is at once a mat-
ter of degree, of convention, of habit, of attitude, of asso-
ciation, of reason ; yet also — here its affiliations with primary
sensibility — it rests upon sensory and organic reactions of
attraction and recoil, and finds various natural outlets for
its expression. These include the scrutiny of food, which
extends beyond the protection against noxious food or a
bare gastronomic verdict of decided unpleasantness, to in-
clude also its purity, or presumable freedom from **dirt."
The nose is the original and persistent hygienic and gas-
tronomic guardian. Putrid meat or decaying vegetable

THE SENSIBILITIES 75

matter offends the sense of smell sufficiently to drive away
appetite. The sense of disgust, through which aversion is
aroused, assumes the mimicry of food-rejection; and this
attitude becomes the type-form of strong avoidance through
sensibility. Intense disgust, though aroused by situations
unrelated to a "food" situation, turns the stomach. But
the appeal need not penetrate to the sense of smell. Sight,
the great anticipating sense, heralds and summons the
''hygienic" sensibilities quite as readily. The food looks
nasty, as though it might be unclean; and that is suffi-
cient [10]. Nicked and coarse china, untidy linen, spotted
knives and forks, depress the appetite, serving as visual
clews of situations offensive to an increasingly fastidious
sensibility. Intellectual elements are prompt to make their
appearance, and complicate the channels of impression. A
fly in the cream or hovering over it may arouse effective
disgust. Knowledge alone does not produce so vivid a re-
action; the fly in the cream or the worm in the chestnut
looks disgusting. When we learn by unemotional investi-
gation that flies carry disease, we welcome this rational re-
enforcement of our affective aversion; yet we recall that
other aversions may be quite as pronounced and lack such
scientific sanction.

The **food" situation is met by the sensibilities that
arouse sensory recoil directly and intimately; but human
and other contacts summon them quite as distinctively.
Visible or suspected dirt produces an uneasiness ready to
grow into disgust. The great unwashed arouse a repug-
nance that hardly needs the convincing verdict of olfactory
stimulation, so completely does the eye anticipate the im-
pression. The telltale disclosures of face and hands or
the more critical test of troublesome ears and finger-nails
proclaim the measure of the underlying sensibilities; all
of which are readily transferred to the personal habitat
and belongings, and particularly to the more intimate in-
vestiture of the body. Filth, squalor, foulness, pollution,

76 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

provoke disgust and offend a common sensibility. They
form the grosser transgressions, menacing or disregarding
the safeguards of health which the major hygienic sensi-
bilities protect. It is the slighter infringements and neg-
lects that illustrate the familiar level at which their be-
hests are practiced. The whiteness of linen proclaiming
an unsullied raiment stands but one or more removes from
the cleanliness of the body which it protects or adorns. A
frayed collar and an unbrushed coat, like nicked china and
rusty cutlery, or a slovenly bed, or an unswept floor, or a
frowsy toilet, suggest defections from proper standards.
As such they betray a lack of underlying sensibilities. Ap-
pearance becomes the clew to the minor and more delicate
violations; sight replaces rather than awaits the confirma-
tory verdict of what in coarser form may offend the orig-
inal censor — smell. Such is ever the process of refinement
— the development of a useful toward an esthetic sensi-
bility, enlisting any and all the senses helpful to the pur-
pose. Much of it is the product of education, which both
enlarges the field of application and refines it. It acts not
alone positively by cultivating an eternal vigilance against
minor defection, but constructively develops a sense of sat-
isfaction in all the outward show of tidiness, care, purity,
spotlessness, even luxury. It broadens its scope by includ-
ing the secondary extensions radiating from its original
service; thus, while still most exacting in the acceptance
and rejection of food and its accessories, it embraces all the
visible signs of the cherished quality as conveyed by the
brightness, smoothness of glass or porcelain, all the varied
elaborations of the food situation and of its setting. It
similarly extends its domain congenially to all situations of
personal contact and the more derivative and remote ac-
cessories of habitation, clothing, public and private environ-
ment. The extension and elaboration is a psychological
one; the sensibilities matured in one relation extend to
others by virtue of an inner congeniality and a cultivation

THE SENSIBILITIES 77

due to a common quality [11]. Refinement in reaction to
''contacts" becomes a significant quality.

Cleanliness of food and person — including the vital pro-
tection of the lungs' supply of inviting or at least breatha-
ble air — constitutes the natural sphere of operation of the
hygienic sensibilities, which the civilized endowment but
extends and refines. Cleanliness begins as wholesomeness ;
but it is difficult to say where it ends; and that because —
true to the nature of complex sensibilities — it affiliates with
and draws upon others of its kind, to their mutual trans-
formation. It affiliates with the habits of neatness and
orderliness, evolved from more developed situations, which
like cleanliness indicate care — the index of sensibility. The
well-groomed condition, the spick-and-span, ship-shape ap-
pearance of one's surroundings, satisfies an order of sensi-
bility in which cleanliness is implied but by no means
stands alone in responsibility. Pride, display, the sense of
value, the esthetic appeal, the social esteem, imitativeness,
conformity to standards — all enter and complicate the situa-
tion. Negatively, litter, mussiness, squalor, suggest an un-
kemptness hospitable to dirt, but offend the allied, more
derivative sensibilities as much or more than the ''hy-
gienic" ones. Order, designated as Heaven's first law, is
quite commonly man's last; whence he has been cynically
defined as the messy animal. In the end the sensibilities
involved, and the complex phases of character which they
reflect and mold, travel so far away from their point of
departure as to make the term "hygienic" quite unsuit-
able; it is far too use-full, too limited in its implication to
suggest the rich connotation which civilization confers
upon it.

The gospel of soap is lowly to begin with, but reaches
the highest places. At the top where we supercivilized folk
practice it, it is a highly rationalized product; it carries
the atmosphere of disinfectants and antiseptics and the
familiarity with causes and effects that a former generation

78 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

hardly knew. Through intellectual channels, open to the
elect, we have discovered that certain procedures avoid
evil; and we follow prescriptions, not our likes and dis-
likes, though we may come to acquire a liking for that which
we know to be wholesome. At the upper levels the accepta-
ble is no longer a matter of sensibility alone, but largely of
knowledge; yet knowledge may both support and correct
sensibilities and prejudices alike. Promiscuous expectora-
tion is in itself disgusting to sensitive natures; a sense of
public hygiene both quickens and justifies its offensiveness
and appeals to reason in putting down the evil. Public
drinking-cups and communal towels are likely to be abol-
ished by an educational campaign; in the future, sensi-
bility made fastidious in this direction may adequately
protect against such indiscriminate communism. On the
other hand, one may be taught so to overcome or control
his sensibilities in the service of the intellect as to hold to a
task which without such support would be distasteful.
Habituation does much, and use dulls sensibilities favor-
ably and unfavorably. The nurse and surgeon subordinate
sensibilities of one order to intellectual interests of another.
The medical student in his early experience with dissecting-
room or clinic — ^the latter appealing to the sympathetic sen-
sibilities as well or mainly — is keenly aware of the conflict.
The occasional or amateur cook loses appetite through in-
timate contact with the unsavory preliminaries to a savory
meal. Many a person enjoys the sight and flavor of a juicy
grilled steak who has an aversion to the carcass in the
butcher-shop — ^the latter again a mixed hygienic and sym-
pathetic aversion.

The rationalistic support of the hygienic as of other sensi-
bilities operates by conferring a derived sense of satisfac-
tion in a conformity to accredited practice ; but in so doing
it furthers a direct sensory satisfaction as well, Such sat-
isfaction continues and proclaims the original olfactory
dominance. The clean, the sweet, the pure exhale an

THE SENSIBILITIES 79

aroma of wholesomeness, of direct vital pleasure, which is
accepted and enjoyed as an index or clew of the cherished
quality. The (olfactory) terms of admission to the group
are enlarged to include the antiseptic order of preparations.
The more primitive scents of nature 's offerings are retained,
but are combined in the esthetics of odor with the developed
satisfaction of hygienic ministrations. The intricate ac-
cessories of the toilet, represented in Oriental luxury and
Koman baths no less than in the modern boudoir, minis-
tered to by the perfumes and lotions that form an inviting
corner of the druggist's shop — all testify to the permanence
as to the elaboration of the hygienic sensibilities and others
of near kin, of which the olfactory sense remains the direct
and original guardian.

From olfactory guidance to social sanction is a long psy-
chological step; yet both are exercised upon the hygienic
order of regulation, and properly so [12], In each sta-
tion there is a common desire to be about as clean as one's
neighbors and associates. In the social rating, the "hy-
gienic" test, along with many another, is applied. The
cleanliness of the Dutch household becomes an outward
show of social station and prosperity quite as plainly as are
material possessions; it may be compatible with far less ex-
acting standards of personal hygiene and herein show the
effects of social convention. Because thus subject to the
influence of public opinion, social approval, communal meas-
ures, and the restraints of ethics, etiquette, tradition, re-
ligion— all of them responsive to similar ranges of social
influence — the particular acceptance and avoidances that
we meet or practice are not readily referred to their nat-
ural or their nurtural sources, nor is it clear to what phases
of natural impulses or acquired habits they dominantly ap-
ply [13]. It becomes difficult to say whether such ap-
proval or disapproval, prescription or proscription — and
the like holds of the appeal which leads to their observance
— is maintained as an hygienic precaution, an esthetic ex-

80 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

pression, a moral regulation, a racial, class, or national cus-
tom, or a religious rite. In such a merged or cumulative
sanction or prohibition the social influence often stands
forth as the most conscious and compelling force ; and this
for the reason that such consciousness attaches to the
strongly emotional or sentimental roots of impulse rather
than to the rational ones. In the last analysis an actual
sense of acquired disgust may become quite as strong as a
primitive or original one, while yet acting wholly through
indirect mental channels. Indeed, when the social tahoo
is accepted — as it is commonly in primitive and not uncom-
monly in advanced societies — with the fervor of an unques-
tioned injunction, it constitutes the chief motive force of
social regulation, utilizing the sensibilities while yet ex-
tending them far beyond their primary range.

It is in the degree and kind of responsiveness to this as
to other orders of sensibility that a significant source of
personal quality is found [14]. The standards followed,
and the loyalty in following them, measure one's place in
the scale of sensibility ; the test becomes the perspective as-
signed in the personal equation of life's values to this or
that group. In the main, the sensibilities have a natural
and enduring sympathy for their kind ; and high-grade sen-
sibilities of one order have a tendency to affiliate with and
to support high-grade sensibilities of allied orders. The
contrast between one level and another remains consistent
and distinctive. Yet it must be admitted that the several
factors — or rather the force of their appeal — that combine
to make effective a social sanction or a personal scruple, are
quite various and more and more so in complex civiliza-
tions teeming with old ancestral and overlaid modern en-
forcements and motives. It becomes intelligible that what
one man avoids as unclean, another shuns as unesthetic, a
third shrinks from as bad form, a fourth eschews as re-
ligiously forbidden. Such divergences indicate that men
differ, and civilizations yet more so, as to the general level

THE SENSIBILITIES 81

at which their sensibilities are active as well as to the dif-
ferent kinds and degrees of sensibilities which they main-
tain. Yet the correlation of sensibilities is strong and finds
expression in composite terms crystallizing their common es-
sence and expressing their common ideal, as in the concep-
tion of a " gentleman. ' ' The kind of behavior and appear-
ance, the standards of considerations, of sentiment and ex-
pression, of morals and hygiene, of ideals and impulses, of
traits to be counted upon and infringements not to be
feared, that belong to one thus characterized, radiate to all
contours of human nature. But above all the gentleman
represents an order of sensibility — a man gentle in manner
and in all things possessing the traits that affiliate with
gentility [15].

To trace the development of any variety of sensibility
gives the perspective of the factors disclosed by analysis
a definite set. The example portrayed is apt and, apart
from its limitations, typical. It presents the relations of
what is fundamental to what is derivative in manner and
scope of sensibility, of the interplay of primary and sec-
ondary factors, and the simple, direct and complex indirect
forms of expression which they attain early and late in the
transformations of culture. However briefly, a few other
types of sensibility must be considered for the sake of other
and distinctive contributions which they offer to the natural
history of the genus.

We may profitably turn to a form of sensibility oper-
ative mainly in the esthetic realm, in regulation of the sat-
isfaction of organic needs: the evolution of the natural
function of eating into the social-esthetic ** function" of
dining — the gastronomic sensibilities. Primarily we must
eat and drink; the enjoyment of food is ever legitimate.
To live we must be fed ; yet feeding must be overlaid, dis-
guised, sublimated, and subordinated by complex appeals
to sensibilities before it comes within sighting distance of
''dining." Its evolution begins in the sensory realm that

82 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

directs the primary gratification concerned. We whet ap-
petite by savory cooking, by seasoning and flavors, by zest
of the choice and the rare, yet also by the bounty of the
feast. We order the courses of the repast — the sequence
following the empirical clews of taste and digestion alike —
to give each its optimum effect. With the proper prelim-
inaries of appetizer, we lead through soup and fish to the
heavier nutritious joints, tempered with sauces and rel-
ishes ; then invite with the more piquant flavors and spices
of game; counteract with salads; tempt the satiated appe-
tite further with the lure of dessert and sweets ; throughout
promote digestion and secure a mutual contrast and offset
of quality with appropriate wines; and conclude with the
peculiar aromatic stimulant of coffee. Even that we still
imbibe; the cigar in the psychological sequence completes
the series, and flavor is all and even the sugges-
tion of nutriment is gone. All this belongs to the field
of gastronomy — by no means a despised esthetic art. The
distinctive point is that attention to and enjoyment of eat-
ing for flavor distracts from the grosser satisfaction of eat-
ing for nourishment y however ready we are to admit for
daily application that natural appetite is the best sauce.
It is an appeal from the coarser to the finer satisfactions
of sense. In this field as in others, despite the differences
of taste and custom, there is sufficient agreement to indicate
where the coarser and where the finer satisfactions lie, to
justify preferences, and to establish orders of refinement
and standards of judgment. Yet gastronomy utilizes all
the collateral sensory appeals which it can enlist in its
service. The eye serves as its herald and attendant. The
appearance of the viands, their form, color and garnishing
— all leading away from, yet inviting to the test of the pud-
ding— the service, the whiteness of linen, brightness of sil-
ver, delicacy of china, luster of glass; the festal illumina-
tion; the flowers, central in the arrangement of the table
because ornamental only ; all these add to the impression of

THE SENSIBILITIES 83

the dinner as to the mood of the diners, and derive their
effect from an appeal to varied sensibilities which the deco-
rative arts of other realms employ. Yet these arts are but
subsidiary to the central moment of the '' function" — the
diners themselves, who to proper sensibilities of a very dif-
ferent order of appraisal, must be so worthy that the worthi-
ness of the repast retires to a very incidental place. The
occasion engages other modes of esthetic appeal ; the formal
dress permitting the maximum privilege of ornament to the
ornamental, and for the other sex prescribing a conven-
tional, dignified propriety as a foil. Ultimately the social
and intellectual stimulus, the good feeling, the play of
word and wit, the feast of soul, the spirit qf the occasion,
must justify the setting [16] ; and, one might add, the tra-
ditions and standing of house and host, the dignity of the
occasion, the honor of being included, even invidiously
as against the lesser fortune of those excluded. How end-
lessly far has an invitation to dine traveled from an oppor-
tunity to feed! Yet any marked defection or poverty of
food would mar either occasion. With the ethical rating
or overrating of either- the dinner or the accompaniments
and the cost which it entails in terms of sacrifice of other
interests, we have at the moment no concern. It is the
psychological factors operative in the transformation and
the orders of sensibility to which they appeal, that form
the present center of interest.

Sensibilities may be far more artificial, may be developed
for orders of response more remote from the ordinary type
of situation, and yet be indispensable to the regulation [17]
of complex socialized expressions, equally derivative and
artificial. Such expressions are particularly subject to
esthetic influences and social rating. The instance to be
selected — the language sensibility — in that it reflects the
composite influences of usage is peculiarly instructive. Di-
rect sensory guidance is practically superseded in speech;
imitation of set usage determines (upon a slight natural ten-

84 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

dency) how one shall speak. In mature speech social se-
lection provides the acceptable models among which sensi-
bility, both sensory and intellectual, is exercised. Brogue
and dialect or local accent assume a social aspect — as the
standards of cosmopolitanism are sought and the taint of
provincialism avoided. Early breeding may fix the Cock-
ney or the Yankee beyond the possibility of later conscious
assimilation of accredited models. Within limits the nice-
ties of pronunciation, the cultivation of voice and expres-
sion and the choice of phrase, give to one's speech a lead-
ing and fit social rating. Once beyond the infant prattle,
the learning of language hardly presents stages of trans-
formation because the sensibilities concerned start at so
high, so artificial a level. Organic use and primitive serv-
ice are but faintly reflected. The grunts, groans, sighs,
laughs, chuckles and other human noises, are disciplined
to standards of behavior. We readily set apart the uncouth
and the refined varieties of their expression; or if beyond
control, we beg pardon for coughs or sneezes as intrusions
into the regulated order of polite society. The distinctive
field of operation is the intellectual one; the offense to the
ear of unacceptable pronunciation is akin to the oflfense to
the eye of wrong spelling; both yield to the offense to the
mind of unacceptable phrases or constructions. Let us as-
sume a creditable logical and grammatical correctness ; for
these but serve as a foundation for the finer preferences of
word and phrase wherein the ''esthetic" sensibilities, dis-
ciplined under intellectual tutelage, rule. Language
throws an almost blinding illumination upon sensibility,
fixes class and mass. Slang is usually objectionable not
when or because it is illogical or ungrammatical, but be-
cause, in slight or pronounced measure, it conveys the
proof or suspicion of insensibility or vulgarity — the tol-
erance of lower standards, the indifference to better ones.
It is a pardonable exaggeration to say that usage is accepta-
ble— or if one prefers, right or wrong — not intrinsically by

THE SENSIBILITIES 85

structure or meaning, but because the right persons or the
wrong persons use it. The freedom of speech among equals,
and the deference of tone and address to those esteemed by
reason of station or authority or merit, are likewise guided
by social sensibilities of a most complex kind. The older
social order emphasized and exalted such etiquettes; and
only one to the manner born, whether served or serving,
could feel quite at home and trust to his sensibilities to
guide conduct on all occasions. The sensibility for correct-
ness and propriety of usage depends upon an intellectual
grasp. Yet it is acquired as well upon the basis of a semi-
esthetic discrimination of the right or wrong models to
follow — a procedure of good form like that which regulates
table manners. As ethics shades into etiquette, so correct-
ness of diction shades into propriety; and in doubtful is-
sues— suggestive of the indecision as to the use of this or
that fork for salad or entree — we observe and copy those
whom we trust. Favorably or unfavorably, the language
sensibilities lead each speaker to gravitate to the language
level of his kind. It would be invidious and misleading to
mention any one of the shibboleths [18] which are certain
to be established to separate the linguistically saved from
the lost. The net issue is this : that a correct and proper use
of the English language is within reach of the intellectual
capacity of a score where but one attains it ; the others fail
through defective sensibility, just as they may fail in man-
ner or dress through an acceptance, willing or unwilling,
of a less exacting standard. A social-esthetic defect is re-
sponsible for the issue. So characteristically does speech
brand the individual that in the conversational portraiture
of novels, the placing of just the right shades of deviation
into the mouths of the several characters is a peculiarly sub-
tle art, requiring observation guided by sensibilities. In
real life it remains proper to judge men by their speech,
finding as a rule that which is said is of a piece with the
manner of saying it. Expression, here as elsewhere, re-

86 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

fleets the quality of the thoughts as of the thinker. Con-
tent embodied in form yields the criterion of style, which
is manner, quality, character.

Sensibilities have a wider play than that indicated in
these selections of their types and operation. Though sup-
ported originally by the organic affect and by that ele-
ment in the play of the special senses, in their maturity
they determine the acceptability of sensory stimulation,
however elaborated. Such acceptability or its opposite
(largely through the associations conferred in the service
of distinction) develops to a selective preference — a guide
to attitude and conduct — which in the main is what we
mean by taste. As the factors of selection become complex
they involve esthetic, emotional, intellectual, moral consid-
erations. The several senses and the situations which they
serve present markedly different tendencies to assume such
complications and equally distinctive trends in the issues
thus resulting. Of fundamental import is the function
thus regulated; whether it stands close to organic welfare,
or, released from such utility, serves as an indirect chan-
nel of adjustment to an artificially expanded environment.
All such varieties of conduct — that is, all acceptances and
rejections, selections and preferences, dispositions and in-
clinations, regulated in part or in whole by the sensibilities
— retain this original sensory element, though it may be
slight and transformed. It is marked and persistent in the
''dirt'' sensibilities offensive to nose and skin and eye. The
composite clew shows how one sense anticipates the impres-
sion of the other senses and indirectly but effectively arouses
the repugnance which need not be carried to its comple-
tion in the original terms [19]. Much the same is true of
the ''food" sensibilities — one of the most organically inti-
mate of our contacts [20], and the one responsible for the
extension of the word "taste" to all allied "sensibility"
preferences. Taste, originally pertinent to preferences of
food, is a term applied to embodiments of color, form, and

THE SENSIBILITIES 87

design, to tones, to textures, to nicety of discrimination in
any realm ; at first directly responsive to sense-stimulation,
later it is overlaid more and more by derivative impres-
sions, and ultimately is shaped by standards and judg-
ments more or less consciously entertained and convention-
ally sanctioned. Good taste extends throughout the w^hole
of the wide span of human preferences, v^herein we reveal
the quality of our endowments and attainments.

The most important alliance of the sensibilities is with
meaning through the mediacy of recognition or distinction.
The sensory (including the organic) factor recedes — though
it ever persists and vitalizes the issue — and the associa-
tional values enter and are prone to dominate. This gives
rise to the characteristic esthetic situation, and to the qual-
ity of '* impressionism " in esthetic preferences. To cite a
familiar range of distinctions: our noses inform us of the
flavors of tea, coffee, tobacco, wine, fruits; our eyes inform
us of the differences between forged and cast iron, between
machine-made and hand-made lace, between wood and
*' composition, " between stone and scagliola, between ma-
hogany and stained birch, between linen and cotton, be-
tween velvet and plush ; our fingers, as well as our eyes and
noses, distinguish between an apricot and a peach, or an
orange and a grape-fruit ; trained fingers tell apart the tex-
ture of silk and satin, or of ''bond" and ''linen" paper,
of forged and cast iron; the genuineness of coins may be
tested by the feel, and by the ring of the metal ; the ear dis-
tinguishes between a fingered performance upon the piano
and the rendition upon a mechanical "player," or its re-
production by a phonograph, between a natural and a
*' stage" cough or laugh or sneeze, and it detects the
slightest foreign accent or trace of sectional pronunciation,
even specifying its provenance. Much of this recognition
proceeds on the basis of an impressionism which is an issue
of sensibility, dominantly of an esthetic order. The me-
chanical "player" fails in the varied vital touch of a hu-

88 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

manized expression ; the phonograph distorts the tone quali-
ties. The stained birch gives the impression of being less
rich, less pure or less pleasing than the mahogany, before
the eye consciously absorbs the telltale of the grain. The
expert summoned to pronounce upon the genuineness of
a painting rated as an "old master" instantly gets the im-
pression (by its lack of appeal or weakness of effect) of a
copy or of a ' ' school ' ' piece badly retouched, which impres-
sionistic judgment he then reenforces by examination of
brush-marks, texture, pigment, canvas, and the like. The
impressionistic factor in our recognitions is extensive and
underlies the appreciation of manner, style, or quality. In
the appraisal of tea, tobacco, wine and other commodities
where objective tests are difficult, the critical sensibilities
of the connoisseur remain the chief criterion. Such expert-
ness — which is at bottom an impressionistic one, refined by
attention — becomes a practical asset in the specialized
trades. Indeed the prevalence of fraud and imitations and
of inferior quality masked as superior — summarized in the
satirical admonition that "things are seldom what they
seem" — provides a constant challenge to our sensibilities.
The deceived fail to distinguish, are not forewarned by
sensibilities, not forearmed by knowledge. It is interesting
to add that when suspicion is aroused in commercial trans-
actions, it may be by the appearance or other "qualities"
of the 'article itself, or it may be by the very different qual-
ity of the manner or circumstances of the transaction. As
in other situations, we prefer to substitute a psychological
quality of an intellectual, or, it may be, of a moral order
— which we call expert knowledge for the one and repu-
tation for the other — to safeguard the uncertain verdicts of
sensibility alone.

We thus return to the central intellectual factor — the
expertness of distinction, the tap-root of the tree of knowl-
edge. Subjectively it directs the readjustment of native
impulse ; objectively it secures the control of natural forces.

THE SENSIBILITIES 69

It is represented directly by the sensory power of precise
discrimination and indirectly by the logical quality of in-
sight into relations, and is at once a support of sensibility
and a check upon it. Keenness of perception, however
supported or to what end directed, remains the prerequisite
to intelligence. Although our direct concern is with sensi-
bility and not with rationality, we must accord the latter
its proper place in the composite psychology, because at
every stage, insight no less than sensibility supports and
controls appreciation and perception. Indeed, one of the
most comprehensive contrasts of mature character is re-
flected in the relative development of the one or the other
of these affiliated yet divergent trends. Within the field
surveyed, in which, although sensibility is primary, insight
enters almost at the outset and remains throughout all
stages, it presents the contrast of intelligence tempered by
sensibility with sensibility tempered by intelligence. Feel-
ing guides or drives reason, or is urged by it. In antici-
pation of its remoter issues, it may be said that the contrast,
when widened, becomes that of the matter-of-fact, calcu-
lating, practical, hard-headed man of affairs and his anti-
pode, the sentimental, impulsive, sensitive, sympathetic,
imaginative enthusiast. Psychologically its import lies in
the inherent inverse development of the *' feeling" factor
and the ** distinction " factor in the joint impressionism;
it lies also in the contrasts of the temperamental trends
which lead to the emphasis of the one or the other in the
determination of attitude and conduct [21]. Yet the pre-
sumption is strong that a decisive factor in such trend is
the underlying disposition — a disposition primarily of the
direction of sensibility — through which the one order of
responsive service carries a more vivid, more confident im-
pression than the other. By virtue of this quality the es-
thetic nature gravitates to a different psychological type
from that represented by the scientific mind in one aspect
and by the practical mind in another. The latter distinc-

90 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tion lies within the field of intelligence, and relates to the
keenness of discernment for concrete realities and the
handling of situations presentatively, or of the mastery of
abstract principles and logical deductions. The prac-
titioner and the theorist are both rationalists, each mod-
erately conversant with the other's domain, yet diverging
in bent and capacity sufficiently to mark the separation, the
specialization of their habits and careers. Observation and
experiment require keen and intelligent sensory distinc-
tion; yet also must they be directed by a perception of
relations framed in a system of interpretation. When the
former dominates the practitioner emerges; when the lat-
ter, the theorist. In both pursuits the esthetic apprecia-
tions find occupation — more than is commonly recognized
— although in a transformed and subordinated service.

Dwelling for a moment on the contrasted service of the
intellectual and esthetic factors in the development of sen-
sibilities, we may note that in matters of taste, the question
may not be which esthetic judgment carries the keener per-
ception or reflects the higher standard, but whether the
intellectual or esthetic factors in the composite judgment
shall prevail. Judgments, like sensibilities, emerge from
mixed motives; which may be the source of reenforcement
or of conflict. The esthetic temperament follows sensi-
bilities where the scientific follows logic; to the former is
justified the principle that ** manner maketh the man'';
and manners spring more directly from sensibilities than
from consciously entertained reasons. Hence the art of
social intercourse; and hence also the futility attaching
to manuals of etiquette that aim to inculcate rules in the
absence of the sensibility necessary for their application.
The fact that the arts are less teachable than the sciences,
and manner less so than matter, indicates the larger de-
pendence of the former on qualities closer to endowment
and absorbed and encouraged by a favorable appreciative
milieu, and of the latter upon a more direct acquisition by

THE SENSIBILITIES 91

an objective effort sustained by zest of analysis and insight.
To all this we shall return in a closer survey of the prac-
tical phases of human quality. So far as their sources are
concerned, the arts and the sciences appear in the genetic
view as remote and complex developments of contrasted
phases of responsiveness ; and in this resultant, as in the
history of the race, poetry precedes science. The esthetic
is earlier, more comprehensive and pervasive than the sci-
entific trend; and is so by virtue of the priority of sensi-
bility in the psychological unf oldment ; hence the justifica-
tion of the emphasis of the sensibilities in a study of the
sources of human quality [22].

The more formal relations of the several orders of sensi-
bility may be set forth in terms of (a) the supporting
sense (or senses) ; (b) the function served or the direction
of its exercises; (c) the development which it undergoes
— that is with reference to its status in primitive sensory
and organic preferences and to its transformed ranges of
application : all of which are mutually conditioned. Thus
in human psychology smell would be rated as strongly
sensory, with an intimate, organic, body-protecting service ;
as maturing a meager intellectual power, of limited de-
velopment. The functions most intimately served by it
are those growing out of the *'food" and ' ' care-of -body ' '
situations. By contrast, sight retains slight stimulation-
value (marked only in color) ; develops a vast world of
esthetic and intellectual meaning; is related to no one spe-
cific function, but serves the general adjustment of all forms
of reaction (movement, skill, observation, experiment, the
technique of the arts and crafts), particularly of the intel-
lectual reactions, to the natural and artificial conditions of
life. Clearly both the senses and the reaction which they
direct, must have a place in the original nature of man.
The smell-guided instinctive reactions need no further
specification. Visual exploration and visually guided ma-
nipulation (both linked to an equally instinctive tendency

92 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

toward assertive muscular and mental control exercised in
making changes happen to things felt and seen) are also a
part of original nature ; ' they underlie the acquired ex-
perimental interests, as observation of infant activity con-
vincingly shows. The removal of the criterion of sensory
judgment from the nose-mouth to the eye-hand center of
control marks an interesting stage of development. How-
ever far from this original stage men may travel upon the
support of their sensibilities in the cultivation of the arts
and sciences, they continue to reflect the sensory de-
pendence ; the inventions of man, like the telescope and the
microscope, and all the many devices by which forms of
energy are registered, are so many extensions of his sensory
apparatus — most of them additions to his visual equip-
ment.

It would accordingly have a meaning to speak of the
** visual" sensibilities or of the *' auditory" sensibilities or
of the *' kinesthetic " (movement) sensibilities. But the
meaning is more adequate when the function served is con-
sidered. So long as that function is close to natural need,
the functional aspect dominates; the "food" sensibilities,
the ''hygienic" sensibilities indicate the type. When we
turn to sensibilities ministering to the derivative esthetic
nature or to the developed intellectual nature, the sense still
conditions; but the ''function" requires a considerable re-
statement. The esthetic as well as the discriminative sen-
sibilities of the eye lead to the decorative and representa-
tive arts and to expertness in scientific observation ; in the
process they call upon the dexterity of the hand, whose
evolution is directed by a useful, prehensile service of the
greatest aid to bodily mastery and to control by intelli-
gence. The ear is the gateway to music and to the allied
arts of language; but music is a by-product of the voice,
originally apprenticed to directly useful service, seconded
in due course by artificial instrumental aids. The esthetics
of bodily movement leads to the dance and to the manifold

THE SENSIBILITIES 93

graces of social expression [23], and enters also into the
''form" of athletics and sport. The skill of hand is of
all the most distinctive of kinesthetic accomplishments; the
works of man are originally, and remain characteristically,
handicrafts; his civilization is the work of his hand. The
hand is most intimately the associate of the eye, and shares
in its intellectual preferment; visual sensibility combines
with manual deftness. Obviously all accomplishment im-
plies a trained organ of execution as well as a critical sen-
sory appreciation. Eye and hand, ear and voice, form inti-
mate and indispensable partnerships. The ''function"
becomes the field of application of the joint media of
psychic expression; the conditioning factor in shaping the
product is sensibility. Such, reduced to its psychological
terms, is the groundwork of human achievement and of the
differences of individuals in endowment. Though it may
appear somewhat strained to reduce to such bare psycholog-
ical terms the vocational proficiencies or the spheres of the
muses and graces, the analysis, setting the theme to the
evolutionary movement, remains suggestive.

It will be evident that we have gradually shifted our
ground from the consideration of the origin and nature of
sensibility considered close to their sources, to the service
of the sensibilities in their mature development. Once
again a summary may be helpful both retrospectively and
prospectively. It is true of the sensibilities as exercised
(1) that the issue is typically composite, several orders of
sensibility sharing in the process of preference, distinction,
expression, regulation; (2) that such compositeness brings
about a reenforcement of impression, but also the possibility
of rivalry and conflict, and this not alone as a cooperative
enterprise with varied demands, but as a rivalry among the
several orders of sensibility that may claim a voice in regu-
lation; for (3) we carry with us constantly all the several
orders of se^isihility which have a fit place in human psy-
chology, prepared to exercise them upon any ''function"

94 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

that invites their play; (4) that the exercise of sensibility
is typically complex, an elaborate transformation through
levels of refinement, of original sensory responsiveness re-
directed by infusion and overlay of acquired psychio
processes; (5) that the original range and service of each,
type of sensibility conditions its mode of participation in
the composite issue and its possibilities of development;
(6) that the element of value enters early and directs the
development and the education of sensibilities, bringing
it about that practically they are rated and defined in terms
of their acquired applications. These principles readily
emerge from the observation of the play of the sensibilities
in the practical life; their bearing upon the foundations
of character and temperament invites further comment.

The central factor in any practical rating of a given
order of sensibility is the ''function" served; closely as-
sociated in the rating is the level at which it arises or to
which it attains ; yet the medium through which it is main-
tained is neither accidental nor incidental to its status
and course ; the result reflects each of these aspects. Even
though we consider the sensibilities as exercised, the
*' biological" situation which gave them birth is not neg-
ligible; for the native quality of the original disposition
directs and persists in the most developed psychological
transformations. The arts severally and jointly flourish
because of the original surplus of gratification in sensory
experience. And no less in the sciences: sanitation, how-
ever scientifically pursued, cannot dispense with the di-
rective impulse of sensory comfort and discomfort, which
at each stage of its progress makes its ministrations de-
sired or acceptable. Men^s surroundings will continue to
be as artistic and as hygienic and as rational as their sensi-
bilities [24] direct, and no more so.

The gradation from natural service to applied direction
of sensibilities is responsible for much of the complication
so constantly met in this exposition ; the sensibilities seemr

THE SENSIBILITIES 95

ingly and actually change with the manner of life, yet re-
veal their ancestral allegiance. On the basis of a limited
protective reaction — which it shares with the **food" sit-
uation— the hygienic sensibility develops to a fine art of
cleanliness and affiliates with both orderliness and purity;
it expands from person to clothing, to belongings, to sur-
roundings— all of it man-made and socially standardized.
By reason of the supplementary influences that thus come
forward, many of our sensibilities, though provided for in
nature, have so large an element of acquired redirection
that they follow the laws of acquisition more loyally than
those of endowment. Such are the derived orders of sensi-
bility that still properly bear the name but not the full
implications of the primary order [25] : the "language"
sensibilities, the "social" sensibilities, and certain types
of "artistic" sensibility. By reason of their divergent
course and origin, the several orders of sensibility present
varied and complex affiliations and congenialities as well
as incompatibilities. If we kept too constantly in mind the
hygienic conditions under which our prized Indian baskets
or Oriental rugs are woven, our esthetic enjoyment might
suffer through our hygienic distrust. In a similar strain
Bohemianism resents the prim orderliness which interferes
with the free expression of impulse and banishes the pic-
turesque; or again the musician may be insensitive to the
decorative arts, and the painter to the niceties of music,
or both crude in the appreciations of literature. Yet these
individual or class deficir:icies or rivalries will not obscure
the underlying kinship of quality. A composite art like
that of the "opera" combines the scene with the action,
with the melody, with the sentiment; the song is as much
an aria as a poem. The medium conditions the product,
yet forms no barrier to the expression in different arts and
in different phases of life of a comparable sensibility.
There is no real violation of principle, only a rivalry and
dominance and limitation of expression. Obviously the

96 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

issue involves more than the sensibilities alone; much de-
pends upon the emotional development fostered by the
sensibilities, and much upon the parallel advancement of
the intellectual interests. The sensibilities reach far into
the eventual possibilities of the common compass of human
nature, and share in its complexities of development.

Fundamentally the sensibilities of whatever stage of de-
velopment, in whatever direction applied, make situations
attractive or repugnant, determine what and how we select,
reject, seek, avoid, prefer. They serve their part in regu-
lating conduct, in modifying attitudes and inclinations, in
shaping careers. Their permanent deposits are the quali-
ties of character thus matured and favored. In this generic
aspect sensibilities are but one variety of endowment, one
evolutionary issue, one device of adjustment among several.
The like purpose of adaptation may be served by other
psycho-physiological equipments, utilizing the sensibilities
or supplementing or transcending them. Such, we may
anticipate, is the status of the emotions, of the sentiments,
of reason, and of ideals, all merged and culminating in sys-
tems of regulation. It is because regulation through sensi-
bility occupies this intimate place near the source of qual-
ity that it becomes a type-form of such regulation, and
secures a preferred value in the run of qualities, in the
make-up of character. We remain individually the sum of
our sensibilities; these condition our appreciations and
guide our acquisitions. As the sphere in which our ap-
preciations are exercised and c"v acquisitions guided be-
comes artificial and complex, thj distinction between the
natural bent of sensibilities and the sanctioned mode or
range of their expression increases in scope and significance.
The complication likewise reflects the increased tendency
for the sensibilities to act not in detachment or self-suf-
ficient independence, but to form alliances with other regula-
tive media, even to be absorbed and overlaid as well as re-
enforced by them. Of these the most direct is the emotional

THE SENSIBILITIES 97

expansion — the radiation and expansion of the motive of
attraction or recoil to a larger, more persistent, more versa-
tile sphere. This may be succinctly expressed by saying
that the sensibilities become emotionalized. It is precisely
the possibility of becoming thus naturalized in a larger do-
main that constitutes a distinctive quality of sensibility,
differentiating those orders of sensibility that possess it
largely from those that possess it meagerly or lack it wholly.
Therein lies the peculiar fertility of the esthetic order of
sensibility, particularly in that division thereof leading to
the fine arts : in that the preferences which are directed
upon a sensory-esthetic basis affiliate so richly with the
emotional nature and also, though not equally, with the
issues of intellectual insight. It is because the **food"
sensibilities and their like are by nature debarred from
such expansion that their lowlier place in the psychological
perspective is ordained. Thus for sensibility the status or
level of potential expression becomes definitely formulated
as the susceptibility to emotional elaboration; or, more
simply expressed, a sensibility takes its rank and value from
its capacity for emotional alliance and growth. The
higher careers of the sensibilities are opened after their en-
listment in an emotional service is accomplished. To in-
terpret the significance of the transformed domain into
which the sensibilities are adopted and absorbed requires
a parallel survey of the emotional nature — the task of the
following chapter.

The practical phase of the sensibilities has not been neg-
lected in this exposition; it has, however, been made sec-
ondary to analysis and principle. A survey of the sub-
ject from the practical aspect affords an inviting retrospec-
tive vista and a convenient basis of review ; for in practice
as well as in principle, the place of the sensibilities in hu-
man psychology is fundamental. Sensibilities go far to
mold the eventual nature that on the basis of original en-
dowment matures through cultivation. The role of the

98 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

sensibilities appears most clearly in the leading parts which
they play in the careers depending primarily upon them.
The musician embodies one order, the painter, another.
With equally pertinent differences the architect, the actor,
the novelist, the craftsman, represent careers based upon
cultivation of sensibilities combined with other proficiencies.
All are artists; each in his sphere is more delicately sensi-
tive to a certain esthetic range of differences, is more nicely
appreciative of their values than is the man of average en-
dowment. Upon this native superiority is developed a
technical proficiency. Such proficiency while guided by
appreciation is professionally expressed in skill of execu-
tion; the artist is a performer, one who produces. The
quality of the production reflects sensibility as well as skill.
Either quality may be present out of relation to the other ;
technical skill may far exceed sensibility, or may be con-
spicuously inadequate to bring it to expression. As a rule
both mature together though with variable preponderance.
Virtuosity is a name for technical mastery ; it is frequently
applied to the musical performer who, if deficient in the
other respect, is commonly said to lack soul or expression
or intelligence — a composite defect of sensibility. A re-
view of the professional careers and differences within these
careers based upon sensibility would furnish a rich illustra-
tion of the complications to which the esthetic field is sub-
ject, but would contribute little new in principle. It would
consider differentially the prominence in one painter of
sensibility to color and in another to form, in one to the
decorative, in another to the dramatic factors in composi-
tion; it would differentiate the sensibility of form-percep-
tion upon which the portrait painter and that upon which
the sculptor proceeds; it would differentiate the epic poet
from the lyric, the comedian from the tragedian, in part,
the romanticist from the realist in any art. Through all
it would differentiate the several orders of standards and
ideals reflecting the sphere of culture and the genius of the

THE SENSIBILITIES 99

social forces under which the sensibilities have been molded,
by which they are directed; schools and allegiances would
be contrasted, and the varieties of esthetic sensibility dis-
closed. In the analysis the varied dependence upon the
collateral function of discrimination — of which the intellec-
tual quality is the type — would likewise be recognized, mak-
ing one artist thoughtful and another sentimental. These
conspicuous differences, which reappear in later considera-
tions, are cited here as illustrative of the careers in which
sensibility is fundamental and remains fundamentally of
the esthetic variety.

Such is the issue when the sensibilities play the leading
role in endowment or career. The subordinate functions
which the sensibilities exercise in endowments, proficiencies,
and careers elsewhere centered, constitute their second great
order of service. The support of the sensibilities appears
most directly in the companion quality to esthetic sensi-
bility; sensory and intellectual discrimination. Keen ob-
servation, a sensory alertness, a finely adjusted instrument
of appraisal, is its condition. The psychological instru-
ment registers impressions as a balance registers weights.
The fact that the grocer's scale is coarse means essentially
that it will not respond differently to two weights of very
slight difference, will not detect differences of a hundredth
of an ounce. Furthermore for practical use it will and
need read only approximately, say to quarter-ounces or
half -ounces; for in the operations in which the grocer's
scale is the suitable instrument, precise readings are un-
necessary. The chemist's balance responds to the minutest
differences of weight; it is an instrument of precision. It
is sensitive to the thousandth of an ounce ; the range of its
use is a refined one in which minute differences count.
The psychologically sensitive visual instrument discrim-
inates complexly as well as finely. Tints and shades sub-
stantially alike for the house-painter are wide apart for
the portrait-painter; and more significantly than the bare

100 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

units of differences are the varied ranges of value and
esthetic significance which are decisive in the one and
nearly negligible in the other. A portrait executed with a
house-painter's palette and a house-painter's sensibility and
skill would be a travesty of art indeed. Coarse and fine
sensibility, while in a limited and legitimate interpretation
a matter of scale, are separated in reality by a complexity
of mechanism — a reference to divergent systems of value,
for which the grocer's scale and the chemist's balance offer
altogether too meager and inadequate an analogy. By way
of corollary, let it be added that a similarly contrasted
sensibility is involved in different types of movement. In
coarse occupations, like scrubbing a floor, the movements
may vary in inches from the intention and yet be efficient ;
in writing or in plain sewing they may vary slightly yet
appreciably; in the surgeon's craft or the jeweler's they
may vary hardly by a hair 's breadth or miss their purpose.
Movements of precision require sensibilities of precision to
feel when the execution departs the slightest * ' shade ' ' from
intent or desire. Only the singer who hears the falsity of
the note sung will and can correct it; only the craftsman
or the sportsman who feels the defect of the stroke can im-
prove it [26]. Expertness is ever dependent upon refine-
ment of sensibility.

The comparison of the units of the underlying scale,
though inadequate, is profitable. It pictures the operation
of sensibility concretely; it suggests the measurable or ap-
praisable factor for which discrimination — quasi-intellec-
tual discrimination — is the psychological counterpart.
This likewise may play the chief role or a subordinate part ;
when it leads, it finds support in esthetic sensibility; when
it is subordinate, it supports the latter. Scientific expert-
ness is a trained instrument of precision for the detection
of differences, not of bare or minute, but of significant ones
■ — pertinent to an artificially regulated welfare yet ever in
the original terms of the sensory alphabet. The signifi-

THE SENSIBILITIES 101

cance is logical; it arises from the insight afforded by a
rational system of interpretation; it is at once a difference
of fact and a difference of meaning. The careers in which
sensory-intellectual discrimination is fundamental reflect
the acquired proficiencies of this order. The chemist, the
physicist, the astronomer, the engineer, the geologist, the
biologist, the psychologist, the economist, the philologist, all
exemplify it; the diversities of their mode of applying it
are in the larger outlook but secondary [27]. And in each
specialty, though differently, the esthetic type of sensibility
supports discrimination and insight. The man of science
is an artist in some measure; and many an artist is in a
comparable sense somewhat of a scientist. There are phases
in the activity of each supported by the supplementary
trait; there are qualities in the character of each that re-
flect the strength of the compensatory factor in the per-
sonality.

The role of the sensibilities is capable of further illustra-
tion. The sensibilities become a supporting factor of other
mental processes — a theme more pertinent to later consid-
erations. Sensibilities support reason; they combine to
form tact and judgment; they stimulate the imagination;
they direct association; they determine the stream of per-
ception. Matured preferences are complex; the sensibili-
ties form a typical factor in the composite. Lying close to
the foundations, the influence of the sensibilities is often
concealed by the elaborate and conspicuous superstructure
to which decisions are credited. It is the common situation
that reason — here used as a type of the consciously recog-
nized forces in conduct or attitude — reenforces or justifies
preferences and decisions rather than inspires them. The
motive force is apt to be imbedded deeply in sensibilities
favored by esthetic leanings and the appeal of fundamental
interests.

Sensibilities, it has been variously illustrated, are ac-
quired, often redirected, on a natural basis, at times quite

102 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

transformed. The derivative use of the term applies it to
a complicated product, which operates in analogy to the
original procedure, though of different range and import.
The moral sensibilities aptly illustrate such a derivative
issue; and their instrument of acceptance and avoidance
is recognized as the conscience. Conscientiousness in moral
conduct is analogous to artistic sensibility in esthetic prefer-
ence, to sound discrimination in practical judgment, to rea-
son in acceptance of conclusion or in the regulation of be-
lief. The judicial attitude, the critical distinction, actually
proceeds upon a very different range of considerations than
those which sensibility directs; yet the ''sensibility" type
or model is not wholly departed from, and in some cases
clearly persists. Moral action, we all know, is a matter of
inclination as well as of sensibility ; doing right and know-
ing right may be estranged, despite their ready intercourse.
But intent alone may be futile or worse; and causes like
persons must at times be saved from, as well as by, their
friends. The cultivation of moral sensibilities proceeds
upon a refinement of discrimination for which the sensi-
bilities in the primary field furnish the parent type. Quite
similarly in the intellectual domain: the issue of constant
association with exacting standards develops attitudes and
habits of outlook with reference to what should be accepted,
entertained, held plausible, or rejected, as fact or truth.
It is established with reference to inferences, statements,
and conduct. In all these relations the absorption of experi-
ence is of a complex order; it develops a keen scent for
truth, for the significance of relations. Such keen-minded-
ness is but the intellectual counterpart of sensibility, of
keen-scentedness. It is exercised in various directions,
common or rare, exalted or lowly. It is the reportorial
"nose for news" that scents the material for a story in the
incidents of life, often in disregard to considerations which
other types of sensibility would respect. It is the detec-
tive's sense for a clew, the following a trail of suspicion,

THE SENSIBILITIES 108

no differently than the pursuit of a rebellious or an elusive
fact and its final apprehension in a principle, its eventual
application in an invention. The sense for the picturesque,
for the dramatic, the shrewdness of the adventurer or of
the trader, mature specialized sensibilities in the practical
domain under the impulse of natural inclination and arti-
ficial stimulation. The model upon which sensibility acts
remains directive.

In retrospect we observe the manifold proficiencies and
careers in which sensibilities play the leading role; we
observe yet more familiarly the proficiencies and aptitudes
which they support ; in such support an esthetic impression
is commonly supplemented by a sensory or an intellectual
discrimination, and in such service we find the most direct
measure of our individual differences ; we observe more gen-
erally how the sensibilities lead to and affiliate with other
expressions of our nature ; we observe the resulting derived
varieties of sensibility, conforming to the parent patterns,
yet diverging in trend and direction of service. By such
observation we realize the span of human psychology in
terms of one of its fundamental aspects. The substratum of
the nervous system, and the superstructure of the mental
equipment alike appear as instruments regulated by and
regulating the sensibilities.

CHAPTER III

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT

The sensibilities, though fundamental and far-reaching,
require and find their complement in other psychic regu-
lations and particularly in the emotions. Under the stress
of situations of a larger psychic appeal and a more diffused
spread, the sensibilities are inadequate ; they accept or reject
but do not propose or dispose. The central interest is in the
emotions as sources of human quality ; but this pursuit re-
quires an understanding of their place in the psychic or-
der— of their natural conditioning, of their primary scope,
of their mature potencies. The affective life yields re-
luctantly to analysis. Its movement is deep ; by nature it
is felt rather than known; yet its report to consciousness
in self -analysis, and the discerning interpretation of con-
duct in terms of motive and desire, form a body of knowl-
edge adequate to direct inquiry profitably. A consider-
able range of personal traits may be confidently referred
to qualities of emotional susceptibility. Emotions, as or-
ganically conditioned, must be approached as elements in
the physiological economy; they are of manifold types, of
varying explicitness, of varied status ; hence the inquiries :
Which are the primary emotions? What are the dis-
tinctive varieties of emotion? What is their place and
mode of operation in human nature, in the composite
psychology of man? Emotions develop, interact, compose
with other psychic trends, are played upon by environ-
mental forces; hence the further inquiries: What are the
types of emotional complication ? What are the careers of
the emotions in mental evolution?

104

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 105

We begin with the pain-pleasure root of feeling in its
organic setting; but we do not dwell there long. The do-
main in which the smart or sting of simple bodily pain
or the sip or thrill of simple bodily pleasure directs con-
duct is itself too simple to meet involved situations or to
hold the mature interest, however absorbing to infant sat-
isfaction. It may be insistent and on its punitive side is
certain to enforce a hearing. Pains disturb the equili-
brium alike of the physiological adjustment and of the men-
tal poise; their slighter varieties, or our individual sub-
jection to their tyranny, help to make or mar the success
of our enterprises and the serenity of our dispositions.
At all levels of existence pains continue to be avoided and
pleasures sought; the susceptibility to both remains and
colors the tone of all experience. But the qualities of pain
and pleasure and the ranges of experience to which they
are attached multiply (not in their original reactions pre-
sumably) as the range of experience becomes diversified and
complicated. The pain-and-pleasure type of reaction ac-
quires a richer emotional quality, not unrelated to the
sensory and organic satisfactions but far transcending
them.

The general influence of organic condition appears in
the fluctuations of elation and depression, eagerness and
lassitude, as they quicken or retard the play of emotion,
favor the appeal of this or that range of the emotional
register. Such organic incidents as hunger, sleepiness, di-
gestive distress, and the vaguer and slighter fluctuations
of physiological welfare, affect the susceptibility to the
conduct-regulating stimuli; if of disturbing character,
they may engender an emotional instability. Hunger, like
anger, may quicken the struggle for existence; fatigue,
like satiety, may dull its edge. The association of fasting
with prayer is similarly though more subtly significant.
Underlying the specific susceptibility to the emotional ap-
peal of the moment is the general organic liability. In

106 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT '

concrete illustration : If I am tired, have slept badly, crave
my breakfast, or am ''out of sorts," any of the common
slighter sources of irritation has a fair chance to get by
my self-control and release a puff of anger. Similarly a
rankling thought of my own carelessness or poor judg-
ment or plain hard luck may put me in a " bad humor."
There are also certain occurrences that have somehow ac-
quired a ready access to my irritability. I find certain in-
cidents, tasks, or ways irritating, possibly out of all pro-
portion to their intrinsic offense. A loud voice, presump-
tion in address, needless questions, the German language,
mislaying my eye-glasses, packing a trunk, losing at cards,
the prospect of being late for a train, waiting for a
street-car, onions in my food, stubbing my toe — heteroge-
neous as they are thus assembled — may each stir my petu-
lance, and arouse a similar reaction — a scowl, sharp words,
a lapse in manners. Let one of these legitimate inciters
of wrath combine with a sullen mood, and the outbreak is
aggravated ; let it reach me when I am particularly at ease
in mind and body, and it scarcely raises a flutter: ''Fate
cannot harm me; I have dined." By the same token a
piece of rare good news may go far to dispel a dejected
mood of organic origin, as the visitor's sprightliness serves
to cheer the sick or the despondent. It is natural that my
friends should judge a phase of my character by such
emotional manifestation and regard me as testy, peevish,
churlish — according to the frequent and constitutional
habit of such outbreak; and I may be saved only by my
sex from being put down as a shrew, vixen, termagant, or
virago. The more charitable or more knowing may refer
it to uncertain health; the rest to a common inheritance
from Adamitic days, or to individual moral peryersity or
to bad training. Furthermore and under other occasions
than those cited, reflective consideration may enter to sus-
tain the emotion, alike for self-interest and for my inter-
est in others. The highly cultivated sense of insult or in-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 107

justice is also a provocative of so primary a response as
anger, the inciter of my pugnacious instincts. As under its
sway I seek redress, the anger grows by meditation and
promptly or slowly matures attitudes and actions. If I
observe a big boy bullying a smaller one, an official abus-
ing his authority, a corporation imposing on the public, a
prejudice or neglect from which innocent persons need-
lessly suffer, my reflections feed the smoldering fires of my
righteous indignation. I feel aggressive and in striking
mood, and may show it by word and manner as plainly as
by deed. The like conditioning applies even in the intel-
lectual sphere. In my general views of, and attitude
toward, people, affairs, prospects, institutions, movements
— all of which should be reasoned and reasonable positions
— my prevailing disposition colors my outlook, and makes
me much or little of a pessimist or an optimist. Such are
the complexities of temperament and of the motive sources
of conduct. Chronic dyspepsia, a falling on evil days or
ways, ill-temper born of pampered or undisciplined habits,
are all likely to be cited as causes of despondency or bit-
terness, from the lamentations of Jeremiah to the diatribes
of Carlyle.

The course of emotional complication has been thus car-
ried abruptly to its mature and familiar issues in order to
use the interest in the upper stages in behalf of a more pa-
tient analysis of the earlier ones. For the primary ques-
tions are these : Why does human nature present this com-
mon trait of irritability? What is its original source and
service? How does it acquire its present orbit or sphere
of influence? What, similarly, is the source of the other
appeals which turn its edge? How does it come about
thet so many different types of occasion induce a similar
reaction ? What, in a closer view, are the orders of trans-
formation in the finer quality of such response or in the
psychic play that induces it ? In the first instance, we may
assume, the emotion spreads an agitation specific enough

108 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

to meet the outer disturbance that precipitated the situa-
tion. Such emotion must on occasion be ready and quick,
instinctive and impulsive. In such direct service the an-
ger is as essential as the sharpness of tooth or strength of
claw that gives it play ; the fear as serviceable as the fleet-
ness of limb which it summons. In the response at what-
ever stage, the inducing stimulus or occasion of the emo-
tion, its inlet first engages the attention ; there follows the
play of the emotion itself, of which little is known posi-
tively and for which the inner feelings, the physiological
changes, and the superficial miens and attitudes serve as
clews. Lastly, there is the manner or type of conduct, the
resulting reaction to the situation, which serves as the out-
let of the emotion and as its consummation. If I am
afraid of snakes, the sight of a snake (or in later stages
through their imagined presence, the very mention of
snakes) serves to set in operation my fears or aversions;
snakes become a "fear" situation — possibly a "disgust"
situation as well. If I shudder or tremble or grow pallid
at their sight or even recollection, then these feelings and
their revealing bodily expressions may jointly stand for
the inner phase of the emotion. If I run away in good
or bad form, the recoil and retreat supply the outlet and
constitute my reactive behavior. If I like dogs, their
presence releases some phase of my tender feelings, and in-
duces a contrasted affect, which my facial expressions and
bodily attitude disclose, and which lead me to approach
and fondle. Furthermore and pertinent to later issues:
in approaching a big dog of rather savage appearance, I
am divided in my feelings and uncertain in my reactions.
I recall that the dog has a psychology of his own, and I
cautiously await the bodily expressions and reactions
which serve as the outlet of his emotions. If he growls
and snaps, I may be honestly afraid — and my heartbeat
may advise me of the fact — and yet hesitate in reaction be-
tween pacification and aggression by voice or gesture, or

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 109

even counterthreat with stick or boot. Evidently the
emotions go but part way in the regulation of even simple
conduct — as in the higher life, feelings are often an un-
certain guide — and require the support of the intellect and
the control of the will. But this moral anticipates later
developments.

The initial consideration relates to the status of emo-
tions as primary and secondary, as simple and composite,
original and derivative, bare and overlaid. At all stages
the distinction is decisive between (1) the attracting, in-
viting, engaging, emotional attitudes, and (2) the pas-
sively retreating, shrinking, withdrawing ones — or, in an-
other phase of the same contrast, the actively repelling,
aggressive ones: composure, sympathy, love, joy, as
against disquietude, hate, fear, anger. The natural situa-
tions calling forth these affective tones and the behavior
which they evoke, must all be considered together ; for they
share a common life-history. The recurrent satisfaction
of the constant pressure of natural needs and the protec-
tion from hurt and harm or from the thwarting of im-
pulse, point the emotions as well as the sensibilities to their
primitive uses, and keep the nervous system keyed to effec-
tive pitch [1].

It is not essential to fix the stage — clearly an early one
— at which the feeling-tone of organic response matures
into an emotion. In the field of urgent activity, emotion
implies the more complex satisfaction of more complex and
variable needs, requires that the needs satisfied shall not
be too constant, possibly intermittent, but typically occa-
sional; not the interludes but the tense moments of the
drama. Emotion applies the spur to the mental gait; it is
an obstruction-meeting device reserved not for the run but
for the jump in the hurdle-race of life. The subdued af-
fective accompaniments of sensibility dispose of the minor
fluctuations from the even tenor of routine; they achieve
the adjustments of comfort and composure, doubtless agi-

no CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tating a faint emotional undercurrent. The emotional sit-
uations tend toward the acute, the complex, the unusual;
they must be distinctive, interesting, worth while, to dis-
turb the balance of play of the organic equilibrium, to
arouse latent impulses to expression. Urgency alone is
not of itself sufficient ; breathing is vital, but arouses slight
emotional accompaniment; its adjustment is too automatic.
If we had to struggle for air as for food, the result might
be quite different. If adjustment is required, as in a close
or sultry atmosphere, it contributes to the emotional tone,
the euphoria. The first lung-full of salt air or the tang
of the pine forest, or of the balm of rare June days, makes
breathing a realizable joy. Vitiated air oppresses and
chokes; a sudden spasm of choking induces alarm, and a
sudden fear finds expression in a gasp for breath. A dis-
tinctive range of emotional expression is respiratory in
source. Yet in this illustration we have touched upon a
double not a single source of emotional quality; the spas-
modic fear is summoned because of the danger of choking;
the need of clearing the throat will waken a nervous
sleeper to a moment of distressing agitation ; the terrors of
nightmare may in some cases be of like origin. By con-
trast the added quality of stimulating ozone is a surplus of
experience. Both are departures from routine adjust-
ment. Similarly, hunger and thirst in their primitive
nakedness do not attain to an emotional quality; yet as
commonplace urgencies, they have an affective accompani-
ment. Metaphorical hunger — that is, desire — for less vital
and rarer satisfactions may acquire an emotional setting;
such as the longing in winter for the resurrection of spring
or the relaxations of summer. These arouse an emotional
affiliation of which their availability for poetry is not an
unfair test. We do not call the appetite for a beefsteak
nor the feeling of satisfaction in eating it an emotion [2] ;
nor do we write odes to beefsteaks or immortalize them in
painting. But the more delicate satisfactions of flavor of

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 111

fruits, wines, or rarer indulgences — remote from the grati-
fication of appetite as bent upon nutrition — may thus
qualify. Like the stimulus of the salt air or the balm of
the pine woods, they are added zests, the surplusage or
luxury of life when of the enhancing variety; the goads,
the crises, the thrills, if exciting or menacing in trend.
Thus we seem to lay bare the dual source of the emotional
life: the one, the imperious emotional demand to make ur-
gent impulses effective; the other the enhancement of ordi-
nary even-toned responses by the infusion of an added
zest — a minor by-play of interest.

Along with the occasional character of emotion — for we
cannot maintain excitement long at even pitch — and the
complication-inviting quality, there is needed a specific
trend of feeling to give it inwardly a distinctive variety of
disturbance and outwardly a definite bent or set of relief
or satisfaction. All this makes for interest and for a place
in consciousness; it likewise converges upon action and
justifies the close association, the coalescence of the emo-
tions and conduct. The emotion like the motive is some-
thing that moves to action; the psychology imbedded in
the etymology is sound. Action must be both specific and
intent. Mere contraction of muscle may result in a twitch,
a spasm, or a fit — pulling these or those strings of our
motor apparatus — but is no more conduct than a chance
pouncing of all fingers upon the keys of a piano makes a
chord. From the interests of conduct, simple automatic
action takes care of itself without demands upon feeling
or with only a faint, even-toned psychic pulsation ; sporadic
actions — the hill-climbing moments of dis-ease or the coast-
ing moments of super-ease — introduce interesting, con-
sciousness-engaging excitements among the level stretches.
They sustain conduct by the inner excitement which they
radiate; they guide it by the specific responses to which
they incline and in the consummation of which they find
relief and profit.

112 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

The emotions considered specifically are distinct by vir-
tue of the distinctive inclinations which they at once em-
body and further and direct. Emotions and sensibilities
are subject to the common principle that action depends
upon (differentiated) responsiveness; to act appropriately
one must feel appropriately, be distinctly affected or dis-
posed. The sensibilities achieve the adjustment by imme-
diate stimulation in terms of an ingredient of pleasure that
attracts, or of pain or disaffection that repels. The ele-
ment of gratification or offense is the specific focus of the
reaction and lies directly in the organization of the sense
or senses which convey it. The horse may be led to the
water but cannot be made to drink. Food acceptances or
rejections as well as preferences are thus regulated. The
sensibilities provided for the normal range of reactions in
simple organisms may be adequate to guide conduct, and
make an emotional life superfluous. Where this condition
is realized — whether in amoeba, snail, or crab — is uncer-
tain. Types of sensibility-preferences favorable to an
emotional growth are found in certain recurrent situations
connected with organic excitement. The sex instincts are
of this order; the attraction is fundamentally in terms of
sense; but susceptibility, organically conditioned, deter-
mines the inner agitation, such as the organic stress of
the rutting season, the uneasiness that by the call of im-
pulse leads to a quest for its satisfaction, or is passionately
aroused by its direct or indirect clew. In the more refined
and individualized responses of sexual selection, the role of
the emotions is vastly expanded. The hunting instincts of
predatory animals supply an expansive recurrent excite-
ment which is needed to maintain the chase efficiently and
energize its central and collateral activities. Such in-
stincts are capable of instant and violent provocation [3]
by the presence — detected by sense — of the appropriate ob-
ject. The relations, though simply stated, readily acquire
a large complexity. Hunger arouses an affective disturb-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 113

anee for which sensibility supplies the selective appetite;
the struggle for food vitalizes large areas of conduct satu-
rated with emotional incentives. The sensory factor
comes to be the spark that lights the charge ; it conveys the
impetus to a prepared and organized energy of larger
scope; the course of the fuse is set in the nervous struc-
ture. Conduct extending beyond the momentary situa-
tion, more urgent or more pervasive excitements requiring
responses of variable type and energy, demand the diffuse
internal agitation and the specific outward trend that con-
stitutes the emotional wave. Yet once more the disposi-
tional mood should be recalled. The invitations of situa-
tion propose; the inner fluctuations dispose. The influ-
ence penetrates to the finest inclinations of acceptance and
rejection, affects subtly and selectively the reception and
the course of emotional play. Organic disposition con-
tributes to the tone of hospitality — a selective and discrim-
inating, even a capricious hospitality — toward the several
appeals which the day's occupation presents. Like the
prepared attitude in the intellectual realm, known as ap-
perception— which smooths the way for apprehension — the
organically conditioned sympathy, the Stimmung, deter-
mines which of the manifold emotional attitudes will more
congenially prevail, will be more readily responsive.
The psychology of prejudice and predilection in its nicer
applications has its sources here. Our sympathies and an-
tagonisms are complicatedly conditioned; they obey a nat-
ural as well as a disciplined summons. A trait of charac-
ter lies in the susceptibility to the appeal of such orders
of stimuli and the regularity of their responses. Mood as
predisposition must ever be reckoned with. There is a
tide, however irregular, in emotional affairs; the ebb and
flow of the psychic stream is unceasing.

The motor trend of the emotion dominates conduct.
The situations in which emotions play their part are * * con-
duet" situations; the affective attitude conditions as it ac-

114f CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

companies the total psychic reaction, which it serves. In-
stinct and impulse refer to the organized tendencies of the
nervous system, which by emotional diffusion discharge
accustomed mechanisms or response. The nervous system
presents specialized areas of sensibility to receive stimuli,
which in due course or originally are qualified to arouse
emotional agitation; the movement from first to last pur-
sues an organic route not rigidly charted, but following
a well-marked natural course. The complexity of emo-
tionally guided response reflects the complexity of situa-
tion ; if the latter were simple, the former would be equally
so. If the psychic state alternated between quiescence and
excitement, and excitement alternated between attack and
withdrawal ; if in an hypothetically simplified turtle all sit-
uations induced either a stereotyped snap or a fatalistic
retirement within the shell, the psychology of the emo-
tional endowment would be reduced to the simplest terms.
The instincts, the nervously organized routes within the
human organism are various; their multiplicity demands
an intricate elastic adjustment. Instinct, blind in one
sense, is keen of discrimination in another. Though
driven, it steers ; for impulse is manifold, and conduct, to
serve its end, must be organized. The emotional route,
though organically charted, ^s it runs its course, engages
collateral trends without losing its central direction. The
induced currents compose the complexity of mature emo-
tions and appear in the early stages as well; the headway
is derived from the primary source. The complex flow re-
directs the stream, yet is conditioned by the course of the
nature-worn bed. Looking backward to the source and
motive trend of the emotion, the psychologist applies one
perspective ; looking about him upon the rich issues of the
emotional life, he applies another. The adjustment of the
one to the other presents a problem of regulation as well
as of analysis.

Sensibilities and emotions alike regulate conduct, dis-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 115

pose to response selectively. Sensibility supplies the in-
vitation; its acceptance is so involved as to require the
ampler influence of the emotional irradiation to carry the
stimulus successfully to its satisfying response. Sensi-
bilities and emotions combine, yet retain their contrasted
status. Disgust is a sensibility reaction of avoidance ; fear
is an emotional reaction of avoidance. Disgust is not fear,
though the two may be directed to a common object, and
either induce the other. Snakes may be found both dis-
gusting and fearful [4] ; the unpleasant affective tone per-
vades both attitudes. Appearance may attract by an ap-
peal to an accepting sensibility; it extends and continues
its attraction by arousing desire, or under suitable incen-
tive, tender feeling. This expanding and complication-
inviting quality finds two points of attachment; the one a
spreading of the roots, the other an extension of the
branches of psychic growth. The one attaches itself to
strong primitive situations; the other to the derivative,
secondary play of impulse. If recoil is to culminate in
flight, it draws upon the sustaining excitement of fear; if
a momentary interest is to mature into watchful ministra-
tion, it draws upon the sustaining excitement of love, at
the least, of devoted concern; if the interest is to find its
issue in attack, it draws upon the sustaining excitement of
anger. These emotional expansions are derived from the
field of primary, ardent emotion, attaching to urgent situ-
ations or to their minor contributory incidents, and de-
rive their vitality as well as their quality from this source.
Ultimately, the parts which these instincts play are so vast,
the stages of responsiveness are so varied, that the emo-
tional enhancement, corresponding to an organic tension,
is indispensable for the variable and complex perform-
ances that intervene between the stimulus and satisfac-
tion. The life of sex is typical in this relation. The spur
of emotion goads desire, and also extends the agitation to
by-paths of invitation. Emotions involve an inner spread

116 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

organically, and objectively an adjustment to complex
situations and to their subsidiary issues. Thus consid-
ered, the emotional life is an enhancement and complica-
tion and radiation of instinctive feelings connected at
their source with urgent natural situations; it gives these
tendencies a psychological setting, a career.

But this stream of activity is not the sole fountain-head
of emotion; emotional enhancement is attached not alone
to the regulation of the vital and urgent needs. In the
second and contrasted variety of emotional complication
sensibility remains directive but with a distinctive and dif-
ferent range. The emotional complication of protective
pains and vital gratifications takes a different set from
that of surplus pleasures. The urgency of situation, far
from being essential is in this development vrholly incom-
patible with it. Such by-products of sensory experience
are congenially emotionalized. The very release from too
direct a bearing upon survival liberates other ranges of
psychic quality. The more luxurious sensibilities find a
congenial support and expansion in the emotional career;
the esthetic life demands a rich emotional basis. Like the
arts, there are also the emotions of peace as well as of war.
It is the emotionalized expansions of the esthetic sensibili-
ties that continue the course of evolution to the highest
types of human satisfaction. In the end the susceptibility
to emotional expansion becomes the distinctive trait, the
distinctively human trait, of the sensibilities. To which
of the sensibilities this emotionalizing susceptibility more
particularly obtains appears from the place of sensibility
in original regulation, and in the considerations of the
preceding chapter.

Pertinent at this juncture is the important consideration
that the existence of the esthetic sensibilities, as of the situ-
ations which they direct, contributes to the life of the emo-
tions a vast enrichment and complication. The emotional
life of man would present a very different, a very meager

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 117

and bare and even crude aspect, were it developed wholly
from the urgent primary types of situation : from -fighting
and fleeing, from food foray and sex rivalry, from aggres-
sive hunting and defensive flocking, and the maintenance
of offspring against competitors. The limitation of the
emotional life of even the most sympathetic animals may
find its source in their incapacity for the esthetic range of
emotionality. Yet the intrinsic strength and leading
quality of the more indigenous emotional order maintains
its place in all later developments; the vantages and the
liabilities of such primitive emotionality continue to shape
the problems of moral regulation in the highest civiliza-
tions. Human pugnacity, though not in its original fe-
rocity, will endure; but it depends largely upon the cor-
rect psychological interpretation and control of the origi-
nal combat iveness, whether the conclusion is reached that
war is inevitable, or that these impulses can be safely and"
profitably directed to other outlets. The essential con-
sideration of the moment is that man, having developed to
high estate both orders of emotion, enjoys more than the
sum of the two. The presence of each infuses the other
with an added quality of potency. The susceptibility to
the esthetic order of emotion profoundly modifies the hold
and the manner of expression of the emotions that reflect
primitive urgencies. The plays of men, the constructions
of men, the surroundings of men, the intercourses of men,
the pleasures of men, the standards of living in all respects,
are markedly different by reason of the esthetic infusion,
even though these expressions continue to embody and re-
flect the modes of solution of primary needs. That in this
development the emotional regulation plays a primary part
is the theme of the present chapter.

The complexity of the sense-impression in developed sit-
uations invites an intellectual expansion that supplies the
emotion with an object, establishes it in an organized sys-
tem of response, and saturates it with associative enrich-

118 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ment and values derived from all shades and grades of ex-
perience. When the direct sensory pleasure of a play of
color develops to an esthetic harmony, it becomes the type
of the complex luxurious issue — ^like the enjoyment of a
sunset — in which associated factors and educated inter-
ests enter and dominate. Such an emotional product can
be grafted only upon a parent stem which itself stands in
more indirect, more remote relation to organic adjust-
ment. It is the esthetic aspect of the emotional life that
engages the slighter by-products of luxurious sensibility,
and, with the aid of the intellectual enrichment, composes
them into the subtler, richer satisfactions. The two orders
of emotional expansion merge and combine and carry the
qualities distinctive of each to and in the higher reaches
of the emotional development of man. The ultimate thrill
and the matured complexity and intricacy of emotion re-
flect the composite source. Of this relation the life of sex
offers a convincing example, exemplifying also the common
organic bond of urgent and of luxurious emotion. The
heights and depths of romantic attachment combine with
the urgent decrees of nature-set desire; the still more re-
mote realm of a spiritualized emotionalism is an efflores-
cence of the same parent stem. Man becomes an esthetic
and a religious being, by virtue alike of his passionate na-
ture and of the refined sympathies and exalted virtues
which his insight and his sympathetic emotionalism dis-
cover in common experience. Life, though never remote
from a struggle and a competition, may yet partake of the
movement of a symphony. The emotional vitality per-
vades both aspects.

We return to the question of emotional primacy and the
specific trend of the emotion. To direct the analysis con-
cretely, we may use the method of illustration, beginning
with an unquestioned instance of a primary emotion, fear.
Fear appears early in human development, is widely pres-
ent in animal life, has intimate physiological reactions, an

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 119

incorporated facial and bodily expression, affects the en-
tire psychic disposition, arouses an instinctive response of
retreat, presents characteristic abnormal variations par-
ticularly of excess. Thus anchored in the organic life, its
role extends by its modification through experience and
control, its affiliation with other similarly directed emo-
tions, its alliance with composite emotional states, its so-
cial complications. These traits, readily observed, confirm
the diagnosis of fear as at once a primary and a compre-
hensive order of emotion. Fear is an important type-
form of emotion with distinctive species and varieties.

Fear has branded its claim upon the nervous organiza-
tion; it gives evidence of a deep and ancient sovereignty.
Its somatic reactions are strong and direct : in fear, breath-
ing is impeded, the heartbeat pronounced and irregular,
the throat dry, the skin pallid, the perspiration cold. In
extreme cases (more familiar in journalistic accounts than
in physiological texts) the hair stands on end or turns
gray; the knees knock together; complete syncope occurs.
The minor expressions, passing over to -the controllable fac-
tors— the trembling, motor hesitation, broken voice, fixed
stare, drawn face, open mouth, shrinking attitude, mental
bewilderment, panic, remain significant; for even the least
of these may point to the original status of a complex emo-
tion that has wandered away from its primary orbit.
Much of this, when the situation is or may be urgent, we
cannot control; and if taken unawares — as by the sudden
slamming of a door — the start or twitch is all over before
our slower intelligence recognizes what has occurred and
restores tranquillity. The abnormal expressions — the in-
stincts gone wrong — are significant. The panic of fear,
crowding out reason — ^as does likewise anger or any pas-
sionate emotional indulgence — is peculiarly subversive,
both in its individual restriction of action and in its col-
lective contagion; witness theater fires or stampedes of
crowds with their tragic, needless loss of life. Such lia-

120 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

bility or anomaly is not limited to human psychology ; the
horse in his mad dash for escape from unreal dangers ex-
hibits it all too readily for human comfort. While exem-
plifying the extreme or misplaced expression (misplaced
by reason of the altered environment), the horse indicates
the original purpose of the instinct the more convincingly.
Running away is the natural response, is what the fear is
for. This consideration brings us once again to the view
of emotion as the spur to action, and to the natural bonds
of emotions and instincts.

The survey of fear as a type of primary urgent emotion
invites the statement of collateral problems in its terms.
First is the distinctive nature of the emotion — the joint
clew to the problems of primacy, of definition, of classifi-
cation. "What, then, is fear ? Superficially a mode of feel-
ing. But how is its mode distinguished from other modes ?
Does the induced response define it? Then fear is the
flight-inducing agitation [5]. But fear need not induce
flight ; it may go part way only and induce withdrawal, or
only defensive caution as in response to a threat. It may
induce concealment — quite as primitive a reaction as
flight. Combining these tentative approaches, we make
fear the emotional accompaniment of the ''protective with-
drawal" type of response to a situation of attack or threat;
and then secondarily apply it to a like tendency and simi-
lar emotional play in situations subsidiary to those of
threat and attack and derived from them. Yet in so gen-
eralizing the emotion we lose something of its specific di-
rectness as prompted by a specific instinct. For it has
become clear that the position here developed is in accord
with that of James and others, and first explicitly formu-
lated by McDougall : that at their source the primary emo-
tions are determined by the principal instincts. The
emotions are distinct as the instincts are distinct. An enu-
meration and classification of the one supplies the clew to
the other; for the liberation of the response sets the trend

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 121

of the emotion. In this view fear is the flight emotion,
and in the equine psychology it is unreservedly such; for
human psychology the more generic statement is truer.
To repeat: fear is the feeling attitude conducive to the
protective retreating type of response [6] ; similarly anger
is the aggressive attitude expressed at its full in pug-
nacity; which, in turn, is equally contrasted with the
friendly approach of tender fellow-feeling, or intermedi-
ately with the neutral inquiring approach of curiosity
awaiting the signal that may turn it to fear, sympathy, or
anger — to running, fondling, or fighting. Such is the
clew to the principle of definition and classification. In
applying it there will be substantial agreement in regard
to the great primitive trunk-lines of instinct-emotions, and
a moderate though not particularly notable divergence as
to the exact points and manner of division.

To arouse the emotion a sensory channel is indispens-
able. For fear it may be smell ; it may be contact ; it may
be sight; it may be sound. It depends upon how the or-
ganism is sensitized. The like is true of anger, the great
counterpart of fear. Smell-induced fears are common in
animal psychology: the deer is alarmed by the human
odor and is approached by the cautious hunter from the
leeward; the fittings of the trap are suspected by the fox
because of the taint of human manipulation. Kittens with
eyelids still sealed will spit and hiss when a hand that has
fondled a dog carries the canine scent to them. For ani-
mal rage the smell of blood is as exciting as its color.
Touch has its play in instinctive emotion; the contact of
fur causes violent alarm in some infants, and shrinking
dislike in others. Appearance and sound are the pre-
ferred avenues of fear-inducing stimuli. Enraged ani-
mals look terrifying; threat is written in every feature.
But the hiss, the growl, the trumpeting, the roar add to
the terror. Possibly by reason of its carrying power, pos-
sibly by rea-son of its gregarious service, the sound has

122 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

gained a special inlet to fear [7], and not of fear alone but
of other emotional attitudes, such as sympathy. A sudden
sound is to human kind as well as to many animals a
startling experience; and all unusual sounds excite sus-
picion; the hunter moves in stealthy silence so as not to
alarm the quarry. While there is thus observable a
natural preferment among the inlets of fear (as of other
emotions), there is a considerable, almost an indefinite ex-
pansion of its terms. Which sounds and which appear-
ances are to be feared, and which ones welcomed, must be
learned, though upon the basis of natural but not always
reliable clews ; the unlearning of irrelevant, though in type
natural, fears proceeds by the same process of education.
But native trend or early set of experience may be too
strong ; and roaches, snakes, toads, mice, as well as thunder
may continue to arouse violent and uncontrollable fear.
The innocent insects, reptiles, or rodents that excite alarm
may also arouse disgust; but the case of thunder stands
as a pure terror of an ''auditory" source [8]. An
eclipse of the sun is an object of fear among many primi-
tive peoples ; and they follow the auditory clew by making
loud and hideous noises to frighten the eclipse monster
away. Among educated persons the eclipse is an object
of curiosity alone, not unmixed, it may be, with an un-
canny feeling, in the presence of the unusual, which is of
remote kin to fear. Such fixing of fears by experience has
a distinctive bearing upon the psychology of attitude,
which makes its consideration more pertinent in a later
connection.

The role of the situation as a whole is to be considered.
The vital end to be accomplished by fear is protection; if
this can be otherwise accomplished, the fear is needless.
Fear is required when a general alarm, ready to inspire
whatever response may be useful, is demanded; it is apt
to engage the total organism with all its equipment of
flight, concealment, defense; anger does the same. Thus

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 123

in the food-quest, herbivorous animals are protected from
injurious plants by an instinctive (odor) avoidance.
The poisonous plant does not strike back, as does the snake
equipped with a comparable protection; sensibility is ade-
quate for the protection and an emotional irradiation un-
necessary. The food-quest of carnivorous animals en-
gages the active pugnacious instincts, as well as the
shrewdly offensive and defensive ones; it engenders an
ardent emotional tension. Similarly for the care-of -young
situation: organisms that deposit eggs in large numbers
and leave them unconcernedly to the sun to hatch, or to
their fate, with a large margin for the destruction of the
many — and the survival of the few — develop no emotional
attitude to the situation. But those, like the birds, that
have few young in a brood — which by their helplessness
require constant attention — mature a complex range of
specialized care-of -young instincts with an equally complex
range of emotional agitation. Shrewdness as well as sac-
rifice en-ters, and the mother bird, when disturbed, draws
attention to herself and away from her nest of fledglings.
Similarly, the mode of fighting and defending sets the clew
for the emotional life; for primary emotions are consist-
ently derived from the primary instincts which they fur-
ther, and the latter are shaped with reference to the situ-
ations which they must meet for the ends of survival
and preferment. From all this conditioning man is not
exempt; his emotional nature is derived from the native-
set habits of his primitive life.

The expression of the emotions offers a series of prob-
lems. How do we come to express our fears and our an-
gers, so variously excited, in such similar ways? Simi-
larity of organization is responsible for the issue ; the gen-
eric similarity of the primary situations from which the
expressions are derived, also plays a part. The consid-
eration of the repertory of expression proposes such ques-
tions as : Why do we glare and set the teeth and raise the

124 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

voice when angry, why smile and chuckle when pleased,
why frown when worried, why sigh when sad? These
natural outlets, sharing in a like mechanism with the vis-
ceral changes, constitute the inward phase of the emotional
complex — the most unchanging factor. Similarity of ex-
pression, both inner and outer, becomes a significant clew
of similarity of affect; the congenialities, compatibilities
and incompatibilities of expression disclose the relations
of organized emotions. The constancy of the visceral re-
actions has the same basis as their remoteness from volun-
tary influence. The facial and related expressions are also
deep enough to make their control difficult though possible.
The most urgent types of emotion are bound up with the
most involuntary expressions. Anger and fear, even guilt
and shame, are not easily concealed ; for, like murder, they
will out. The restraint of laughter and tears under strong
provocation sets a task to the will, and serves as a proper
index of maturity; but by the natural affiliations of the
suppressed expressions the effort has a somewhat different
range. Because of their remoteness from control, because
of their genuineness, the visceral and related changes ac-
companying emotion form an invaluable record. They
tap the emotion from within. If adequately revealed, such
** readings'* would differentiate the affect of fear and of
anger, of submission and elation, of tenderness and indif-
ference. How far this clew may eventually be followed it
would be rash to predict ; practically it remains partial and
limited, and throws us back upon the outward visible ex-
pressions (interpreted by the light of our own fallible in-
trospective experience) for the interpretation of the subtler
and slighter emotional play, and the regulation thereby of
social attitudes and responses. The situations of stronger
urgency excite the stronger expressions; the hot jealousy
and pugnacious anger of sex rivalry, the desperation of a
panic, reflecting the cruelty of primitive struggle for ex-
istence, offer examples. In these the outer expressions

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 125

are strong enough to bring to the surface the internal ex-
citements, the reddening or the pallor, the motor contor-
tions, the panting, the general physiological upset. The
full-fledged expression is significant as a magnified render-
ing applicable to the reading of the lesser miens in related
expressions. It is such intense anger that makes it clear
that anger is the '^striking" emotion: witness the expert
and uncontrolled rage of children, which may make use of
''biting" and all the attacking armor of fist, teeth and
nails. It is such complete expression that indicates that
all expressions of rage or irritation are miniature and in-
complete approaches to the original consummation. There
is often an unwelcome evidence of the primary hold of the
instinct in the involuntary tendency to strike when acci-
dentally jostled or when one's toes are stepped upon, and
even irrationally to kick an unoffending footstool over
which one has tripped in the dark. The slamming of a
door in leaving a room in anger serves as an outlet of
''impotent rage" and, like the tendency when angry to
smash something, may relate destructiveness to anger, at-
tack and its sequel. Such response may be released the
more readily because of the absence of fear of counter-
attack which restrains in meeting a "real" foe. But the
point is mainly that the occasional revelation in sophisti-
cated and well-bred persons of a tendency, possibly related
to the original trend by which conquest was completed by
extermination and the slaughter of war by pillage and con-
flagration, discloses the intimate bond of the emotion and
the primary impulse for the sake of which it came into be-
ing. It is further interesting to observe the response when
several original tendencies may be jointly operative. The
fact that fear is also the concealment tendency may ac-
count for the tendency to throw the bed-clothes over one's
head when alarmed by thunder, or even by the suspicious
sound of a possible intruder — a conduct as wise and as
natural as that of the proverbial ostrich. It has been sug-

126 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

gested that the physiological counterpart of the dual re-
sponse is traceable jointly in the paralysis which is at times
the effect of fear and belongs to the "concealment" com-
plex, and in the quickened heartbeat which belongs to the
* ' flight ' ' complex. The latter, as the more common, may in-
dicate that the typical anthropoid fear reaction was flight ;
and that possibly in extreme cases concealment was the
more favorable alternative: when too much frightened to
run we, like our ancestors, are rooted to the spot. In
milder variety fear induces consternation as well as hesita-
tion; it induces also a search for social security.

As a result of such evolutionary excursions, we obtain a
richer sense of the history imbedded in the play of emo-
tion, of its occasions and expressions, and of our common
and our individual susceptibilities to its sway. We may
resume the more orderly course of exposition by restating
the results of analysis in simple form. We recognize (1)
the stimulus or outward invitation to the release of the
emotion which the environment supplies and to which the
sensory equipment is open; (2) the internal changes of
feeling thus aroused, including (in addition to the pre-
conditioning disposition) the adequate range of distinc-
tive attitudes of attraction, repulsion, attack, defense, curi-
osity, sympathy, elation, submission, and their variants
and derivative affects; and (3) the combined expression
of, and reaction to, these processes. Such psychological
terms as instinct, impulse, the Latin nisus, the German
Trieh, the double sense of passion, indicate shif tings of
emphasis toward one or another of these phases, while yet
extending over all. The one aspect emphasizes that which
sets the instinct in its specific course, makes the cat the
hete noir which the dog fights and the mouse fears, makes
the young of the species the object of tender concern, de-
termines less rigidly what sights, sounds, contacts, odors,
will alarm or attract. Incidentally the same considera-
tion emphasizes the psycho-physiological predisposition;

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 127

such as the emotional tension in animals during the rutting
or the breeding season, and in human kind the slight in-
ducement needed to arouse fear when by nature, mood,
or circumstance, one is timid. The other aspect em-
phasizes consistently the terminus ad quern. As we
think of the Trieh as the driving force or as the action
to which we are driven; of the nisus as the inner inclina-
tion or the outer trend of the instinct; of the passion
of what we inwardly suffer or what we ardently and
outwardly express; we place in the foreground one or
another aspect of the emotion-complex. As we consider
the more developed phases of our own emotional life,
we regard as distinctive the inner trend, the tendency
for the emotional irradiation to become psychically promi-
nent and explicit, gathering about its nucleus of natural
affect an enlarging as well as a differentiating mass of
*' ideas'' and associative enrichments. The fear that arises
when actually confronted by a danger or an ordeal leads
to dread of its anticipation ; and the telling of ghost stories,
no less than organic enfeeblement, induces the mood of
timidity. If we dwell upon the completing aspect of the
emotion, we subordinate all other phases to the central clew
of conduct. We look upon emotional agitation and upon
consideration alike as suspended or partial responses,
stages of delay, as indirect shapings of conduct, of prompt-
ings and impulses. Furthermore we look to the reaction
as decisive for classification and evolution alike, value
highly all that is expressive and motor [9], and in practice
appraise and educate pragmatically in terms of ends ac-
complished— the enduring values — ^while yet recognizing
how much of the science of psychology and the art of edu-
cation is involved in the variability of the means. Sensory
recoil, emotional distrust, conscience, imposed scruples and
social restraint are all efficient regulators of conduct, and
find a common value through the common affective disposi-
tion which they arouse. Situations in which what men

128 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

do is less significant than ivliy they do it, become increas-
ingly frequent with the growing complexity of mental life.
The reverse order of importance is more pertinent to primi-
tive cultures and situations, and by the same token, to an-
alysis. Leaning upon this evidence, we should look for the
distinctive instincts of man, as of animals, in what they
cause organisms to do, naming this or that emotion as pri-
mary in that it leads to a primary mode of reaction, yet
considerate of the mode of inner agitation which colors
the response.

To understand the nature of primitive instincts and emo-
tions we must observe and interpret them in primitive situ-
ations [10]. These are provided in the first instance by
the struggle for existence under the conditions of nature
— the ultimate battleground of human quality. It is not a
constant warfare, but a preparedness for it; a confronta-
tion with warlike situations which must be met before
peace is restored. The fundamental issue is that of ad-
vance or retreat, the attitude of aggression or of defense.
In terms of attitude, the distinctive groups or types of
emotions are on the aggressive side, anger, self-assertion,
and, with allowance for more remote issues, curiosity and
tender emotion ; on the defensive side, fear, repulsion, sub-
jection.

Among the primitive situations, the **food" situation,
the ' * combat ' ' situation, the * * sex ' ' situation, the * ' care-of-
young" situation are conspicuous and definite; but inter-
mingling with these more specify appeals to response are
the generic ones suggested, though not adequately de-
scribed, by such terms as the *'play,'' ''activity," "occu-
pation," "enterprise," "function," "welfare," "inter-
est," "experiment," or "plot" situation. For the con-
cerns of combat, sex, care of young, and even food, are
severally and jointly occasional, at all events, not con-
stant ; and the frequent intervals of their pressure must be
filled by movement, exercise of function, adjustment, men-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 129

tal and physical occupation, recreation, and most charac-
teristically by * ' play ' ' — itself disposed to assume the mimi-
cry of the realities of life. In any systematic view this
commanding situation must be recognized, difficult as it is
to give it a distinctive name applicable at once to its versa-
tile expression and varied intensity of engagement. If one
could establish the word *'play" in this far more generic
sense, extending it from its juvenile, which remains its fun-
damental, setting to include the adult ''interval," ''experi-
mental," "enterprise" activities, vocational and avoca-
tional alike — as recent theories incline to extend it — it
would be the preferred term, peculiarly appropriate for the
higher organisms with their increasing periods of varied
premature and mature occupation, through which all other
functions and the emotionally tinged impulses involved,
find their maturity and service. Reduced to their lowest
terms, which still show large overlapping spheres of influ-
ence, the comprehensive and absorbing situations become
"play," "food," and "family." In terms of the instinc-
tive habits primitive man may be defined as a playing,
feeding, family-bred-and-breeding animal.

The instinctive reactions to each of these several situa-
tions enlist distinctive emotions in their service; further-
more, the situations have common factors, or aspects, as in
turn the supporting emotions present intimate physiologi-
cal affiliations. Thus men (or animals) compete for food,
for supremacy, for mates; and it is for this reason that
James regards the agitation centering about emulation or
rivalry as a primary emotion — ^the emotion taking its name
from the situation which arouses it. If the food depends
upon the chase, the traits expressed in prowess, endur-
ance, and skill as well as the emotional accompaniment of
pursuit, triumphs, failure, are of no very different order
from those engaged in combat and war. If the food sup-
ply is fairly secure, the combative instincts turn to other
outlets. Nature's demands are slight — self-preservation

130 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

in as favorable condition as possible, and reproduction of
the species. But it is more in poetry than in life that
*'man wants but little here below." The craving for ex-
ercise of function, expressed in *'food," **play," and
''family" reactions develops a varied and rich life of ac-
tivity. The social situation particularly — as established
within the family and the tribal-group — is so inherent and
pervasive as to form part of the primitive nucleus of the
emotion-instincts. Apart from "play," the general di-
vergence of ''food" and "family" activities as ends of ex-
istence not inaptly marks the great divide of the individual
or selfish impulses and the social ones, the two potent mold-
ers of human quality. From another aspect it is sugges-
tive that the aggressive, antagonistic, destructive, emula-
tive impulses are more naturally and emphatically aroused
by the personal, food-getting variety of situation; the
defensive, sympathetic, preservative, cooperative emotions
by the "play" and "family" type of situation. Finally
on the motor side, action and restraint form the two de-
cisive responses of the muscular system — release of energy
and inhibition, and by direct and not distant descent, the
two great moral attitudes of self-assertive expression in
wrath, defense, conquest, or whatever other employment,
and of self -subjecting humility, prudence, compassion,
obedience, or allied deference. As by analysis we lay bare
the roots of human quality, we touch upon the vital points
of its germination, the issues of which, through a consistent
unity of organization, persist in its most complex fruition.
Summarizing we find (1) two distinctive attitudes
toward the several appeals to response offered by the envi-
ronment; the aggressive and the defensive. In the state-
ment of the alternative lies the origin of choice, the germ
of the will. ^^C'est a prendre ou a laisser'' — "take it or
leave it" — is the spirit of the issue from the fish's hesita-
tion toward the bait mysteriously entering his watery hori-
zon to the introspective perplexity of the melancholy Dane:

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 131

**To be or not to be." (2) The situations admit of
flexibility in enumeration, making many or few, throwing
the emphasis here or there, according to the grouping.
The three groups of ''play," ''food," and "family," in
the enlarged sense indicated, seem adequate. An aggres-
sive or defensive attitude may and on occasion must be as-
sumed in the activities centering about play, food and
family, if life is to go on and to go on favorably. (3)
Furthermore, for human purposes, shared in some de-
gree by all social, even by merely gregarious animals — a
distinction momentous in its issue, however obscure in its
origin — is the direction, the purpose, the objective pointing
of the emotion-instinct, as directed to and by self alone
and to and by others — ^the individual and the social direc-
tion. Certain of the instincts arise and persist largely,
even wholly, in their social phase or expression; others
are notably modified and developed by becoming socialized.
There is a fourth distinction to be introduced, which has
been postponed to avoid too involved an exposition, and to
differentiate the situations as presented. (4) There are
two stages of operation in these primary activities: the
preliminary and the actinje oi consummatory. The qual-
ity of the emotion and the trend of the instinct are alike
shaped by the prominence of their roles in the one or the
other act of the drama [11].

The distinction of preliminary and active is significant
for the course of evolution. If all reactions were imme-
diate, the stimulus irresistibly inducing the keen eager-
ness and quick response — the bait instantly snapped, the
blow struck, the attack made — they would remain simple,
mechanical. In fact they are variably and indefinitely
mediate and indirect, and consequently complicated by
delayed hesitation and consideration. The preliminary
(inner) stages begin to stand apart from the (outer) ac-
tive instinct-expression, and develop a more intricate
emotional regulation. The issue may be very different

132 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

because of the intervention of conflicting impulses which
induce and favor consideration. The relation of the pre-
liminary to the active stage of the emotional complex is
suggested for animal as well as for human character by
the common experience that 'Hhe bark is worse than the
bite." Barking precedes biting to signal to companions
and to warn the enemy — interpreted socially — or to ener-
gize the biting propensities — ^interpreted individually. It
is equally, perhaps chiefly, significant as the stage of cau-
tious inquiry — a preliminary defensive check which in the
end makes the biting needless or harmful. By building
upon this psychology, we use watch-dogs against intruders
and for our own protection. Canine sniffing presents
a parallel stage for food or sex or friend-or-foe approach;
and jointly, the aggregate of such preliminary stages of
reaction builds up a generalized attitude of curiosity (and
caution) applied to many situations, particularly to am-
biguous ones — a stage of tentative examination and hold-
ing back, the filling of the reservoir of energy if a strong
aggressive (or defensive) response is the ultimate issue;
the draining it off in harmless ways if the alarm is need-
less, the disturbance mild. It thus becomes intelligible
why all strange situations should excite fear, curiosity, or
anger, as the case may be, the familiar ever finding ready
adjustment.

The contacts of human and animal psychology will fur-
nish an illustration. If in a cross-country stroll I enter
a pasture, the young bull becomes "ugly" at the approach
of a stranger, though tractable enough in the owner 's care ;
the cows approach in idle, vacant curiosity, or chew the
cud in stolid indifference; the crows overhead promptly
emit their shrill gregarious cry of alarm; other birds keep
at a safe though not unfriendly distance; a rabbit or a
gopher observes me curiously yet remains near enough to
his burrow to make an instant dash for safety; the sheep,
if accustomed to trespassers, are indifferent, yet quiver

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 133

on the *' tenter-hook " watchfulness for the reaction of the
leader and then scamper as a flock; the dog approaches
menacingly but in answer to my friendly call and assur-
ance— or through some subtle instinct finding me not a
vagrant or a lawless intruder — checks his growl, reverses
his emotional brakes, and frolics to my petting. Such
animal reactions, selecting among the alternative emo-
tional attitudes of fear, curiosity, friendliness, and anger,
exhibit a preparedness for action — a series of preliminary
responses that may or may not develop to their distinctive
and useful consummation. The fact that such responses
show a considerable adjustment and control indicates the
formative power of experience, the enrichment of the re-
sponse by association, the finer differentiation of situation,
the nicer adaptation of conduct. Much of it, however,
like the difference of attitude to friend and stranger, re-
tains a vestige of that vague organic and possibly emotion-
alized order that is termed instinctive. The response
moreover is determined not by any one emotion but jointly
by the several appeals of contracted emotion and by their
combination and interplay [12]. The complexity is ap-
parent to human consciousness because of the report which
the course of emotion returns to the mind. For animal
behavior it is not easy to determine or to imagine how
much of the internal agitation which we associate with the
release of an emotional wave accompanies the reactions.
We judge mainly by analogy of outer expression, and thus
judging, are prone to "humanize" the psychological state
expressed; yet some simpler type of emotional experience
is presumably present in the higher animals. We may
safely infer that it lacks the reflective and imaginative ac-
companiments that convert fear into apprehension, or make
the human mind shudder in recalling past danger. What
is accomplished through ideo-motor channels in conscious
humanity must find a regulation in animal life in more
direct, organically determined relations.

134r CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

The analysis of the primary emotional range has been
conducted upon the central position of fear and anger as
the contrasted and dominant currents of the emotional
stream; and the illustrative material has been developed
upon the same emphasis. This course has been chosen be-
cause of the resulting definiteness of presentation; it is
also justified by the actual dominance of fear and anger in
urgent emotional situations and by their characteristic
place in the composite nature at all stages of develop-
ment. They are positive and all-absorbing emotions when
pronounced, and give the set to conduct and attitude and
temperament when mild; they suggest the persistence of
the older attitudes of aggression and defense as the con-
stant price of the struggle for existence : the eternal watch-
fulness that now may be directed to concerns of deriva-
tive value, to the mature interests of the mental and the
moral life. The emphasis thus adopted has carried the
argument dominantly in terms of the food situation, and
less centrally, of the sex situation so closely involved in a
common pursuit. This series of contrasts of primary emo-
tional trends must now be amended; for the duality, as
has been suggested, is not adequate to the facts nor to the
integrity of their interpretation. A triad of situations and
a triad of central emotional trends yields a more convinc-
ing, a more fluent, and a more adequate interpretation of
the emotional life. The food situation sets the initial
course and occasion of aggressive anger and defensive fear ;
the sex situation and the family relation continue these
attitudes and enlarge them to varied service and enriched
inner experience by the added by-plays of emotional re-
sponse which these situations entail and invite. The third
type of situation — ^the play situation — is essential to the
completion of the emotional interaction, and is responsible
for much of the complication of the courtship qualities of
response, and for the like subsidiary attitudes aroused in
connection with the food situation. It is important to

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 135

supplement the exposition, indeed, to revise it — in the light
of the contributions of *'play" to primary emotional psy-
chology.

It is in this attempt that the inadequacy of the term is
conspicuous. Between the excitements of fear and anger
is the large interval of adjusted composure and the exer-
cise of function, not unrelieved from the stress of sex or
food but yet centrally directed under their retirement to
ways and means of other type. The presence of so com-
plicated a neuro-muscular system adequate to food and sex
functions involves a larger adequacy for the varied inci-
dental functions of which life, and particularly a complex
life slowly maturing its bases of control, consists. The
presence of functions demand their exercise; with the
claims of food and sex adjusted, there follows either
fatigue, rest, sleep, stagnation, or restless seeking of stim-
ulation, release of pent-up impulses, free expenditure of
energy in animal spirits, idle curiosity, occupation of some
sort. Life is not full, is indeed bare without this complet-
ing interstitial activity which rounds its contours and ex-
pands its opportunities. The vacancy of the cow seems
to reflect the imposed burden of chewing the cud so con-
stantly as to leave little or no incentive for play; the un-
employed interval is too slight and is absorbed in placid
rest. Even the active cat, fed and established in its home,
goes to sleep, when once it has lost the added incentive of
its kittenish play or the cares of family. The dog though
stretched on the hearth in dozing content eagerly awaits
the call of his master to supply the incentive of a walk to
relieve his ennui. The susceptibility to the call of play is
a fundamental quality of the higher emotional nature and
has far-reaching consequences for the emotional life of
man.

The specific emotional quality that is thus furthered may
be set forth under the general terms of joy and grief — the
emotional counterparts of pain and pleasure. The fur-

136 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

therance of function is accompanied by pleasure so far ay
it is a sensory satisfaction, and by the spreading emotion
of joy as a larger gratification. In the general conception
of the series of emotional waves, it is the slighter fluctua-
tions of joy and sorrow, the milder ups and downs of the
psychic barometer, that set the course of the movement;
and the point of present consideration is that the source
of these, though by no means exclusively thus excited, is
in large measure to be found in the incidental situations
of general welfare, enterprise, occupation, play, exercise.
The zest of pleasure is the added incentive of the continu-
ance in whatever activity or experience it is aroused. The
sting of pain as the pang of grief is the recoil from the un-
desirable. In sense-gratification — which is the simple type
of pleasure — each morsel carries the lure of flavor so long
as the appetite holds; a favorite dish, a choice delicacy
points the pleasure to a maximum. A good dinner is en-
joyed as food, however much other factors contribute to its
**joy." Pleasure is attached to furtherance of function,
and to the satisfactions of food and sex as well as and even
more directly than to others. But it extends equally to
all satisfactions of impulse and desire however conditioned,
and extends with a peculiar pertinence to those activities
complete in themselves, containing in recurrent sequence
stimulation and satisfaction — the emotional zest to supply
the continued incentive. Art even more than play, or as
the esthetic form of play, embodies the principle. A thing
of beauty is a joy forever in that contemplation brings a
thrill of satisfaction, and the joy thereof continues the con-
templation. The self-sufficient stimuli of play, or the like
contemplations of art, are not without direction of impulse
— as fear animates flight and anger vitalizes attack — but
direct the impulse to their own continuance as an end until
appetite fails, satiety or fatigue sets in, interest or novelty
wears off, rival impulses displace. To continue beyond
that point may turn pleasure to indifference or even to

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 137

loathing. When one is surfeited there is no zest of appre-
ciation or action, no longer a furtherance but a hindrance
of desire ; pleasure then attaches to rest and inactivity and
recuperation, to quiet and freedom from stimulation or
incentive to action. Hence the shifting adjustments of
pain and pleasure; hence also the pleasure of free unim-
peded activity when the going is easy, and the sense of
effort allied to pain when obstacles intrude and thwart.
To be vigorous and young assures in certain elementary
directions the zest of free activity and imparts a ready joy
to all incidents of living; to be weak or old, wearied or
blase, depressed or careworn, lessens the joy of action and
contemplation, or turns the joy to other consolations.

As joy is the emotional accompaniment and incentive of
furtherance of function, grief or sorrow, like pain, is the
expression of any frustration, most typically of frustra-
tions accepted, possibly under compulsion. The accept-
ance may be helpless or protesting, or even rebellious and
thus arouse anger, or be submissive in resignation, or ap-
pealing in the cry of sympathy or distress. In its social
aspect it is a call for aid — the cry of weakness, an appeal
to others, a prayer. It is all this even in the infant's cry,
while yet the plaintive wail may yield to the solace of
fondling, the satisfaction of feeding, the charm of a new
toy. It is as characteristic when it turns to anger and
rage as when it sobs in distress or fear ; for it is the protest,
weak or strong, against the frustration of impulse, the
checking of unsatisfied desire, the loss of the stimulus or
the opportunity that continues its own satisfaction. The
toy that is taken away or broken, the play that must be
stopped, the merrymaking that must be forsaken, the holi-
day that must be postponed — all occasion sorrow; the loss
of money is a transferred and more potential deprivation
and hampering of impulse; true and deep grief reflects
the loss of the zest of living in the compelling contempla-
tion of what was but can no longer be enjoyed. In this

138 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

survey the ordinary run of joy and sorrow attaches so
characteristically to the minor satisfactions of furtherance
and frustrations of parts and aspects of situations of en-
terprise, play, or exercise, that it seems justified to connect
these emotional attitudes not exclusively but centrally — at
least in their emotional fertility — with the situations thus
created. Freed from occasion for either fear or anger —
and likewise from the stress of food or sex — play develops
the pleasure of function, of living, moving and being, of
looking and listening, of prospect and song; and it com-
bines with these experiences the resultant complexities of
play in the pursuit of food and sex. Motor self-expression
is pleasurable; and by drawing upon the self-expressions
of other varieties — of combat, rivalry, triumph, fortune,
pride, vanity, applause — such expressions carry the flavor
of joy to psychic furtherances. Sorrow leaves the field of
pain and expresses the emotions of defeat, despair, mental
distress, submission, disappointment, guilt, misfortune,
failure, and all manner of psychic frustrations. The wider
emotional aspects of joy and grief span the full measure
of the emotional nature. The reverberations of the or-
ganic welfare and the special gratifications of sense as of
exercise of function continue in the more complicated,
more effusive joys and sorrows, and give tone to mood and
disposition, outlook and reaction. The emphasis of the
moment is that a large share of such attitudes is connected
with the activities of play and exercise ; that the enrich-
ment of the emotional life connected with this range of
activities is responsible for many of the distinctive traits
of character; that the qualities thus introduced in turn
combine with and play upon the emotional products of
other situations. Play joys and play sorrows set the pace
for the emotional life, modify the self-assertions of food
and sex pursuit, enrich the aggressive and defensive, the
self-assertive and self-abasing trends, and expand vitally
the general emotional susceptibility. Joys and sorrows go

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 139

out to food furtherances and sex furtherances, to food frus-
trations and sex frustrations, and in these relations shape
the emotional repertory; yet a distinctive role is added in
the versatile activities of play essential to the evolution as
to the comprehension of the emotional nature of man.

Since our central pui*pose is not to inventory the types
of emotional attitudes nor yet to survey the varieties of
emotional experience, it will be adequate to leave the
analytical pursuit at this stage. Central in the condition-
ing of character and temperament is the play of emotion
in securing appreciation and control: how the psychic na-
ture by virtue of which we severally become the individuals
that we are, is conditioned by its participation in manner
and measure, in scope and depth and in the diversities of
its allegiances, in the several fundamental persistent trends
of response, of which our complex responsiveness in the
elaborate phases of our characters are but the mature is-
sues. In the further pursuit of this purpose, it will be
helpful to consider the expression of the emotions for the
sake of the side-light which they throw upon the evolu-
tionary relations. Such evolutionary history is incorpor-
ated in that marvelous palimpsest — whose decipherment
awaited the genius of a Darwin — the face; not the face
alone, but facial expression as the center of interest, sup-
ported by the attitudes of the more mobile parts of the
body. Properly interpreted the face becomes a venerable
human document, the most ancient of records, compared
to which the picture-writings on rocks and outlines
scratched on bone by the cave-dwellers are recent. The
face reveals the most primitive emotion-engaging inter-
ests of men, and still serves its social purpose as an indis-
pensable instrument adaptable to the highest ends of
human intercourse.

The psychic movement, it has been duly set forth, is a

140 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

wave running into, through, and out from the nervous
system; a sensory inlet, a central diffusion, a motor outlet,
form its components. The facial (and bodily) expression
is a derivative accompaniment of the motor outlet, re-
flecting the emotional tone and import of the central dif-
fusion. By natural organization the anger under which I
strike, the fear under which I run, and similarly if less
directly, the tender feeling under which I approach to
fondle, and still less directly, the curiosity under which I
examine, all give rise to distinctive attitudes and miens
which are *' associated serviceable habits" — in Darwin's
phrase — of the striking, running, fondling, examining re-
sponses, or of preliminary approaches to them. For anger
the expression of setting the teeth or clenching the fist are
associated serviceable habits of biting and striking, are in-
deed a specialized part of these responses, induced by the
same tension which, if continued, discharges the bite or the
blow. At one remove the expression stands as a faint in-
cipient approach, a minor associated habit; the menacing
scowl associates congenially with the set teeth. At yet
another remove the faintest play of the slight muscles that
in stronger contraction compose the scowl, gives the eye
the firm set of stem severity and shapes the closed lips of
displeasure. The expression is faint, incipient, delicate,
remote ; so remote as to lose its meaning if detached. Yet
because our primeval ancestors worried their enemies, we
set the teeth in anger, and glare sullenly with closed lips
when unsympathetic in mood. As the arts are built upon
the esthetic by-products of sensory appreciation, the art
of expression arises from the by-products — even the by-
products of the by-products — of serviceable response.

The facial expression of man is versatile because his
emotional life is rich and varied, and the fullness of emo-
tion has its source in the manifold instincts which serve
his complex adjustments. Expression accompanies activ-
ity as part of its motor vent; it is only because such ac^

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 141

tivity is characteristically emotionally inspired that we
accept the expression as dominantly the clew to the emotion
and its ''sign-manual." In interpreting the roles of the
facial repertory, we are referred back to the instinctive
activities. The ''food" activities (in terms of affect, the
"food" satisfactions) and the use of the teeth in the seiz-
ure and biting of combat as well as in the chewing of food
— ^both accompanied by excitations of smell — fix the mouth
(and nose) as the expressional center for a great primary
range of satisfactions ; the expression persists, while the sat-
isfactions change. Out of the by-play of the muscles con-
cerned in such occupation, a considerable part of the
facial mimicry arises. Disgust is the mimicry of food re-
jection; and the open mouth is (in part) the incipient
stage of the pleasant act of food acceptance. The smile
may have part of its origin here, and for the rest is shaped
(through Darwin's principle of antithesis, it may be) by
its contrast with the open mouth, baring the teeth. We
smile to show that at least we are not going to bite, just as
in more artificial analogy, we extend the open hand of
welcome to show that we are not going to use the member
as a fist. The welcoming smile of the face is thus a remote
yet legitimate descendant of the welcome of food; the
"sweetness" of human disposition by not too remote a
metaphor means "attractive enough to eat." That the
mouth is the early center of expression the infant convinc-
ingly proves by the comprehensive experimental use of this
receptive organ to test the sense-values of all objects that
the hands can convey to the lips. Gradually the eye cen-
ter of expression comes to its own ; through its indirectness
of affiliation, it refines the expressional miens. The open
eye and raised eyelid of surprise (differentiated from the
fixed stare of fear) expresses the expanding interest of
curiosity. It is evident that expression as a product of
"luxury," itself playful, reflects the large share of the
"play" activities in human development. Eager curiosity

142 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

expands to general attention, and the attention attitudes
are of all the subtlest facial expressions; these are largely
centered in and around the eye which plays the leading
part in supporting the intellectual interests of the mind.
Out of the motor by-products of sensory processes are
fashioned the most delicate expressions of interest and
sympathy, of amusement and expectation, of pity and con-
cern, of understanding and perplexity, of approval and
displeasure. The plasticity of the features animates the
face and gives the cast of *' expression " which in human
intercourse we have learned expertly to associate with in-
telligence and sympathy [13]. We are so accustomed to
read the -finer grades and shades of emotion, intention, and
character in these highest grade refinements of expression,
that we find it difficult to realize them as motor nuances
accompanying the sensory activities of ordinary range,
upon which the intellectual life is founded, in turn modi-
fied, by the play of mild emotion by which all activity is
sustained. A negative example may be the more convinc-
ing. The ears play no part in human expression because
man has lost the motor accompaniment of the ''listening"
process ; its possibilities are evident in the ears of the horse,
constantly moving, and responsive to every emotional ex-
citement. ''Pricking up the ears" is for man a metaphor-
ical expression; similarly, the "sitting up and taking no-
tice" is an associated bodily habit which man shares in
restrained manner. Its completer counterpart is ob-
served in the alert raising of the head of browsing animals
alarmed by a suspicious sound.

The range of activities determines the repertory of ex-
pression. The fact that we not alone hear but make
sounds gives to the quality of the voice an emotionally ex-
pressive value of high degree. Vocal expression like man-
ual gesture or bodily attitude requires a consideration of
general emotional states. An aggressive emotion like
anger radiates to every part of the body [14] ; the com-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 143

bative attitude, and no less the threat thereof, sets the body
tensely to facilitate the blow. In the pouncing cat and
the pointing dog the action and the expression are one, or
nearly so. It is necessary to recall that along with the
specific incentive which disposes now to this and now to
that activity, there is an organic predisposition which car-
ries over to attitude and response, and by such participa-
tion becomes represented in expression. By virtue of their
organic hold, such conditions — typically in the form of ela-
tion, depression and allied fluctuation of nervous tone —
find diffuse expression in general bodily attitudes. The
body writhes in severe physical pain; in fatigue the pos-
ture is slouchy ; in grief, which is mental pain, the body is
characteristically bowed. Depression may be read from
head to foot. It is part of the skill of the sculptor to re-
produce the bodily pose that carries and supports the
bearing of the head and the set of the features. Laughter
may be explosive in violence, the body thrown back, the
sides shaking, the voice uncontrollably roaring, all pos-
sible vents utilized. In equally real but gentler emotion
one may dance and sing for joy. Dancing as a fine art
refines and composes while it also conventionalizes bodily
attitudes to an expressional drama; the pantomime con-
centrates upon the facial repertory, but is equally depend-
ent upon the larger range of bodily expression. The face
as the specialized center of expression uses finer strokes,
and to our specialized interest in its revelations discloses
the pictorial meaning more subtly, more effectively. The
drooping mouth, the downcast eye, the careworn brow, are
the finer phrasing of the bowed head, the enervated body.
If the affect is stronger, it may show its tendency to find
relief in expression in the wringing of the hands, the moan,
the tears, the wail, the restless contortions. The tragic
mood gives way to its opposite through the sense of incon-
sequence, when an accidental blow of the hammer upon
the finger-nail induces a rapid violent shaking of the in-

144 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

jured member, a hopping about or stamping of the foot, to
say nothing of repressed profanity; the open mouth, taut
muscles of the face, engage other safety valves for the es-
cape of motor impulses to ease the regaining of composure.
The bodily tone, concentrated in the mobile play of the
face, carries the report of ^'feeling well" and 'booking
well" in the popular and the professional diagnosis.
What all this means is that there are certain charted
drainage routes of motor impulses open to the fluctuations
of organic tone, which reveal themselves as expressions and
merge with and complicate the more specific repertory.
The animal spirits of youth, or the hilarity of good humor
offer apt illustrations. This is in essence Darwin's third
principle of explanation of the sources of expression [15].

The grosser bodily expressions stand forth more con-
spicuously when the face has not monopolized the leading
role. The dog's body is the more expressive because his
facial muscles — retaining their primitive functions — are
less so. The slinking body and tail dropped between the
legs are as eloquent of canine submission, as are the guilty
face and averted eye for human humiliation. By the same
argument, the infant expression, by the very fact of its
lesser differentiation, is more pronounced, nearer to na-
ture, more authentic because less controlled. Infant rage
or pain — the two not yet differentiated — offers a complete
picture of passion in the intense reddening of the face, the
tightly closed eyes, the clenched hands, the long restrained
breath eventually bursting into the shrill cry; all seem as
instinctive as impotent, yet they indicate the strong or-
ganic route of agitation that in due course and by the
same decree of nature specializes expression to distinctive
situations [16]. The month-by-month and year-by-year
maturing is reflected in the expansion and refinement of
the expressional repertory, and early gives a forecast of its
adult dramatic possibilities.

Intermediately between bodily attitude and facial expres-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 145

sion is the development of manual gesture. The human
hand by a like partial release from original service (most
originally and completely from walking and climbing, then
more partially from mauling, scratching, grappling, strik-
ing) qualifies for a supporting role in expression. The
hand may threaten or appeal, warn or insist, command or
beg, bless or curse. The more derivative status of such
expression is shown in its larger subjection to control, as
in the part of imitation in the acquisition of its language.
Some races and societies encourage and others discourage
manual expression. Its service in conveying the sympathy
of contact appears in the pat on the back, the fondling
stroke, the hand-shake — all affected by the play of custom.
Convention and refinement enter together ; the slighter and
derivative dramatic gestures of the eloquent hand enter
into the complex manner as into the refinements and con-
ventions of the dramatic art. But by preferment of parts,
the face at the same time carries the message more subtly
and more incisively. The subtleties of expression develop
the questionings, the suspicions, the disdains, the sarcasms,
the sneers, the considerations, the flatteries, the sympa-
thies, the understandings; and the face conveys them to
those of the same schooling. They remain complex deriva-
tives in increasing remoteness of origin from the motor
accompaniments of the cruder and more direct responses,
in which their coarser antecedents played a more primitive
part. Manner, as an index of sensibility and breeding, has
its warrant in these relations. The story of expression
parallels and reveals the evolutionary course and signifi-
cance of emotion in regulation of behavior. Without this
convincing and objective corroboration, our exposition
would lack confidence as well as completeness; with it we
acquire a version in a translated and accessible language
— and yet a vernacular — of a development obscurely im-
bedded in the primeval growths of bodily and mental evo-
lution. The language of the face proves, as it exhibits,

146 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the phrasing of the emotional life and the validity of the
psychological analyses and interpretations. The story of
the emotional life and its vicissitudes is written doubly,
once in its own vernacular and again in the facial render-
ing.

Resuming the account of the emotional development in
its approaches to the higher ranges of the mental life, we
may present concomitantly the growth of emotion and
expression; their species and varieties, their complication
and elaboration. In clear-cut situations the response, and
with it the associated expression, is equally definite; but
with situations variable, uncertain, and far from simple,
the expressions, linked with the dispositions which they
accompany, like the overtones of a fundamental, reflect
the play of conflict or of combination of trends. In ani-
mal life the expression is the chief if not the sole index of
the emotion; but the inference is unmistakable. Two
''strange" dogs meet with sullen challenge, ominous
growls, fierce looks; they circle cautiously with alternate
approach and retreat; each eventually goes his way with
honors even and impulse appeased. In such maneuvers
pugnacity is contending with flight, the strength of each
apparent, though the resultant in this parallelogram of
emotional forces is inaction. In human diplomacy valor
and discretion contend more delicately. Darwin tells of
a conflict in monkeys between fear and curiosity: he
placed in their cage a bag containing some harmless
snakes; they peeped in the bag, scurried off with fright-
ened look, and returned in fascination to look and run
again [17]. The *'play" situation depends upon a paral-
lel check and interaction of impulse. Playing dogs growl
and bite, but do not set their teeth; children romp and
tumble and throw one another, but without malice or hurt ;
play of this order may easily go too far and become ear-
nest. The game is a combat with restraint, a contest under
rules; but it is a good game — which means a contest en-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 147

gaging the same order of emotional interests as vitalize the
original activity upon which* it is patterned — only when
one plays hard, with heart and head. Sport must have
the element of risk and venture, or it is tame; the effort
must find resistance, antagonism of some sort, fictitious or
real, to be emotionally worth while. The foeman must be
worthy of our steel, and the play must be fair to retain its
flavor. Conflict and combination of emotions merge and
find mixed expressions; for while the one emotion gains
the day, the other modifies its triumph. Both leave a
record in the expression, though this is too static or stat-
uesque to embody more than a suggestive moment of the
moving picture of emotionally guided conduct. Such
combinations show a further variety according as each of
the combining factors enhances the other, or as the issue
reflects the tempered product of the whole. The joy of
destruction may be a primary expression of combative ag-
gressiveness, but it is completed by the self-assertion of
victory, concentrated in the visible humiliation or suffer-
ing of the victim. Anger, gloating, and the pride of suc-
cess, are cumulative in the expression of triumph. Cruelty
is the yielding to its sway ; vindictiveness is the same with
a special motive. Scorn is a composite of combat and re-
jection; and the expression of hate varies as the compon-
ents of anger, tempered by fear and modified by loathing,
shift the emphasis of emotion and play of features. Jeal-
ousy arouses a warring conflict of emotion, typically when
stirred by sex rivalry. The tender feeling may turn to
resentment by transfer of the anger toward the rival to
the object of devotion who shows him favor. In ironic
laughter the anger goes out to the foe; the laughter is a
derision of his pretensions.

There is thus brought forward the largest factor in emo-
tional complication: the adjustment of cooperating and of
. conflicting impulse, the control of their interplay dis-
criminatingly and prudently in the interests of purpose.

148 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

This theme will presently be resumed, and in its completer
perspective developed in the following chapter. There are
now to be assembled and interpreted the collateral trends
and processes that participate in the issue. Eefinement
proceeds by differentiation and specialization; the emo-
tional life becomes rich by distinction as well as by compli-
cation ; and distinction is itself diverse and of varied impli-
cation in terms of the support which it requires of other
phases of the psychic endowment. It is well to observe that
in such development expression becomes more than a vent
of impulse or a by-product of responsive trend; it assumes
a socially serviceable part; the expression becomes more
than a registry in that it is a notice. Attitudes of social im-
port must be published and read — the reading as one runs.
Hound and hare, cat and mouse have their antagonisms
fixed by decree of nature; man to man may be friend or
foe, as the expression decides. The dog barks because it
is his nature to; but part of that nature is the gregarious
habit in which barking, while no less serving for the out-
let of emotional tension, serves to keep the pack together.
Once thus established in its setting and associated with
excitement, barking becomes a natural expression of ex-
citement, dominantly a joyous one reflecting the chase, but
ready to become the preliminary to biting, as that action,
too, represents the possible outcome of the excitement.
The growling bark of menace is differentiated from the
gregarious belling; the baying strikes another tone and
tempo; the howl of pain of a retreating dog still another;
the incessant whine of the deserted pup is equally dis-
tinctive, and each is associated with specific bodily atti-
tudes and emotional states. The differentiation has in
part a gregarious source or reenforcement, as the challenge
or the appeal of the voice is answered in like terms. Two
principles thus appear even at the level of canine expres-
sion: the one is the expansion and transfer of the expres-
sion from its original to a more generic situation of similar

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 149

emotional quality ; and the other is the play of social serv-
ice in the process. The transfer of the expression is sig-
nificant of the change of status which the emotion under-
goes. It appears in canine psychology in that the ' ' chase ' '
bark of joyous excitement greets the returning master ; the
dog's capacity for human companionship is founded in his
gregarious nature and in the individual habit which the
gregarious pursuit established, of which the gregariousness
consists. For human psychology the socially available ex-
pressions, reflecting socially serviceable emotions in the
regulation of socially serviceable activities, are of peculiar
moment. The bark of the dog, the caw of the crow, as
auditory signals, the raised tail of the dog, the white spot
appearing under the stubby tail of the deer, as visual sig-
nals, are primarily ''gregarious" signals. The human ex-
pressions are far more than this; hence the need and the
value of the term "social." They react upon the indi-
vidual expression, modify it, and jointly with it carry the
message to others as complexly as they relieve the impulses
of self. Though we need not go so far in making human
expression a social response as to assume that a Eobinson
Crusoe, deprived of the social motive, would lose his facial
expressionability — even neglecting the inevitable absorp-
tion of the art in his formative days — we know that by its
social service is expression matured. The blind smile, and
the deaf laugh — proving the strength of impulse set in its
natural course ; but they fail to develop the rich facial and
vocal repertory of the seeing and the hearings — proving
the large range of acquisition through imitation. That the
emotional development of blind and deaf is handicapped
through deprivation of the social interplay thus furthered
by the give and take expressionally assisted, can hardly be
questioned. The cry of distress brings assistance, and the
look of distress brings sympathy; human intercourse re-
quires that we read as well as show intent and disposition.
The socialization of emotion forms an integral phase of its

150 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

career; its medium is in large part the socialized play of
expression as a basis of human intercourse.

Differentiation involves intellectual distinction. The in-
fant smiles and chuckles and waves its arms at the sight of
food, when fondled or tossed or tickled, when splashing in
the water, and presently at the sight of nurse or mother,
or when amused or interested; the infant without marked
discrimination scowls and frets and cries when hurt, when
uncomfortable, when tired or hungry, when afraid or shy;
and its emotional susceptibility (which presumably is no
more finely differentiated than its expressions) is elastic
enough to be appeased by a sweet sip or a toy to banish
fear or pain, much as maturer souls use other potations
or diversions to drive dull care away. Recurrent ex-
posure to similar situations, though it dulls the emo-
tion, as custom stales, endows the response with the
value of distinction and recognition, and gives to the
expression a distinctive, familiar quality, the token of
understanding. Yet the generic similarity of the ex-
pression makes it at times a dubious index of the extent
to which distinction has gone. Until the command of
language enters and decides, it is uncertain whether the
eager smile and the brisk waving of arms greeting the re-
turn of the father after a brief absence — or the prancing
of the dog greeting the master after a long one — indicates
the pleasurable welcome of a sympathetic human being, or
the recognition of the parent or mastpr. We infer the
recognition from the exuberance and the spontaneity and
the specialized quality of the expression ; we recognize that
the tendency to express joy when sympathetically ap-
proached is by nature present in the infant and in the dog,
but that the degree to which the emotion is aroused, the
scope of the emotion itself, is determined by the values of
experience. In the shaping of these values distinction
plays its major role.

There is a fair agreement among comparative psychol-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 151

ogists that what nature provides is an instinctive yet plas-
tic equipment, laden with useful tendencies to certain re-
sponses together with certain dispositions under emotional
stress to release them; and that, once thus aroused, under
slight repetition of experience, the instinct takes the set
or bent of its direction and embraces the experienced ob-
ject within the sphere of the reaction. Thus chicks have
the "instinct" to follow; and if raised by hand, as Lloyd
Morgan recounts, will follow the human foster-parent, and
when thus accustomed pay no attention to the maternal
advances of the hen. The instinct, having found its object
(or range of objects) natural or unnatural, clings to it;
here lies the organic basis of conservatism, and here the
paramount significance of early experiences of attachments
and repugnances alike. Chicks have no instinct to follow
the hen; in nature as in the poultry-yard the hen is the
natural object of the ''following" instinct, as the hen by
like nature is inclined to mother the brood. There is
plasticity on both sides, and hens will mother ducklings,
and dogs give suck to young lion-cubs. How far the in-
stinct can be bent from its natural inclination is uncer-
tain; the story of Romulus and Remus will presumably
remain a myth. In the establishment of a habit the in-
stinct expends its force; and the habit includes the fixa-
tion of the object. Thus instincts not originally specific
readily become so, and give the appearance of being specific
from the outset. Yet in the course of nature the adapta-
tion of a certain range of objects to provoke certain ranges
of reaction is marked, and in some cases specifically condi-
tioned to insure urgent ends. Other instincts are by like
nature plastic. The pecking instinct in chicks is their
great experimental endowment; and their acceptances and
rejections are partly ready-made, but largely acquired
upon a very brief experience. Once stepping in water,
they are tempted to drink, and learn it in a single lesson.
When presented at an innocent age with such formidable

152 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

objects as a caterpillar and a worm, chicks learn promptly
— and in terms of sensations accurately reflected in the
mimicry of expression — to shun the caterpillar and bolt
the worm; yet for a time mock worms of bits of brown
worsted aroused the same pecking and even swallowing
reactions as did genuine worms; cigarette ashes and frag-
ments of white of egg were confused; but knowledge soon
came, and the wisdom of acceptance and rejection lingers.
New associations are formed; old ones abandoned. Birds
on remote uninhabited islands show no fear of man,
but if disturbed soon learn to keep aloof; and the report
and then the appearance of a gun or gun-like stick in-
duces flight, and man as an object of fear is established.
Taming or training toward or away from fear are all sub-
ject to association. To a young child a dog is an interest-
ing object, arousing at once the fondling and fearing im-
pulses; if snapped at, the fear impulses dominate, and
dogs become objects to be feared. A parallel process ob-
tains in extending food acceptances and rejections, where
a primitive reference to sense at first decides. Despite
the natural orders of preferences adapted to normal physi-
ological needs, there is a large field for uncertain reac-
tions and the caprices of appetite, in which a fortunate or
unfortunate early experience with this or that food candi-
date may be decisive. Nonetheless, tastes are acquired
and tastes change, and the spice of variety is sought, while
childish tastes are often stubborn and capricious. Withal
the instincts are dominantly conservative; new foods and
dishes become objects of attention-interest, but also ob-
jects of suspicion. We fall back upon the security of the
familiar, and cannot restrain our surprise or our disgust
that foreign peoples should eat such queer things.

The definiteness of relation between the impulse and the
object or range of objects which arouse and satisfy it is
necessarily determined by the place of the impulse, by
what it is to effect in the order of nature, a principle ap-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 153

plicable more specifically to the sensibilities, but with
proper allowance to the emotions as well. If an organism
had but one enemy to shun, but one rival to fight, but one
source of food to seek, but one possible mate to court, but
one monotonous environment to which to find adjustment,
its fearing, fighting, feeding, courting, prowling impulses
might be so rigidly fixed that but one situation would
arouse each, and that at once recognized instinctively.
For the mating impulse such limitation approaches the
actual state of affairs; yet sexual susceptibility is promis-
cuous, though sexual selection operates. .Such selection
enters among the higher organisms, and in human kind
reaches a baffling complexity, in the regulation of which
eugenics and romance find equally ardent defenders, while
the aloofness of race testifies to an organic recoil. Con-
sidered near their source — as we have just considered the
food impulses — such impulses may be as specific as that of
the young of mammalia seeking and sucking the maternal
breast, yet in due course turning to other food under the
more general impulse of curiosity. Yet appetite repre-
sents both a need and a selection ; under severe stress men
and animals will eat what they would otherwise refuse.
Man's feeding is so omnivorous that his fare is far more
largely a matter of education than of nature ; yet the bond
of appetite and suitable nutrition remains and is set by
organization. In the emotionally regulated responses of
courtship, for the man it is only the maiden, for the
maiden only the man, who can arouse the distinctive emo-
tional attraction that brings them together. Under stress
of restricted opportunity the finer claims of selection give
way. But with proper consideration of the full richness
of the human sex-emotion, it is as true as significant that
even for the susceptible youth, the qualifying maidens
capable of arousing the culmination of falling in love at
first or later sight, are limited in number. The play of
forces determining the issue is — as is so generally true

154 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

of the regulation and assertion of human instincts — artifi-
cial upon a natural basis, in terms of social, conventional,
prudential, considerations. The point of present interest is
that once the impulse has found the object, the object at-
taches to itself the full vitality of the impulse, and be-
comes its "be all" and "end all." Thus, as James ob-
serves, through the spur of appetite we establish our
dietaries, through the spur of sociability we find our
friends, and through the spur of sex our mates j and with
them once found and established, we cannot understand
that the established objects of these settled instincts can be
other than they are, however tolerantly we observe the
varied predilections and aversions of others.

The importance of this flexibility of relation will appear
in the sequel. In tracing its psychological foundation, we
may approach one step nearer to the conditioning process.
The explicitness of the relation between the stimulus and
the response, appears in the familiar fact that the cat is
the creature that the mouse fears and the dog fights; and
for this end, each to the other, though with opposed reac-
tions, is by nature an object of compelling interest. Apart
from the mechanism by which the object gains access to
the emotion, there is the broader condition of attentiveness
as a prerequisite for the genesis of the emotional wave;
and in the attraction of the object to the attention lies the
germ of the intellectual life. Underlying the specific im-
pulse is the general attention-attitude; nature provides
and experience vastly extends th: perspective of attention-
interest; the senses are its instruments and the pleasures
its lures. Objects are questions before they become stim-
uli; they are inlets to attention-interest before or as they
become inlets to fear, or love, or anger. They are dis-
posed to arouse a response and thereupon an ardent and
explicit one. Objects of indifference lie beyond the atten-
tive pale [18]. In tentative exploration alertness of tak-
ing notice passes over to a concretely emotionalized atten-

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 155

tion and then to an adjusted response. The result is
(though with limitations incompletely explained), that a
general timidity keeps the organism at a safe distance from
all but the most familiar and adjusted objects, and a gen-
eral curiosity attracts to a large range of possible desir-
able or engaging objects. Curiosity is the most positive
and thus the more efficient; timidity is mainly the pro-
tective and cautious and conservative instinct. Curiosity
becomes the great enlarger and extender and enhancer of
experience ; the mental, and with it the emotional, life will
be the more complex as experience is wide. The suscepti-
bility to the general shrinking conservative timidity, or to
the like general venturesome curiosity constitutes a highly
significant trait of character. Underlying both tenden-
cies is the still more general one of attentiveness, interest,
capacity to observe, alertness of mind, which stands as the
natural incentive to the intellectual life. The ranges of
such interests, their points of attachment and motive
source, go far to shape the varieties of human quality and
careers.

The service which distinction — the exemplar of the
functions intellectual — performs for the development of
emotion is parallel to but not the same as its service in
the field of the sensibilities. For the latter it supplements
and replaces impressionism by analysis ; for emotion it sup-
plies the object, in the sense that it directs the finer ad-
justment by which stimuli presented as candidates are ac-
cepted, and assigned to service. As already set forth, it
is the plasticity of bond between the emotionally inspired
response and what shall arouse it, that summons the diag-
nostic service of '^distinction.'' Where that bond is more
rigid by dint of nature, the intellectual role retires,
though it does not completely withdraw. Thus considered
the child is the object, the stimulus to, and the recipient of,
the mother's love; and the strength of the emotional sus-
ceptibility of this order — which, with the usual range of

156 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

variations, all persons share — is indicated by the readiness
and the warmth with which tender feelings are aroused by
the presence of a child. Despite Solomonic judgments,
which may be offset by the stories of changelings, there is
no individual recognition by the maternal emotion of the
particular object that in due course will arouse that emo-
tion to an intensity, which no other substitute, however fa-
vored, will command. The mothering emotions are by na-
ture strong; they are strongly aroused by the engaging
helplessness of the very young child; the feeling extends
to others' children so far as the appeal is not opposed by
contrary emotional claims; it extends to pups and kittens;
it extends to all the properties and associations of infancy
— to everything that is tiny and ' ' cute. ' ' By the principle
of transfer, woman, thus sensitized, infuses all her minis-
trations with the flavor of the original emotion: her min-
istrations to men, her philanthropic and social endeavors.
In shaping the course of the emotion, distinction enters to
determine when that and not another phase of womanly
nature shall be released. The state of being a mother, by
like decree of nature, heightens these susceptibilities to
their full intensity; they are organically keyed to a pitch
which they cannot otherwise attain. But it is only the
associational wealth conferred by the experiences of moth-
ering the child that attaches the ardent emotion to the
particular child as to no other.

It is in the careers of emotional impulses that are less
specific that the play of distinction is larger and more
characteristic of its central place in emotional develop-
ment. For sensibilities and emotions alike distinction or-
ganizes the situations; it differentiates those that are to be
shunned or sought, to be examined and reacted to thus or
so. Nor should it be overlooked that in higher stages, the
direction is subject to an element of- control; we make
friends easily when we give our sociable impulses free
rein; we relea^ our fears when distinction determines

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 157

that the occasion warrants, and restrain them when the
verdict is opposed; not that such yieldings are simply or
wholly voluntary — any more than is falling in love — ^but
that to the organic prompting is added, and more and
more so in the higher acquired responses, the release of
consent. Distinction and control, the intellect and the will,
cooperate congenially in such service. Distinction assorts
and fixes the objects upon which the varied range of im-
pulses shall be exercised ; and by such exercise the associa-
tional bond is strengthened, and the emotional complication
proceeds as part of the general psychological development.
The burnt child dreads the fire because the pain is vivid
enough to fix the attention not vaguely upon things in
general or upon future pain, but specifically upon the fire ;
which fear by instruction is directed to the stove, to the
lamp, to matches, to insure the protection which only dis-
tinction can confer. But all this identifying, this compar-
ing and contrasting, this detection of clews to situations, all
this reading of meanings, in the actual confrontation with
experience under the general stimulus of the attention-in-
terest conferred by a catholic spirit of curiosity, quite in-
adequately describes the service of distinction in enlarging
and directing the sphere of influence and operation of the
emotional nature. It is the reinstatement of the emotional
warmth of cumulative experiences representatively that
inspires action, and enriches the meaning and the ardor of
our responses. Distinction not merely supports the power
to meet the situation when it is upon us, but anticipates it
in imagination. When and only when thus exercised does
emotion attain the full human stature. The sight of the
child to its mother reinstates with a cumulative rush of
reminiscence, a concentrated cluster of hopes, the endless
longings, satisfactions, cares, reliefs, hopes, fears, atten-
tions, which the child means and means emotionally. The
enlarged and transferred power of emotion has its liabili-
ties as well as its assets. The intellectual guidance or

158 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

stimulation of the emotion may be extended unwisely or
too well; the dread of anticipation may be worse than the
pain of the ordeal; the sensitization of the fear impulse
by the imagination may induce a general hampering or
harassing timidity or an irrelevant, useless, or disordered
one — as the prevalence of superstition and delusion abund-
antly illustrates. Fearing, thus intellectually encouraged,
may create a terror of belief, arousing an excitement which
only real dangers command by ''natural right"; it re-
places enemies by bogies. By compensation the imagina-
tive mind anticipates and thus enjoys in twofold measure
the joy of anticipation and of consummation; and in the
fullness of its powers finds enduring pleasures in the world
of ideals.

We have, however, been proceeding too rapidly. Re-
tracing our steps we find a safe point of departure in the
emotional life of animals. There may be simple orders of
creatures, that pass their lives in unreflecting alternation
of alarm, and security, a more or less vivid and constant
alertness for danger (or opportunity), all furthered and
operated by inner promptings and outer occasions, with no
commentary of imagination, no deposit of memory com-
plications, no extension of the mind to past or future — a
wholly presentative, living-in-the-present existence. But
for human psychology, at all events above the infantile
stage, such an ''out of sight, out of mind" mentality is far
too rudimentary. It is true that the present remains ab-
sorbing, and that the representative types of mental opera-
tions like the prudence to which they lead, require special
and prolonged training to give them worthy efficiency,
whether in provisions for rainy days or in profit by past
experience, or more generally, in the complex absorption,
interpretation and control of experience as it comes. But
for human standards the objects out of sight that remain
in the mind enrich emotional experience and condition
foresight. Emotion, to be sustained, requires an object;

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT i5§

the explicitness of the object and its availability for
mental procedure absorb and convey the explicitness of
the emotion, at that stage released from too literal and
narrow bondage to situation, and ready to develop With
large strides to its complete psychic stature. The object,
the moment of intellectual distinction and recognition,
forms the psychological nucleus — the point of growth and
attraction — of the experience. It does so largely for hu-
man nature by virtue of the representative qualities which
it presents, the imaginative functions which it engages, yet
engages in an emotional motivated course [19].

Illustration may still be serviceable. When a dog
chases a squirrel up a tree, the squirrel is for the time a
busily scampering creature, but no sooner reaches a place
of safety than it " scolds '* at the dog volubly, the violence
of its expressions decreasing as the excitement wears away.
The spasmodic ''scolding" is apt to persist with puffs of
renewed and then lowered intensity so long as the dog re-
mains in sight, yet may occur although the dog is at once
out of sight. The behavior is clearly an outlet of the ex-
citement of fear, an emotional surplusage bridging the re-
gaining of composure ; but it may be little or nothing more
than that. The human observer, in sympathy with the
flutter of excitement of the harassed creature, is apt to con-
ceive the agitation as accompanied by the rehearsal of such
representative incidents and items as accompany any nar-
row escape from danger on his own part. He would be
haunted by the scene; he would be emotionally upset for
days; and if the danger had occurred on the water, it
might lead to a permanent dread of boating; the recollec-
tion would recur in waking thought and in dreams. A
like critical experience directed to the future would be even
more absorbing; anxiety would fill the approaching hori-
zon with pictured terrors, ordeals, consequences. The
squirrel a moment later resumes his busy scouring for
food or mates as though, dogs were unknown. Similarly

160 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

his instinctive method of laying up stores for the future
gives no hint of mental anxiety, or of restraint in the pres-
ent in the interests of prudence. He buries nuts because
he must, and domesticated goes through the motions on a
carpeted floor and crowds nuts into a wholly impervious
covering where they remain completely visible. In this
mock burial-service, has he any picture of the woods, and
the leaf-and-mold strewn carpet, and the prospect of the
wintry covering of snow? A needless assumption! The
presentative and representative life are lived at differ-
ent levels; the chasm that separates them or the bridge
that unites them, we may be quite unable to discover. It
suffices to recognize how largely, engrossedly, and inevi-
tably, we live in both worlds; how they overlap and re-
act upon one another, yet how the privilege of the repre-
sentative life radically changes the tenor of all our pre-
sentative experience.

We thus lay bare the underlying process of emotional
transformation : the iyitellectualization of emotional experi-
ences— the quality that lifts it spontaneously and mightily
to a loftier plane of operation. This alliance of emotion
with intellect is a mutual interaction. Recognition gains
in vividness and motive efficiency; emotion attaches itself
tenaciously to the object, and in the object finds a renewed
life. Such, at all events, are the careers of emotions not
too closely tied to their physiological moorings. The ca-
pacity for expansion, the power to enter into the higher
phases of the psychic responsiveness, to play a part in the
shaping of human character, represents the privilege of the
fully matured emotion — a privilege acquired intimately
and largely by its intellectual affiliation and transforma-
tion. The susceptibility to sex-emotion is fixed in the or-
ganism; the comprehensive manner in which its highly
evolved operations sensitize the entire emotional life is
the issue of the influences whose course we have followed.
The disposition to fall in love is both organic and generic;

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 161

the implications of the process are specific and compli-
catedly psychological. Vague longings, perplexing dis-
quietudes, and irregular bursts of impulse seemingly unre-
lated to the central motive may be stimulated by under-
currents and side currents of the adolescent transforma-
tion. Once an object of the emotion is found, it becomes
the object, and magnetically attracts all the poetizing,
romancing, idealizing tendencies that the intellectual, emo-
tional and social maturing have for years been cumula-
tively preparing for the great passion. Indeed, so
strongly is the object recognized as the primal cause, crea-
tor and unique author of the situation, that the emotional
susceptibility is overlooked. Disillusionment is not perti-
nent. Presentative experience quickens the emotion; the
touch, the glance, the kiss, the caress, the exchange of
esteem and consideration strengthen the bond; but pro-
verbially absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the
representative moment, the longing, comes to its own again
as the major factor of the state. Falling in love is a nor-
mal susceptibility ; but what it means is determined by the
sum total of the emotional, intellectual and social nature
modified by the like forces of the molding environment. It
may be of high, it may be of low degree — an incident or
a transformation. And similarly for all the intellectual-
ized emotions. Pain hurts but ceases when relief comes;
grief broods and grows by reflection. Fear does not re-
main an indiscriminate timidity, but finds an outlet in
wolves, snakes, fire, burglars, bandits, tramps; and we
think and dream of these, and through such thoughts in-
crease the emotions of terror when traveling on deserted
roads or passing the night alone in a strange house. For
the inlets to emotion the decisive factor in the complex
as ordinarily established is the representative value of the
object as the gathering point of the emotion. It is pic-
torial, persistent, recallable, extendable, associational ;
while emotional excitement wanes, subsides, and finds ri-

162 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

vals in succeeding presentative experiences. Grief dies in
consolation and resignation; joy mellows to content. For
the emotionally regulated conduct, the decisive factor is
the play of considerations which affect the quality of the
emotion, as it arouses the several susceptibilities, which to-
gether constitute the endowment of temperament and the
force of character.

The principle of '* transfer," repeatedly encountered in
the course of emotional development and peculiarly sig-
nificant for the interpretation of expression, requires spe-
cial consideration by virtue of its diversified applications.
The principle is fundamentally unitary. It indicates that
an impulse or its quality, bred and fostered in one rela-
tion and a more primary one, is carried over with altered
play to another and more derivative sphere — a transfer of
service or function. But the principle acquires a differ-
ent bearing as the nature of the transferred service engages
varied psychological processes and products. The princi-
ple is related to the more general one that we use a sensory
endowment or other psychic equipment for more than its
original service. Having the sense of hearing as a warn-
ing and a social bond, we build upon hearing language and
music. More generally, an attitude, an inclination, a dis-
position, a form of responsiveness, originating dominantly
in one situation, nurtured in one phase of human nature,
is transferred to others. Because of the necessary and
useful place of distinction in the practical guidance of
conduct, there comes to be an eagerness for the percep-
tion of relations for their own sake, a joy of discovery, a
keen pursuit of acquired purposes. Subjectively, because
of the interest fostered by the attention fundamental to the
incorporation of experience, there is developed a general
avidity in the welcoming of new experience, an intellec-
tual curiosity, a zest of enterprise, a spirit of inquiry and
venture. In the elaborated situations we lean upon the in-
vitation of the earlier ones, use the primary momentum for

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 163

our transferred employments. Because natural situations
set problems simple or complex, the mind thus stimulated
matures a problem-solving interest, which, transferred to
other fields and larger ones, makes the scientific habit. In
the incidental allurement attaching to the surplus of sen-
sory stimulation lies the potency of the esthetic nature and
ultimately the achievements of the arts. By virtue of the
original emotional appeal of the voice, man comes to have
music in his soul. The interest, the pleasure, and the utili-
zation of experience extend beyond the moment ; the imagi-
nation thus fostered functions for its own sake; poetry,
myth, and the creative drama result.

To continue in another direction: because the relations
within the family as well as the pursuits of courtship
sensitize the individual to the esteem of others, that sensi-
tiveness is available as a social force. It influences ambi-
tion, the code of honor, the social rewards and punish-
ments, public opinion. But in this, as in many another
illustration, the principle is already involved in the com-
plications of other tendencies, so that the transferred
quality is of a different order and is but partially and un-
certainly an example of transfer. It is no longer a trans-
fer so much as the modeling of attitude and response upon
a design, a psychological pattern of similar motive. A
sensory shrinking becomes an embarrassed shyness; a di-
rect aversion of a sensory order leads to a complex fear
in which the original shrinking is at once incorporated,
transferred and remodeled ; and the presentative fear thus
complicated in turn develops to a representative dread of
ever broadening scope. Neglecting these finer distinc-
tions, we may summarize that gregariousness as a feeling
of adjustment leads to sociability as a trait of character;
passion anchored in sex-attraction makes for ardor of pur-
suit and of devotion ; self-assertion reared in primitive cir-
cumstances matures in courage, in pride, and, it may be,
in affectation or idiosyncrasy; self-seeking aggrandize-

164 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ment develops love of property and the hoarding in-
stincts; the sympathy and dependence nurtured in the
family relation, prepares the individual to be generally,
sympathetic, ultimately altruistically so. Nor is the
transferred service of a simple origin; it reflects its com-
posite source. The fondness for sensory stimulation leads
to fondness for stimulation in general — a sensationalism,
superficial or profound, supported dominantly by the
emotional or by the intellectual nature. Play in one de-
velopment leads to experimental exploring and to sport in
another; both combine with other primary trends in the
resulting transformation. Aversion may be so tempered
as to lead to anger, and anger so directed as to become
moral indignation. The ugly, the base, the false are in
some aspects transferred reactions from the repugnant, the
nasty. Morality — a product of ** transfer," and a high-
grade systematic embodiment of restraints — derives its vi-
tality widely from fear of consequences, from fastidious
aversion, from desire to retain the esteem of others. In-
deed the resistance of temptation requires all the safe-
guards afforded by our composite nature. The moral life
is the clean life, the honest life, the considerate life, the
sympathetic life, the sensitive life, the life regulated by
standards and ideals; its sources are as diverse as its ex-
pressions.

The principle of transfer as embodied in expression af-
fords a concrete and a pictorial rendering of its values.
The expression, typical of the evolution of which it is an
integral part, preserves the original attitude, but with an
added and specialized nuance j giving it a more distinctive
meaning adequate to the transferred employment. The
transfer, however, must be congenial; for in the emotional
congeniality lies its being and justification. The signs of
grief are not merely similar to the signs of pain with the
similarity of a common vitally depressive tone; a smile of
sensory gratification and one of amusement are not merely

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 165

set in a common medium of vitally exhilarating tone; but
the grief expression is the pain expression, the amusement
expression is the expression of a more primary gratification,
draughted to another service and an ampler one ; and they
are thus enlisted, thus qualified, because of the congeni-
ality of pain and grief, of physical pleasure and mental
joy. The psychic orders of responses of the higher range
find the expressional channels set, the available muscles
preempted by the expressions of direct import, and can
but turn them to their own uses. Tears served pain be-
fore they served grief. Though grief is pain or of close
kin, it is other than pain in that it is open to the larger
complication, the alliance with other and related emo-
tions, the suffusion by intellectual memories, the vast en-
largement of representative elaboration. Parting is such
sweet sorrow because it is retrospective and prospective at
once. The expression follows, but in its limitations can-
not be expected to do more than suggest to a sympathetic
and delicately sensitive recipient the sway of emotional
complication thus coming forward in the sensitive face.
The portrayal of emotion discloses the limitations of even
the elaborate literary arts, despite the insight of the poet
and the mastery of explicit utterance ; it may be more sin-
cerely reflected in the emotional medium of music; it sets
a problem to the trained powers and natural sympathies
of the actor. The reference to spoken language invites the
application of the principle of transfer to the psychological
processes of which words and phrases are the products.
The mental operations are of one genius; they may be
traced in language as in other human products of like
order. Language is an artificial expression upon a natural
#basis. As now exercised, the natural basis has retired to a
slight place, and artificiality dominates. Yet such psycho-
logical artificiality means that the product follows the
psychological lines of development of an acquired order
but modeled upon a natural pattern. In the verbal em-

166 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

bodiment of the mental processes the principle of transfer
is recognized as metaphor; carried out more explicitly as
an avowed comparison, it becomes a simile; when in terms
of relations and resemblances of a more indirect order, it
becomes an analogy. Generalized it appears in the tend-
ency to use words and phrases figuratively, not literally.
Employing the familiar terms, we may say that grief is
metaphorical pain, and amusement metaphorical gratifi-
cation. A garish combination of colors hurts, but less
literally than a bruised finger. The expression of the
physical pain more delicately rendered is the metaphorical
expression of the esthetic pain; the same expression more
refined, and blended with other equally derivative miens,
reflects the pain of hurt feelings. There is an intermedi-
ate product of the same tendencies similarly exercised, not
so close to the natural patterns as the mimicry of the face,
and not so remote as the artifices of phrase — the language
of gesture. Gesture is richly metaphorical; and its meta-
phors span the entire range from natural associative mo-
tor outlets to conventionalized, figurative allusions. Fa-
cial gesture participates in the composite issue. For,
closely considered, the analogy of facial miens, of gesture,
and of words is something more than an analogy ; it is the
evidence of a like mental and emotional functioning, a
common psychological habit of thinking in symbols and re-
lations, and particularly in terms of similar or allied emo-
tional qualities or effects. I cough literally to remove a
physiological obstruction; I clear my throat nervously to
get rid of a psychological embarrassment. When I scratch
my head when puzzled, I use the reaction to a physical
irritation to express a mental one. The metaphor of
speech and of facial gesture agree: I say that so-and-so's
behavior makes me ''sick" or ''tired"; and as I say it, my
face assumes the motor contractions of incipient stages
of the nausea which I feel morally but express physically.
A figure of speech may reflect an organic analogy.

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 167

Such metaphorical expressions are plainly of the same
order as the metaphors of gesture — the strutting like a
peacock when making a fine drive at golf, a witty speech,
or a lucky hit on 'change. The situations which use the
expressions fixed and made significant in a more natural
setting, are themselves but one or more removes away from
the primary occasions of similar emotions. The analogy
may be strongly intellectualized ; but typically it proceeds
upon a common emotional affect. Many of the developed
expressions are imperfectly, if at all, provided for in the
natural situations ; these artificial gestures, though devised,
are framed upon natural patterns. The metaphorical
habit has taken its set, and continues to enlarge its re-
sources by playing upon the complex and derived as upon
the simpler orders of situation. The expression itself may
thus show transfer. When annoyed at my own forgetful-
ness or stupidity, I punch myself, and say that I feel like
kicking myself; in so doing, I not only transfer a physical
act of resentment to a moral situation, but I treat myself
as I might a remiss inferior. In the cruder days of fron-
tierdom, under the provocation of insult, the hand reached
as naturally for the hip-pocket, as in boyish encounters it
forms a menacing fist. Why shrugging the shoulders in-
dicates a state of enigmatic doubt, is not easy to de-
termine; but it is an acquired gesture, equivalent to the
slang: ''You may search me." Metaphor may be formed
upon crude and coarse or upon delicate and refined models ;
and as employed in words and gesture alike, it forms a test
of manners, for it is a manner of psychological expression.
Characteristically, the figurative expressions tend toward
the refined, transferred expressions because they so largely
are used in the transfer of physical to mental and moral
situations; the guffaw and side-splitting laugh is aroused
by horseplay; the smile is the fit appreciation of wit, the
play of ideas. The contortions of disgust are appropriate
to the strongly repulsive physical situation ; the delicate play

168 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

of disdain to the moral offenses. So natural has it become
to treat mental situations after the pattern of physical
ones, figurative after the manner of literal ones, that with-
out this habit expression would fall short of its full value
for individual revelation and for social ends. The writer
at a loss for a phrase looks to the ceiling, or half-closes his
eyes with his finger placed reflectively upon his forehead,
as though the object of search had a physical habitat or
would yieYd to an inner directed vision. In social inter-
course the expressions of surprise, sympathy, interest,
amusement, approval, dissent, similarly accompany imag-
ined or related incidents, and give vitality and animation
to the context of words. The expressional commentary
is indispensable and particularly so in supplying the emo-
tional key to conversation and intercourse.

"Without stopping to point out the varieties of the em-
bodiment of such metaphor in words and phrases, we may
observe that they are often descriptive of actual miens and
gestures. When I say that I wink at slighter offenses, find
myself on the wrong scent, turn a cold shoulder to such a
proposal, or turn up my nose at it, or hang my head, not
daring to show my face, fight shy of debt, harden my heart
or set my teeth to refuse an appeal, receive another pro-
posal with open arms, or snap my fingers at it, or let it
slip through my fingers, or find that I have inadvertently
put my foot into it, I am using expressions referring to
more or less usual and obvious (in part gestural) situa-
tions— some natural and others more artificial — analogous
to the transformed mental or moral situations to which I
appropriately apply them. Such appropriateness lies in
the fact that the feelings which I now experience under the
figurative situation, are best indicated by citing the ex-
pressions that have a more literal bearing and a familiarity
of association with literal situations; the similarity is one
of application, sympathy, or mood. By larger appeal to
the imagination, and by a larger recourse to the artificial

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 169

situations for my figure of speech — created and provided
by the intricacies of my civilized and complicated life and
enriched by conventional and literary traditions — I enlarge
the field of metaphor and with it the range of emotional
analogy. I say that I can turn so-and-so around my
finger; that all this is merely a flourish of trumpets, or a
device to see which way the wind blows; that I feel the
ground slipping from under my feet; that I propose to
bury the hatchet ; am prepared to eat humble pie ; to catch
at a straw ; to throw off the mask ; to get off my high horse ;
to make my opponent swallow his words; to turn over a
new leaf; no longer to blow hot and cold; to stick to my
guns. The very danger of mixing metaphors points to
the variety of ways in which an analogy of emotion or
situation carries over from the literal to the figurative,
the real to the imaginary, the pictorial to the abstract, the
presentative to the representative.

The central place of emotion in the sources of human
quality is the theme of this chapter. The approach to it
through the gateway of analysis leads to a survey of the
evolutionary forces in their natural and then in their more
artificial setting. With this basis established, it becomes
possible to summarize traits of temperament and charac-
ter as the composite susceptibility to the different ranges
and types of emotion thus surveyed. Emotional nor-
mality means a normal sway of the common fundamental
emotional appeals; it implies also a normal susceptibility
to the expansion of such motives in the secondary deriva-
tive play of emotion in the psychic maturing. But along
with this common factor in normal endowment, each in-
dividual conformity involves a variable play both of the
fundamental appeals and of the secondary modifications.
The emotional sensibility is variously distributed, and par-
ticularly so among the second-growth products conspicu-
ous in the familiar contours of character. Levels of com-
plication thus mature ; the ability to attain them, the mode

170 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

of their partial attainment, constitute the emotional
measure of the man. In such development the force of
primary emotions — hy their nature adjusted to meet the
urgent primitive demands — seems to retire, and in pro-
portion actually retires, as the secondary transferred
varieties of emotional traits assert their claims and their
acquired right to prevail. The altered environment favors
and demands an altered perspective of emotional regula-
tion. The indirection and enrichment of the emotional life
is due largely to the intervention of the intellect and to
the reconstruction of the social structure, which furnish
the medium of its expression. This development and its
consummation in the actual psychological perspective un-
der which we contemplate the vicissitudes of human nature
require an independent presentation.

The division between the simpler, earlier, more primi-
tive emotional regulations of conduct and the higher
phases of psychic regulation — the subject of the following
chapter — is one of convenience only. A unitary evolu-
tionary process combines the two presentations in a com-
mon theme. The present chapter supplies the principles
of procedure, the analytic argument, the illustrations of
the processes involved. It may be well to utilize tKis point
of arrest for a summary of the conclusions by making the
individual application, though such summary in a measure
anticipates the further stages of analysis. In its larger
foundation my emotional susceptibility is set by (1) my
momentary, periodic and chronic organic state; (2) by
the particular strength of the instinctive response con-
cerned; (3) by the intrinsic nature and acquired appeal
of the stimulus or incentive ; (4) by the modifications and
reconstructions of these conditioning factors through ac-
quired setting and training; while (5) the manner of ex-
pressing the susceptibility is also and similarly significant.
These conditioning factors have a markedly different play
according to the status of the emotion-inducing situation;

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 171

to its closeness or remoteness from the natural, and in that
regression from an imperative, situation.

These conditions are to be considered first in the primary-
emotional responses, in the near-to-nature situations.
The organic state underlies the emotional susceptibility
broadly and generally as well as finely and specifically.
The sexual emotions reach their climax of intensity when
the organic invitation is at the full; falling in love is a
predisposition as well as a disposition of youth. More-
over it is in the springtime that a young man's fancy thus
turns. The ages of man are differentiated organically, to
begin with, by the varied strength of appeal of instinctive
emotions maturing to varied needs. Night thoughts are
characterized by the emotional tinge — an organic disposi-
tion to the periodic changes of nature. Hunger predis-
poses to sullenness and irritability, makes it difficult for
the contrary emotions to be aroused. It is hardly pru-
dent to ask favors of a man before breakfast; and a good
dinner is a strategical preparation to induce an indulgent
mood — not of itself adequate, but yet a promising diplo-
matic step. Applied to animal behavior, it is proverbially
unwise to interfere with a feeding dog. It was in part in
the defense of his share of the quarry that the dog's pug-
nacious instincts were kept at keen edge; it is under the
like situation that they are predisposed to pugnacity, even
to the snapping at his master or friends, whose attentions
under ordinary situations would arouse his acquired
submissive or friendly impulses. The ancestral impulse
remains even though the bone comes from the butcher
shop and is placed on the dog's **own" plate. Similarly
at the zoological gardens, though a regular feeding-time
has replaced the food-quest of the great predatory beasts,
a restless roar and eager excitement daily attend the keep-
er's meat-cart, and the daily ration is pounced upon with
an intensity that may well be an organic reverberation, as
to our imaginative eyes it is a rehearsal of an exciting

172 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

jungle-scene. We know from animal psychology how
marked is the altered emotional stress in the mother when
attending to or defending her helpless young; the mother-
state with its vast organic radiations develops a compre-
hensive emotional complex. Transferred to the human
kind, the infusion of the developed psychic considerations
and the transformation of the instinct by emotional en-
richment make the mother relation a different "situa-
tion" indeed, but not for that reason released from its or-
ganic source and original assets and liabilities. Not all
emotional reactions are so deeply set in condition or asso-
ciated with so specific a range of activities. For the most
part human emotion takes its set from the plastic ranges
of the supporting emotions, from their more playful and
generically serviceable roles in advancing the interests of
investigation, intercourse, the enlargement of interests and
experience — in brief, from the open highways of accessory,
subsidiary, derived, and acquired service of activity that
forms the mental life of man. Though these fruits of the
psychic tree are more cultivated and their flavors more ap-
pealing to our schooled appetites, they were gained by
grafting upon the natural growth the selected products
of our preferences; their vitality is derived from a com-
mon source. Above all are the expansion of intelligence
and the refined system of preferences introduced by the
maturing of the esthetic nature — ^both in a sense the issues
of the leisurely, luxurious activities, from urgency re-
leased— responsible for the complexity of human psychol-
ogy and the perplexities of the art of living and the finer
differentiations of human character. Yet even at the
level at which these influences operate is the release of
emotion affected by the conditioning fluctuations of organic
welfare. Vigorous aggressive health confers an eager self-
assertion, a tone of venture and optimism, available for
whatever action makes the stronger appeal, for good or
evil as the native bent decides; the depression of ailment

THE EMOTIONS AND CONDUCT 173

makes for weak endeavor, submission, yet may also open
the restraints imposed by sympathy that have slight
chance to be heard when all is well and the zest of life
prevails.

The Devil was sick — the Devil a saint would be;
The Devil was well — the devil a saint was he.

Yet in this respect also a normal susceptibility is
established in which the fluctuations recede under ordi-
nary circumstances to a state of adjusted composure. The
regularity of such condition determines moodiness, as the
standard tone of the equilibrium disposes to elation or de-
pression, inclines by temperament and the superimposed
set of character to irritability or serenity, to indulgence
or severity, to sociability or seclusion, to sobriety or
frivolity, to content or discontent. The individual sus-
ceptibility is the composite of them all; in it lie the
sources of character and temperament.

CHAPTER IV

THE HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL

In the ascent to a height the perspective of view changes :
there is a shifting of the approaching foreground in the
higher levels, and of the receding background in the lower
ones; there is a redistribution of points and areas of fixa-
tion, resulting in an altered emphasis, a transformation
of relations and values. Yet the natural features are con-
tinuous, and at the higher level are determined by the un-
derlying structure. In like manner the conditioning
sources of human qualities assert their potency in and
through the complications of their matured products.
Mental evolution may be profitably conceived as an ele-
vation and complication of the processes — a shifting of
perspective — in the several components, by which the in-
dividual regulates his responses and acquires a control
of, even as he achieves an adjustment to, his environment.
At first largely under the sway of the physical situation,
his means of adjustment and control are found in the pro-
tective and useful instincts and impulses of his physio-
logical organism. The infusion of the psychical is never
absent and grows rapidly until it dominates. Intellect,
emotion, will — explicit understanding as well as strong im-
pulse and regulated desire — secure the ends of life; the
by-product of the earlier stages becomes the central pur-
pose of the later ones. The higher stages of the psychic
control which characterize the life of organized humanity
above the most primary condition involve no radical de-
partures from the bept of original nature, do not dispense
with the instruments of adjustment that constitute the
measure of a man in however early an estate. They con-

174

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 175

tinue these, enlarge them, reconstruct their application, re-
fine their employment. It is the higher stages of psychic
control that stand close to our practical interests and fur-
nish the interpretation to the life of mind as we live it.

The original psychic equipment of man has presumably
changed but little. Primeval man felt, saw and heard,
feared and trembled, rejoiced and laughed, grieved and
wept, loved and hated, remembered and imagined, com-
pared and distinguished, reasoned, desired, planned, and
acted quite as humanly, with the same complement of es-
sential endowment, as his remote, cultivated, sophisticated,
and schooled descendant. The bases and occasions for the
employment of this range of qualities were shaped and
fixed in the many generations of primitive human, even
prehuman existence. Unmistakably the scope and the
manner and the quality and the proficiency of these opera-
tions have decidedly and decisively altered; above all the
intellectual horizon has vastly expanded and been redis-
posed ; but the original predispositions remain consistently
operative and now as of old dominate human nature. In
the present mature outlook there is a foreshortening of re-
mote beginnings where the great roots of vital trends lie,
and a disproportionate enlargement of the nearer pros-
pect where acquaintance, interest, and the vitality of ex-
perience sharpen details and enhance values. The race
and the individual live in the shifting present — the mo-
ment of the outlook — and perceive the components of the
psychological topography from that engaging position
retrospectively and prospectively. The complement and
correction of the resulting perspective are the functions of
science, which, in such measure as it succeeds, yields an
appreciative understanding of the past, a sympathetic in-
terpretation of the present, a serviceable guide to the fu-
ture.

Attention is to be focused upon two momentous trans-
muting processes acting upon instinctive dispositions, as

176 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

yet considered in their initial bearings only. The one is
the increasing infusion of action with the intellectual
quality of distinction, leading to the dominance of reason
in a large realm of human activities ; the other is the com-
plication of motives, measures and expressions, by virtue of
their setting in an inherent social disposition — ^the compli-
cation shaped and favored by the expansion of the social en-
vironment. There are no accredited terms to designate
these processes; they will be referred to as socialization
and intellectualization. Socialization refers to the aggre-
gate and mutual influences upon instincts, emotions,
ideas, desires, and actions, of the play of like processes in
another, and in naturally and conventionally organized
groups of "others" — mates, companions, family, clan,
tribe, nation, class, society. It refers also to the contri-
bution of these relations to the reconstruction of the hu-
man environment and its reflex effect upon the expansion
of human qualities. It would be misleading to imply that
the distinctive psychological functions flrst came into be-
ing and were then socialized; the consideration of the in-
volved processes in their natural setting discloses the side-
by-side origin and coordinate growth of the individual
and the social nature. Species and races compete and
survive not as individuals alone but as groups ; their group-
traits are the social traits of the constituent individuals.
But self-preservation is rooted so firmly in the survival
motive of natural function, is so insistent and pervasive in
its demands, that it shapes and establishes the play of in-
stinct and impulse. It rules by primacy of natural right
where the elemental demands of psychic regulation are
strong and deep. It occupies and organizes the psychic
domain, so that the deferred and gradually maturing in-
stincts and the issues of their growth must make terms
with, and find adjustment to, the claims of the established
settlement [1]. The terms individual and social represent
an emphasis in direction of function primarily, in which

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 177

the precedence of the former for the molding of the latter
is unquestioned. The type of responsiveness from which
these terms derive their meaning is for human kind not
a detached or non-social one; yet the self-seeking trend
dominates moderately or immoderately, even though it em-
ploys the social medium for its expression. The "social"
responsiveness is at its source a one-sided dependency in-
herent in the ''family^' relation, of which the nursing in-
fant presents a typical picture. Such dependency makes
for social ties. The incubated chick, pecking its way out
of the shell, might be forced to lead a hermit life, devoid
of occasion for such social impulses as its inheritance
favors ; but the young of mankind is both fated and privi-
leged to a prolonged dependent infancy — to a slow ac-
quisition of powers following upon a ripening of impulses,
and giving wide scope to the plasticity of individual
promptings, and a large field for the reflexive socializing
influences. The responses of play — the typical activity of
the young — provide the great playground of interaction,
rivalry, incentive, and cooperation; for the **play" order
of responsiveness is clearly one in which what one feels
and does responds to the feeling and doing of another.
Neglecting the instinctive blindness of the impulse, we may
conceive that the kitten's strategic pursuit of a string or
of its own tail, the dog 's seizure and punishment of an old
shoe, poses the object as a reacting one, the player ignor-
ing that the impulse of escape is supplied by the pursuer.
Play spontaneously creates the "other" relation; its
"give and take" reflects a social responsiveness. Analo-
gous to this play of kitten or pup, but of a higher order,
is the play of the child [2]. When playing alone, the
child plays with the imagination as much as with the toys;
the child personifies and projects the contrareactions to
which the responses in propria persona constitute the play.
Yet self-expression is dominant, though it requires a com-
plementary presence for its fullness of development. The

178 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

more mature child, like the adult, sets himself tasks and
problems, and finds a spur in surmounting difficulties, a
thrill in their successful overcoming — all of it a reaction
to and mastery of conditions paralleling the encounter with
individuals of his own kind. Yet no play or work with
things can replace the richness of psychological interac-
tion which playing and working with other human beings
provide. The projections of one's own intentions upon
others, the discovery of like motives in others, the adjust-
ment of the two, constitute the play as well as the matur-
ing of the psychological endowment. An ancient evi-
dence of the strength of the habit of self -projection, stimu-
lated by the like feelings produced in the presence of
forces as of persons of superior power, is the interpreta-
tion of the forces of nature as personalized beings acting
with human motives, which appears so generally in early
''psychology" and represents its inevitable anthropomor-
phic tendency. It finds varied expression in primitive
cults in the personification of wind and storm, of sun and
moon, of grove and stream, of sea and mountain, of cliff
and cave, of eclipse and earthquake, no less than in the hu-
manized representations of the virtues, vices, graces,
ideals of men. It appears in the ascription of human
qualities to animals, from Esop to Brer Rabbit. The en-
vironment, animate and inanimate, which man confronts,
is looked upon as moved by the same desires and inten-
tions as shape his own attitudes and conduct in the social
and competitive relations with his kind. The traits de-
veloped and grown strong in primary situations, matured
in primitive human intercourse, continue to direct later
and more complex types of response. They are consid-
erably modified by the stress of adjustment to a changing
environment, and are thus transferred in later stages to
express acquired interests and meet artificial situations.
Outgrowing the old incentives, yet under their prompting,
man finds and makes new ones conforming in large

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 179

measure to the older patterns of behavior and interest.
The early interpretation of external nature, called animis-
tic, follows the clew of man's conscious experience, and
projects its findings to other realms ; quite as naturally the
traits developed in a primitive social setting are trans-
ferred to situations of large complexity, presenting anal-
ogous stimuli, and met, however tentatively and imper-
fectly, by like responsive trends.

By reason of its commanding place in the formation of
character, the socializing process must be subjected to a
psychological analysis of its stages and development. In
an early and distinctive stage, the socialization represents
the complement of individual function through a social
expansion, much as reaction in general requires an envi-
ronment that provides incentives and occasions as well as
media of response. The fact that each individual grows
up with others interweaves the individual development
with the products of social interaction. The growth of
each acts upon, as it is acted upon by, the growth of others.
Children gravitate to play with other children of like level
of development; while yet other ranges of social response
are appealed to in play with younger children and with
their elders. Such reactions are not imposed upon the
young, though a strong element of suggestion and even
compulsion exists ; in " the main they proceed upon the
principle that by original nature the presence of the kin
and kind is a natural inlet disposing maturing instincts
to response. Yet the response is never passively to the
bare presence of another, but is aroused by the engaging
interest of varied vital movements. The infant smiles to
my smile or call or antic receptively, in so far as I tap
the natural incentives to its satisfactions; but soon it re-
sponds expressively with a measure of recognition and ex-
pectation. As intelligence develops and command of en-
dowment ensues, the child becomes responsive in a world
of responsive beings who provide the situations inviting to

180 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

its incentives and to the satisfaction of its needs. The
human individual lives and matures in the medium of a
socialized responsiveness. The social setting operative in
the formative period fixes and favors the social disposi-
tion, gives a set to the expression of impulse ; the fact that
such impulse embodies the inherent gregariousness of the
species reenforces the social trend. The foundations for
social development are laid deep in human nature; the
large capacity for the expansion of the social-psycho-
logical responsiveness reveals the sturdiness of the social
roots.

The implications of ''sociality" are drawn so largely
from the contemplation of its mature, high-level, artificial
products — and from certain limited friendly aspects of
these — as to obscure the broader psychological conception
indispensable to analysis. The reasons for this usage are
adequate: the term takes its meaning from the practical
range of exercises of the quality; the commanding inter-
ests lie in that realm ; and sociality is a growth that sprouts
luxuriously at its upper branches. As we are now pre-
pared to follow the higher stages of psychic regulation, we
shall for the most part adopt the practical perspective,
without ignoring the early stages of sociality. Such con-
sideration returns to the primary ranges of emotion-
instincts and their original situations. The food-quest is
a selfish struggle, a concern for number one, and remains
so, whatever the means by which it is carried on, until dis-
cipline or altruism tempers its quality. That the raising
of the young has a gregarious setting and presents a de-
pendency upon material ministrations, surrounds the early
appearing instincts with a favorable social atmosphere, but
does not divert them from their central trends. With
several in a brood or litter, the social phase of competition
and conjoint response presumably shapes early develop-
ment more decisively than when the relation is with the
mother alone. It is, however, the higher phases of psychic

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 181

regulation that concern us; and these assume a fairly ma-
tured and independent basis of conduct. In human
psychology such a stage is still an early one; for the so-
cial trends of impulses sets them to social satisfactions.
In the human setting the forces with which they contend,
the influences which they meet, are themselves of a psycho-
logical order. Persons and their behavior constitute the
preferred inlets to the attention-interest from which all
but the simplest emotional reactions emerge. The instincts
thus pointed to a social-psychological stimulus respond
upon the basis of a gregarious susceptibility. When the
social aspect of the response dominates, it implies well de-
veloped psychic capacity.

If we accept jealousy as a type of such "social" emo-
tion, then the possibility of jealousy implies something
more than the intensifying of the bare impulse to contend
and compete. Jealousy grows out of rivalry, and rivalry
is enforced by the subsidiary attitudes growing out of the
competitive struggle for existence and out of the finer
contest for fuller existence. Jealousy is a social product
of the relations of the competitors. The reactions to which
it leads are closely similar to those prompted by self-
centered desire alone. The added quality lies in the
psychic diffusion of the emotion, the quality of the diffu-
sion determined by the social nature of the re-agent. It
can be inferred only from the incidents and manner of the
response. Though we interpret jealousy as liberally as
possible, we cannot expect evidences of its action among
animals until the response attains an individual expres-
sion and a fair emotional range, of which the capacity for
domestication may be an index, while a natural gregari-
ousness may also be a favoring disposition. It is possible
that the natural rivalry of dogs hunting in a pack, or of
seals contending for mastery of the females in the rookery,
is itself adequate to develop a relation upon which jeal-
ousy is readily grafted; yet the contest may proceed upon

182 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the '' individual " impulse alone. The quality seems to
emerge more assertively under association with man. In
the bidding for favor of the master — in the transferred
situation — an older dog regains the sprightliness of his
youth; the dormant incentive revives under an increased
and ancestral stimulus, and develops a modified attitude
toward the rival. When trained seals behave in a jealous
manner when punished by exclusion from their *' parts,'*
the thwarted hope of food and petting may still be the
assertive factor, though the indication of other factors is
strong ; and if seemingly reliable accounts may be credited,
the elephant carries jealousy to the point of vengeance.

The assignment of the place of "leader" among dogs
drawing the sledges in Arctic expeditions stimulates re-
sponsive attitudes of the jealousy type ; the dogs seemingly
insist upon their acquired places, and contend for mastery
almost as fiercely as the older bulls among seals for the
dominion of the harem. The gregarious setting of the
lives of these animals may be an important factor in all
such developments. In the behavior of children the emo-
tion of jealousy and the growing occasions of its provoca-
tion are prominent, while the ''pre- jealousy" indications
of direct self-seeking retain their primitive strength.
Children want things for the satisfaction of their own de-
sires; but they want them much more when others want
them or have them, and sometimes only then. Quite apart
from the influence of suggestion, the "social" jealousy sets
the spurs to desire. To grant a privilege to one child
quickens in others a desire for the same favor; emulation
becomes a social instrument of individual discipline. It
is readily so utilized because its native appeal is strong.
"Thou shalt not covet" is included among the primary
injunctions of the moral code because coveting is the issue
of deeply natural traits, and forms a stubborn obstacle
which the individual trend of an instinct places in the way
of a social-sympathetic ideal. The behavior of both ani-

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 183

mal and child conforms to the rather neutral psychological
description that what one feels and does is affected by the
feeling and doing of another. The childish jealousy is
clearly open to a far larger range of psychic influence than
the animal variety. The more the privileged child gloats
and displays its triumph, the keener the envy of the rest;
the tendency to gloat and to display is itself part of the
complication and of the social complication. It ministers
to self-assertion — an individual trait; but the self-
assertion is feeble and incomplete in its satisfaction
until reenforced by the *' social" evidence of the envy of
others. The individual reward of competitive assertion
is possession and enjoyment, and this may set the limit
of attainment of animal response ; the social reward is tri-
umph and by further social expansion, the visible discom-
fiture or deference of the dispossessed. The prominence
of the induced satisfactions in the complex indicates the
elevation of the whole. The rank assertion of the second-
ary satisfaction above such justification as the primary mo-
tive may attain, becomes the anti-social vice of cruelty, its
fuller consummation appearing in revenge. It is indeed a
growth of higher level, the primary motive being all-suf-
ficient for primary regulation. The cat playing with a
mouse is by decree of its limited mentality a tyro in
cruelty [3] compared to the expert capacity for torture to
which human depravity may attain. Jealousy — and, with
reservations, its derivative trends just noted — is strong in
children because it is strong in the race; and cruelty may
be similarly favored. This means that the social-psycho-
logical nature of man makes human competitors jealous
and vengeful. The sympathy which is counted upon to
offset its hold is a slighter and later growth. In the neu-
tral psychological sense, jealousy is as distinctly social as
sympathy ; for in its scientific use, ' ' social ' ' designates the
play of a certain range of influences upon the expression
of a trait, and disclaims appraisal of its positive or nega-

184. CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tive value in the system of purposes cherished by society,
without denying" the trait a place in such system. The
childish jealousy is ready because of the child's ready dis-
position to a social response by virtue of a gregarious
trend. The social aspect of jealousy is distinctive in that
the emotion arises only through the (social) presence of
another ; its stimulus is the other. The emotion stirred by
the ''jealousy" situation rises in complexity with the com-
plications of desire and the intellectual and emotional ca-
pacities. It finds its expressions in the rivalries of sport,
in the competitions for preferment, and keenest of all be-
cause then animated by the richness of vitally social and
fully matured instincts of the race, in the rivalry for
mates. It is aggressive in tone, affiliating with anger and
attack, but affiliates as congenially with the indirect in-
tellectual weapons of intrigue, strategy, and the wound
and hurt of malice and slander. Thus anchored in an
urgent instinctive need, and capable of a vast social ex-
pansion, jealousy remains one of the strongest motives of
human action, and offers a problem in the higher phases
of regulation through all levels of social organization [4].
The conception which leads to the view of jealousy as a
typical social efflorescence of the self-assertive trends, com-
bining their primary values and giving them a wider career,
requires a parallel socialized expression of the opposite
trends — the self-withdrawing tendency, leading to fear
and flight or similar response in the primary situations.
Such a ''retreating" emotion aroused only by the pres-
ence of the suitable "other," is shyness. This shrinking
from human presence and contact is a familiar trait of in-
fancy and childhood; it is close to fear, as is jealousy to
anger, and seemingly closer because of the more obvious
similarity of response. In children, as well as in animals,
it is rather capriciously exercised. The protective instinct
leading the child to shun strange contacts is of a piece with
the gregarious nature that leads it to welcome familiar

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 185

ones. We may suppose that the young of primitive hu-
manity were exposed, if momentarily deserted, to the at-
tacks of an approaching enemy in human or animal form.
In such a situation the tendency to emit a cry of alarm
and to run for protection to the mother would be a useful
one. The shrinking child would be protected, while an
indifference or friendliness to strange contacts would be
perilous. Yet the temperamental shyness may be part of
a weak self-assertiveness, which in other and later situa-
tions may be detrimental. Obviously the status of a
quality, as well as the interaction and rivalry of qualities,
is affected by their social complications; the individual
survives and competes with the sum total of instinc-
tive traits which nature transmits and matures. The
career of each trait is influenced by the integrated career
of all. In all but very young children the ** shyness" is
more than a bare organic shrinking; it is already set in a
budding emotional complex; in its wayward and conflict-
ing expression, it behaves after the manner of an ances-
tral habit somewhat at a loss to discern its proper occasion.
Shyness is a persistent and enduring trait; its complica-
tions expand with the several distinctive relations and situ-
ations which the social nature of man imposes. Most dis-
tinctive is its adolescent type, which is in essence a new
and differently occasioned variety. The shyness of ado-
lescence is an aggravated and a richer form, readily grafted
upon the general temperamental shyness, but like the jeal-
ousy that arises in the same situation, with an added range
of motive and expression. Thus heightened and special-
ized in the sex relation, the shyness in the expression of
social intercourse seems almost a transferred product of
the former. It assumes yet another distinctive form in
the alarm and embarrassment of a public appearance; its
dimensions in that relation entitle it to the name of fright ;
yet the reasoned fear of breakdown which the imagina-
tion summons to justify the terror is often pale by con-

186 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

trast with the organically motived emotional upset. In
the more simple forms of shyness simpler principles are
operative. The conflict of motive is apparent; in the ob-
jective relation it is a conflict between fear and fascina-
tion, between a prudential withdrawal or a curiosity-satis-
fying exploration. Natural curiosity and a prudential re-
serve have equally an instinctive basis; which order of
stimulus will more strongly stimulate and thus prevail,
experience in the end decides. It is, however, not a free
decision, but one freighted with the shifting values of the
opposing traits and the strength of certain specific types of
sensory disturbance as inlets to release their specialized
emotional responses. The hesitant approach is the char-
acteristic observable response of shyness, and equally so
the inner embarrassment — the uncertainty of command of
resources, the wavering decision as to which phases of the
responsive nature are to be released, or, in later stages, the
uncertainty of control, though desire is plain. The shrink-
ing or hesitation in the presence of unfamiliar objects is a
simpler shrinking than the shyness in the presence of
*' social" strangers; the latter is a socialized emotion, while
the other is not; both may become intellectualized though
with a different order of complication — as in the differen-
tiation of fear and awe. The deeper hold of the socialized
variety of shyness appears in the tendencies to abnormal
expression which it assumes in predisposed individuals;
the ''phobias" are apt to take the form of social appre-
hensions. In brief, the social quality of the ''shy" re-
sponse typifies the central part which the social nucleus
occupies in the self-assertive and self-abasing trends of
personality — the conjugate foci of character.

The consideration of the more highly intellectualized,
more complexly socialized phases of the composite attitude
of shyness, is corroboratory. The element of conflict per-
sists; the response is a hesitant approach: the approach
aggressive, the hesitation retreating. The youth is eager

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 187

to make an impression, yet afraid of the possibilities; the
maiden is willing to be impressed or to charm, yet is com-
plexly timid by natural coyness, by modesty, by conven-
tion. The speaker is anxious for the opportunity of the
appearance, and appreciates the honor of the occasion, but
the trial of it still more keenly. • On the one side are ar-
rayed the forces making for self-assertion — conquest, dis-
play, charm, prowess; on the other the retreating tenden-
cies, moving toward self-abasement or withdrawal — timid-
ity, modesty, humility, homage, submission. Most of these
attitudes may be viewed as curtailed emotional states, ap-
proaches and incidents of the completer response: such as
the triumph of success and its attendant self-enhance-
ment, or the complete subjection and humiliation of self-
abasement. Thorndike's analysis is suggestive and cor-
roboratory. He considers display as a curtailed form of
the behavior of mastery, shorn of its completing stages of
domineering threat and control. The displayer, becoming
the cynosure of all eyes concerned, attains the satisfaction
of triumph as well from this social source as from the ab-
ject submission that would form the completer behavior of
the mastered one when on mastery bent; and the partially
mastered or subdued subject becomes merely shy. The
situation is social throughout, but changes its social flavor
in the presence of a group or a crowd in whom respectful
admiration replaces submission. Similarly shyness is the
'* submissive behavior minus the gross hodily cringing y and
the inner acceptance of subserviency/^ The modification
of the original tendency occurs in both parties to the social
relation, and occurs through inhibition under the influr
ence of contra-dispositions appropriate to; the situation.
The male confronting a resisting male will be disposed to
persist in mastery to the stage of enforcing submission,
even cruel subjugation. The male confronting a coy
female turns to display for the technique of mastery. To
oita directly : * ' Thus, where a powerful and hostile crowd.

188 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

would provoke submission in toto, a mere crowd or a fairly-
friendly crowd provokes shyness, and the speaker simply
cannot look at them quite squarely or speak naturally.
Similarly, while a sufficiently domineering mistress may
provoke submission in toto, the ordinary nice girl makes
her admirers simply shy." The shyness in these several
situations is clearly of a variable psychic order, and is so
by the quality of the social situation in which the response
has its setting. The responses in their design may indeed
follow the '^Ur-form'^ of the primitive combat situation,
as Thorndike presents them; but sex-shyness, stage-fright,
and social embarrassment introduce new qualities or, at
the least, new flavors of qualities, significant in the sphere
of regulation. Moral courage replaces physical courage,
and moral temerity physical fear; and the complex occa-
sions of their display induce or engage subdued undercur-
rents of reflective hesitation, subconscious involution, self-
conscious entanglements.

It becomes clear from these illustrations that the central
bearing of the socialized emotions is upon self -feeling, the
ups and downs, the veers and shifts of the personal meteor-
ology; and that these induced changes are possible only in
their full measure to a highly socialized individual, re-
sponsive in a complex social atmosphere. In conformity
with their higher development, the pain-pleasures give way
to the ** personality " satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and
these reach ever more and more complex and reflective
varieties in the social-psychological setting which becomes
the field of operation of human quality. The objects of
jealousy and shyness and the other socialized trends are
beings in the social relation [5]. It is by virtue of this
circumstance that expression acquires a peculiar social
value; through expression each reads the other's meaning
even as his own is read, and thereby is intention met and
answered, purpose anticipated and aided or thwarted. In
so supremely social a being as man the individualistic in-

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 189

stincts are socialized in the sense of being set and ma-
tured in a medium requisite to their satisfaction; yet they
remain self-directive in trend. The display impulse is
thus social ; children love to show off, and their elders play
to the gallery. Exhibition and admiration as enhance-
ments of self-assertion form a tremendous social motive, a
great incentive to effort; they account for the glitter and
pomp of worldly vanity, the rustle and sheen of silk or the
clanking of silvery harness, as directly as for the frank
**see me do this" of a five-year-old. The vanity that finds
an individual satisfaction in the mirror — in more than one
sense, a dress rehearsal^ — would be vain indeed without the
social reflex of the presumable effect of the attraction upon
admirers. All this belongs to the natural tendency in a
highly socialized individual to respond to the approval and
disapproval of others; it is reenforced and directed by
discipline of parent and teacher and world at large. Modi-
fied and chastened socially, it is still self-interest that
directs the pursuit of the esteem of others and the avoid-
ance of their ill-will. The environment is itself a socially
effective one ; the social medium absorbs and redirects —
from early infancy to the formation of mature character
— the individualistic trends of instinct and emotion, as it
sets the direction of thought and conduct.

We turn to a factor of primary import in the socializa-
tion of responsiveness. As is typical of the derivative
social impulses, it is not specific in its trends, but generi-
cally plays upon a considerable range of primary impulses ;
it has however specific or preferred inlets which are deter-
mined by the social nature and more primarily by the emo-
tional nature of man. We approach the broad emotion of
sympathy. It is founded in the community of human na-
ture. By original nature we share common satisfactions,
are pleased and pained by a fundamentally like range of
stimuli, are attracted and repelled by like approaches, are
made afraid and angry by like incidents, tend to like ex-

190 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

pressions, are moved by like motives and desires. Upon
this common psychology and common organic condition-
ing— to which we may now add, a common sociality —
experience imposes its differentiating stress. There is,
however, to be recognized a special reenforcement of this
community in the gregarious impulses. Community of
nature reenf orced by gregariousness supplies the basis
upon which the high-level products of sympathy may be
built ; yet in one aspect they are more generic, more funda-
mental, more primary than sympathy. Infants cry — as
dogs bark and growl — when they hear the cries of their
kind, or when disturbed by a common alarm, and presum-
ably are swayed by like emotional excitement. The con-
tagion of fear spreads by the sensing of the audible, vis-
ible, tangible signs of fear — shrieks, pallor, trembling,
motor agitation. Gayety and depression (through their
expressional counterparts in a merry or a sad face), com-
posure or excitement, curiosity or indifference, are all in
some sense contagious. In such sympathetic contagion the
inherent gregariousness is but the starting-point of the
emotional response, which develops quickly and richly to
its consummation through the complication of other fac-
tors. The panicky scurrying of sheep when alarmed
means not alone that by community of nature what
frightens one sheep frightens another, but that the fright
of one itself induces the wave-like spread of the agitation
through the signs thereof which the rest perceive. Even
among the ants when a catastrophe occurs, the rapid ex-
cited movement of the antennae of one ant against the
antennae of another quickly circulates the alarm through
the nest. That about the same result is repeated in the
human herd when assembled in unstable crowds inviting
disaster, is all too true ; but it is obvious that the gregari-
ousness thus appealed to is a far more complex though
equally a social product. A similar spread of emotion
occurs even, in realms where reason, is supposed, to rule —

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 191

in **runs^' on banks, and in the vagaries of fads and fash-
ions. The contagiousness of mind is a graft of complex
nurture upon the parent trait of " gregariousness. "

Returning to the evolution of sympathy, we note that by
implication of the facts cited, the audible or visible sign
of the emotion acquires the role of a special inlet to the dis-
semination of that emotion, or to some appropriately re-
lated emotion — the appropriateness socially determined.
By virtue of this principle expression attains a high value
as a social force. It accounts for the peculiar power of
sudden, loud, unexpected, or unfamiliar sounds to alarm;
once the alarm is started, the terror spreads by all the vari-
ous signs of terror. In that sense the expression of each
emotion forms a special inlet to that emotion. The sight
of anger in another encourages or invites or precipitates
the assumption of anger in me; but when the anger first
shown is directed against me, my responsive anger is pro-
tective and not contagious; if directed against a common
enemy, the action producing the anger in another as well
as its signs in another may have the same effect upon me
as upon others; or I may be more readily disposed to a re-
sentful anger contagiously (or more probably sympathet-
ically) by the sight of another angry. The latter response
may proceed dominantly upon my gregariousness or domi-
nantly upon my sympathy or my native pugnacity ; I may
by nature find it difficult to keep out of a fight. Briefly,
gregariousness absorbed in sympathy and acted upon by
other impulses becomes an ingredient in a composite of
rather different range. It is true that when alarmed, we
shout, and that the shout alarms others, at first largely by
mere organic contagion, later by added reflection upon the
danger itself. The first panic of alarm — as in the case of a
flre in a theater — is a presentative contagion, a herd-like
response. If the audience can be kept from shouting and
scurrying, can be held quiet and calm, the danger of panic
is likely to be averted, and a more rational yet fear-inspired

192 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

response may prevail. It still remains true that the ex-
pression of an emotion as observed in others induces —
serves as a special inlet to — the summoning of emotion in
oneself; but the application of the principle is limited [6].
The response may be seemingly contagious but really pro-
tective or socially sympathetic. It is true that the infant
smiles to my smile, but equally that it cries in fear at my
scowl; another's anger may induce my fear, and the smile
of derision may induce my anger. The psychological
analysis of an emotional response is not so simple as the
*' practical' ' recognition of its bearings.

Sympathy in the special sense is the tendency to feel a
like or an appropriate emotion in the presence of tense
emotion. The sight of pain may actually go so far as to
induce the feeling of like pain ; but that borders upon the
abnormal. The sight of pain produces pity, which is the
sympathetic response to pain; any of the suggestions of
pain, particularly the strongly presentative ones, like the
sight of blood, will produce emotional upset, and sympa-
thetically a fellow-feeling, and, it may be, altruistically
the tendency to minister and relieve. By way of the imag-
ination the description of painful scenes induces the like
effect, but is ever enforced by presentative details, as the
gruesome illustrations of a sensational press too commonly
set forth. An apt example of ''pure" sympathy, that rises
above contagion or a presentative clew and is equally free
from an altruistic quality, and yet involves the assumption
of others' sensations as our own, is the experience in ob-
serving acrobats on the trapeze, tight-rope walkers, or per-
formers of other thrilling feats of conspicuous peril. The
flesh creeps, the heart thumps, the breath is held, the hands
become clammy, the eyes half-averted yet fascinated; and
there is a sigh of relief when all is safely over. Yet the
performers as persons have no relation to our personal
sympathies. Moreover there is no suffering here, no vis-
ible or audible appeal to sympathy, such as would keep the

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 193

spectator who enjoys the performance because of or de-
spite the thrill quite uncomfortable at the bull-ring, and
which would sicken him literally or metaphorically in the
presence of accidents or of their realistic portrayal. The
*' thrilling" fear in observing others in positions of peril
(actual peril to us if we were on the trapeze or on the tight-
rope) parallels the sensations which we experience on the
top of a sheer cliff, or even on the outer platform of a tall
building, well secured by a railing. The danger of the sit-
uation is a mental one, quite as much so when it is real as
when the presence of the railing makes it imaginary. The
sympathetic thrill reflects both socialization and intellec-
tualization. That a similar sympathetic effect may be pro-
duced by sensory stimulation alone — such as that of the
dissecting-room experiences — has been made clear in the
treatment of the sensibilities; for the sensibilities are so
readily emotionalized that they carry a sympathetic ap-
peal as efficiently by the suggestiveness of the object as
does the expression by portrayal of the affect. The quality
of sympathy — the simpatico which is the favorite compli-
ment of the sympathetic Italian to the foreigner — is the
congenial responsiveness in the presence of emotion and its
signs. It is the sympathetic man who cannot endure the
sight or cry of pain, or exposure to situations that induce
them ; hence the compelling power of tears, and hence also
on occasion the crocodile variety. Hence the interference
of too sympathetic an emotional response with the calm-
ness needed for proper ministration; the surgeon must
lose or control his emotional susceptibilities to permit his
professional insight and skill to prevail. More generally,
sympathy forms the running commentary and support of
human intercourse ; in this service, it requires further con-
sideration.

Sympathy is social and as such is both a giving and a
getting; a sensitiveness to the fate of others and to the
esteem of others are in themselves very different, but alike

194 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

social products. Sympathy thus broadened becomes the
great medium of socialization. It makes us responsive to
a situation whether centered about self or about another;
sympathy — so far as it goes — making it ours. Without
sympathy the social life would be merely the gregarious
life, a sharing of experience and a helpful one, but limited
and bare in comparison with a socialized existence. Sym-
pathy does not cease to retain a self -reference (and by a
curious involution one may direct sympathy to oneself,
self-pity being a very common attitude observable in chil-
dren among the early products of their socialization), but
is not self-centered; and by that grace it contains in germ
the altruistic factor which expands into the richest growths
of the emotional nature. Sympathy employs various chan-
nels: organic and sensory by expression, through the in-
terpretation of experience representatively, by the intel-
lectualized imagination in its largest reaches. The sus-
ceptibility to emotional affect without the strong original
clew of bearing upon personal welfare is its central feature,
though in the larger view a derivative product. In the
course of its growth it develops various relations, some
reciprocal in part or whole, others dominantly one-sided in
attitude, but in some measure amenable to the blessing of
giving and receiving. The merely gregarious herd re-
ceives a collective benefit from the individual tendency to
respond for all; and certain herds post sentinels to give
the signals of danger and safety. The individual receives
the protective benefit of the collective response ; the shying
of the horse and the mad dash may be the tendency to seek
the shelter of the herd — the obedience to a signal for a
collective stampede. The taxes imposed and the benefits
received by a primitive natural organization suggest the
patterns of our artificial socialized relations in forms of
government and regulation of private and public interests.
It has been set forth that high-level emotions proceed
upon an intellectual elaboration; the intellectual aspect of

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 195

sympathy is already involved in certain of the illustrations
given, but appears more explicitly as the emotional element
retires. The name given to this stage of the process is
suggestion. It plays a part in the contagious spread of
emotion, but is more marked (because its course is slightly
more indirect) in the contagion of yawning than of laugh-
ter; even sea-sickness is contagious, in the sense that the
succumbing of one's companions weakens the powers of
resistance. Suggestion in its completer formulation in-
volves imitation; and imitation carried to its explicit issue
involves an attention to the copy and a more or less delib-
erate or at the least a consenting intent to repeat it; its
route is ideo-motor [7]. Imitation expresses a deliberate
intent, even an effort, and when mature proceeds upon an
intellectual analysis and a trained guidance of muscles to
fashion a reproduction which the senses recognize as true
to the model; such exercise satisfies the constructive im-
pulses— the expression of self in things made and done.
The imitativeness of children proceeds upon this intellec-
tual basis, and the imitativeness of society no less. This
ultimate issue of a natural gregarious, sympathetic social-
ity, when transferred to the mental realm, becomes one of
the greatest socializing forces, responsible for the achieve-
ments as well as the limitations of men as social units.

We are at present concerned with analysis applied to
the mental routes of social response. The suggestion route
and the imitation route cross one another's trails. Sug-
gestion proceeds upon a complacent and not an assertive
will; it whispers and insinuates its behests to avoid the
possible resistance of an aroused individualistic desire.
Projected to a plane of conduct in which this description is
pertinent, '^social" and *' individual' ' begin to show their
opposition, which opposition is part of the social-moral
problem of all ages. The tendency to follow a lead and
the tendency to set a lead are both social issues; and both
bear upon the social development of an individual trait.

196 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Suggestion calls upon the "following'' tendency, and
(when occasion warrants) proceeds gently and indirectly in
its approach, in order not to awaken the slumbering ''lead-
ing" tendency. The latter becomes the "leading" ten-
dency when socially completed; it is first and always the
individual tendency to self-direction. Projected to the
competition of rivalry, it takes the form of insistence,
domineering, contentiousness, obstinacy — all qualities exer-
cised in the impulse of mastery; projected to a larger
group, it becomes true leadership with its vast social reen-
forcement of submission and approval on the part of the
following. Though rather formidable when thus de-
scribed, these qualities are as characteristically exercised
in the nursery, or on the playground, as in the political
arena, the social whirl, the marts of trade, or campaigns
in the field or on paper. A factor presently to be included
in the complex social responsiveness, must be anticipated
at this juncture. Leadership and deference may both re-
tire to an equality of fellow-feeling ; the pleasure of acting
as one of a group, as "belonging" to the group, is a part
of one's socialization, and promotes the acceptance of the
socially accredited pattern as readily as does subserviency.
The "belonging" is both a possession and a being-pos-
sessed. The appeal is at once to the assertive and to the
submissive self-feelings. Fellow-feeling is congenial to an
emotionally infused responsiveness ; and by that token does
the emotional basis remain the large, primary, reliable
basis of communal socialization. It is ever important that
collective action shall be based upon like feeling, common
enthusiasms, loyalties, sympathies; for only thus can the
greatest common factors of human nature be reached.

Principles and ideals as well as doctrines and dogmas,
though formulated as creeds or slogans, must be enthusi-
astically embraced before they become massively effective.
The individual, assertive, "leading," tendency is congenial
to intellectual explicitness, to consideration, exploration,

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 197

and the reflective type of initiative ; the more individual
one's attitude, the less amenable is it to suggestion. The
field of suggestion accordingly lies closer to the realm of
emotional than of intellectual regulation, though its inter-
course is with both. Suggestion and imitation imply the
tendency in the presence of a model to copy it; when the
tendency is animated rather decidedly by a social con-
formability or a social complacency or a mere gregarious
'^following" trend, the modus operandi of the copying is
referred to suggestion as its vitalizing principle; if the
directive tendency approaches the status of an adoption
rather than an acceptance, an intent rather than a consent,
an appreciation in some measure of the steps of the process
rather than a blind succumbing to their sway, the copying
is imitative. The boundary between the two spreads
broadly and uncertainly, yet remains a boundary [8]. In
concrete illustrations the cooperation of the two tendencies
is prominent ; as in the actual stream of experience we often
really follow when we seem to lead, or flatter ourselves that
we act from convictions won by individual effort, when we
follow prejudices imposed by convention upon an emo-
tionally receptive and intellectually dependent deference.
Disposition, typical of the emotional phase of the com-
plex, favors the play of contagion and suggestion. I am
the more ready to laugh in a gay company, if I enter it in
a gay mood; I am the more disposed to yawn when others
yawn, if I am a bit tired ; I am more apt to feel hungry as
I observe others eat, when I am somewhat hungry myself.
But when at a restaurant I order what 1 see others eat,
suggestion is completed by imitation. Children are by the
same range of qualities suggestible and imitative, yet ever
distinctively along the grooves of common trend and na-
ture. They imitate other children and the patterns engag-
ing to their impulses far more congenially than the example
of forbidding elders; otherwise education in morals and
manners would not be the problem that it is. The indi-

198 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

vidual responsiveness to social influences is predominantly
by way of suggestion and imitation on the basis of an
appeal to a common endowment, the selection among the
presented patterns depending upon the relative strength of
appeal to natural impulse, as well as upon other considera-
tions not at present germane. It is because the emotional
appeal in simple cases is to such large common factors of
disposition and impulse that the resulting community, con-
tagion, spread — or whatever term best expresses the social-
ized product — is inevitable, and hardly presents the prob-
lem of selection; what appeals to one appeals to many
others; the common social sympathetic action is rooted
deeply in the normal sources of human nature. In such
instances nature and nurture converge and make the prob-
lems of the distinction of their contributions perplexing,
because the patterns suggested or designedly supplied and
imitated by our nurture are in such large part built upon
or addressed to the redirection of the impulses of our
nature. This, indeed, is what is meant by the ready popu-
lar verdict that human nature is ever the same ; that com-
monly recurring situations make a like appeal to like qual-
ities, and do so not alone by virtue of the acquired social
impulses and the disposition to conform which they en-
gender, but by the reassertion of original trends. Social-
ization thus -finds its tap-root in sympathetic emotionalism.
It operates by communal reenf orcement ; it redirects na-
tural individual emotion-impulses by and through the
''other" situation.

In the present perspective through which we look upon
the field of operation of our own psychology, the social
phases of traits seem as intimate and primary in the com-
ponents of human nature as the individual phases. Jeal-
ousy, shyness, and sympathy are summoned as readily as
fear, anger, self-assertion; there are as common occasions
for the one group as for the other. We are familiar with
love and hate, and see little purpose in reducing them to

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 199

tender-feeling and pugnacity, with which we have as dis-
tant acquaintance in a ^'pure" state as we have with
"pure'' sensations. Intellectually w^e know objects and
not qualities; and yet an elementary psychological analysis
proves that but for the persistent recognition of qualities,
objects would not emerge from the chaos of impressions.
The service of the intellect for the elevation of the emo-
tional life is part of its catholic mission — to many students
of human problems, the most important part of the mission.
As the socialization of the human endowment is applied
more and more to fields where community of natural bent
is less decisive, and community of acquired experience and
views more so, the commanding share of the intellect grows
by rapid advances. In this vast domain suggestion and
imitation are added to and replace organic community or
gregarious contagion, to support the work of sympathy,
and jointly warrant the definition of man as a social ani-
mal ; they furnish the clew analytically, and the instrument
practically, to his social domestication. But such service is
possible only by the inclusion and marked perfection of
the intellectual guidance. Imitation becomes the central
highway of socialization and the road to its issues in the
compositely emotional and intellectual solidarity of feeling
and cooperative conduct, which proclaim the measure of
the individual transformation of character. With this
stage of socialization accomplished, the sympathetic direc-
tion may transform self-regard to the inclusion of the altru-
istic end and motive, the perfection of the sympathetic
trends, the culmination of the socializing of the human
endowment. Yet at every level the original strain, the
emotional foundation, shows through; it appears in the
''social character" of man as the motive of sensitiveness to
esteem, as susceptibility to imitation and suggestion, and
as a general sympathetic responsiveness to the social mo-
tives. This social sensibility dominates the entire emo-
tional growth; as it progresses, intellectual considerations

200 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

set the course, but the vitality of the emotional impulses
furnishes the motive power.

The place of sympathy in the higher phases of psychic
regulation has led to the consideration of the socializing
processes as a whole. We must now return to include a
survey of a factor in sympathy, of uncertain origin. All
that is clear is that the relations of mother and young, and
the ministrations imposed by the care-of -young situation,
make necessary an other-directed impulse, which in the
human psychological setting involve attitudes of devotion,
properly termed altruistic; such ministrations give pleas-
ure, yield altruistic satisfactions. While sympathy is an
extension of the self -feelings to others, altruism is the pref-
erence of the other and finds its consummation in sacrifice,
small or large or complete. It is altogether probable that
the roots of altruism, though slender, spring from other
natural relations than those of mother and young; but the
evidence is not clear. It is plausible to suppose that the
trend thus introduced in the maternal relation would mod-
ify the sympathetic nature in general ; that while it would
act dominantly as a sex differentiation to insure maternal
care, it would collaterally include a paternal solicitude to
complete the protection of the family interests. Altruism
seems weakly set in human nature and may have no in-
herent part except in the sacrifice imposed by decree of
nature upon the older in favor of the younger generation,
if the race is to survive; the social self-assertion of race
extends to the coming generations. Yet the very complex-
ity of the ''family" relations matures attitudes of love and
loyalty congenial to sacrifice. None the less the altruistic
maturing is in its present sway an artificial product; it
requires the combined disciplines of education, morality,
religion, and other systematized and inculcated loyalties
to maintain its place in the higher psychic regulation.
The instruments of maintenance are the approvals of social
esteem and the sensitizino: of the moral conscience. Altru-

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 201

ism is so uncertain a motive, even in the field of operation
which it has itself created, that we are prone to detect the
motive of self-satisfaction in philanthropic display, and to
suspect the taint of money gained by predatory disregard
of sympathetic considerations. To the modern mind the
suggestion is certain to occur that the technique of court-
ship as at present exercised engages like tendencies to
devotion and sacrifice of an altruistic flavor. Modern
courtship is enshrined in an atmosphere of romance, gal-
lantry, chivalry and sacrificial attentions ; in appearance it
provides a favored medium for the expansion of altruistic
conduct. If we are tempted to give this trait a place in
original nature as a real and strong root of altruism, we
are at once met by the contrary evidence of history. Early
courtship was dominated by the appeals to mastery and
possession; capture rather than persuasion or ingratiation
was its primitive method, and there is reason to believe
that the success of bold advance and elopement, if not
seizure, in the most formally conducted courtships reflects
the hold of primitive techniques. Submission rather than
the power to enforce devotion was the cherished quality of
the primitively feminine. Doubtless attraction always
played a part, and the coyness of response shows the con-
flict of mixed motives; but the conclusion stands that the
altruistic flavor in courtship is to be regarded as a product
of high-level evolution, and cannot be appealed to as a
natural or even a very early source of other-directed sym-
pathy. Yet it would be misleading to dismiss the trait with
so final a statement. It is obvious that with the desire for
the esteem of the opposite sex once established upon what-
ever source or basis, it plays a large part in spreading the
sensitiveness to esteem as a general social instrument. The
relations of courtship of more than the primitive form
utilize, absorb, and develop the altruistic flavor of devo-
tion and sacrifice. If the attention of the male is but self-
seeking disguised, the disguised status itself involves the

202 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

play of other ranges of motive; the effective disguise up-
holds the consciousness of the lover in a romantic network
of admiration and the quest of approval. Once slightly
transformed so as to come within the reach of the altruistic
impulse, the love passion reenforces that impulse and ex-
pands it. There is a large truth in the generalization that
only because the slight altruistic roots are stimulated by the
emotional warmth of the love passion, is the further growth
of the altruistic nature made possible. Without this trans-
forming medium the altruism of the average man would be
far more uncertain, the possibility of the use by society of
the desire for approval far more limited than it is. It re-
mains true for the practical spans of social evolution that
the sensitizing to sex-esteem serves as a powerful stimulant
to social esteem. From the exhibition of prowess as a
means of captivating the fair sex to the gallant chivalry of
romanticism there runs a common trend. It has a further
chance of growth in connection with the paternal share in
the solicitude for the offspring, and in that relation also
may derive strength from a borrowed source. The appeal
of wife and child facilitates other appeals; the composite
altruistic susceptibility attains, as it requires, the support
of all the natural relations that can further its establish-
ment and growth.

Collateral evidence supports the conclusion that the rela-
tion of mother and child is the natural point of germina-
tion of altruistic sympathy [9] ; though with it we may at
once associate the entire range of family relationships that
come from and with the sharing of the same protective nest.
The ' ' group ' ' relation is thus established, and may well be
the model for the wider group relations that human so-
ciality has at all times developed. The stronger hold of
family ties upon women, the intensity of the maternal con-
cern, may account for the readier emergence in the femi-
nine nature of the altruistic flavor of sympathy, and the
stronger hold upon men of objective cooperation, making

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 203

room for mutual benefit and leadership. Yet feminine
sympathy is doubtless related to the dominance of the emo-
tional regulation in the feminine perspective, as well as
to the readier play of the ''suggestion" type of influence
in feminine psychology. However this may be, it is clear
that the sensitizing of the self to the sympathetic partici-
pation in the life of others forms one of the great media
of socialization ; and that this sensitization is in part altru-
istic and by that token is more than the competition for the
social esteem as a mode of enhancement of self-esteem. It
is the policy of social institutions to encourage the altru-
istic factor by the esteem which they confer upon (certain
forms of) sacrifice; the larger loyalties thus flourish, and
the smaller allegiances derive an added enforcement. The
ultimate issue is that in present society social favor becomes
a dominant object of competition. Jealousy is directed
to the coveting of social rewards and preferments ; shyness
is induced by any of the artificial forms of social contact;
the competitive energies with all the emotional panoply
accumulated in food-forays, offensive and defensive tactics
of war, capture or persuasion of mates, assertions of mas-
tery and superiority in minor encounters, personal and
tribal, are redirected with an expanded scope to the con-
test for social goods. In this redirection the social sanc-
tion acts negatively as well as positively ; it imposes an in-
tricate system of checks and restraints upon discouraged
forms of self-seeking, and thereby favors the altruistic
trends by the strong disapproval of the chief obstacles to
their emergence. Custom and convention are the media
through which these influences are exercised; there results
the socialized conscience, supporting the sympathetic emo-
tionalism and building the superstructure of character.

The socialization of impulses proceeds by ''first nature'*
directly self-concerned; next, and by a like process, it acts
upon later types of emotional responsiveness through the
development of "second-nature" impulses intrinsically so-

204 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

cial in origin, in trend and in their genius; the two jointly
set the personality for which these impulses are the media
of expression, toward the culminating issue of a social self.
On the positive side the activities and relations of the day
and of the hour are socially directed or socially tinged or
infused by and with the interaction of like processes in
others, both specifically with these others and generically
upon the basis of a social consciousness. The avoidance
of such relations is the mark of a recluse; which trait, if
pronounced beyond the limits of social shyness and
touched by a misanthropic aversion, readily assumes an ab-
normal form. Unsympathetic and anti-social tendencies
are allied to criminality — ^much of it also an abnormal ex-
pression. The opposite tendency is also prone to marked
expression and proves the strong hold of the earlier stages
of socialization. To be so slavishly dependent upon others
as to find meager satisfaction in self -directed energies sug-
gests the absence of inner resources. Reading, study, oc-
cupation, music, sport, avocations, hobbies, are all utilized
as forms of self-complete pursuits, in which the satisfac-
tions, like virtues, are their own reward. In a sense they
replace the *' others" as points of contact with our own
personalities. The manner of our lives determines the di-
rection and intensities of our social cravings. A crowd
seems necessary to the social-psychological setting of the
city bred; country life develops a psychology of its own.
Yet the need of privacy for self-development is variously
recognized, and the prominence of its claims forms a sig-
nificant distinction between the ideals of different peoples.
An ethnological student, living for a long period among the
North American Indians, found nothing more wearing than
the total absence of privacy in the enforced communal life.
Yet despite these marked differences in expression of the
social consciousness, of the social dependence and of the
social approval, which customs and modes of life present,
the general trait remains and expresses itself in a desire

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 205

for and a satisfaction in the * * diffuse notice and approval ' '
of others. A greeting, a nod, a bare acknowledgment of
our presence suffices. In its absence the self-esteem suffers ;
disregard, slight, disdain, scorn, insult are stronger expres-
sions of the common affront to the social self, which guards
our honor and our reputations as vitally as our persons;
yet even these imply notice. In James' authoritative de-
scription: ''A man's social self is the recognition which
he gets from his mates. We are not only gregarious ani-
mals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an
innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed
favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment
could be devised, were such a thing physically possible,
than that one should be turned loose in society and remain
absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one
turned round when we entered, answered when we spoke,
or minded what we did, but if every person we met *cut us
dead,' and acted as if we were non-existent things, a kind
of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us,
from which the crudest bodily tortures would be a relief;
for these would make us feel that, however bad might be
our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be un-
worthy of attention at all."

It is accordingly not in the bare acknowledgment of one 's
presence but in the degree and manner and refinement of
such acknowledgment that the art of human intercourse
consists. The sensitiveness to its forms and expressions be-
comes a significant trait of the social character; it is this
more explicitly than any other trait that is referred to as
''sensitiveness." The sensitive person is responsive in an
exaggerated measure to every slight suggestion of advance,
compliment, disregard, offense — often imagining its pres-
ence where it is not intended. It is this surface play of
self-regard, received and offered, that forms the ripples on
the stream of psychic impressionism socially directed.
Systems of regulation in codes of manners and morals are

206 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

developed about this central nucleus; ideals shape their
formulation. Distinctions enter: the approbation of some
groups is sought and preferred; that of others disdained;
schools and parties, cliques and affiliations are established ;
sanctions are elevated to rules and philosophies of life.
The consolations of religion, the supports of conscience, the
faith in an ultimate justice, the finer satisfactions of dis-
interestedness direct the quality of self-esteem sought and
found. Such are the issues of the social consciousness,
without which the individual could not take his place in a
social system, without which the system could not prevail.
Yet the inherent range of self-directed motives must ever
be acknowledged, and their dominion given a place in the
social competition, however helpful the dream of a Utopia
where the altruistic act is sufficient unto itself.

There is a further aspect of the socialized consciousness
which finds its origin in the practical basis of cooperation.
There are endless situations which a man cannot meet or
solve alone, but can master with the aid of others. The so-
cial quality which results from such collective enterprise is
a sympathetic zest in acting as one of a group ; it is a
'H^am-play" feeling that yet gives abundant room for in-
dividual assertion, and indeed assures to such assertion the
approval of the witnessing as well as sharing companions.
The bearing of this spirit upon communism of living
eventually absorbed in the play of economic forces, in the
fostering of friendship, alliance, patriotism and the larger
loyalties, will be considered where it more properly be-
longs— among the group-traits of men. Our present con-
cern is with the psychological setting of the motive that
leads to *' lending a hand," and with the resultant effect
upon social responsiveness. The expression of the collec-
tive action in defense or offense, against invasion by foe,
fire, flood, in the management of a hunt, a ship, an ex-
pedition, a campaign, an engineering construction, a drama
or game, a ceremony or cult, are conditioned by practical

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 207

organization; but the very tendency of organized human
actions to take such collective expressions of human inter-
ests and desires, builds upon the socialized impulses and
leads to the trained cooperations of men. So deeply satu-
rated in the social setting and reenforcement are our ac-
tivities and their satisfactions, that to many persons a large
range of the luxurious experiences is possible only in the
social setting. To such persons the enjoyment of a con-
cert may depend intimately upon the sympathy of com-
panions with whom comments and approbations are inter-
changed; the enjoyment is influenced by the appreciative
mood of the audience ; the vigor of applause of any group
of enthusiasts is repeated by the collective outburst, that
grows by spontaneous contagion and culminates in an ova-
tion. The most natural expression of admiration is to sum-
mon the admiration of another: "Oh! look at this! Isn't
it beautiful ? ' ' Solitary enjoyment is limited and bare, be-
cause the richest fruits of psychic cultivation must yield
the social flavor. In travel, in the theater, in an art gal-
lery, among the beauties of nature, at church (wherever
the finer feelings which are themselves the product of a
disinterested pleasure are concerned), while the impression
is an individual one, it craves the social reenforcement. It
may be supplied in imagination by rehearsing the impres-
sion as if to an absent mate or companion, so great is the
sense of lack in solitary surplus of experience. The social-
psychological values thus resulting from shared enjoyment
are utilized to lift the selfish pleasures to the same disin-
terested plane. The table becomes the symbol of sympa-
thetic hospitality and the occasion of social intercourse;
and eating in solitary state becomes a bore, lacking at once
the social distraction and the social enhancement. To be
sociable means not alone a craving for companionship, but
a dependence upon the customary socialization of experi-
ence in all realms where the self-centered interests are not
exclusive. Of these in turn, if too pronounced and selfish

208 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

in tone, one is more or less ashamed — by virtue of his social
consciousness — or in more innocent instances, decently se-
cretive. The point to be emphasized is the socializing of
the emotional attitudes, not primarily by way of their de-
mand for the approbation of others or the rewards of so-
ciety, but by way of their dependence upon the sharing of
others for their own inner satisfaction: hence the pangs
of loneliness — of a fictitious or figurative loneliness, it may
be, when amongst people but a stranger in their midst, lack-
ing the ties that establish the approaches of self to self ; or
a yet more select loneliness in that the companionship of-
fered is not satisfactory to one's standards, predilections,
and ideals ; or yet of the literal loneliness of constant soli-
tude, that affects the entire disposition. The loneliness of
a stranger in a big city and the loneliness of village life in
the winter are very different but equally ''social" expres-
sions of a complex dependence. It is the sense of detach-
ment from the social environment that makes working or
even sleeping alone in a house a trying situation to many
socialized individuals; the trait then aroused more di-
rectly reflects the primitive gregarious hold, turning the
emotion toward fear. Yet it is the more complex phases of
the trait that operate in the higher reaches of the social
sensitiveness. The landscape may seem a barren waste
until there is discovered the touch of the human hand, the
sign of human habitation, even though it be no more than
the smoke of a chimney in the distance. It is the sense of
solitude that makes the poetry of the desert, the impres-
siveness of the obscuring star-lit night, the awesome expanse
of the wilderness too mighty for human powers to com-
pass. In these finer esthetic realms of emotion the social
consciousness refinedly asserts its sway. In the beginning
socially dependent, maturing in a social medium of re-
sponsiveness, seeking social rewards, sensitive to social re-
straints, expanding experience through a socialized sympa-
thy, finding enhancement in socially shared pleasures, al-

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 209

truistically responsive to the satisfactions which others en-
joy through his efforts, bound to social interests by ties im-
posed and associations assumed, the human individual finds
his psychological expressions so thoroughly incorporated
in the socialization of his traits that he cannot readily con-
ceive of his nature in any other terms, cannot construct a
hypothetical psychology stripped of social complications,
cannot picture a world of action for his qualities that does
not represent a constant appeal to his social self [10].

The altruistic turn of the social-sympathetic emotions in-
troduces in psychic regulation a factor as distinctive as
momentous. Despite its uncertain origin, its precarious
hold, and its essential limitation to high-level expressions,
the altruistic quality is as strongly to be reckoned with as
any derivative phase of acquired nature. Altruistic con-
sideration is maintained by the eternal watchfulness that is
the price of moral safety ; and the manners so carefully and
wisely fostered in lighter considerations are readily for-
saken under stress or strain of personal advantage. The
scratching of the Kussian that discloses the Tartar may be
repeated with the same result upon almost any average ex-
ample of civilized humanity. Despite the glorious records
of heroism, philanthropy, and devotion, it takes but the ur-
gency of a panic, a crowding of the means of subsistence,
a rush for immediate advantage, a fierce clash of individual
interests, to send the human struggle back to a sauve qui
pent scramble. The proverbial ' ' Devil take the hindmost ' '
spirit indicates too pointedly the attitude of the foremost.
Although altruism is valued intrinsically for its effect upon
character and is thus a moral quality ultimately, the import
of this comment is not moral but psychological. The pre-
ceding survey serves to indicate the variable play of altru-
istic emotional trend in its sources and earlier manifesta-
tions, and the transformations which it affects among the
composite impulses of individual and social human nature
of like derivative status. It is pertinent to recall that al-

210 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

truism has a chance to assert itself through the medium of
a disturbed sympathy. The sympathetic man may un-
dergo large sacrifices to make others happy, because others'
misery makes him miserable sympathetically ; or considera-
tion may lead prudentially to the morality of the golden
rule with its inevitable altruistic trend; or the mutual
reenforcement of cooperation, the congeniality of friend-
ships, the glow of a social solidarity in loyalty to causes
and institutions, may attract toward self-effacement and
''other-seeking" efforts. It is equally pertinent to recall
that the altruistic flavor, if not pure, at all events in a
creditable approximation, directs human motives and en-
ergies, enhances and molds the emotional thrill, offsets the
individual set of impulse as effectively as imposed restraint,
enlarges the outlets of affections and interests. Joy be-
comes doubled as it is shared; grief more bearable by the
same enrichment. Emotion directed to others returns upon
itself and gives an added and a keener zest to individual
effort. The consolations of poetry, the vicarious experi-
ences of the drama, would be barren were it not for the
altruizing trait, which makes the human being humane,
makes it impossible for the sympathetic man to attain a
full sentimental expression without the reflex support of
kindred souls. Practically it supports the institutional ex-
pressions of sympathy and social solidarity; psychologi-
cally it creates a new order of susceptibility.

It is in the spirit of these considerations that we turn
to the emotion of love — a term of ready familiarity in every
language, but far from definite in its psychological bear-
ings. The contrast of love is with hate ; they are distinctly
of the upper-level, ''sentimental" order and require a con-
siderable psychological maturity for their unfoldment.
While withdrawal is significant of shyness or fear or dis-
gust, the alternatives of approach are in the first instance
as contrasted as are fear and flight with anger and pug-
nacity. To approach in friendliness or in hostility, with

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 211

the open palm of amity or the closed fist of enmity, with the
frank smile or the clenched teeth, with word or mien of
blessing or curse, must be "instinctively" distinguishable
as vital and urgent situations of opposite import. The
' ' sentimental ' ' stage of antagonism or aversion is hate ; the
hater feeds the embers of his wrath, and broods revenge.
The "sentimental" stage of affection and friendly ap-
proach or welcome acceptance is love ; the lover glows with
the warmth of his fondness and dreams of bliss. But the
very fact that human love is "sentimental," makes it dif-
ficult for man to strip it of its "sentimental" accretions
and stand face to face with its pre-sentimental stages.
The psychological analysis requires a neutral term for the
basis of friendly approach; in recent discussions "tender-
feeling" answers that purpose. The desire for such atten-
tion appears in the solace of fondling, caressing ministra-
tions, though these may afford equal or greater satisfac-
tion to the giver than to the recipient. They memi far more
to the mother than to the child; pet dogs and cats have
learned to cherish them at human hands. The instinctive
tendency whereby only the maternal (or kindred) touch
is soothing and every strange contact is instinctively re-
sponded to as a hostile one, gives way to the acquired as-
sociation. The cubs of even the most feral carnivora may
be freely fondled — that is, their instincts accept contact
as protective — ^but in due time are swayed by the mature
feral instincts which resent contacts. Domestication, like
a simplified civilization, aims to let the ape and tiger die,
and to enlarge, eventually to enlarge rationally, the range
of welcome approaches. That in a primitive perspective
the attitudes called forth by food-acceptances as well as by
organic antipathies and sympathies contribute to the re-
active habit is inferable from the mode of operation of loves
and hates. The hateful is also the repugnant; language,
reflecting the feelings, merges affection and sensory pre-
dilection. "Loving" is loosely used as a stronger sense of

212 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

** liking." Such enthusiastic exaggerations as a passion-
ate fondness for peaches, or a doting on chocolate creams,
or an adoration of roses, are pardonable by reason of the
underlying congeniality of the sentiment. Conversely the
''sweet" disposition is the lovable one. The esthetic ele-
ment enters and is swayed by the affect; love makes the
beloved object beautiful and the hated one ugly, whatever
more critical judgments may decide. To maternal eyes
there are no ugly babies. Love is blind to faults, and the
prejudices of hate are equally blinding to virtues. The
emotions of love and hate are indispensable and inevitable
products of the setting of our approaches and contacts in
the socialized and intellectualized medium; they become
complicatedly friendly and hostile, reservedly and versa-
tilely welcome and unwelcome. The same contrast inheres
in the projection of emotional states into the future, where
the welcome inspires the sentiment of hope, and the un-
welcome is included in the enlarged compass of fear. The
situations contributing to the development of the emo-
tion of love are threefold: the care-of-young situation, so-
cial friendliness, and sex appeal; by transfer the tender
feeling, welcoming joy, and impulse to devotion, bred in
these relations, are applied to one's work, one's pleasures,
one's larger interests. Maternal devotion, cordiality of
friendship, and attractions of youth and maiden are as
distinctive in their source as in their manifestations ; they
are blended in a common emotion — in due course a common
sentiment — and find a like support in a passionate nature
capable of deep and ardent feeling ; yet they mature with a
dift'erent range and quality. The friendships of men and
women cannot be as those of men to men, or of women to
women; the drift of friendship to love marks the change
of the emotional-sentimental current. The emotion as felt
is commonly suggestive dominantly of one source and in
minor measure of the others; the relation of father to a
daughter of congenial temperament may combine parental.

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 213

companionable, and gallant devotion. The loves of men, as
well as their allegiances to causes and ardencies of pursuit,
are distinctive because man is (really or potentially) a
fond parent, a true friend, an eager lover. The loves of
women are distinctive because of the distinctive ties in the
complementary relations. Thus emotions, however desig-
nated, take their psychological meaning from the concrete
conditioning of their exercise.

The dominance in the mature civilized psyche of latter-
day generations, of the romantic relations of courtship, en-
shrining the passion in a sentimental tradition, liberating
its power to transform thought, feeling and energies, has
conspired to give the lover-beloved relation a precedence in
the love complex. The condition of ''being in love" has
but one reference, and in that reference develops a unique
psychology. If it were fair to disregard the history of
courtship and the customs of nations and times and the di-
vergences of classes, as well as wayward amorous expres-
sions and uncertain ''elective affinities," and accept as the
standard relation the highly romantic elaboration of the
*'sex" appeal under modern, occidental refinement, "court-
ship" love — the complement of sex to sex in enduring at-
traction and devotion — could be unreservedly set in a posi-
tion of exalted supremacy. How far the imperial sway of
sex rule is established by divine right of nature, how far the
enthronement is the work of man, the psychologist must
consider, though he hesitates to decide. To those of our
minds, moods, and traditions it seems natural and inevitably
ordained that no other avowal of love, however sincere, dis-
interested, deep, spontaneous, and enduring, can carry the
emotional thrill, can so transform the psychic nature and
occupation, so enhance experience by the depth of the emo-
tional background against which it is projected, so vivify
ideals and animate resolve, as this one. Its keynote thus
construed is devotion, in which the other becomes dearer
than the self; yet its gratification is saturated with self-

214 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

indulgence ; and in all its moods and phases it proclaims its
loyalty to nature, reveals that the wealth of its treasures
have been gained by refinement of sentiment and transfor-
mation of ideals in the intellectual and the social alembic
from the primitive crude ore of human nature. The at-
tempt to develop it in isolation from its organic basis, to
present in ideal a sacred and a contrasted profane love, to
detach from the sympathetic devotion of man and woman
the added charm of sex allurement, led to the conception
of Platonic love — a psychological abstraction.

That the lover theme has become the leit-motif in the
movements of the modernized psychic composition may be
admitted, whatever the decision as to its place in original
or primitive nature. In surveying the upper levels of
psychic regulation, we seem to find the issues of the com-
mon theme; we think of acts of devotion and loyalty to
deeply cherished human interests as finding their vitality
in the passionate strength that belongs to the plighted
troth. We find it interesting if aimless to speculate how
far the loyalties to social and philanthropic causes would
have developed and present civilization have assumed its
creditable altruistic appearance, without the absorbing,
compelling, transforming sweep of the love-passion to
teach men the potencies of desire and devotion. The
psychologist may more confidently recognize that the sus-
ceptibility to the love passion reverberates to the most re-
mote psychic recesses, and vibrates characteristically for
masculine and for feminine nature ; and recognize the col-
lateral presence of the maternal, parental, filial ties, the
allegiances of kith and kin, of friend and clan and race, of
associates in mental and moral sympathy, that make the
overtones of the harmony. The meaning is clear when we
speak of the artist as wedded to his art, of the consecrated
nun as the bride of the Church, of the amateur (lover)
who roams the woods for the love of nature, or searches the
depositaries of human products for the choice embodiment

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 215

of what men wrought with love for their work. Even the
thrill of discovery and the scientific ardor, though exercised
in the realm of thought, and the undertaking of exploits of
venture, though motivated by other phases of nature, take
their support from the ardor of the love susceptibility.
They are at times turned to as compensations for the lacks
of the authentic passion; and careers are abandoned or
modified by reason of its rival claims; wives have been
known to become jealous of their husbands' professional
absorption, intuitively aware that the acquired interest has
usurped when it should but borrow from the resources of a
prior claim. The common conclusion remains that the
strengths of pursuit derive their vitality in some measure
from the potencies of the love-passion set in a natural ur-
gency but developed to a far-reaching consummation by
virtue of the same psychic enrichment that permits its
transfer to the socially and intellectually determined en-
thusiasms of life.

To draw a distinction between the elaboration of an emo-
tion and the establishment of a sentiment is possible; but
the distinction would be gained at the expense of continuity
of development, would become a somewhat arbitrary em-
phasis of contrasts above affiliations. In the considera-
tion of the emotion of love — which might with equal right
be called a sentiment — anticipation was inevitable. Ac-
cordingly it seems better at this stage to pass at once to
the consideration of the intellectual factor by virtue of
which the sentimental stage of the psychic elaboration is
gained. Intellectualization refers to the influence upon the
responses stimulated by the affective disposition, of the
presence and radiation of meaning — of objective reference.
Situations are responded to not only by the disposition
which they arouse but by what they are and mean in a
system of recognition and consideration; knowledge or-
ganizes feelings and actions. As conduct becomes com-
plex through the complexity of relations between the sev-

216 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

eral factors of the situation and the several alternatives of
response, and again the several ranges of inclinations and
aptitudes to be drawn upon in preparing it, the route to
action comes to be mainly through ideas — ideo-motor
rather than emoto-motor. The role of the intellect in fur-
thering distinction, recognition, comparison, in the analy-
sis and appraisal of the situation and its further play in
suggestion and imitation in shaping response, has already
been set forth. By its operation the representative situ-
ations become as real as those in sensory terms; mental
situations not only replace physical ones, but create a new
order of situations in the ''ideal" life. The more concrete
embodiment of this range of forces lies in the action of the
imagination, the representative experience. The route of
suggestion, when it follows this course, vastly enlarges its
scope and makes mental suggestion a far more important
factor in psychic regulation than suggestion on the sensory
plane, makes beliefs of even larger influence than experi-
ences, imposes speculation upon observation and interpre-
tation upon facts. The result is not alone that one may
become thirsty or aware of one's thirst through the sound
of running water, or at the sight of someone drinking — as
the odor of appetizing food makes the mouth water — or in
reading about life on the desert, but that the situations thus
responded to are far more commonly and more signifi-
cantly those of the last order than those of the other orders.
Nor is the essential relaJ:ion so bare as this: it is not alone
that attitudes shape mxcntal situations and determine pol-
icy and the spirit of responsiveness, but that the instru-
ment of psychic control thus intellectually shaped sweeps
over the whole range of experience with momentous recon-
structive effect. The mental element leads in the approach
to situations, and makes for apprehension and comprehen-
sion. Intellectualization refers to the prominence of the
recognitional, the objectively referring, the associational,
the explicit factor in appreciating the situation — by im-

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 217

plication a mental one — and the further play of such fac-
tors in reshaping the affective attitude and in maturing the
response. Considered generally such participation deter-
mines the actual status of the emotion and the conduct:
whether feeling guides with the aid of distinction and its
associated processes, or whether consideration leads, modi-
fied and supported by emotional promptings ; at still higher
levels, whether we reason our way to conduct and com-
promise or restrain our feelings, or whether we follow our
impulses, impressions, and predilections, finding such sup-
port in reason as we may. It is the contrast of acting more
by feeling how or more by knowing wJiat and why.

As it affects distinction, the quality was portrayed in con-
sidering the natural impressionism of the sensibilities; in
distinction, analysis proceeds to determine whether feeling
is dominant, incited by a recognitional moment, or recog-
nition is dominant, sustained by an emotional appeal. The
comprehensive reason why intelligence is so vital to regu-
lation lies in the first instance in its support of the emo-
tional interest, in its direction of impulse into the channels
of purpose and design, toward the integration of experience.
The desire is vitalized by emotion, as is also the satisfac-
tion of accomplishment; but the means of attainment are
intellectual and constitute the specific plot of the action.
Impressionism stands for the fact that a slight ingredient
of recognition, at least of explicit recognition, is sufficient
and is effective through the emotional affect which it in-
spires, though in higher stages readily and commonly
reenforced by an organized group of distinctions. As
already instanced, animal and infant responses frequently
leave uncertain the degree of intellectual meaning which
the response entails : whether father or master is greeted by
infant or dog specifically with the joy of recognition, or is
generically received as a friendly, sympathetic, welcome
but unassociated presence. Language alone is a sufficiently
explicit and developed intellectual product to furnish an

218 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

adequate expressional statement. The dumb creation and
the infant (literally: not-speaking) have only an emotional
language at their command, and presumably respond only
to the emotional appeal however couched. The tone of
endearment and reproof in the language of father or mas-
ter is understood long before and more intimately than
are the words in which the attitude is conveyed. Emo-
tional language is earlier, as the emotional life runs deeper
than the intellectual.

There is no need to dwell more minutely upon the initial
stages of intellectualization ; we soon reach the very ex-
tensive realm in which the appeal embodied in the clew be-
tween stimulation and its response is composite, yet tends
toward an intellectual type. The resulting impressionism
extends to various phases of human nature; at more com-
plicated stages it becomes the contrast of the esthetic re-
sponsiveness of different orders of quality of pleasure or
pain: in what manner and degree subconscious, implicit,
subjective, or conscious, explicit, and analytic of situation.
It appears in the form of insight, intuitive feeling of values,
as against reasoning — critical knowledge of signs and con-
nections; it becomes the sense of direction as against the
points of the compass, the rule of thumb as against the
rule of head. The theme set forth in terms of the simpler
orders of sensibility may be transferred with variations to
the higher levels, where emotion and reason and their com-
posite associations operate. Sensory distinctions, general
impressions centering about the ] ■ easurable moment, and a
schooled experience combine. Fooling recedes as the in-
tellectual criteria advance; as the sensory clew to distinc-
tion retires, judgment — considerate of relations, reasons,
and motives — replaces a more subconscious emotionalized
impressionism, yet never wholly supplants it. Feeling
one's way to a solution gives way to and is absorbed in
reasoning one's way to it. Yet the situation must be com-
plex to bring forth the intricate play of the contributing

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 219

factors; and none is more so than the complexity of hu-
man intercourse with its strongly socialized relations. The
reading of others' motives, the anticipation of others' ac-
tions, proceed upon the distinction of situation, in which
sympathetic feeling is uppermost. Consideration is
prompted by individual sensibility, is its sympathetic ex-
tension; and morality, no less than sociality, waits upon
an impressionistic insight. Upon the same insight rests
the capacity to distinguish between the false and the genu-
ine in this as in simpler relations. The appraisal of so-
cial advances and attitudes at their true value in order to
avoid presumption as well as deception, to maintain self-
respect and yet present a due friendliness, to meet expecta-
tions and yet neither give nor take offense where none is
intended : all this is a fine art — the art of tact — based upon
an intellectual sympathy, conversant with the acquired con-
ventions of its exercise.

Our purpose will be advanced by the consideration in the
first instance not of the general play of intellectualization
in the higher psychic regulation, but by consideration of the
distinctive products which intellectualization contributes to
human evolution. Such products must by law of nature
build upon the regulative provisions operative at lower
levels of development, and by the added integration give
them a reconstructed service. The dominantly emotional
response infused and guided by the appreciation of mean-
ing remains central in psychic regulation. Applied to the
several distinctive appeals of which the emotional life con-
sists, the intellectualization of these traits gives to each a
distinctive career. The issue is a sentiment — a term both
popularly and scientifically referring precisely to the in-
tellectualized, presumably socialized, often conventional-
ized, feeling trend or Trieh that determines attitude and
action. Sentiments develop only upon emotions as oper-
ative in a properly qualified and matured self. The senti-
ment retains the motive power of the emotion, with the spe-

220 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

cific carrying power and center of radiation of the idea.
Sentiments form the leading, derivative, upper-level prod-
ucts of instinctive human qualities. They are subject to ex-
tensive evolution, and reflect as does no other phase of our
psychology, the historical vicissitudes of the human psyche
and the conditions of human progress. Their prominent
position in the psychological welfare involves an intimate
bearing upon conduct — always the test of efficiency of char-
acter. The emotions are ' ' feeling ' ' incentives to the favor-
able release of natural impulses; the sentiments supply ra-
tionalized motives to complex, considerate, artificial conduct.
Gusts of emotion find outlets in direct expression ; waves of
sentiment more or less indirectly affect attitudes, modes of
thought, and through these elaborated channels, shape con-
duct. Mere emotionalism unallied to impulse is apt to be
vain; and overindulgence in sentiment, by its remoteness
from resolve, runs the risk of enfeebling and devitalizing
conduct. Yet at the high-level development where senti-
ment guides, the relations are so inherently complex, that
a certain remoteness of interaction between feeling and do-
ing is legitimate, indeed, requisite to the expansive and re-
fined function. Furthermore, a distinctive trait of human
quality appears in the relative absorption in, and affecta-
bility by, sentimental considerations, with the motivation
subtle and indirect, the character contemplative and recep-
tive; and again in the contrasted disposition which passes
lightly through brief moments of vivid and intense feeling
to the joy of impulsive satisfaction in doing. Quite as
significant as the emotional is the intellectual factor in the
process and product ; it serves not alone as the fixation and
rallying point of maturing attitudes, of systems of psychic
and moral regulation, of trends of desire, resolve, and en-
deavor, but equally supplies the concreteness and explicit-
ness of representation through which, in manifold variety
and growth, the sentiment is maintained, fashioned, re-
vived, and redirected — pointing it to a practical moral as

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 221

well as adorning it as an engaging tale. For thinking,
which is reflection, readjustment of experience, redirection
of impulse through consideration, is the life of the mind;
and conditioned by practical aims, tested by results, it finds
its issue in set habits and attitudes, which are the concrete
deposits of traits of character.

The simpler — and as applied to more cultivated indi-
viduals, the truer — statement results from a substitution of
the intellectual for the emotional perspective. The higher
psychic control is a process of thought ; it is thinking under
the spur and guidance of feeling. Thinking requires an
object, also a road upon which to travel, and a conveyance
to carry the utilities and the impedimenta of the journey.
The journey may be sentimental or utilitarian, real or
imaginary ; the tempo, the spirit, the nature of the journey
is largely determined by the interests and capacities of the
traveler; yet most journeys have a common or ordinary
purpose, a standard range of incidents, pleasures, and
trials, and a commonplace route. Moods come and go, and
purposes constantly change; their persistence while they
last is due to the taking thought — the direction of senti-
ment and emotion in and by the stream of consideration.
Such is brooding if the sentimental tone be depressing in
grief, resentment, revenge, hatred, despair; such is bliss,
if the sentimental course be cheering in love, hope, triumph,
admiration, gratitude, relief; such is mixed contemplation,
if the sentimental tone be one of intellectual inspiration in
insight, discovery, surprise, curiosity, resolution of doubts
and worries. Equally characteristic are the alternations
and conflicts and interplays of sentiment that make the
complexities of the thoughtful life — its thorns close to its
roses — and the perplexities of right knowing and doing.

In one great realm through the sway of sentiment, in an-
other through the dominance of reason, the intellect enters
into and possesses the higher regulation of the psychic life.
To appreciate its scope and perspective, we may pass in re-

222 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

view the chief types of sentiments and their service. The
bare mention of the leading sentimental attitudes — love,
hate, admiration, surprise, pride, honor, shame, modesty,
sorrow, joy, scorn, reverence, rage, despair, pity, gratitude,
respect, repugnance — indicates two points of community.
The first is the bearing of these sentimental movements
upon the ups and downs of the inner, emotional, personal
welfare; they represent the meteorological vicissitudes of
a sensitive self responsive to the shifts and veers — the ther-
mometrical, barometrical, and other intricate changes in the
*' personal" atmosphere — in the social-psychological cli-
mate in which we live and move and have our being. The
second is the converging power of the sentiment in the fu-
sion and amalgamation of many varieties of emotional dis-
position. With the object fixed in a sentiment of love, I
converge upon the loved one affection, sympathy, jealousy,
hope, anxiety, admiration, favorable prejudices, pitying re-
proach if offended, tender sorrow if disappointed, ready
forgiveness without resentment, a double measure of grati-
tude if served, enhanced joy if approved ; I converge upon
the hated one, revenge, a joy in his woes and an indiffer-
ence to his joys or cares, contempt, an unfavorable preju-
dice, ruthless anger if offended, an unforgiving resentment,
a scorn of his kindness or compliment. Each of the larger
sentiments gathers about its central core of affect a con-
siderable cluster of related and subtly interacting and coun-
teracting contributory influences, converging upon the
complex veerings and shiftings of self-esteem and self-
abasement. Yet it is equally true that toward the same ob-
ject I may feel a like complexity of sentiment. I may love,
fear, respect, and pity, the same person. Opposing and
combining sentiments determine my composite attitude
toward my friends, my social and my professional obliga-
tions. Brothers and sisters quarrel readily and remain
friends by ties of blood; the ties imposed and those freely
made entail different sentimental relations. Relatives, if

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 223

they happen to present a different social standard and a
wholly divergent set of interests, are trying to natures that
thrive only upon an intellectual congeniality. While these
situations form sentimental problems, they enter the field
of reflection, and practically require compromise and re-
straint. Yet the sentimental life, however strongly it re-
flects at every stage its direction by reason, is determined
by the fundamental range of the emotions; and the emo-
tions have a backward reference to the urgent or luxurious
situations which they meet, and to the responses which they
infuse with the added zest of interest, meaning, refinement.
Certain ranges of sentiment are strongly intellectual in
bearing and composition; others, less disinterested, are in
the main emotional expansions and complications. Their
boundaries overlap ; definition gives way to the rendering of
types; moral and esthetic considerations, with their intru-
sions of value, are insistent; custom and the environment
divert them to contrasted issues; the abnormal varieties
present extremes of development; the balance of sentimen-
tal allegiances offers the individual problem of regulation.
Individuals, groups, classes, nations, and civilizations di-
verge and find mutual understandings difficult because of
their divergent allegiance to one and another sovereignty
in the domain of sentiment.

Pride is a sentiment direct in its reference and expres-
sion; it is the sentimental elaboration of conquest, suprem-
acy, the getting the better of persons or difficulties; it is
the emotion of success, attainment, exultation, stripped of
its coarser implications. The proud man draws himself to
his full height, holds his head high, disdains, exults, may
even strut like a peacock. This aggressive by-play re-
mains attached to the self-assertive sentiments, such as
vanity, conceit, dignity, authority, majesty. The expres-
sion needs the context to interpret it. We refer vanity to
the peacock because we humanize the peacock's instincts by
irrelevantly imposing upon them the sentimental values of

224 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the human expression. The pride may take the form of
vanity in clothes, serving — like the parade of the peacock
— the instincts of display. It may be of very different
range and ally itself with dignity in the badge of office, the
precedence of rank, or take its tone from distinction in the
gaining of a prize, an honorary degree, a title of privilege,
membership in a limited body; or from achievement in au-
thorship, construction, invention, management, finance. It
is indeed a most elastic sentiment, and characteristically ex-
tends to all one's belongings and connections, most inti-
mately to such personal connections as reflect credit upon
one — the distinction of one's family, the success of one's
relatives, the qualities and achievements of one's children.
All these are the extension of the individual self by virtue
of the social self and of the intellectualized system of rela-
tions surrounding them. One may be proud of one's
birth, one 's family, one 's ancestry, of one 's physique, one 's
wealth, one's good taste, one's home-grown vegetables,
one's yacht or automobile or horses and the records which
these have established ; of one 's skill with cue or golf-stick
or trout-rod ; of one 's choice English or cosmopolitan accent ;
of being a busy man or a man of leisure or a man of the
world; of rising from the ranks or of one's early advan-
tages ; of being in the height of fashion or of being superior
to fads and fashions. We judge a man by the manner and
objects of his pride, and to such of these as he takes pride
in, he gives attention. They aid and abet his self-esteem;
they are to him objects of value by virtue of their status in
a social system of values; they represent the inlets to his
pride, as the care and attention he places upon them serve
as the outlets of the sentiment. Yet emotional disposition,
however subject to training by society, school, and Mrs.
Grundy, or by systems of morals and ideals, still shows
through. It still has a meaning to speak of a man as proud
or of a woman as vain; or to call one humble, modest or
subservient, and another overbearing, conceited, or defiant.

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 225

Such character-traits and the modes of exhibiting them rep-
resent the strength of self-regarding impulses. The mas-
terfully assertive man and the meekly submissive man reg-
ulate their conduct by different perspectives; they must be
dealt with by different methods.

The satisfaction of pride becomes a motive. It is such
motive that determines the goal of desire, the direction of
effort, the restraints of conduct; it is this motive that
social forces use to establish a hold upon the individual.
Yet character is judged not alone by the strength of one
appeal or another, but by the classes of objects and achieve-
ments in which the individual chooses or is impelled to feel
and exhibit his pride — ^his selection among the patterns
offered by the mental, moral, and material aims and inter-
ests of his social environment. Once more is it well to
recall that pride and the group of sentiments of which it is
the type-form would not have developed, had there not been
an emotion of elation instinctively connected with the
primitive self-assertive tendencies (in combat, play, rivalry)
that gave it a natural role ; and in addition had not the gen-
eral social and intellectual development expanded these re-
lations and transferred and differentiated the motive-
impulse to appropriate stimulations in the larger system
of interests which the larger life creates. For their efficient
operation in the higher phases of regulation, the sentiments
imply a centralized self, a self capable of assimilating the
sentiments and understanding as well as feeling their ap-
peal. A self-consciousness, a more or less reflective assim-
ilation, accompanies understanding; the sentiments thrive
in the medium of such consideration. They are incorpor-
ated— again more or less deliberately — in institutions, cus-
toms, beliefs, ideals, and are stimulated by these social
forces. Such artificial stimulations exist because the needs
and satisfactions of the sentiments create them ; their fun-
damental source is in the qualities of men. The socialized
and intellectualized man requires a sense of pride for his

226 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

development to a proper place in the conduct-reflating
system. The pride represents at once the hold of the sys-
tem upon the individual and the individual's participation
in, his susceptibility to, the forces of the social organiza-
tion. The sentimental life grows with and marks the
growth of the self: the sentimental life of children is not
that of adults; of primitive peoples not that of the highly
civilized; of peasant not that of patrician; of the laborer
not that of the scholar. The differentiations of men, while
founded in native temperament and set by the circum-
stances of their lives, proceed ultimately by the support of
their sentimental divergences, assisted by the like diver-
gence of intellectual capacity and of the simpler regulative
systems already passed in review. Of such regulation the
stimulations of self-esteem, as embodied in the type-form
of pride, offer the standard illustration.

The survey of pride may be supplemented by a like con-
sideration of the opposed self -restraining, self-withdrawing,
or self-detracting sentiment. It presents itself as a closely
organized cluster of sentiments, best indicated by humility,
modesty, shame, and the attitudes of admiration, reverence
and submission toward others. The common basis of the
group is a feeling of the lowered, retreating submission of
the self; it has the common negative trait of being non-
assertive or non-aggressive, but for the rest is promptly di-
vergent in its quality. The sense of modesty carries the
tenor of the trait most directly. As applied to the ex-
posure of the body, modesty assumes as its complement the
sense of shame. The age of innocence and the story of the
fall of man enforce the lesson of its moral bearings upon
the distinction of good and evil; its intellectual bearing is
symbolized in the fruit of the tree of knowledge. But the
central bearing of modesty is modesty of spirit, a modest
view of one 's worth and attainments and exploits ; it takes
the form of a genuine humility, checking a too pronounced
or too inconsiderate self-assertion. Socially it becomes the

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 227

deference to others, the acknowledgment, the ready admira-
tion of excellence in others. Applied to one's shortcom-
ings, it becomes a factor in moral regulation and imparts
the sense of shame in the consciousness of remissness or of-
fense. Such response may approach in expression the
earlier phases of timidity ; we shrink and hide in shame as
in fear, yet are expert enough in analysis to distinguish the
shrinking of humility and that of guilt, or other type of
self-abasement.

Modesty of person presents the most varied and curious
conventions of race and custom; and this circumstance
points to its true status. As actually applied, the senti-
ment is substantially an artificial product ; hence its fluctu-
ations. The growth of the sentiment in children is an in-
dex to their maturing character; shame is in large part
an inculcated feeling. The complicating relations of the
life of sex have more to do with the extreme development
of the sentiment than has any other factor. They spread a
secretive character over the entire relations of sex, and
sensitize to the remotest suggestion of impropriety in men-
tion or thought of sexual incidents; the extreme form of
the sentiment leads to prudery. But the net issue of the
sentiment as exercised is this: under an exacting social
standard, a man may be distressingly if absurdly embar-
rassed by the absence of his necktie ; a different play of the
social sanction under sway of sentiment may give propriety
to a bathing-suit. Things are modest by their place in
thought; honi soit qui mat y pense; and the spirit gives and
takes or holds immune from offense. Such considerations
make it plausible that modesty of person is a reverse trans-
fer of a high-level sentiment to a (lower) natural situation,
originally regulated without such intrusions. This deriva-
tion may be otherwise stated. Having developed a moral
sense of modesty and shame, man projects it upon the ex-
posure of the body and the suggestions of nakedness. The
true range of the sentiment is mental and moral, even de-

228 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

cidedly artificial ; it is possible only to organized individu-
als. In direct reference, one is ashamed of offenses, of op-
portunities neglected, of remissness of obligation, of lack of
consideration, of slight or gross selfish indulgence. In type
the things of which one may be ashamed are as various as
those of which one may be proud; and so divergent are
standards that one man may be ashamed of that of which
another may be proud — witness the social shame or pride of
humble origin. One may be ashamed of untidiness, shab-
biness, poor work, humble surroundings, of a meager bank
account, of one's associates, of being out of fashion, of los-
ing one 's position, of an outburst of temper, of negligence,
of offense to any of the standards of good behavior [11],
or of any type of failure in any cherished direction.

These illustrations of the operation of the sentimental
regulation affecting in contrasted manner the rise and fall
of self-esteem will suffice to bring forward the general man-
ner in which such regulation transcends and supersedes the
earlier types. The evolution of fear as the parent type of
the shrinking emotion is equally apposite. Let the higher
range of forces play upon fear, and it becomes dread, ap-
prehension, hesitation, embarrassment, precaution, consid-
eration, worry — all set in an elaborate system and forming
nicely differentiated series of expressions of a common con-
cern. The reasons for this equipment are capable of simple
statement. If all that we had to care for were our bodies
— as is nearly true of many animal forms — the only dan-
gers would be those of physical injury, the only responses
those tending to avoid and protect against bodily harm;
the range of fear excitements would be the flutter accom-
panying the simple measures of protection — flight, conceal-
ment, shamming dead, running to cover, or other organized
habit. As a fact we fear for all we care for ; and our fears,
like our cares, grow with our possessions and our responsi-
bilities. Our interests and protections extend to all the
objects of our desires, however established. For diverse

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 229

and obvious reasons we all care more or less for power
— prefer to rule than to be ruled — and for property by at-
tachment to what we have, for our reputation as a vital
social asset, for our friends, our families, our city, our
nation. Any loss of or injury to these is a hurt to us ; such
injuries we ''fear" in the transferred sense. It is not that
they actually make us hide or run ; though we feel like de-
serting, and say that we tremble at the thought of what is
before us.

By similarity of attitude the language of fear is avail-
able for the slightest occasion : we fear that we cannot lin-
ger, when urged to extend a visit ; we fear that it may rain
before we reach home ; we fear that it is getting late. Any
hesitation, shrinking, avoidance from an undesirable con-
sequence, however contingent or trivial, becomes a trans-
ferred fear — an ever so minute, indirect, derivative, meta-
phorical imminence of loss or disquietude [11]. Fears be-
come the offsets of our desires, the possibility of failure
lurking near to the venture for success. The conflicts of
motive again become pertinent : the honor of an invitation
to speak at a public dinner as something to be proud of is
offset by the nervous apprehension of the approaching trial,
which spoils the enjoyment of the repast. However con-
trollable and remote from the primitive occasions of fear,
the aft'ect continues and presents the same physiological
complex — the drawn face, uncertainty of response, motor
instability. Prominent in psychic control is the rational
meeting of undesirable consequences by prudence, fore-
sight, forethought, all weapons of forearming. We thus
regulate our withdrawals, take our precautions, are ever
careful, mindful, on our protective guard. This is equally
true of the checks which we place on our words, on our
actions, on our investments, even on our thoughts. We
scent danger everywhere ; but the dangers have vastly
changed in the reconstructed life — infections, poisons, elec-
tric shocks, pickpockets, missteps, collisions, unreliable

230 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

banks, adulterated foods, misleading advertisements, in-
trigue, stock- jobbing, false friends — while the older and
standard risks have vastly altered their character by their
increased complication. The armament needed to meet
these situations is wholly different from that which we have
inherited to meet the natural dangers; nature cannot be
prophetic, and instincts are protective only from natural
dangers. To act toward the artificial transferred dangers
as one might toward the natural threats to the body — to run
away from microbes, or hide when a bank fails — would be
foolish in the extreme; yet in limited measure the unsuit-
able responses of animals may be cited as cases of such sur-
vival. But the central bearing remains that of the self-
reference, not to the limited natural primitive self, but to
the expanded socialized and intellectualized self. The ex-
tension of the personality extends fears and desires and
the scope of each and all of the sentimental elaborations of
primitive impulses ; the objects of interest extend to actual
or possible possessions, however immaterial, contingent or
remote, and to all the derivative circumstances that com-
pose or influence their values ; the attitudes toward them be-
come complicated by the manifold varieties and refinements
of sentimental relations. It is essentially the same process,
by whatever name it is described, that is responsible for
the evolution that converts primitive exultation to pride,
primitive shrinking to shame, modesty, humility, in one
direction, and to apprehension, embarrassment and worry
in another. If we add to this conclusion the further corol-
lary that from such extension and at the different levels of
its complication (and furthermore from the interplay of the
several motive trends, thus differentiated) there arise off-
shoots and by-plays of relations and attitudes of a deriva-
tive status, referring to parts and abridgments of the com-
plex, and to refined specialized relations arising within the
complex, we have a fair sketch-map, an intelligent plan of
the phases of higher psychic control. In interpreting the

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 2S1

map we use the conception of value, and may most simply
indicate the resulting change by the statement that the
psychological expansion and the environmental complica-
tion introduce and create new ranges of value in the regu-
lative process. Desire implies the attachment of value;
fear of loss is of possible diminution of value. It is obvi-
ous that we still cling to the original perspective and value
our lives most highly, saving our skins when all else must
go. But ordinarily the acquired perspective of value dom-
inates; and the scale presents the characteristic variations
that attach to civilizations, social stations and individual
characters. Whether expressed as values or as psycho-
logical complications, the changed status of regulation re-
mains the central point of attention in analysis and in the
practical perspective. The understanding of the nature of
the process in its reference to the sources of human nature
IS as vital to the practitioner in any of the relations of
human concern as it is to the psychological analyst [13].

With the mode of establishment of sentiments thus illus-
trated, it remains briefly to note the interplay of senti-
ments with and upon another and the modified, derivative,
partial sentimental attitudes thus resulting. Sentiments
of kindred order combine by congeniality: tender feeling
and pity attend love; hate breeds loathing. Sentiments
are offset by opposing trends : scorn issues from anger with
the check of fear and the support of superiority; it may
combine disgust, lose the semblance of dread, and become
contempt; it may soften its features toward disdain, leav-
ing mainly the superiority. Self-assertion ever moves cau-
tiously or considerately between the threat of insistence or
compulsion and the fear of withdrawal and compromise;
between the desire to impose and prevail and the fear of
wounding. Sentiments are complicated by by-products and
subsidiary attitudes; revenge is an issue of hatred fed by
anger and of a desire to repair wounded self -feeling by ex-
ultation over the fallen foe — a turning of the tables, in

232 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

which the previous discomfiture but intensifies the present
triumph; resentment is the reflective preparation for the
vengeance; jealousy is itself a by-product of combat moved
by anger, while destructiveness is a motor by-product of
pugnacity, even to the slamming of a door as a parting
shot in terminating a disastrous argumentative encounter.
Sentiments develop by a scheme as variable as the psychical
capacity, and differentiate nuances of attitude as intri-
cately as the circumstances of their setting.

Self-respect becomes a happy mean between conceit and
overmodesty; condescension rearranges or assumes ele-
ments of both. Envy is admiration of another and detrac-
tion of one 's own lesser fortune ; grudge expresses the envy
without the kindlier element. Eeproach is anger ex-
pressed toward one who is the object of affection ; criticism
is sharp-tongued or good-natured; chaffing, bantering or
teasing shows appreciation, is both loving and irritating;
flirting is both serious and playful ; humor appeals to sense
and to the divergence from it ; irony and satire assume the
semblance of praise with the indirect sting of censure or
belittlement. Gratitude is a tender emotion toward the
source of benefaction and a certain submissiveness (nega-
tive self -feeling) of its beneficiary. To offer and accept a
favor graciously is a fine art of social intercourse on both
sides, so delicate is the shifting of values of the self-regard-
ing sentiment in sensitive personalities. Lady Bountiful
may easily become odious by an exacting condescension;
and a shameless acceptance equally with an overweening
refusal may destroy the beneficence if not the benevolence
of the act. The hero-worship of a great man is the more
engaging when modestly received; though false modesty
will also turn its edge. Adoration of unworthy popularity
or of ill-proportioned type like toadyism, becomes nauseat-
ing to sensitive souls; and the worship of money grates
upon lofty sentiments.

It would be as impossible as unnecessary to follow the

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 233

source of development or even to indicate the status of each
of the components that together form the register or reper-
tory of sentiments aiid sentimental attitudes; all high-
grade emotions are more or less sentimentalized. The
forces to which the emotional trends are exposed through
the social and intellectual environment turn them to a sen-
timental stage. If capable of such affiliation, they attain
it ; the sentimentalization may be more or less explicit, may
be more or less encouraged by the environment, or fail of
such encouragement by mere absence of place and part —
the environment developing it feebly — up to the discourage-
ment exercised by an opposed sentimental strain. Senti-
ments themselves vary in the manner and degree of de-
pendence upon the environmental forces ; the most complex
sentiments or the most elaborate development of simple
ones regularly embody the strong play of environmental
influences, and are for that reason more satisfactorily con-
sidered from the environmental point of view. The opera-
tive force is known as convention; the contrast of the
component tendencies in such sentimental issues becomes
that of their relatively natural or markedly conventional
status. Yet so familiar are these sentimentalized products
in human relations that they participate as naturally in
the acceptances and rejections as those based upon such
direct organic equipment as the sensibilities; by virtue of
this naturalization of the sentiments we speak of a " sense ' '
of justice, and await and encourage its appearance in chil-
dren along with their early introduction to the social and
intellectual regulations of conduct. '^Fair play" and a
' ' square deal ' ' are as familiar concepts in the nursery as in
economic discussions.

The stages of expression of punishment will serve to con-
tinue the argument. Punishment is modeled upon the
natural sequence of pain upon infringements of natural
adjustment. Contact with a flame hurts because tissue is
injured; the process is substantially as ** natural" as that

234 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

by which the pricking of a thorn hurts or the bitterness of
gall repels. Playing with matches is not hurtful but haz-
ardous, is, indeed, interesting and pleasurable. If it is
punished by a rap on the knuckles, the disciplinarian has
stepped in as a deus ex machma and interposed a wholly
artificial consequence, that follows only when the trans-
gression is observed or reported. But once thus acting,
the threat replaces the fear of consequences as efficiently
as the actual hurt of the burn, which also becomes a fear of
similar pain. The attachment of value as reward and pun-
ishment is the universal method employed by the environ-
mental play. Punishment thus considered begins as cor-
poral chastisement; it inflicts physical pain, which is un-
pleasant by natural constitution: the avoidance of such
literally unpleasant consequences, it is assumed, will deter
from repetition of the offense occasioning it. Yet also the
rod by further association incites fear; fear of pain has a
natural place in psychic control and increases the smart.
The threat of the whip may be as effective as the sting ; the
power of fear asserts itself early and persistently. So
accustomed are we to view punishment as a moral instru-
ment in end and means, that we shrink from a return to
its primitive form. Even when resorted to, parental pun-
ishment is impressive by stern severity of discipline and
restraint of blow. The transformation of attitude is ac-
complished when a moral punishment is substituted for a
physical one, when the appeal of the punishment is to an
organized system of sentiments- — sentiments shared and
exercised by both parties to the situation.

A typical psychological appeal is to shame, especially to
shame socially manifested. In school the rod may be re-
placed by the foolscap or by detention after school-hours,
which in turn may be less ' * felt ' ' than the taunts of incon-
siderate companions. The stocks of more primitive days
were intended to be moderately painful and equally to sub-
ject the victim to public gaze and jeer ; and the scarlet letter

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 235

became the symbol of the tragedy of proclaimed shame pub-
licly expiated. With the changed status of punishment the
appeal changes: disgrace hurts more than pain only when
the social sensitiveness is present to make it hurt. Depri-
vation must really deprive of something that is cherished.
' ' What is banished but set free from daily contact with the
things I loathe," was presumably but a Ciceronian taunt
or consolation. Children recite that,

Sticks and stones

May break your bones;

But names will never hurt you,

and disprove the sentiment by their sensitiveness to names
and their indulgence in malicious verbal teasing. As a
fact the appeal of reward and punishment alike is to some-
thing that one cares for ; the something may be both mate-
rial like confiscation or payment of damage, and far more
usually sentimental and spiritual — loss of rank, honor, es-
teem. The disgrace of punishment becomes its sting.
And if we adopt the altruistic sentiment, punishment is
intended not merely to deprive but to reform and redeem ;
punishment itself must stop before the spirit is broken and
the appeal to self-respect destroyed. It has taken society
a long time to learn the lesson. Whether we seek effective
moral punishments of children or a properly regulated
system of punishment of hardened offenders, we must find
a real deprivation or affliction, a curbing of unrestraint,
and also protection of self-respect — an appeal to saving
virtues. Everywhere we seek for available motives, some-
thing that people care for, some factor that in a complex
appeal may save the situation. The mean between the self-
regarding and the self -detracting sentiments may be difficult
to find, but practically it must be found.

Deprivations grow with the extension of varied desires
and the constancy of their satisfactions. The same out-
ward punishment is glaringly unequal in severity when

236 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

imposed upon different persons. The opposition between
making the punishment fit the crime and making it fit the
criminal is the difference between the recognition of con-
vention and institutional interests and the recognition of
the psychology of sentimental regulation. The mixed sys-
tem prevails — in the family, in school, in society, in formal
institutions. The withdrawal of the usual marks of social
regard serves as punishment; displeasure, neglect, un-
friendly looks, act as deprivation of keenly cherished social
favors; and these replace the physical deprivations of "no
dessert," or "being sent to bed without supper." The
same play of motives determines the formal punishments
of the State to deter from offenses against its laws. The
psychology of punishment must make terms with the com-
mon fundamental psychology of emotions and sentiments.
While the whipping post is still retained in isolated puni-
tive systems, and physical deprivation prevails, disgrace and
dishonor always accompany them and commonly outweigh
them. Indeed discipline and restraint are of themselves
unable to carry the sentiment of punishment; and mar-
tyrdom for a cause may make the prison an honorable
servitude in the eyes of sympathizers. Likewise, where
moral motives fail to make an appeal, punishment fails to
punish ; materially, life within the jail to a chronic vagrant
may come to be more secure and quite as welcome as that
in the uncertain world without. The psychology of pun-
ishment must consider both the social environment and the
psychology of those subjected to the process. In the
lighter disciplines and encounters the manner of punish-
ment reenforces the same moral. "Adding insult to in-
jury" becomes a real aggravation because the insult hurts
more than the injury ; it injures one 's reputation, and suits
for libel are recognized as equally legitimate as suits for
assault. The discomfiture of reproach rankles; honor and
all that for which the organized sentiment stands becomes
the object worth fighting for and open to the keenest hurt

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 237

or wound. Everywhere the moral replaces the physical,
and ever in more refined and more remote derivation.
Here, as in all such developments, refinement tells. De-
bate and controversy may be carried on with the same zest
and even heat, but with very different weapons. A politi-
cal campaign may be clean or dirty, acrimonious or fair-
minded, courteous or rude. Vilification, slander, innuendo,
irony, magnanimity, free field and no favor: each chooses
his weapons according to his sensibility and his standards.
But the efficiency of the weapons, the very existence and
availability thereof, spring from the common source of
' ' sentimental ' ' psychology.

One further aspect of the sentimental product may be
noted. The transforming power of sentiment, when reen-
forced by principles and ideals, may in its remoteness from
nature turn against it. The difficult problem of the altru-
istic trend recurs. If altruism as a sentiment is carried
too far, may it not destroy the integrity of the self-regard-
ing impulses? The conflict is significant psychologically;
to turn the other cheek to the smiter suggests a reversal of
natural inclination seemingly too radical to be grafted upon
the parent impulse, and suggests no less an exaggerated
self-detraction, itself liable to confusion with timidity or
overhumility. Yet ideals, as will duly appear, have in
many respects turned human qualities radically from their
natural orbit; and asceticism, stoicism, and the cloistering
and scourging as well as the denudation of the emotional
life have in turn been practiced as meeting the highest ends
of human destiny. Thus sentiment, issuing from consid-
eration applied to natural emotional incentives, in the end
analyzes and reconstructs, organizes and criticizes in terms
of artificially established values the issues of its own
growth. It decides that the ends thus rationally remodeled
require provisions and encouragements, and devises means
to establish them; it decrees that the ape and tiger in hu-
manity shall die, and determines what qualities shall re-

238 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

place them. The enforcement of the decree and its formu-
lation consummate the process of rationality, and enthrone
morality as a psychic regulation. For this end sentiments
must be systematized; and the systems of sentiments, vari-
ously embodied in the institutions of culture, constitute the
actual molding forces of social progress and social stability.

With the attainment of sentiment the sources of human
quality are in a sense complete, however endless the possi-
bilities of evolution of the sentimental life, however rich its
social and intellectual issues, however elaborate systems of
conduct, moral codes, and philosophies. Despite its many-
sided limitations, it remains a deeply significant truth that
we **can bring no more to living than the powers that we
bring to life." Living is more than life — the life natural.
It is overlaid and complicated by acquisitions, enveloped
in convention, directed by ideals. Even abnormal quali-
ties and products are brought about by the stress which
living places upon the powers by which we live. While the
traits of human character do not directly yield the forces
of human history, or the organization of human society, or
even the realized varieties of social intercourse and con-
flict, they illuminate these issues, even as they take illumina-
tion from them. Social influences and events deal with
human totalities set in condition. It is logical to reach
their consideration through a study of the sources from
which the issues spring. Yet psychology, like life, must in
the end deal with individuals and environments. The spe-
cial complication of an applied human psychology lies in
the circumstance that the intricate plexus of qualities
evolved in that transformation of human nature which we
call civilization, itself contributes the effective factors of
its own progressive environment.

This survey of the sources of human quality directive in
psychic regulation, is inadequate by reason of the too
slight consideration of two momentous factors. Their brief
supplementary consideration can hardly restore the true

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 239

perspective of their place in the mature psychology of man
or in the step-by-step unfoldment of his powers. If, how-
ever, it be recalled that the legitimate emphasis of the pres-
ent pursuit is upon the relations of types of quality — not-
ably in and near their origin — to the varieties of character,
the perspective employed will be justified, and a due cor-
rection readily introduced. The first factor is the logical
regulation by insight and reason [14] ; the second, the
energetic factor of determination and will. The sense in
which man is predominantly a rational animal is iiot likely
to be overlooked; and the practical lesson that qualities
can reach expression only through will is likewise not apt
to be neglected by the moralizing propensities that make
man not only a reflective but also a pragmatic being.
Psychology has quite too exclusively dealt with the former
quality of reason; and the stress of practice and the
urgencies of conduct are equally prone unduly to emphasize
the latter quality of will. It may be possible to give each
its due, while remaining loyal to the general design set by
the scope of the present undertaking.

It remains central in the genetic view that the significant
contributions of the intellect are its infusion and transforma-
tion of other psychological dispositions — the intellectuali-
zation of the instinctive impulses and the tendencies emerg-
ing and maturing from them — rather than its independent
achievements, potent as the latter are at the outset and in-
creasingly so in the psychic growth. To say that rational-
ity is the scaffold, conforming to the same outlines, without
which the building could not be erected, conveys the partial
truth of analogy; the figure would be more apt if we
imagine the scaffold — like a skeleton — absorbed and pre-
served in the structure which it supports in use as in con-
struction. The clew to the life of reason lies in its service
to an emotionally derived conduct; its marvelous power to
remodel the products of original impulse gives it an archi-
tectural supremacy in the modern world, but dimly fore-

240 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

shadowed in its primitive estate. Yet so potent a factor,
whatever its ultimate scope, has a vital primary psychology
of its own ; it finds in the natural environment a large field
for exercise and encouragement, and thus parallels as it
conditions the growth of other phases of regulation.

In the accepted analysis of the reasoning tendencies, the
fundamental intellectual requisite is the approaching step
of attention — the emotional phase of which is represented
by interest. It is the impulse that, conditioned by natural
dispositions and equipment, brings the situation within
ken, and then holds it there for distinction and recognition
— all preparatory to action. The emotion-instinct thus
comprehensively effective we call curiosity; it invites and
receives experience, recognizing and relating under the
pleasure of familiarity, or assimilating under the spur of
novelty, or avoiding under the warning of caution. On the
active side it leads to the experimental impulses, which
enter prominently in the "play" complex. The reaction
to and redisposition of the situation, resulting in new stim-
ulations and satisfactions, engage constructive and in-
ventive impulses. Experience thus becomes knitted to-
gether by association; while anticipation in the one direc-
tion and memory in the other make way for adjustment
beyond the present. The representative trends of thought
and imagination that give the intellect its direction are
developed for their own sake: the exercise of ''thinking"
is itself a satisfaction, while yet it extends the zest of ac-
tion, and comes more and more to color the satisfactions of
the composite psychic life. Through its exercise inven-
tion brings rewards in achievement ; if thorough and devel-
oped, it confers insight into the relations of cause and ef-
fect. At that stage it favors the keen and abstract per-
ception of relations — a culminating fusion of insight,
ingenuity, and comprehension, upon which the ministration
to human needs sets a premium. The parentage of inven-
tion is not quite so simple as is commonly assumed. Neces-

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 241

sity may act as a spur, but hardly confers the discernment
that determines true relations: the analysis of the nature
of things, the breaking-up of experience into intelligible
parts, and the confirmation of the analysis by the test of
further experience. The desire to avoid effort, often rated
as a predominantly masculine quality, may equally supply
a spur to invention, and develop resourcefulness. The en-
vironment, to which adjustment must be attained on pen-
alty of extinction or loss of vantage, by this selective
process sets the direction of emphasis, which ' a favorable
variation in a favorable endowment provides. In tracing
the original ^'natural" condition setting this trend, it has
been suggested that when the animal ancestor of man gave
up his arboreal habit, his feeble olfactory sense threw the
burden of his survival not alone upon the keen use of his
eyes but of his wits. With no formidable natural weapons
of defense, he found them or made them, using strategy or
invention. By keen observation or shrewd guesses, as well
as by traps and plans, he asserted his dominion. Reducing
his fears by recognizing their groundlessness, he increased
his confidence and extended his control over nature.
Turned to intellectualism by stress of nature, he accepted
and developed the necessity into his choicest possession.

Whatever the origin of this quality by which we distin-
guish, compare, contrast, analogize, infer, it soon comes to
its own, in shaping reactions directly by the knowledge
that is power [15]. Its distinctive elevation to a higher
efficiency may be said to attach to the power to consider
the relation apart from the terms thereof, to handle the
situation as a type, or abstractly: to count not stones or
trees or shells, but to count in numbers, eventually to
reason in numbers — to conduct the campaign in imagina-
tion or on paper before taking to the field. The stages of
the process are capable of succinct statement. From direct
response to experience through sensibilities, there emerge
by attentive selection the perceptions of objects and their

242 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

behavior, then of the relations revealed by analysis under
specialized attention, and from these by abstraction, the
development of concepts, at first simple and then more and
more complex ones. The concepts may be feebly explicit,
even vague and but partially intellectualized, and yet ef-
fective. Such is apt to be the case in the relations and
conceptions developing upon an emotional basis. The
sense of honor or of justice may be an effective motive as a
sentiment, though the sentiment is not consciously reflected
upon. In this deposit, as already reviewed, lie the richest
values of the intellectualizing process as it affects the per-
sonal life — the control of self. Similarly in the recogni-
tion of causes and effects and in the development of such
knowledge into a system of principles, lie the highest
achievements of the intellect in its own realm — the realm
of objective control of nature. In this realm there obtains
the important distinction of theory and practice, the
greater adeptness in comprehension of abstract relations
and the relations of situations to principles, representa-
tively; or the greater reliance upon the expert manipula-
tion of actual concrete situations presentatively. In both
aspects rational insight dominates and elaborates the scope
of satisfactions along with the means of meeting them.

Situations set problems, and the problem-solving ten-
dencies invite the ingenuity that is taking thought — ^the
skill of mind that complements the skill of hand, and gives
to intellectual conquest the same and yet added zest that
primitively attached to physical supremacy. The battle
of wits supersedes the encounter of blows.- The correct-
ness of solutions is pragmatically tested; errors of appre-
hension, of judgment, of inference, may prove costly, while
proficiency and forethought may prove to be self-rewarding
virtues. The special premium attaching to the resulting
intellectual superiority, the practical shrewdness reflecting
an intimate knowledge of human forces and the under-
standing of the sequences of nature through observation

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 243

and experiment, gives the cherished quality a unique rat-
ing, and more than any other factor, provides the stepping-
stones for the advances of humanity in the increasing gen-
erations. All sorts and conditions of situations that are
certain to arise in the everyday current of commonplace
affairs continue to demand varied types of reasoning. Yet
the special development of the intellect is reserved for the
few original problem-solvers and problem-seers of the race.
The same imitativeness that leads to convention leads to the
acceptance of the solutions of others and confines the role
of reason largely to application. Education formalizes the
processes and covers the conventional range of reasoning
presumably adapted to the routine demands of life. The
enormous emphasis given to the maintenance of this quality
by devoting to it in each individual life years of devised
exercises and learning — which form the heritage of the life
of reason, of the cherished traditions and achievements of
the past — indicates how great and constant is the effort by
which it is retained, how limitedly in a large view of human
quality it is distributed, how artificial is its status in the
psychological perspective. In a far more intimate manner
intelligence continues to get its training in the realistic
encounter with the situations of practical import, in the
guidance of intercourse competitive and cooperative. Na-
ture's school can never be superseded. Through substitu-
tion and alteration, the play of the environment has vastly
modified the range of qualities demanded, but has not de-
tached them from their original setting. The character-
istic of the upper levels of the life of reason is that it oper-
ates so largely in an environment which more and more is
made by the very processes which through their issues
direct its further course. In self -analysis as in the history
of science, rationality appears as a self-sufficient process;
consistency becomes a virtue, if a rare one ; by it alone can
a place in the system be retained [16]. In the psychic
regulation the ancient schooling of its lowly estate becomes

244 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

again conspicuous; in the educational process as in the
actual world, both aspects cooperate though with variable
emphasis.

Of energy still less need be said. Considered first in its
primitive expression, vigor and endurance seem the most
necessary qualities for survival under rigorous conditions.
Civilization reduces the physical harshness of the environ-
ment and weakens the powers of resistance by the shelter-
ing protection which renders their exercise less urgent.
In primitive surroundings the ''tenderfoot" appears in
unfavorable contrast with the native or the frontiersman.
The civilized life is more delicately poised, its equilibrium
more easily disturbed. Its gains are paid for by losses;
luxury breeds vices as well as makes way for newer virtues.
Yet all situations give occasion for the exercise of will ; and
the vigor of reaction, ever supported upon an organic basis,
remains a dominant individual trait. The occasions for
its application vary considerably, as also the manner of its
exercise. Courage of a moral order replaces courage of
a physical order, but it can never be too violently detached
from its original tone and occasion. The manly virtues of
self-defense cannot be wholly eliminated from the composite
of human nature without loss; an outlet for them or for
their derivative varieties must be provided. Athletic con-
tests form one such outlet, competitive industries and the
''game" of politics or business another; great cooperative
engineering enterprises still another. Fundamentally
vigor is a primary requisite to achievement: "Be ye
strong ' ' is the command of nature no less than of morality.

It is however more germane to the present pursuit to
dwell upon the common physiological factors underlying
energy. For this end, we may in a measure disregard its
varieties of expression, and may focus attention upon the
types called upon in the more complex situations. In all
relations energy represents the available reservoir, the
supply of headway for action; it varies with and reflects

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 245

the tone, the temperamental quality, of responsiveness. It
fixes the budget of the bodily economy ; it presents the fur-
ther fluctuations of maximum momentary effort and of
persistence, and of the distribution and reliability of com-
mand of the motor endowment that serves the purposes of
the body and the indwelling mind. We speak of ''volun-
tary" action and of "voluntary" muscles to indicate by
contrast the realm of subvoluntary, automatic, and reflex
actions that find their mainsprings in organic constitution
and make slight demands upon conscious cooperation. In
this relation — for the most part of cooperation but in no
small measure of conflict — is found the source of training
and the exercise of restraint. It is the vehemence of or-
ganic desire under the direct push and pull of instinctive
impulse that must be restrained and subjected to training
under the guidance of reason as well as of social enforce-
ment. This struggle of passion with imposed restraint —
always in the end self-imposed, however much leaning upon
the aid of society and its institutions, or fearing its penal-
ties— typifies the moral training and advancement of man.
It is the yielding in any undue measure to the call of the
primitive man that social etiquette and ethics frown upon,
insisting upon fitness of occasion and subdued appropri-
ateness of expression. Here likewise are found the deep-
est problems of moral education, the diversion of primitive
energetic impulses into wholesome channels, letting the ape
and the tiger die, while yet preserving the energies bound
up with primitive passions for larger, fuller, richer, ideal-
ized purposes. The ''will" aspect of the problem is per-
sistent. In its negative side it presents the quality which
temperamentally is called phlegmatic, and refers to a dis-
inclination to the release of energy — which is work — and
quite as notably, a shirking of the sustained mental concen-
tration requisite for bringing to a head the .powers of
thought. In some sense we are ever struggling against
fatigue, while yet craving occupation and exercise ; and this

^46 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

adjustment presents the practical problem of regimen and
the special problem of the sustained source of energy known
as determination and resolution. However vain mere
strenuosity undirected by intelligence and unredeemed by
moral rectitude, it yet presents the indispensable requisite
for achievement; and coupled with it on the emotional side
is the enthusiasm that keeps aglow the fires of devotion to
persons, interests, causes, and movements. The quality is
differently valued in different situations, and the mode of
its adjustment makes varied demands upon human occu-
pations. It allies itself with such emotional qualities as
courage and the self-assertions of prowess and daring, as
well as with the intellectual loyalties of cherished purpose.
Its relation to the organism and to healthy physiological
function is unquestioned. Strength of body is intimately,
if uncertainly, related to strength of mind ; muscular Chris-
tianity is not an incompatible ideal. The availability upon
demand, the security and regularity of resource, is likewise
a determinative factor. High-pressure, intermittent activi-
ties call for differently constituted releases of energy than
low-pressure constant ones. These manifold variations
occur as individual temperamental variations, and appear
in the practical arena where qualities compete for suprem-
acy. The quality of will that remains dominant in con-
nection with the support of emotionally and intellectually
guided conduct, is a combined resolution and restraint —
the dual components of the moral life. The conflict of
wills contributes an inherent complication, which is char-
acteristically a social one. *'The will to prevail" repre-
sents the enduring aspect of self-assertion ; to prevail above
others gives the added quality of competition implied in
the evolutionary struggle. Success and triumph are re-
flexive and support and encourage such qualities as confi-
dence, which in turn effects the expression of the will.
While capable of simpler statement, the career of the will
in the composite of qualities is as vital and versatile as

HIGHER STAGES OF PSYCHIC CONTROL 247

that of sensibilities, emotions, or reason. It seemingly re-
tires in the higher levels of thought and conduct, but in
reality but changes the mode of its assertion. It has a
peculiar place in the social organism where it becomes ef-
fective in cooperation and the socialized forms of expres-
sion, finding a unique embodiment in the collective will
that represents the higher authority appealed to in the arm
of the law or the force of public opinion. It is as the joint
products of sustained regulated endeavor, schooled insight,
and loyal enthusiasm that we regard the contributions to
civilization, which stand as the achievements of human
qualities at their best, evolved as the instruments of the
higher psychic control. In the study of such cultural
products we shall resume their consideration [17],

CHAPTER V

TEMPERAMENT AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Temperament, though an elusive concept, is a useful
one, and may be directed to a profitable meaning. It re-
fers to a composite inhereiit bent of nature. When con-
trasted with character it represents the basis upon which
the latter proceeds by support of training, circumstance
and purpose, yet consistently along the trend of native dis-
position. Temperament is nature specialized upon the
basis of a temper of qualities of a common inheritance [1],
expressed in and through the functioning of the nervous
system. It is the ultimate condition of individual quality,
the native vein of the psychological ore. The decree of
temperament reminds us that, as a leopard cannot change
its spots, no more can we by taking thought add a cubit to
our stature, physical or mental. Yet ideals picture the
lion and the lamb lying down together; and the direction
of endeavor determines whether the metal of human qual-
ity shall be fashioned as spears or as pruning-knives, as
swords or as plowshares. As nature underlies nurture,
and heredity limits the influence of the environment, so
temperament underlies and sets limitations to character.

What is temperament and what are the temperaments
are not the same questions. A completer knowledge might
merge the two, the one solution serving for both. As
chemistry was assured of the existence of elements before
their determination was at all complete, so psychology may
emphasize the temperamental basis while allowing for the
uncertainty of its applications. In both sciences the prob-
lem of elements of composition requires a true principle of

248

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 249

differentiation — the confirmation more uncertain in the
chemistry of mind than in that of matter. It is obvious
that men differ comprehensively; these differences require
interpretation and formulation at the psychologist's hands.
The problem of *' temperament * ' forms a vital part of the
problem of the original nature of man. It proposes the
question of the common human inheritances, the potencies
and impulses, the capacities and trends, upon which the
environment directs its formative play ; it regards such en-
dowment, though individually presented, as a concrete
formulation — a particular statement — of a general human
inheritance. The problem of "the temperaments" is the
problem of temperamental variation ; it proposes the ques-
tion of the reduction of individual differences to type-
forms ; for it recognizes that while men differ, they do not
differ by chaotic or scattering divergence but by more or
less systematic variations from standard norms. Psy-
chology attempts to place such variant types in a consistent
system of interpretation of the sources of human quality,
and in so doing recognizes community above divergence.
The inclusive problem concerns the play of the native
psychic trends in the shaping of individuality and career.
The fact of variation forms a starting point. Nature
admits of and provides for variability; such variation
represents the favorable range of divergence compatible
with life and with normality of endowment, itself an elas-
tic standard. More narrowly it represents the limits of
fair efficiency, of survival adequacy. For human estate
these boundaries are complex by the complexity of original
nature, and become yet more elaborately complicated by
the cumulative as well as selective influences of nurture;
the boundaries of the psychic territory are further compli-
cated by artificial divisions and sovereignties. Simplify
nature and nurture to the utmost, and the differentiations
of temperament disappear. Organisms so simple that all
the individuals, to maintain an existence in a rigidly fixed

250 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

environment, must possess the same combination of effi-
ciency-traits and, to a like extent, must inherit uniform
temperaments and develop equivalent characters. The
formulae of their life-history would be expressible in a
few combinations of simple qualities. Individual varia-
tion represents the limits within which organisms may be
different and yet of comparable fitness — each viable, each
sharing a common endowment sufficiently to be normal,
each presenting in its make-up varying efficiencies of ad-
justment, compensating advantages and disadvantages.
The temperaments, whatever their specific formulae, are
so many solutions of endowment compatible more or less
favorably with normal humanity. The temperamental is
at once the generic expression of inheritance and its specific
value in the individual.

This interpretation of the sources of temperament fixes
its scope, but leaves its differentiation uncertain. The guid-
ance of biological principles continues. Negatively the
substantial non-inheritance of acquired characteristics
clears the problem notably; it eliminates the irrelevant.
Positively the inheritance that determines the individuality
is a convergence of determinations. The individual be-
longs to one sex, also to one race, also to one stock; there
are no merely human individuals — only individual men
and individual women, members of this race and stock, or
of that. It is equally a biological consequence that men
and women are matured children ; the child is the father of
the man. To be psychologically masculine or psycholog-
ically feminine is itself a mode of expression of an under-
lying humanity ; the psychological community of child and
adult is as comprehensive as convincing. Race, stock,
family, remote and immediate ancestry, determine the in-
dividual biologically. Temperament is in essence a bio-
logical emphasis, but also a psychological ''complex," that
constantly repeats itself, in that the conformities to type
far outweigh the deviations. By such determinations each

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 251

personality holds true to its type, while yet it is the in-
dividual point of convergence of ancestral forces.

Holding this conception in reserve, we proceed to the
practical consideration that temperament is known in and
through its issues; that the solution of the problem that
confronts us depends upon a correct interpretation and
correlation of these issues. The more liberal as well as
practical conception of temperament includes the tempera-
mental factors as concretely exemplified. It considers the
primitive qualities that change but slightly, and the em-
phases of life 's demands, whose constant change gives these
qualities a variable set. The sex-factor in temperament is
not absolute; it plays its part and runs its course, though
its formative role irrevocably conditions the entire psychic
expression. In infancy the sex-traits are bare of critical
distinction; in adolescence, they come to their own; in the
prime of life they reach their zenith; in senility they are
softened. Yet the sex-factor inheres in all individuality.
The age factor in the expression of psychic responsiveness
is never negligible; to be temperamentally young or old
carries a large significance. The formulation of tempera-
mental expression implies a reading of the foundation
through the superstructure, much as the landscape which
the geologist contemplates is to him but the surface indi-
cation of a deeper structural formation. Temperament is
imbedded in composite character, is expressed in traits
heavily overlaid and transformed. The equipment of the
psychologist for his interpretation of source from issue is
less secure than that of the geologist; yet it is his task to
apply to a comparable problem such insight and resources
as he commands. The conspicuous features which he finds
in his survey he aims to reduce to significant types, which
shall indicate — in remote analogy to the geological forma-
tions— the natural history of the appearance. The sage
and the fool, the saint and the sinner, the strong and the
weak, the reserved and the passionate, the deliberate and

252 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the impulsive, the venturesome and the conventional, the
original and the commonplace, the resolute and the vacil-
lating, are all human, and all carry to expression underly-
ing bents of nature present in some measure in each indi-
vidual composite. They are issues of temperamental
forces. For the most part these trends appear in moder-
ate degree; accordingly the ordinary application of "tem-
perament" refers to the middle ranges of variation in pri-
mary function and expression. Individuals may be as-
signed, more or less distinctively — in their extreme varia-
tions contrastedly — to types, by virtue of their tempera-
mental allegiances, though these are but moderately strong.
The original deviation widens as it extends, and leads to
pronounced contrasts. The temperamental variations em-
body a phase of individual differences. In so far as these
deep-lying sources are not directly accessible, the actual
data of temperamental varieties become the issues at the
surface: hence the indirect and composite procedure to
be followed.

The stress of temperament is felt at many points; the
conception of the "temperamental" gains in richness by
consideration of its many-sided aspects. The development
from childhood to maturity sets in relief the encounter of
temperament with the demands of growth, and its imperi-
ous sway ; its expressions in the young are strong and rela-
tively uncomplicated. Sex is far more generally than is
commonly acknowledged the temperamental clew to con-
duct— as commanding as subtle in its sway. The exag-
gerated and warped expressions of temperament in unusual
individuals, and their approach to abnormal relations, com-
plete the interpretation [2]. It is fortunate that we can
in a measure recall and sympathize with the traits of child-
hood, can experience the complex incentives that radiate
from sex, can understand or observe the eccentric expan-
sion of impulses that we for the most part hold in balance.
Without these personal corroborations we should have far

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 253

less real appreciation of the Trieh, the driving force of tem-
perament, than is our privilege. These three aspects of
temperamental expression stand as psychological methods,
each enlarging and corroborating the interpretation. The
ordinary play of expression as it appears in the average
adult, adjusted disposition is too subdued to suggest the
salient issues of temperament; it requires the pronounced
contrasts of masculine and feminine, of child and adult, of
normal and abnormal, as well as the minor contrasts of
types of character, to set forth its potencies. The ques-
tion of value, though not in the first instance directive, is
involved; it is ever implied in the distinction of normal
and abnormal. We readily accept the accredited traits of
character as virtues, and find it detracting to gauge hu-
man qualities by standards derived from the contempla-
tion of the abnormal. But significance lies apart from
rating ; and vices may be as instructive as virtues. The two
form a series: within the range of the normal there is a
graded worth for service, great or small, and proportion
frequently determines value; below and above are defect
and excess.

"With these indications of the bearings of temperament,
we may proceed more systematically on the basis of the
conclusions of the preceding chapters. Temperament
comes to expression in the sensibilities, in the primary emo-
tions, in the qualities of response to primitive situations;
for these constitute the essential avenues of psychic expres-
sion. Temperament adds nothing to them because it is
part of them ; it represents an aspect of the whole. Tem-
perament continues to determine the strength of appeal of
situations and the finer qualities of response in the deriva-
tive complications of the life of mind. The bearing of
temperament is far more directly and more decisively upon
the primary than upon the secondary range of traits; its
intimate bearing is upon the organic conditions of response,
upon qualities of regulation constantly operative in the

254. CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

near-to-nature situations. This range includes not alone
the protective urgencies of impulse and the vital conditions
of their maturing, but also the types of qualities — such as
the esthetic — that spring from the early by-products of
natural functioning. Temperament as a modifier of nor-
mality attaches to the normal range of sensibility, the nor-
mal susceptibility to primary emotional stress, the normal
range of instincts, the normal powers of distinction, the
normal energies, the normal expressional trends, the nor-
mal capacity for growth and adaptation. Since all these
psychic factors are present in the composite endowment
which human heredity implies, temperament finds its
metier — can find it only — in the color-scheme of the com-
position. The primary colors and even the standard com-
binations are the same; the palette of temperament is
formed by the strengths, blends, shades and grades of the
elementary components. The palette varies for the genre
of the canvas that is undertaken, but holds to its favorite
tones. Or, to replace the esthetic metaphor by an abstract
one, temperament is as the depth factor to the length and
breadth of human qualities which the analytic survey of en-
dowment projects ; it provides the point of view of an added
dimension. It supplies form to content, composition to
elements. When all the essential constituents of human na-
ture have been considered — the common fears, angers, loves,
hates, distinctions, sympathies, susceptibilities, zests, ener-
gies, and the rest — there is still possible a further and a con-
sistent differentiation — an inclusive correlation of the com-
ponents in a significant synthesis.

Furthermore, the general argument of this essay finds
the fundamental expression of temperament in the rela-
tions of the trends of responsiveness to their releasing
stimuli — the dual foci of the psychic orbit. The one series
of psychic qualities is attached to the preparations and
media of the response ; the other to the quality of the action.
Feeling, in its type-forms of sensibility and emotion, to-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 255

gether with distinction and consideration, as the type-
forms of the intellectual processes, supply the groundwork
for the varieties of temperament ; the manner and intensity
of the response is similarly distinctive, apart from its pur-
pose and the other elements of its general conditioning.
The clews of *'the temperaments," so far as they are real,
may be traced in the range of incentives that induce action
and in the vigor and quality of the ensuing response. The
fact' of temperament appears in that individual *'A" ajid
individual ''B" under similar situations and despite their
parallel education respond differently by the different play
of motive and by the different set of their motor impulses.
The analysis of temperament aims to illuminate this differ-
ence ; it seeks a consistent conception to explain the differ-
ence of nervous organization that leads to such contrasts
of response; it thus proposes the problem of the source of
individual differences. The sources of temperament and
the contrasts of the temperaments must be expressible in
analysis, as they are themselves expressed in reality, in
elementary psychological terms — as ever-present factors of
the most general psychological conditioning.

Under the guidance of these principles, we return to the
sensibilities and the emotions to reach the terms of the de-
sired formulae. We return to them in their service as sup-
ports of conduct, as native variations in disposition of the
nervous responsiveness. The type-forms of temperament
inhere in the type-forms of such relations, in the emphases
and perspective of comm- i underlying trends. Proceeding
in the first instance upo^ the distinction of emphasis, and
indicating by capital letters the preponderant factor, we
may distinguish (a) the sensitive- active type, embodying
an inclination to dwell lightly upon feeling and considera-
tion, and under slight incentive to pass promptly to vigor-
ous action : a practical, ready, executive type — the sanguine
temperament in the older terminology; (b) the sensitive-
active type, in contrasted emphasis, embodying an inclina-

256 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tion to linger in the receptive, discriminating, pondering
stages of preparation, coupled with a hesitant, feeble, or
involved expression: a theoretical, deliberate, reflective or
worried type^the melancholic temperament of the an-
cients; (c) the SENSITIVE- ACTIVE type, embodying an incli-
nation to an energetic, presumably a limited, responsiveness,
on the basis of a vigorous susceptibility to such factors of
consideration and emotionalized motive as enter the mental
sphere : a quick, energetic, impulsive, circumscribed type —
the choleric temperament of the classic scheme; (d) the
sensitive-active type, embodying an inclination toward a
feeble susceptibility of impression and a weak expression:
a placid, easy-going, heavy type — ^the phlegmatic tempera-
ment of the familiar system.

This outline is serviceable as a psychological clew — a re-
vised version of the traditional temperaments. Let it be
entirely clear that the value of such a classification lies in
its suggestion of a plausible source of the temperamental
factor [3] ; it affords a descriptive aid to the characteristic
color-schemes of temperamental composition. We must not
permit the scheme to dominate the interpretation or ob-
scure the findings; we carry it along as a suggestive aid
in analysis. But even such informal descriptive treatment
requires an additional distinction: namely, the relative de-
pendence and emphasis in the preliminaries of decision and
the stress of motive upon emotional promptings or upon
intellectual insight. This distinction makes way for an
alternate sub-type within each division, but particularly in
those types in which the receptive factor, the sensitive ap-
preciation, dominates. This preponderant allegiance to the
emotional and to the intellectual appeals of support in
psychic regulation develops to far-reaching contrasts of
character in the maturer, more specialized personalities.
It is of consequence in the human development from the
outset, because in human nature the offset of impulse by
reason inheres in the early expressions of individuality.

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 257

For the mature range of motive and conduct, what men do,
desire, and attempt, carries its full significance only when
completed by an account of why they do it, and how it is
done. Conduct is action plus motive, impulse, incentive,
intent, disposition, and takes its impress from the whole.
The traditional diagnosis of temperament selected as its
clew the prevalent emotional tone of responsiveness; dis-
position was made the standard measure of the psychic
nature; and we may accept the emphasis as equivalent to
the revised conception just set forth.

The basis of distinction is the natural vigor of physio-
logical function, of which the psychological tone is an in-
timate index. Give this the complexion of strong, active
impulse, with slight restraint of emotion or thought, and
there results the native joy of doing, the zest of free, un-
involved impulse, the buoyant optimism of wholesome func-
tion. Reverse the perspective, encumber the path to ac-
tion with uncertainties, entanglements of conflicting emo-
tions, hesitations of purpose — and the mood of the pursuit
is serious, perturbed, prone to depression. To refer the
issues to the sanguine and the melancholic temperaments
but fixes the (fictitious) name to the (real) composite.
When the impulse to action is feeble by inertia of the re-
sponsive mechanism as well as by insensibility to stimu-
lation, the tone of conduct is described as phlegmatic;
when simple, fitful impulsiveness demands prompt expres-
sion, and is readily aroused to violent opposition by ob-
stacles in the path of desire, the emotional tone is choleric.
Or again : when the vital stream that finds its supply and
headway in sensitiveness and its outlet in conduct, is both
slender and sluggish, the surface appearance is phlegmatic;
when the trickling feeders of the stream flow intricately and
uncertainly, it is melancholic; when the stream is narrowed
so that a slender supply makes a brief gush, or meeting ob-
structions rises to a sudden spurt, it is choleric; when open,
unobstructed channels readily provide a bubbling flow, it is

258 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

sanguine. Metaphor and analogy are suitable to convey
the sense of reality that attaches to these contrasts. There
is indeed a personal equation here, which expresses the man-
ner of release of impulse, as determined by the sources of
sensibility and the paths of expression, with their char-
acteristic obstacles and by-paths of invitation. Such con-
trasts and delineations refer to the most general phases
of expression; they do not disregard the varying appeal
of different ranges of emotion and situation, but assume a
standard play of these in their near-to-nature setting; in
this reference their most constant appeal is to the ups and
downs of self-assertion and self-abasement as the greatest
common factors of the personal equation [4].

Obviously the ordinary range of activity may not or need
not call into play any marked temperamental bent; for
such activities proceed upon the common endowment of all
temperaments far more commonly and effectively than upon
the divergent emphases which the variations of the tempera-
ments represent. Tenser emotional situations, more exact-
ing intellectual ones, strains of desires and conflicts of will
and the mastery of circumstance bring to the fore the tem-
peramental set, the specific inclination. Yet in slighter and
subtler fashion the leaning — ^which is a constant one — af-
fects the growth of all the powers in the reaction to ex-
perience of low or high degree, of serious or light import.
Temperament conditions the formative reactions, shapes
the absorption of experience, inclines to selection and re-
jection in the realm of preference, favors trends of inter-
est and occupation. None of these, it may be, it effects
strongly; for its usual color scheme inclines to neutral
tones. Yet its presence as a factor of primary import is
as real when its values are expressed in small units as in
large ones. The dramatic interests center upon the
stronger types and contrasts; such portrayal with its
heightened color scheme serves to set in relief the ke3mote
of the composition. The psychologist in pursuit of the

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 259

temperaments emphasizes the salient divergences; in pur-
suit of temperament, the convergences. Ordinarily and
characteristically, temperament is a subdued rather than
a pronounced emphasis — a blending lacking salient flavors
rather than containing them. For the usual application
the motif of temperament should be set in the minor key, in
the common scale of values, rather than in the unusual
though engaging ones in which the movements are more
sharply contrasted.

The temperamental distinction may be applied in like
spirit to the shifts of emphasis embodied in the psycho-
logical ages of man. Vivacious childhood presents the
complexion of the choleric; limited but urgent disposition
demands instant and vigorous satisfaction and expression:
witness the eager desire of the child, as well as its passion-
ate rage when thwarted. At the other extreme is calm old
age, phlegmatic, enfeebled in responsiveness, unassailed
and unsupported by vivid incentives or needs. The ex-
panding reactions to experience enlarge ambition, stimulate
confidence and ambition, stir the rich red blood of youth-
ful sanguinity. As youth passes, there matures the re-
straint of thoughtful consideration, that inclines the
choleric child, and the sanguine, energetic youth to more
settled, more sober ways, not, as its extreme form implies,
despondent, but seriously considerate and with frequent
moments of troubled doubt — and all in no simple or set
manner. The turning point of adolescence characteristi-
cally introduces introspective hesitations, along with com-
pelling stimulations; it remains an issue of temperament
which of the voices of nature will prevail: whether con-
templative intellectualism, receptive estheticism, or prac-
tical executive interests dominate. The prime of life brings
responsible assurance, the command of resources disci-
plined emotionally and intellectually. Nature and nurture
introduce manifold and unpredictable variations and im-
provisations upon- the pervasive theme. When thus main-

260 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tained upon a suggestive, descriptive level, the classic dis-
tinctions yield their best flavor, their truest profit. An
impressionistic diagnosis, though building upon spurious
foundations, builded better than it knew. Seizing upon
conspicuous contrasts, its empirical insight was truer than
its vaunted explanations; for the observational findings
were the only realities of the elaborate construction. Mod-
ern psychology can afford to extend its shelter to this an-
cient heritage, and need fear no abuse of its hospitality.
The older view of the temperaments may stand for readily
observable types of quality, to be properly valued in re-
vised psychological terms as modestly significant, apart
from, and indeed despite their extravagant and misleading
associations.

The adaptation of temperamental response to the stages
of psychic maturing is itself part of the organic condition-
ing. The child, as expressing a mental age, represents a
temperamental allegiance as well as a limitation of experi-
ence and unfoldment. Though ever a child, the childish
personality shows individuality in and through its infantile
or puerile expressions ; and the native bent thus shown per-
sists throughout life, though it alters its play by the suc-
cessive dominance of other organic stresses and other
ranges of appeal. The process of unfoldment and parallel
widening of interest and capacity and control is a gradual
one, but is subject to mental as to physical leaps and
bounds. The changes of adolescence are of this order, and
equally so in the psychic and the physical scale; for both
are common expressions of an organic change equivalent to
a renaissance if not a revolution. It is sometimes precipi-
tated by an overwhelming inner experience or by a radical
change of the environmental conditions. Adolescence may
be interpreted as the displacement of the youthfulby the
mature temperament; it is a change of psychic perspec-
tive. The stress of temperament comes forward with the
assertion of shifting demands in the economy of natural de-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 261

velopment; for these demands must be adequately met if
normal life is to be the issue, and the provisions for meet-
ing them must be a part of the inheritance. This condi-
tion remains ; while yet in the manner of meeting these, as
of meeting the general run of situations, organic and en-
vironmental, there is discernible a directive quality of like
temperamental order. The shifting emphases of life's de-
mands are compatible with a stronger dependency upon a
specific disposition throughout life [5].

Viewing the same complex of psychic allegiances from
another aspect, we may summarize the conclusions by say-
ing that the psychology of childhood is set in a high-pitched
emotional key, but in that key presents the same underly-
ing type-forms that are recognizable in the mature differ-
entiations. Children in their own domain reveal the em-
phases of the elementary psychic components. In a sense
they manifest them more strongly because so large a share
of their responsiveness proceeds upon the primary range
of psychic motive and expression. Less subject to the
leveling effects of convention and saved by their limita-
tions from too subtle or refined complexities of decisions,
they live the more natural life, and by the same token the
more primitively temperamental life.

In thus following the several aspects of the problem of
temperament, radiating from a central conception of its
functional nature, an important consideration has been
slightingly regarded : the ranges of psychic expression, the
varying play of one order or another of primary appeal in
the general responsiveness. Applied to the classic tempera-
ments, the view would describe a choleric person as one
temperamentally susceptible to the sway and play of anger ;
and the nervous (melancholic) person as one susceptible to
the sway and play of fear. Anger and fear, as the exem-
plars of the two great trends of aggression and withdrawal,
by natural dominance are conspicuous in the temperamen-
tal trends. Because they are the primary motive instincts,

262 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the susceptibility to them is a primary component of tem-
perament. Similarly the angerless (phlegmatic) disposi-
tion and the fearless (sanguine) disposition represent, with
like pertinence, the contrasted types. Obviously these sus-
ceptibilities are matters of emphasis only ; the one disposi-
tion is decidedly prone to anger, the other decidedly prone
to fear ; the one markedly free from anger, the other mark-
edly free from fear ; yet all are subject to the entire range
of normal susceptibilities and on common occasion show
fear and anger, hopeful courage and hesitant timidity.
Moreover and obviously, the temperamental trend is not
limited to this duality of emotional allegiance. The re-
maining primary emotional trends have a like representa-
tion in the temperamental set; sympathy, self-assertion
of other varieties (such as jealousy), variant submissive
trends, enter into the temperamental susceptibility, form
the natural highways of its expression and equally fashion
its quality. Yet it remains suggestive that the casual
psychology responsible for the delineations of the tempera-
ments, found its clew in the two directive emotional atti-
tudes. As a fact it is not the simple susceptibility to fear
and anger or the relative freedom from their tyranny that
differentiates mature temperaments, but the endless de-
rivative consequences, the compatibility of other allied
traits with the underlying trends of which this suscepti-
bility is but a partial expression. It is a question of what
other susceptibilities merge congenially with a proneness to
the appeal of anger or of fear, and together constitute the
temperamental set. The reflective consideration accom-
panying or inducing a hesitant timidity, or at the least
making way for it or inviting it, may have a larger forma-
tive influence upon the shaping of the temperamental ex-
pression than the timidity itself ; the absence of the appeal
of such consideration, the impulsiveness or rashness of ac-
tion that dispenses with it, may be more significant than
the confidence of attitude. Yet such admission does not

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 263

diminish the intrinsic rule of primary emotion. The
designations of temperaments are but ear-marks, convenient
symbols of complexes, which require a more exact and sys-
tematic analysis to indicate their true scope and real na-
ture. The susceptibility to different ranges of the emo-
tional motives remains a permanent clew to the tempera-
ments, however the allegiances of temperament come to ex-
pression ; whatever their source, this factor remains. It
represents a composite susceptibility to congenial groups
of emotions, a composite insusceptibility to other groups —
all relatively and in no simple relations. The question thus
approaches that of the compatibilities of trends and traits,
to be considered presently.

It is desirable before entering upon the consideration of
the finer issues of temperament to have in mind more ex-
plicitly the physiological determinants; for these are ever
present as potential factors or as actual ones. A differ-
ence of condition may release different ranges of suscepti-
bility; and the very subjection to condition is itself a clew
to the temperamental dependency. There is mood as well
as temperament to consider, although both reflect a like
source. Beginning with familiar experiences, we are all
aware, whatever our native strength of resistence or our
readiness to succumb to organic stress, that illness obstructs
activity, hampers expression, throws the attention inward
upon an exaggerated sensibility, makes for hesitation, in-
trospection, irritability and depression. The effect is con-
spicuous in cases of digestive troubles and affections of the
lower viscera, and in the disturbed metabolism of internal
secretions. This type of physiological irregularity, by
some deep-seated connection, obscure though intimate, and
properly called sympathetic in terms of its influence upon
and by way of the nervous system, brings the pangs of
physiological distress and the pained emotional tone. A
chronic liability to such disturbance may induce and es-
tablish a permanent temperamental set of persistent peev-

264 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ishness, invalidism, or disaffection. Carried to abnormal
expression it may reach the stage of true melancholia.
Similarly, a sound robust health, untroubled by *' symp-
toms," using the physiological capacity freely for execu-
tion of promptly energized reaction, with slight intrusion
of either emotional or intellectual hesitations, is of itself
a fair assurance of red-blooded activity; it is the token of
the sound, wholesome joy of the active temperament. The
steadiness, reliability and command of resources is simi-
larly conditioned. The adaptation of temperament to
quality of achievement proves to be a far more delicate
issue. Organic unconcern may not impede, but, by the
very facility which it confers, may divert from more com-
plex achievements, while adequate to its own modest oc-
cupations. The somatic, the constitutional factor in the
conditioning of temperament, is unquestioned ; its mode of
operation, particularly as it comes to expression in the
physiological conditioning, is obscure. It was a sense of
the reality of the somatic source of temperament that led
to the conjectural physiology of the classic doctrine — the
theory of humors — as yet unembarrassed by the exactness
of scientific proof. The real basis is rightly conceived as
set by the inherited bodily constitution and by the resulting
physiological fluctuations, wherein are felt and recorded
the assets and liabilities, the limitations and the possibili-
ties which it determines. The psychological issues are
ever projected against a physiological background. The
conception -finds its broadest application in the lesser and
nicer differentiations of normal types of humanity, in the
distributions of their strengths and weaknesses. Practi-
cally, the relation sets the recurrent individual problem to
adjust purposes and methods of pursuit to the facilities
and capacities of endowment. The mental regimen, like
the bodily one, must be established by cautious self-obser-
vation; it must ever be a compromise between desire anr
capacity, between the ideal and the actual, between wha'

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 265

we have to "do with" and what we have to ''do." Tem-
perament accompanies each and all in vocation and avoca-
tion alike, in waking and in sleep ; it sets the pace for en-
deavor, and complicates as well as directs progress.

The temperamental type [6] is but generically not spe-
cifically set by the emphasis of the sensory and motor pro-
cesses in the formula. The secondary dependence upon the
emotional as contrasted with the intellectual phases of sen-
sibility leads to derivative varieties. Because thus con-
ditioned the SENSiTiYE-active type may equally be termed
the melancholic, the introspective, the esthetic, the nerv-
ous. With the emphasis upon the intellectual phases
there results the * * melancholy Dane ' ' — introspective, brood-
ing, thoughtful, absorbed, insusceptible to diversion. Un-
der the emotional emphasis it becomes the esthetic, the fas-
tidious sensitiveness, the storm-and-stress unrest; or in
other variation, the shy, hesitant, imaginative, self -centered,
irregular excitability and enthusiasm of the nervous, pos-
sibly the sentimental individual — poet, musician, artist, en-
thusiast, neurasthenic, or hysteric, of whatever profession
or condition the fortunes of life may impose. The two
types present intermediate allegiances; the interplay of
values may be further presented as the special emphasis
upon the capitals of the sensitive — the receptive factor — or
upon the small letters of the active phase — ^the expressive
factor. The extreme impressionability, the acute suscepti-
bility to every nicety of emotion, to subtle harmony or deli-
cate play of color or tone or word, or whatever may be the
medium of expression, inclining to deep and even mysti-
cal absorption in the receptive attitude and contemplative
occupation, and the resulting harassing and disturbing
subjection to incongruities and annoyances as impeding
action — all this makes for overcritical hesitation, a feeling
of revelation that cannot be revealed, a message strongly
crowding but inarticulate, conduct involved and shorn of
decision. An intricate maze of troubled feeling no less cer-

266 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tainly than a **pale cast of thought" sicklies o'er the
** native hue of resolution," and makes high impulses and
lofty impressionability nervously lose * ' the name of ac-
tion." In the complementary variant the temperamental
expression is less markedly a sensitive, contemplative ab-
sorption than a weakness of adequate and energetic re-
sponse; the defect — for such it readily becomes — is more
a matter of will than of sensibility. Once again propor-
tion decides and divides favorable adaptation from mal-
adaptation. Proportion enters into the finer delineations
of character, produces the endless variations within the
common type-form which are duly recognized by the casual
as by the scientific student of human nature [7].

We have encountered at several points in the preceding
considerations the specific Trieh or set of the temperamen-
tal stress. Its bearing demands attention; it enters into
the conception of ''the temperamental." The threefold
allegiance that has served psychological analysis so faith-
fully in its historical career may once more be drawn upon.
The temperamental bent may be traced in the emotional,
in the intellectual, and in the volitional aspect of psychic
regulation. The process is unitary; the span^rom feeling
to doing is supported by the central pier of knowing. The
temperamental expressions of feeling and doing are direct ;
the support of knowing modifies the stresses of the struc-
ture throughout. Such modification is directly traceable in
the intellectual regulations dominated by a strong emo-
tional tone, whether of primary urgency or of derivative
status. Thus, on the one hand, the temperamental man ap-
pears in the man afraid and the man angry, in the man
moved by sympathy and spurred by jealousy, in the man
of joys and the man of sorrows, in the responses to situa-
tions that arouse pride, conceit, confidence, magnanimity,
amiability, or shame, humility, despair, suspicion, hostility ;
and, on the other hand, the temperamental man appears in
the man of taste, predilections, intellectual satisfactions,

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 267

general susceptibility to the refining transformations under
which the primary urgencies of the original order merge
into and with the esthetic regulations of the derivative or-
der. The latter are more specialized and more intellec-
tualized; their cultivation upon a temperamental basis has
important bearings upon training and career. Musical
susceptibility is the fitting example of such temperamental
bent, and the poetic and artistic talents no less so. One
is musical temperamentally: which means not alone by
dower of inheritance, in a sense comparable to that in which
one is gay or despondent, impulsive or deliberate by like
decree, but specifically by the combination of a certain
range of emotional susceptibility with a supporting sen-
sory-intellectual endowment (Anlage) [8]. The *' being
musicar' implies a certain aptitude and a certain disposi-
tion— the two converging upon the musical susceptibility.
The susceptibility implies that one is decidedly or deeply
affected by the appeal of music and is appreciative of its
medium ; that one can feel the sensory values of the tones,
their correctness and relations, can ''tell" tunes and can
respond to their meaning. The artist is both ''sensitive"
to colors and forms, and "sensitive" to the picturesque in
life as in art — to the esthetic values of this medium. The
poet, in more general manner, is "sensitive" to the sound-
values of words and rhythms, but dominantly so to the in-
tellectual meanings, the beauty of thought, and all the
subtle charms of emotionalized experience brought to ex-
pression in words. And we are all of us more or less
musical, artistic, poetic; the temperamental Anlage that
gives each and all a modest power to respond to these ap-
peals, is the same temperamental factor that, when pres-
ent in far more pronounced measure, makes the musician,
the artist, and the poet.

The temperamental set in the esthetic careers and in the
esthetic phases of the dispositional aptitudes is by its na-
ture specific; the musical, artistic, poetic disposition is a

268 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

specialized form of sensibility. Persons thus endowed in-
cline to the type-forms in which the sensitive factor domi-
nates, however combined with either skilled aptitude or the
persistencies and energies of will. The relations between
the general emotional and the specifically esthetic tempera-
mental trends are sufficiently elastic to give to artists
a fair variety of character-traits, such as occur in any other
walk of life ; and yet the esthetic bent is a real community
of temperamental allegiance. The intellectual capacities
diverge from this formula in that the specialization is still
more minute ; they represent the elevation of a supporting
insight to an independent value. While no less dependent
upon native aptitude, they lean heavily upon the cultiva-
tion of powers by learning, while yet the zest for learning
and the thrill of achieved insight into relations derive their
vitality from temperamental dispositions. And similarly
for the quality of energy, and the careers executive : their
growth proceeds upon the vigor, endurance, persistence,
and other ''wiir* qualities inherent in all responsiveness,
and is equally temperamentally conditioned. Their more
detailed consideration follows. As illustrations of the spe-
cific temperamental trends, both in their dependence upon
the support of other ranges of Anlage as well as examples
of the different types of appeal which are needed to bring
forward the temperamental set, their present treatment will
suffice.

The difficulty of formulation of the temperamental fac-
tor in human responsiveness does not imply that the reality
thus reduced to statement is obscure or recondite. The
stress of temperament is intimately familiar; it appears in
mood and disposition, in what we feel like doing and en-
joy doing for the moment and more permanently. It is
encountered practically in the modification of trends under
domestication and civilization ; it sets the limit to the proc-
ess, and advises the selection of individuals presenting the
desired traits rather than the attempt to graft them upon

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 269

unsuitable or refractory natures. Temperament is the de-
fense of eugenics, as character is the justification of edu-
cation. The spirited disposition of the full-blooded steed
in prime condition, compared to the placidity of even the
prize cow, furnishes a contrast of temperament ; it explains
why the horse is chosen for a part in the sporting instincts
of men. The refractoriness of one child makes its up-
bringing a trial; while another trots complacently in the
conventional harness. Temperament, though it gives the
delicate touches to the psychic portraiture, is in itself quite
commonplace ; its reduction to psychological formulae is un-
satisfactory because, when so expressed, it seems to lose the
richness of nature and the intimate meaning which it car-
ries in experience. To conserve or restore that value,
psychology must apply its principles of interpretation to
the composite data of humanity.

The actual findings are the differences of men in terms
of their reactions to the standard influences of the envi-
ronment. Popular verdicts furnish such comments as that
this musician or that painter, this poet or that actress, this
or that character in life or romance is blessed or handi-
capped by a liberal measure of ''temperament." The
opinion suggests a far-reaching division of men : it places in
one group those dominated by a positiveness, a strength, a
distinctiveness of endowment, whatever its type or quality,
which throws the emphasis upon the Trieb, the driving
force of nature, and leaves a lesser play for the molding
influence of nurture. From the point of view of imposed
training this endowment makes a difficult, resistive, head-
strong type; from that of worldly management, such indi-
viduals are less tractable, organizable, conformable to social
and other molds; from their own point of view, they are
opposing the leveling and deadening effects of convention
and are shaping career to endowment, and not j3ramping
endowment to the imposed conventions of career; they are
following the lead of their natural bents and talents. The

270 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

contrasted group is composed of individuals who are fairly-
characterized as slightly temperamental, who are consent-
ingly molded in large measure by convention and stand-
ardized training. The distinction, thus expressed in terms
of a highly specialized issue, reflects a primary contrast.

The distinction may be said to pertain to the biological
character of adaptability, which in its issues in complex so-
cial environments, is no more and no less an unmixed vir-
tue than many another factor born of nature's ways and
man's superimposed purposes. The distinction suggests
the opposition of nature and nurture; the nature-molded
are temperamental, the nurture-molded adaptable. The
strong temperamental bent yields less easily to environ-
ment, overcomes or resists untoward circumstance; while
keenly responsive to favoring fortune, is at once sensitive
to the world's contacts and impelled to effort by inner
impulse. As a rule it favors and matures with a special-
ized, directive set of interest and desire. The contrasted,
more neutral, as opposed to the more positive tempera-
ments, yield readily to circumstance, take their impress
from without, while bringing to their work or play a fair
range of impulse and capacity; they lean in expression
upon the support of convention, and follow prepared
models of conduct. Their temperamental trends appear
moderately in the selection of the psychological patterns of
thought and practical models of conduct, and in the em-
phasis of emotional and other predilections in their pursuit.
In the extreme the one becomes strong with the weaknesses
of special bent, the other weak with the strength of balance.
Originality lies with the strongly temperamental, and a
complacent, conservative, unimaginative trend with those
slightly temperamental. However, these distinctions pene-
trate only to the threshold of the problem.

Such terms as variability on the one hand, and plas-
ticity and originality on the other, have a distinct though
overlapping reference. The first refers to the fluctua-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 271

tions of qualities as exhibited by different individuals of
the same species ; it refers primarily to the range of. dis-
tribution of a quality among a group. Plasticity refers
to the individual quality of adaptability to the environ-
ment. The protracted period of the teachability of the
young of human kind provides for a large plasticity of
psychological traits. Originality is the individual tend-
ency to depart from the group type — which at higher levels
may be the conventional type — ^largely upon the basis of
inherent disposition or capacity. Originality in the indi-
vidual represents a concrete issue of biological variation;
it stands in a measure opposed to the adaptability to cir-
cumstance characteristic of the more pliable, less rigorous
and less vigorous set of nature. The one expresses the di-
vergence from the type; the other the plasticity of the
type-traits.

The contrast as well as the affiliation of character and
temperament is in a sense equivalent to the difference of
interest in what men do and in what men are; it implies
that the range of responsiveness in the fundamental rela-
tions of life is more significant than that in the deriva-
tive occupations and proficiencies. Hence the pertinence
of the curiosity to penetrate in biographies of noted men,
back of achievement to the personal qualities in which it
is set : to inquire what manner of man as a personality was
the individual whose sayings, doings, exploits, views, activi-
ties, or influence engage our interests; what were his
family relations, his associations with his intimates, his
tastes, his amusements, his habits, his foibles, his hobbies,
his daily routine, his susceptibilities, his love-affairs, his
worries, his ambitions, his motives, his attitude toward the
experiences of life ? We cannot escape the conviction that
different types of career engage the temperamental quali-
ties with different degrees of intimacy: that some lean
strongly upon the personal reactions to experience, and
that others are built upon highly derivative and specialized

272 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

proficiencies remote from personalized responsiveness.
The latter may be adopted into the system of interests and
by such adoption attain something of the original emo-
tional zest of pursuit; they become the loyal devotions of
persistent endeavor exercised in and attached to careers.
The conviction recurs that the poetic medium reveals the
poet's temperament with a direct and intimate significance
that does not apply to the work of the engineer. Yet it is
equally true that no man is wholly poet or wholly engi-
neer: the underlying man in the poet and in the engineer
participates in the quality of the poetry and of the en-
gineering, as well as conditions the maturing of powers
that turns the one to poetry and the other to engineering.
That the poet is bom and not made is about as true as that
the engineer is made and not born; for either is less true
than the principle of correlation, which reads: that what
men are inclined to be by nature is reflected in and con-
ditions what they succeed in making of themselves by ap-
plying capacity to opportunity under the spur of native
impulse. The importance of the temperamental factor in
career, as in all conventional proficiencies, varies between
such phases of disposition and conduct as temperament
conditions, directs and dominates, and such as it supports
— to which it gives edge and finish, quality and spirit. In
each the temperamental factor becomes increasingly com-
plex and indirect; it operates no longer as a primary em-
phasis in the earlier sense but as a series of temperamental
qualities. Under this term may be included in a liberal
construction the entire range of qualities, however com-
ing to the surface in personal character as in career, that
hark back to the primary psychical trends of original na-
ture.

The qualities of men are those of their temperaments and
their characters. Temperamental qualities are so vari-
ously transformed by their development under imposed en-
vironments as to form merged complexes of traits. In

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 273

such a complex certain trends — and these the temperamen-
tal ones of deeper hold — are directive. The stress of ex-
perience conditions the manner of yielding to their sway,
of utilizing the aptitudes which they support, of adjusting
their promptings to the control of circumstance. Thus the
temperamental traits become the molding forces of char-
acter, the media of psychic regulation, the determiners of
careers. Such trends — in that they arise so directly from
one or another of the tempers or blends of primary dis-
position— repeat themselves in manifold ways and are fur-
ther convergent by the similarity of conventionalized en-
vironments; they furnish common representatives in the
gallery of humanity, and invite description as ** types"
of character. Such bias of temperamental leaning brings
it about that as the situations of life make their appeal to
the developing personality, they encounter an initial re-
sistance if of one order, and a ready assimilation if of
another. Such inclination gives a positive set or stamp to
a cluster of interests which it vitalizes because in them the
specific appetite finds food and satisfaction, and negatively
by the absence of such appetite handicaps and restrains
the individual from full and adequate participation in
other phases of acquisition and intercourse. The domi-
nant bent selects positively and negatively, by what it trans-
mits and by what it obstructs from the spectrum of hu-
man qualities, revealing, as do the lines of the visible spec-
trum, the reactions of the elementary psychical compo-
nents through their natural medium. It is the case of an
instrument that by construction can play but a limited
range of tunes; but the tune that is actually played is de-
termined by the special environment in which the instru-
ment comes to expression. Temperamental quality sug-
gests the limitations of a repertory — at the extreme the
limitation to a single role.

The setting of the temperamental traits may be said to
follow the plan of nature; with a leading differentiation,

274 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the purpose of which is plain, is associated a considerable
series of derivative and supporting trends. As is true of
sex, so also of temperament: the central fact spreads to a
radiating cluster of related facts. The derivative traits
make the surface appearance; they are responsible for the
psychological landscape of human quality. The clustering
of congenial and supporting trends implies the important
fact of correlation of qualities, the compatibility of traits.
It may profitably be approached through the medium of
illustration. Let us assume that some one trait — in this
instance the hoarding trait of the miser — acquires a com-
manding, even a usurping hold upon the individual. By
common observation and report so-and-so is a miser.
What is a miser, psychologically interpreted ? The trait is
the expression of a temperamental trend present in original
nature; it grows to such proportion that all experience is
absorbed through its perspective, all impulses subordi-
nated to the master passion. The trait is the first and
foremost consideration in the individual's reaction to the
stimuli of his environment; it is his constant reply to the
appeals of life through the powers by which he lives. In
all this he stands not for himself alone but for his type.
The miser is the result of the play upon such temperamen-
tal type, of the social system through which the values of
response are fixed. To say that the miser is such by virtue
of a large ''bump" or ingredient of acquisitiveness in his
make-up is true with the meaningless truth of a verbal ex-
change of terms. The significant facts are broader as well
as deeper. They recite that in the psychic endowment
there is a natural place for self-assertion and the will to
prevail, leading to the defense of self against loss; that
the social organization provides an outlet for that trend in
the accumulation of goods socially desired; that, because
of the accessibility or special appeal of this type of expres-
sion thus socially encouraged to the particular and limited
form which the self-assertive trend assumes in the indi-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 275

vidual, his response to the original impulse thus diverted
makes hoarding his absorbing pursuit. A different environ-
ment, a different social tradition, might have turned the im-
pulse to other channels; yet the prevalence of the *' miser"
type through the ages indicates the open path of invitation.
The miserliness may be the bare hypertrophy of thrift;
and thrift may be the restless obedience to a limited range
of interests. The qualities entering into the ''miser" com-
plex are variable. There is the merely negative factor of
a defective imagination to find use for money, the narrow
confusion of means for end, or the lack of cultivation to
develop needs with increased resources; there is the neu-
tral factor of imitation and inertia — the hoarding by habit
and hardened set of interest ; there are the positive induce-
ments of the satisfactions of security against want, the
control through financial power, the reputation of success
in a socially esteemed pursuit, which replace the more
primitive sensory gloating over the money-bags. The trait,
as all such traits, must yield a personal satisfaction of some
sort, and quite inevitably one that depends upon the social
reenforcement. There must be a psychological satisfac-
tion ; and in this instance money, as well as the process of
getting it, is the satisfier. By contrast, spending comes
to be painful as a check upon the master impulse, as an
unwilling concession to the inexorable decrees of existence.
The satisfaction of saving overcomes the enjoyment of pos-
session or indulgence [9].

Truly the miser is such by temperamental bent ; but the
bent is not an inclination toward penuriousness, such as he
might have inherited from his father or may pass on to his
son. If an individual of the same disposition were born
among a primitive people living a communal life, innocent
of the institution of property or wealth, the trend would
perforce have found another outlet, have taken another set.
It requires the cooperation of the environment to trans-
form disposition into a trait, to make hoarding the par-

276 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ticular temperamental expression of self-assertion. It is
accordingly the associated components of miserliness that
furnish the psychological clew. The synonym of the miser
is the churl, the niggard, the harpy, the hard, grudging,
mean, mercenary skinflint. Typically he is a recluse.
Does he shun society because society makes claims that in-
terfere with hoarding, or because social ties have nothing
to offer, make no appeal? Is he a miser because he is a
recluse, and in his withdrawal finds hoarding congenial to
his solitary pursuit? Or is he a recluse because he is a
miser and can save by withdrawing? Or is he both be-
cause of a certain type of shut-in personality, a tempera-
mental limitation of qualities which, as exercised in the
environment, is likely to produce the set of qualities that
form the ** miser'' complex? The psychological solution
favors the last conclusion, though in no simple manner.
The unsociability may be otherwise motivated; for com-
mon symptoms may have unlike sources. The hermit may
deliberately decide that the social struggle is not worth
while ; he may be a solitary scholar and in his own way may
even have costly tastes with a generous disregard for com-
mercial values. The ** withdrawal' ' complex merely over-
laps the *' miser" complex at one point; but it is a signifi-
cant point. It becomes clearly so in its abnormal mani-
festations. The abnormally shut-in personality may be
misanthropic, may be shy to the point of sullen churliness ;
he is so by virtue of an innate warped disposition which all
the machinery of social training is incapable of straighten-
ing. The acquisitive trait may run riot, may lose its more
defensible expressions, and in insanity may labor under
delusions of distorted values, and gather rubbish. For a
considerable range of cases the most scientific is also the
most charitable view of the miser: to regard him as un-
balanced, the victim of impulses inadequately controlled.
In this view the fact that commendable thrift travels for a
distance along the same road which extended — and with

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 277

no reference to the other essential highways of human in-
tercourse— leads to abnormality, is but incidental. The
parsimony of the miser is but a symptom ; his social with-
drawal, his churlishness, his hard unsjrmpathetic nature,
his pleasure in mean advantage, are vital. The same
original defect which expresses itself in these traits — which
carry a ready significance in the system of primary quali-
ties— is responsible also for the further symptom of nig-
gardliness, which happens to be the conspicuous one in the
observed play of human qualities. The limitations of the
*' miser" complex are as significant as its assertions. The
miser is cut off from large areas of psychic development
which proceed upon the expansive qualities ; for these have
a parallel place in original nature with the assertive ones
which in one limited aspect have gained control of his be-
ing. There are many other ways, and richly distinctive
ones, of expressing self-assertion in the social setting. The
expansiveness of generosity, the extravagance of display,
the venture of the gambler, the joy of domineering, the
sense of importance, the thrill of philanthropy, and a
dozen other qualities — all of which minister in very differ-
ent manner to self-esteem — are out of the miser 's reach and
orbit, by reason of the contracted personality under which
he labors. Some of these compensations he may more or
less deliberately forego; and an occasional if inconsistent
manifestation — such as a fitful display — because of its as-
sociation with successful money-making, gives color to the
supposition. But for the most part he is cut off from the
expansive forms of self-expression by the handicap of his
temperament. The miser is anti-social, incompletely so-
cialized, warped in his social reactions; such limitation, if
extreme, gives rise to the set rut of habit, the endless circle
of emotion, the persistence of fixed ideas, for which
** monomania" is the accepted term. The pursuit of one
idea, the dominance of one passion with a consequent loss
of perspective, the rigidity of the mental movement, the

278 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

narrow brooding of the emotional tone — all proclaim the
absence of the varied and shifting appeal of complex in-
terests in which normality consists. Miserliness is a minor
form or phase of a temperamental ** monomania."

It would be pertinent to continue the illustrations by
extending them to other fields in which a temperamental
quality achieves directive expression. The inner set and
the outer setting combine: the miser lives to himself and
hoards; his world is commercial, as he is commercially
minded. The musician lives in a world of delicate emo-
tional susceptibility, and experiences its longings and its
thrills; along with his fellow-artists he is esthetically
minded. Around this central fact it is possible to develop
the psychology of the musician [10] — an analysis of the
musical complex. Such a study would begin with the
trend of the personalized emotions that in the large run
are congenially related to the special Anlage v*^hich makes
the musician; it would continue by seeking to determine
other ranges of common endowment, common handicaps,
common congruities and incongruities that affiliate with
the musical temperament. The fundamental principle
that esthetic sensibility is an offshoot of a general emo-
tional susceptibility, and lives and thrives upon it, while
supported by a specialized capacity for expression, is
abundantly illustrated in the biographies of musicians as in
the ordinary observation of the musically disposed. The
latter is the more pertinent corroboration in that it
recognizes the more common musical susceptibility of
marked degree, and is not limited to the professional
career ; equally important is the reminder that the musician
is much else than a musician. The musical bent serving
as an avocation is as intimately conditioned by tempera-
mental disposition as is the musical talent serving as the
basis of a vocation. Musicians as a class are fashioned by
the converging force of common disposition and common
avenues of expression under common social settings; thus

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 279

the group-traits of men arise, and bespeak an independent
treatment.

The problem of sources ends at this point; and in a
measure we have already encroached upon the domain of
application and the molding force of the environment. It
was necessary to widen the survey in order to set forth the
procedure by which psychology interprets the tempera-
mental traits. The same procedure brings forward the
problem of compatibility of traits. The temperamental set
that favors one order of Anlage or expression also favors
others. The favoring, as the expression, is for the most
part of moderate degree — not so pronounced as to domi-
nate, but marked enough to incline; the inclination is
toward one direction and away from others. Such essen-
tial and valued compatibility gives consistency and unity
to character, and makes the personality a composition and
not a medley. The principle that development in one di-
rection is incompatible with development in another is an
aspect of the law of specialization ; it is so in that tempera-
ment is a special emphasis. Coldly calculating intellec-
tuality is opposed to warm sympathetic emotionalism; the
scientific to the poetic temperament; the practical to the
theoretical proficiencies; absorption in one range of inter-
ests may indicate unfitness for or lack of appeal of others.
On the other hand, despite diversities of expression, art-
ists— whether musicians, painters, sculptors, designers,
poets, dramatists — ^have much in common; which means
that the temperamental quality leading to their profes-
sional expression favors the possession by each group of
other allied qualities, making their companionship con-
genial, their interests allied, their tastes related; and
equally making it more or less likely that they present in
but slight measure certain other ranges of quality that grow
out of a radically different temperamental basis.

The problem of compatibility, when reduced to precise
formulation, becomes the problem of correlation. Its so-

280 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

lution would afford a basis for an applied psychology. It
would indicate how strongly the possession of one capacity
is an index of possession of others, and of which others;
it would prescribe what qualities, in what measures, should
be possessed by candidates for this career or that. The
difficulties of establishing any such body of knowledge are
illuminated by the study of temperament. For it is clear
that the individual endowment is composite, and at once
versatile and limited. It is equally clear that the expres-
sion of traits — the sole source of knowledge — must be in-
terpreted in terms of the accredited media of adjustment
to the demands of a systematized artificial life. Most of
all does learning handicap the inference ; the tree of knowl-
edge is symbolic of the evolution of human psychology.
Acquired conformity replaces original quality; artificial
devices and strategic skill replace original bodily mastery.
Most of the situations to be met occur in prepared stand-
ardized form, and the conditions of meeting them involve
a sheltering from the stress of primary demands. The
learning of the rules and a knowledge of the nature of the
game, more than the player's parts, may determine the
score. Convention remodels the situations so thoroughly,
encourages and discourages by such altered standards ; cir-
cumstances and opportunities are distributed so out of
relation to inherent gifts, that qualities do not come to
simple expression ; and the measure of a man is a thing of
baffling complexity. Achievement becomes an uncertain
clew to endowment, and experiment must replace observa-
tion as well as supplement it. None the less normal per-
sonalities develop under the most complex of conditions;
and civilization proceeds in its transforming career, how-
ever halting the progress of the psychologist in his attempt
to follow or interpret the process. By practical exigencies,
we are each compelled to meet the conditions of existence
with the defects of our qualities and the qualities of our
defects. Within the field of the normal there is room for

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 281

the side-by-side play of the most complex qualities massed
in a reasonable compatibility, and shaping a life large
enough for the satisfaction of the multiple needs of a con-
sistent liberal personality.

It is at this juncture that we turn from the considera-
tion of temperament, and by way of the problem of the
compatibility and correlation of traits, to the general prob-
lem of individual differences. In modern psychology the
temperamental differences of men are viewed as one phase
— though a peculiarly important, comprehensive and even
dominant one — of the range of psycho-physiological varia-
tions. All these differences proceed primarily upon the
differentia of native endowment, upon the specialized vari-
ations of our several heredities; but as they come to ex-
pression, they are richly overlaid by the uses and disci-
plines imposed by the demands of the artificial life, by the
altered perspective of values determined by adopted stand-
ards and cherished ideals. The terms ''individual psy-
chology," "the psychology of individual differences,"
''differential psychology," have been adopted to designate
the specific study, and particularly by experimental and
allied methods, of the entire range of psychic differences
among men; the study proposes to take the measure of a
man. An important group of its problems relates to the
correlation of traits; a consideration that is ever in the
background is the possible reference of traits in proper
measure to heredity and to education, to nature and to
nurture ; a constant purpose is the application of the find-
ings in shaping career to endowment. A brief outline of
the programme by which such study hopes to accomplish
these objects will directly and profitably continue the argu-
ment of the present chapter.

In taking the psychic measure of a man, we begin with
his sensory endowment; for the service of the senses sets
a condition to the growth of mind. The standard test of

282 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

sensory endowment is the power to make small, slight and
delicate distinctions. The data of the sense of hearing may-
be cited as typical. The simplest auditory sense-quality
is acuteness — the delicacy of the auditory function. To
hear sounds of feeble intensity, as well as to distinguish the
loudness of slightly differing or changing sounds, may
prove a convenience and an advantage; it is but the first
step in the mental endowment, however seriously any hard-
ness of hearing or dullness of distinction may prove a han-
dicap. Acuteness is secondary to discrimination; and the
value of the latter depends upon the direction in which it
is exercised. Without rapid and ready distinction of
sounds, speech would be impossible; yet speech is an arti-
ficial acquisition, built upon the natural capacity to dis-
tinguish and interpret sounds significant to welfare.
When applied to pitch-distinction, it plays a distinctive
role, and when specialized for the accuracy of the relations
of interval which underlie music, it becomes basal for fur-
ther musical development. All three sensibilities — for in-
tensity, for pitch, and for interval — combine and merge in
musical discriminations, and find their complement in the
peculiar and intricate distinction of tonal quality, less
measurable but equally fundamental. For musical sensi-
bility the sensory endowment is indispensable; and yet it
does not determine the emotional and esthetic susceptibility,
does not fix the place of music in the life of the mind, with
more than an approximate and partial relation. As thus
conditioned by the innate musical ''ear,'' the musician is
temperamentally musical. Equally fundamental is the fact
that hearing, as is true of all other senses, goes beyond
awareness to distinction, and beyond direct distinction to
indirect meaning. The poet requires an ear for rhythm,
the linguist for niceties of pronunciation, yet merely as a
requisite for the larger service to which it is applied. The
delicacy of auditory discrimination conditions the arts of
language and the vocal technique. In all these respects

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 283

men differ; and by measurement and comparison, individ-
ual psychology has increased the knowledge of the range
and distributions of such differences. The acquired spe-
cialized distinctions are the more significant in their prac-
tical application by virtue of the principle that value for
mind increases as interpretation moves away from bare
sensory distinction. Auditory acuteness of whatever type
becomes secondary to auditory comprehension. The sig-
nificant equation is that of the total value of the auditory
support in and for mental assimilation and elaboration.
What really matters, speaking by and large, is the degree
and manner in which I am ear-minded; the correlation,
fixed or variable, marked or slight, of ear-mindedness with
the above enumerated auditory powers of distinction, forms
the comprehensive determination. Ear-mindedness calls
for more than sensory tests. It demands a measure of the
value of the * ' ear ' ' for apperceptive, assimilative work and
attitude, and of its part in the sensory support of the mental
movement. My ear-mindedness is shown in the more vivid
appeal, the greater ease and carrying power, of an address
when heard than of the same content when read ; it appears
in my vivid auditory imagery of voices and noises, in my
marked emotional sympathy with cries and groans and
laughter, in my suppressed rehearsal of the spoken words
even as I write, as well as in my ready distractability by
sounds that have meaning. It appears particularly in the
imaginative control of absent auditory impressions, and in
the shaping of my ** style" by the prevalent critical pose
which I assume to its effect, as a listener. Yet it may
well be the case that I am intellectually ear-minded in a
marked degree, while yet commonplace in correctness of
musical appreciation, in which latter respect my musical
taste may be much better than my ''ear." Here arise a
cluster of problems in correlation: how far do these vari-
ous types of proficiency run in groups, how intimately is
this or that proficiency, so far as it can be measured, ro-

284 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

lated to another ? All this is part of the programme of indi-
vidual psychology ; its conclusions when developed will con-
fer an authoritative insight into the correlations and dis-
tributions of type-traits, and into their relative status as
issues of temperament or of training.

In gauging the significance of sensory differences, the
principle is important that sensory acuteness is subsidiary
and ancillary to perceptual capacity ; good observation goes
farther than good eyesight, however indispensable a fair
degree of the latter is to the development of the former.
Good eyesight does not assure good visual observation.
The direction in which the perceptual capacity shall be
applied and developed is determined by the situations to
which meaning is attached. Noises, tones, and words en-
gage our powers of distinction because conditions make it
important that we distinguish them. The interpretation
of observed sensory differences among men is affected by
this consideration. Sailors may not see better than lands-
men, but know better how to use their eyes, and what ap-
pearances to expect under conditions at sea; the woods-
man may not have superior senses to those of the city-
bred nor use them more expertly, but knows better how to
catch the sensory clews upon which wood-lore depends;
the woodsman or the rustic is at a disadvantage in the
complex sensory appeals of a crowded city street. Differ-
ences of direction of attention and training obscure dif-
ferences of capacity. The absorption of the sensory pow-
ers in the service of mental distinction guides the life of
the senses.

The determinations of the chief components in the serv-
ice of the ear may be compared and contrasted with the
service of the eye. In vision particularly, prompt and ac-
curate distinction follows the clew of meaning; and mean-
ing, in turn, takes its direction from training and interest.
Yet primary sensibility remains and in some specialized
callings becomes a conditioning factor, dominantly so in

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 285

the field of color. The artist leans heavily on sense-dis-
tinctions ; feeble sensibility to tints and shades and hues of
color will handicap the landscape-artist but also the house-
painter and the "ribbon-clerk/' The color sensibility of
the former is not that of the others raised only in degree,
but a complex development and elaboration of it — the issue
of a more intricate equation. The visual sense of form is
doubtless the largest, most elaborate, sensory distinction in
the psychological equipment. It is minute to the last de-
gree of refinement, serving the botanist and the entomolo-
gist in his distinctions of species and varieties; serving in
every domain for recognition of complex arrangements of
''characters"; in natural and artificial products, serving
the anatomist in identification, the chemist in analysis, and
the surgeon in delicate operations; serving the nice dis-
criminations of artists and craftsmen guided by impres-
sion ; serving the shrewd clews of the detective in his intel-
lectual interpretations; and serving no less the delicate
psychological reading of social attitudes and expressions,
intentional and undesigned. And yet despite the obvious
handicap which sense-deprivation places upon the blind,
their capacity for mental development suffers in the main
by difficulty of support rather than in the ultimate quality
of achievement. Their insight, though lacking the visual
penetration and survey, is yet attained by cultivation of
the rationalized procedures which sight more notably but
not exclusively furthers. The blind travel upon the same
road to learning, reach and pass the same stages as the rest
of us, but travel in a slower, less serviceable conveyance.

The relative dependence upon ear or eye as well as upon
the other sense-data, in mental elaboration yields types of
mind — temperamentally determined — ^yet presents a con-
siderable individual variation within the dominant group.
Though ear-minded in mental assimilation, I may not be
gifted musically, and may find myself possessed of a strong
color-sense and form-sense; I may be more susceptible to

286 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

violations of good taste and good art in the arts that are
directed by the eye than in those directed by the ear. The
same applies to accomplishment: I may not come within
hailing distance of composing a tune, but can with studied
aids put together a design. My critical powers may serve
me better, make more refined distinctions, in matters of
color and form than in those of pronunciation or word-
values, or of melody and harmony. Nor does my sense-
endowment end here. In addition there is in each a meas-
ure of dependence upon movement and the sensory experi-
ence of action; it appears in the intimacy of bond between
observation and imitation. I may be a good auditory ap-
perceiver (listener), and yet not a good mimic; though if
the latter, I must have a fair standing in the former re-
spect. For the bond of ear and voice and the yet more
potent bond of eye and hand embody the relation of instru-
ment to its direction; its medium is the kinesthetic sense,
and its quality is skill. Individual differences in this re-
spect seem vast because so directly expressed in achieve-
ment; the expert seems far removed from the layman, the
skilled artisan from the tyro. Handiness or clumsiness
appears in every movement of the muscles obedient to the
directive will and the critical senses. The performance re-
flects the quality of the performer. There are comparable
elements in singing or speaking, in carving or painting, in
playing one musical instrument or another, in games of
skill, in juggling, in the endless specialties of handicraft.
The kinesthetic measure of a man reflects intimately his
native powers of coordination; in some sense every fully
cultivated man is an artist ; the human touch ever enters as
a measure of the human product. The poise of the body
as the instrument of the mind seems to be set by the ad-
justment of trained muscle to refined conception. Skill,
grace, expertness, and all the technical proficiency of
process and product compose the kinesthetic excellence.
The contents of museums, no less than the exhibitions upon

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 287

the stage — ^whether acrobatic, vocal, mechanical sleight-of-
hand, or clever play of mind — testify to its enduring hold
and value. Analysis is drawn upon to reach the elements
of individual differences: strength, swiftness, accuracy,
endurance, control, complexity of coordination, enter into
performance and submit to properly designed tests. The
correlation of these foundations of handiness and clumsi-
ness, of mental as well as muscular coordinations, are prac-
tically significant. Brightness, quickness, cleverness con-
trast with dullness, slowness, stupidity. The intellectual
factor dominates; heads are more important than hands;
skilled labor commands its price. Most comprehensively,
because achievement is measured in terms of performance,
is the direction of muscle a vital measure of human effi-
ciency; and because performance is guided by sensory dis-
tinction is sensibility the ultimate standard [11].

All this pertains to sense alone, the opening chapter of
differential psychology. Prompted by the individual in-
terest, I at once proceed to ask: How far is my status in
this or that group of proficiencies and sensibilities related
to my status in another ? Which orders of trait or degrees
of their presence go together ? Which are the more, which
the less temperamental traits? But the methods of ap-
proach to these questions are again through designed tests
of specific factors in the general mental procedure. I ask
particularly : What type of imagination do I exercise, not
merely with reference to the sense-terms, the medium of my
preferred imagery, but to the range of resemblances and
suggestiveness in which my thought moves — its source,
variety, quality. The issue involves my preferred types of
association, both for apperception and for memory. Mem-
ory is the most reducible of the components. There is
recognized tenacity and span; the depth and breadth of
the intake and retentiveness. But memory is selective, like
attention and apperception ; not all is fish for my net ; and
the character of the net and of the fishing ground to which

288 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

inclination and purpose take me, determines the kind of
fish that may be lured and held there. Quickness every-
where comes to the front. There is a tempo in my mental
doings, slow or alert, not unrelated to heaviness and dull-
ness on the one side and brightness, lightness and clever-
ness on the other. Quick to see and quick to understand ;
quick in parry and thrust ; quick in repartee and resource
— these too are qualities, dimensions in the composition of
traits in the individual.

Yet that elusive distinction that is called quality and is
the essence of difference and individuality remains para-
mount. All thinking requires the association and order-
ing of the materials of thought; and in the weave of the
mental fabric, the warp and woof of thought, lies the
secret of the product. It is not merely the graded and
measured elements of the weave, not the patterns followed
in the making of it, not the raw material, but above these
something that has a standing in mental valuation — the
originality, the texture and design of the whole, condi-
tioned no doubt by the very factors that analysis discloses,
and yet escaping its formula through complexity and deli-
cacy of relation. The associational steps may be made to
yield certain significant differentia of types, such as the
dominance of logical as against the emotional procedures;
within the former the dominance of ratiocinative and ab-
stract, as against concrete and presentative steps: whether
the thought moves mainly in concrete pictures and vivid
externals, or in internal congrvlties of mood, affect, and
abstract relations. Even in so simple a test as the at-
tempt to describe an object, the natural bent appears.
Some individuals truly describe the optical impression,
others analyze the mental impression; if the object admits
of it, some imaginatively weave a setting and a theme about
it, others literally catalogue the details, give a detached re-
port of the scene. Attention yields a significant gauge, for
it shows itself under test as persistent, resisting distrac-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 289

tion, or as light and distractable — adapted to the longer or
the shorter shifts of effort. Judgment and the power of
combining and of problem-solving have been reduced to
''test'' cases; suggestibility has been measured; even such
qualities as the definiteness, the reliability, the confidence,
the consistency, the impressionability of judgment — linger-
ing upon distinction awaiting assurance, or rushing upon
response — ^have been reduced to experimental terms. In
conduct the type of reaction; the drift of attention as af-
fecting expression ; its spread and illumination ; the natural
precision and decision of responsiveness; the emotional in-
volution ; the variation of all these at the hours of the day ;
the mode of absorbing the recuperative processes of sleep,
and the dependence upon them — these have yielded to
quantitative data, not simple in their interpretation. Al-
though all this approaches and passes the threshold of
psychological efficiency, it does not reach the hearth of the
domain, does not reveal the true inwardness of why and
when and how my work now proceeds profitably, freely,
and again painfully and muddily, or if fluently, of feeble
quality. And no more does it reveal except in a crudely
approximate manner, why my work bears the quality that
inheres in it, finds its natural outlet in my preferred occu-
pations, and its limitations no less. That eventually the
correlation of measured proficiencies with specialized fit-
ness may be accessible for a cautious prognosis is the hope
of a vocational psychology. Diagnosis is the preliminary
step and has bravely met and solved a considerable group
of significant problems. Its findings, like the selections
above noted of the programme of individual psychology, are
tangible and suggestive. The project is well framed; par-
ticularly is the outlook hopeful for the establishment of
''intellectual" types, on the basis of correlations of the pro-
ficiencies susceptible to training.

The limitations of the programme of individual psychol-
ogy have next to be considered. The most notable is the in-

290 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

adequate reduction of the intellectual quality of insight.
That men differ and differ notably — in degree, composition,
quality — in respect to intellectual capacity and proficiency
is in itself manifest; such differences are conspicuously re-
enforced by the manifold play of intellect in the civilized
environment. The world of civilization, the artificial life,
is largely a world of mind ; the adjustment to its demands
is a test of intellectual powder. As a consequence of our
up-bringing and our familiarity in school and out with the
products of invention and the records of the past, we apply
a more finely graded and more diversified scale to the ap-
praisal of intellectual proficiencies. When slight differ-
ences count, a fine scale is needed and devised. The trend
of the original endowment is at once overlaid, elaborated,
and refined, and all to such a degree that the appropriate
scale of values is substantially a reconstructed, artificial
one. Btit the units of the scale are uncertain ; practically
they are expressed in terms of the achievements employed
in the intellectual machinery of modem life; in principle
they should be reduced (or made reducible) to terms of
psychological aptitudes and their elaborations. The com-
promise of theory and practice is apparent in the tests of
life and in the attempted solutions of the psychological
laboratory, designed, in large part, for application to voca-
tional purposes and the determination of deviations from
normality. Examinations for fitness abound in all callings
and professions ; and examinations to test progress attained
are the constant instrument of educational procedure.
They may serve their rough and ready purpose of differ-
entiation; but do they test capacity or attainment? In
taking the measure of a candidate for a degree or for a
position, grades are undecisive, and an appraisal of the
quality of intelligence enters; nor is its recognition a mere
concession to popular impression. From the psychological
approach analysis reduces the prime factor in intellectual
insight to the perception of relations ; inference, reasoning,

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 291

logicality, describe the specific connecting process through
which the data yield conclusions — the induction, deduction,
and hypothesis of the logician. Observation recognizes a
typical variation of the logical quality according as it takes
a practical or an abstract turn. Theory and practice, prin-
ciples and their applications, the handling of an argument
and of an instrument of precision, or the organization of
men, the planning of a campaign on paper and its execu-
tion, head work and hand work — all present allied con-
trasts of the bent of insight as well as of execution. The
intellectual world seems to divide naturally into students
and practitioners, as well as into the directors and the
directed; the adjustment of the two constitutes the prob-
lem of infusing action with knowledge and of bringing
knowledge to efficient expression. The distinction relates
also to the facility in dealing with presentative or with
representative material ; to the leaning upon the support of
the actual impression, or of its imaginatively constructed
presence, of the sensory experience and its control, or of
the mental experience and its interpretation.

It is clear that the more primary field of exercise of the
rational quality, and the larger experience of the race as of
the individual, is that of dealing with things and men ; the
more specialized facility is the dealing with ideas. The
conception that directs the study of such differences among
men is that of ** general intelligence"; and the inherent
difficulty is this: that while we aim to test this underlying
quality, we can actually bring to a test only a specific pro-
ficiency, such as that demanded of successful candidates
for particular callings. The reconciliation of the two fac-
tors has not been successfully accomplished; psychologists
have adopted divergent solutions. An extreme position
denies the existence of ''general intelligence" altogether;
it relies upon the indubitable fact that each brain contains
only specialized connections between definite sensory ap-
preciations (or their symbolic intellectual representations)

292 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

and equally definite motor executions (or their rationalized
tendencies). It points to the evidence that the facilitation
of one such connection by a considerable amount of prac-
tice has but slight effect in conferring a readier facilita-
tion of allied responses. The increasing curve of quick-
ness and accuracy that marks my improvement in recog-
nizing and checking all the ''A"s among a thousand letters
is remarkably like the curve that shows the proficiency in
identifying the ''B"s, although the second process has the
benefit of the accumulated practice obtained in acquiring
the facility in the first. Practice is but slightly trans-
ferred. The learning of one manipulation helps me but
slightly, as thus tested, in learning another and similar one ;
the having-learned-to-write with my right hand gives me
but a feeble start in learning to write with my left hand.
But critically considered, this evidence indicates the limita-
tions of the learning process rather than the absence of
general intelligence. The opposed consideration is the im-
portant one that the endowment and the strength of its
native bent by which I readily learn to draw helps me also
to learn to model ; that my handiness in one craft supports
the handiness in another in the sense that the degree of
excellence which I may readily or eventually attain in one
or the other reflects a common facility. The data of corre-
lation prove this, and support the principle. Learning one
particular manipulation, like learning one particular lan-
guage, may help me in learning another only in so far as
the two contain overlapping acquisitions; but I learn both
by a common aptitude. There is a core of meaning in the
comparison that I am more apt or more awkward than the
average person in learning crafts or in learning languages.
However, the purpose of this reference is not to present the
arguments for *' general intelligence," but to indicate a
true source of human differentiation, and its bearings.

The several intellectual processes, serving as bases of
tests, are steps and supports of problem-solving. The prob-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 293

lem-solving quality of the human mind is a vitally impor-
tant factor of its efficiency; by the stress of artificial de-
mands it has been elevated to a commanding position, and
by the highly specialized nature of these demands it has
been developed to a refinement that is itself a measure of
the racial civilization. The measure of its possession di-
vides men broadly into bright and dull ; it divides them in
the higher reaches of thought and the finer logical adjust-
ments, into the alert, original, resourceful, progressive
minds, and the plodding, imitative, unimaginative, conven-
tional ones — into the ordinary and the extraordinary, into
those dwelling in the approaches to the intellectual high-
lands whose peaks bear the name of the summits of genius,
and the dwellers in the lowlands, where life, though lack-
ing notable outlooks, is well regulated and secure. The
quality of originality is primarily an intellectual one; it
stands as the counterpart, if not the correlate, of the strong
temperamental trend in emotional responsiveness; if the
Trieh of the endowment makes men feel things strongly,
the vigor of the intellect makes them see things clearly.
Superior sensibility to emotional play leads to exception-
ality of the one order ; insight into relations, to exception-
ality of another; talent is a common name for both
superiorities and commonly implies a specialized trend. A
talented person may have many talents and be notable by
such versatility ; yet his several talents are themselves spe-
cialized. The mistake must be avoided of comparing the
lesser aptitudes of men possessing one marked talent with
the proficiencies of those specially gifted in the lesser apti-
tude. A philologist's or a psychologist's mathematical
ability may be very modest compared with that of a mathe-
matician, but, as the group trait, is distinctly above that of
the average man. The principle is still more pertinent
when applied to less specialized aptitudes. The scholar of
whatever speciality is more conversant with intellectual
matters in general than is the average man; presumably

294 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

he stands above the average in general power of adjust-
ment to complex situations of varied type, notwithstand-
ing the popular prepossession (founded upon extreme
examples) to the contrary. The conditions and correla-
tions of great abilities are instructive, but no less so the
like relations of ordinary range. Studies of the heredity of
genius prove the thesis that high orders of capacity depend
in large measure upon native bent; moreover the special-
ized inheritance is the typical one — not merely that high
orders of talents, but specifically that musical gifts, intel-
lectual capacities, practical abilities, run in families. The
intellectual aptitude is thus referred to a temperamental
basis, while yet the dependence of its expression upon the
derived and artificial order of living is abundantly recog-
nized.

Life at all levels of human organization offers constant
problems of an intellectual type; accomplishment and
achievement, however directed, are the tests of life, which
— speaking broadly — conform in their type and genius to
the natural situations that through the ages have developed
the power of adjustment and the control of experience.
Compared with such ** natural'^ trials of wits, the tests of
the laboratory seem artificial and bare. They seem to lack
motive as well as reality, to test detached processes dis-
sected from the living problem. None the less they supply
the only serviceable instrument of special analysis, and in
due course promise to yield a consistent and authoritative
interpretation of the individual differences of mind. De-
spite the uncertainty of analysis and application (together
with the inevitable fact that it is only the specialized em-
bodiment that is capable of being tested), the intellectual
measure of a man will become more and more definitely
and reliably established. The common elements are amen-
able to analysis : quickness and fineness of discrimination,
the perception of relations, memory in scope and security,
imagination and association in richness and quality, judg-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 296

ment, inference, abstract reasoning, symbolic thought.
The difficulty, to repeat, is the comprehensive one that such
community of endowment — expressed in process and prod-
uct— as we are entitled to assume, yields incommensur-
able data. The determination that individual A differs
from individual B in powers of imagination more than
in judgment, in sensory discrimination less than in wealth
of association, or excels him in the one but not in the other
respect, is uncertain not alone by lack of fit and comparable
units of measurement of these qualities, but by the fact that
when these powers are tested by one set of materials con-
genial to A 's interests and acquisitions and not to B 's, the
''capacities" of the two may prove very different and A
superior to B, while a different selection may reverse the
evidence. The difficulty of deciding that A is a better en-
gineer than B is a philologist is but an extreme instance of
the disparity of terms.

In further illustration, tests of ingenuity may readily
be arranged ; but they will always be of special ingenuities.
Mechanical puzzles, logical catches, mathematical devices,
verbal combinations, imaginative riddles, may be used with
equal validity. They will test not quite the same powers,
but, in a general analysis, very similar ones. Yet it would
be as false to draw too rigid conclusions from any one set
of data, as it would be to gauge the general intelligence or
mental ingenuity of all men by their ability to play whist
or chess. The qualities that make a good chess-player or
a good whist-player may in themselves be as significant as
those that make a good philologist or a good engineer ; the
results of the one study may be as valuable as those of the
other. We turn our powers to such different ends as to
lose the common standards of comparison which ** indi-
vidual" psychology aims to restore. When I find through
ordinary exposure to their appeal that I am *'good,"
''average," or "poor" at riddles, cards, games, etc., it does
not mean that the proficiency actually attained in these

296 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

recreations represents the limits of capacity if their attain-
ment were made an important object in life, but (disre-
garding opportunity) only that the actual appeal of these
pursuits to the native quality is strong, moderate, or
slight. One may lose not only one's taste or liking for
chess — owing to the rivalry of later interests — but even the
capacity to excel. For such powers, like those involved in
learning a language, have their special relations to periods
of development. Childhood and early youth is the favored
time to learn a language, because the learning process falls
within the plastic powers then at their readiest service.
Memorizing, direct sensory associations, mechanical facili-
tations develop early; the logical processes, the power of
representative and abstract thought, the philosophic out-
look, the judicial generalization, are late in maturing and
await experience as well as expert logical control.

The original difficulty continues, and is more and more
complicated by the complication of the environment which
tends to emphasize and differentiate opportunity, and to
reflect social encouragement. Persons in one station of
life have slight occasion or opportunity to develop a facility
in handling ideas, while in another station, they will be
encouraged or required to develop such facility, slight,
moderate or marked as it may be, to its utmost capacity.
A may be learned and studious, but not particularly
bright, B bright but ignorant; or A may go forward
as a child by the push of native precocity, and B
progress by diligent forcing. In brief, the difficulty in
the differentiation of men in terms of their composite in-
tellectual qualities — as revealed and yet concealed in their
expressions — forms the central difficulty of an applied
psychology. It explains why in the absence of any such
body of knowledge, at once authoritative and adequate, we
are thrown back upon the tests of the accredited callings
and the everyday demands of the vocational and the avoca-
tional life, of the powers of adjustment to them, the sue-

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 297

cess in utilizing conventions and expressing individuality
through them [12]. All this we recognize as a highly ar-
tificial test, a specialized composite one, with the factors
merged beyond ready analysis. The transfer of the terms
of individual differences from differences of capacity (which
we seek) to differences of achievement (which we find) in
a sense abandons the quest, and in so far expresses the limi-
tations of the present status of individual psychology. It
in no manner weakens confidence in the reality of the under-
lying differences as expressive of psychological capacities,
nor in their practical operation. There is no doubt that men
differ in the entire range of intellectual aptitudes. Talents
are real; the inequalities of men furnish the basis of spe-
cialization and the efficient organization of the manifold
work of the world. To test and express the foundations of
these differences and to supply available formulae for their
application to actual needs sets the programme of a voca-
tional psychology. Such considerations recognize that op-
portunity, encouragement, education as well as native gift,
are responsible for the notable differences of men in prob-
lem-solving proficiencies as exercised. The demand of the
environment as well as the quality of mind is expressed
in the achievement. Beliefs, ideas, cultures, systems of
thought, philosophies, separate men widely; but such
divergences are largely accounted for in terms of nurtural
influences, as the molding force of the environment. The
regulation of life by such intellectual products is itself so
high-grade and artificial a process, that the differentia-
tions which it imposes are dominantly of a derivative order.
None the less we are convinced by a conclusive though ir-
regular mass of evidence that mental acumen and all the
several ingredients of general intelligence, are variously
distributed. With this conclusion we readily assimilate
a similar view of the varieties of energy and the volitional
support of action.
We thus return to the consideration of mental energy as

298 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

a differentiating factor of the human endowment. It com-
bines readily with the intellectual pursuits. Where dis-
tinction recognizes the goal and ingenuity points the way
and consideration safeguards the advance, energy sustains
the movement. Each supports the other; and the differ-
entiation lies in the issue of which is master and which is
man. Originality and initiative are complementary phases
of individuality. Yet to have an idea, and to have the per-
sistence to energize it readily and efficiently, diverge; for
such inequality of impulse underlies the distinction of the
theoretical and the practical turn of mind. Ardor of pur-
suit, reflecting native strength of appeal, is temperamental
and in that relation specialized ; it attaches to the strength
of endowment; our best energies go to our favorite occu-
pations. Energy and ardor, strenuosity or persistence, is
turned by native bent to the expression in which such bent
finds satisfaction; it grows by what it feeds upon. Fur-
thermore, the social setting supplies the road to travel on
as well as the friction to be overcome in locomotion. There
is a rivalry of expression among the several impulses im-
posed by endowment, in which temperamental ardor may
decide ; and there is a further contest between such impulses
from within and the molding forces from without. The
assertiveness of native bent must rise above the neutral
tone as above the average capacity in one respect or an-
other; and, again, individuality emerges and measures its
strength in the resistive reaction to circumstance. Com-
positely the individuality — combining energy and capacity
— utilizes while yet it surmounts the standard patterns of
endeavor. It becomes clear in this view why originality is
the common though indefinite expression of the tempera-
mental trend ; why conventional conformity marks the com-
monplace.

Yet energy may be applied in the rank and file, or in
leadership, or as a free lance. Energy applied under a
strong motive and an independent one is intellectually more

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 299

significant and dramatically more interesting. But energy
may and must go into dull hard work as well. Drudgery
is more or less inevitable. The natural situations still
serve as remote patterns. The will to prevail leads to the
will to succeed, and intellectual success depends largely
upon the grasp of conceptions, the loyalty to ideals and
persistence in their pursuit. Possibly the largest differ-
ence among men, speaking pragmatically, is this of energy
and its emotional counterpart, courage; the orbit of
achievement is determined by energy as well as by capacity.
Where capacity is nearly equalized and competitions pro-
ceed without handicap, the touch of the will, the added
vigor of energy, persistence, steadiness, commonly deter-
mines the winner. That strenuosity as well as its emotion-
alized support in courage or confidence may go with feeble
capacity is quite familiar, but does not disturb the true
value of ''will" quality; the lack of balance between them,
and their wayward expressions are strikingly illustrated in
the abnormal phases of temperament. Morality recognizes
the ' * will ' ' factor by strengthening right knowing by right
doing; it makes its strongest appeal to the will. Flabbi-
ness of purpose, a lapse toward indifference, failure of in-
terest, mere inertia, combine with or may be an index of
feebleness of energy, or lack of persistence, to mar what
their vigorous presence might creditably or nobly make.
Right action is the temperamental meeting point of the will
and the emotions; it sets the problem of the regulation of
desire. It involves more than energy in that it implies
intensity of motive; it is expressed in the qualities of en-
thusiasm, ambition, concentration, devotion, will; in, a
measure it reflects at once the ardor and the direction of
purpose. For constancy of command of resources, the in-
spiration of imaginative readiness, the warmth of vital in-
terest, still require the consummation of sustained effort
to ripen into achievement. Ardor of pursuit is tempera-
mental, is strongly nurtured in the interplay of natural

300 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

impulse and the rivalry of imposed pursuits; when ma-
tured and disciplined and directed toward acquired pro-
fessional activities it makes for large achievement. Even
in its abnormal expression, in devotion to fads and fancies
and extravagant views and positions, it retains a significant
clew to temperament and may redeem an otherwise ordi-
nary range of endowment. It is compatible with narrow-
ness of outlook and insensibility to the wider appeals
addressed to the complex phases of one's psychology. It
supports the singleness of purpose that may be heroic or
narrowing, even blinding. For loftiness of aim stands
higher in the appraisal of human endeavor than mere te-
nacity without reference to the values of the activity in
which it is enlisted. Scale as well as composition enter
into the proportions of achievement as of endowment.

The determination of individual differences in terms of
energy (or of courage) is affected by similar and yet more
marked difficulties than those that attach to the considera-
tion of intelligence. We cannot readily supply motives to
induce the ''will" quality or to arouse its presence. The
tests of life are alone adequate ; and observation and analy-
sis in the ordinary range of responsiveness supply, as in
the distinctions of temperamental variation, the available
data. Yet we are not without resources in the experi-
mental field. Fatigue is the constant expression of the
limitations of the will; and the failure of attention is its
most significant organic as well as psychic index. In a
sense the problem of the will is to supply effective stimuli
when the natural ones pale, to continue interest by sup-
port of purpose or duty or the stress of necessity, when the
task becomes tedious or rival invitations tempt. Fatigue
is constantly to be reckoned with, and mental fatigue par-
ticularly. Thought itself as a specialized and sustained
process is an unnatural procedure, while feeling and action
are direct and natural. The thoughtful life is the artificial
life: hence the difficulty of sustaining endeavor at a high

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 301

pitch, and the inevitable fatigue of attention; hence the
necessity of reducing processes to a mechanical facilitation
in which they may be pursued with a lax attention ; hence
the shortness of hours of work under strain; hence the
constant desire for varied entertainment: the short story,
the condensed paragraph, the brief address, the quick ac-
tion and rapid dialogue of the drama, the change of occu-
pation in school periods, the shifts of routine. Concentra-
tion and rapid dialogue of the drama, the change of occu-
acquisitions, and are uncertainly exercised at the best.
Ability without power of attention and application is vain ;
concentration implies both ; it implies that natural distract-
ability has been overcome. Maturity implies a control of
longer shifts of attention supported by acquired interests.
The study of mental fatigue and of the control of atten-
tion, even in artificial tasks, reveals significant qualities of
mind; they have proved to be among the most helpful of
differentiations in ''individual psychology." They are so
because they are intimately related to the capacity to
acquire and control rather than to the bare evidence of
facilitated acquisitions.

Capacity and energy furnish the composite criteria of both
having resources and commanding them. This relation at
once suggests the temperamental basis of appreciation and
control. For in the equation that unites them is expressed
the condition under which capacity comes to achievement.
There is a strong impression that a pronounced tempera-
ment, when brought to its keenest expression in genius, is
irregular, bound up with uncertain mood, is a fitful spark,
an occasional glow, rather than a constant flame ; and with
it is contrasted the modest but dependable irradiation of
a steady talent. To this difference — along with the closely
related factor of energy and endurance — is often referred
the largest discrepancy between endowment and achieve-
ment: the promise feebly fulfilled, the acknowledged abil-
ity and good parts that leave a disappointingly slender

302 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

result, capital lacking the spirit of investment to yield
income. Across the larger intermediate spans of endow-
ment this relation obtains in less pronounced degree and
furnishes a real factor in the personal equation. Modes
and periods of labor, subjection to or freedom from a
routine, strength and manner of control, determine the
profit of endeavor, and are correlated with its quality.
The composite demands upon the intellectual powers as
well as upon the energies by which we live must be con-
sidered. The personal self and the professional self, the
vocational and the avocational self must come to an under-
standing, to an adjustment of their several claims. What
is peculiarly significant in the contribution of the intellec-
tual bent — ^in the life of reason — is that it confers a deper-
sonalized endeavor, and thereby substitutes acquired,
transferred, elaborate outlets of trends, for their direct,
primary, natural sources. Reason, at the outset supporting
the emotions, in the end controls them, and utilizes their
energy for new purposes.

The problem of temperament remains that of gauging
what men are and do by and through endowment; the
study of individual differences attempts to reduce to meas-
ured statement the bases, distributions, and correlations of
the differences of endowment. Their pursuit under the
available resources of psychology involves a composite pro-
cedure, which the course of this chapter has served to illus-
trate. It yields less definite conclusions than those growing
out of a more confident type of ** character study," but its
conclusions are checked by scientific considerations; that
these impose limitations of statement testifies to the logical
virtue of caution. The admitted complexity of the prob-
lem makes the road from theory to practice far more diffi-
cult and indirect than would result from the unsupported
simplification of older views. Facts without interpreta-
tion are hazardous; facts forced to an interpretation that
but partially embodies their vitality distort the perspective ;

TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 303

a compromise procedure that goes as far as possible to ex-
press the claims of theory and practice alike seems the
profitable one. Such at all events is the guiding principle
of this attempt to reinstate an old term in a new meaning,
and to supply the principles of interpretation upon which
cautious application may in due course proceed. Tem-
perament remains a significant expression of the sources of
human quality, possibly its central expression, and as such
must enter into every equation, however expressed, which
proposes to set forth the significant individual differences
of men [13],

CHAPTER VI
ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND

Mental abnormalities may be viewed as the assets and
liabilities of variant or specialized temperaments, or as the
irregular expressions of normal endowments under excep-
tional strain. The degree of normality, of sanity in one
sense of the word, is tested by the violence of the shock
that can be withstood without wrecking the psychic founda-
tions; but the *' shock" itself and its consequences, what-
ever the inducing cause, are determined by native sus-
ceptibility. Abnormal tendencies of mind are dispositions
toward extreme or irregular functioning, marked enough
to appear in the ordinary run of situations or at the more
critical periods of development or stress. The mode of in-
adequacy or irregularity is as significant as the setting in
which it appears; the two phases direct the study of ab-
normal tendencies [1].

Temperamental abnormalities imply an organic condi-
tioning; they bring to expression functional peculiarities
of the nervous system. The limited knowledge of their
operation is important; the more extensive knowledge of
their issues constitutes the body of data of direct signifi-
cance for the study of character. Minor transient varia-
tions of mental attitude connected with organic disturb-
ance fall within the ordinary experience of the normal-
minded. The oscillations of nervous tone and the slighter
fluctuations of the metabolism condition mood; recurrent
susceptibility to them determines moodiness — an uncer-
tainty and irregularity of (sensory and) emotional sus-
ceptibility and of command of mental resources. Disturb-

304

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 305

ances of a more violent nature may turn the disposition or
carry the responsiveness so far from its ordinary channels
as to verge upon the abnormal. Bodily ailment, by en-
feebling or deranging the nervous basis of adjustment, in-
duces mental complications — anxiety, despondency, irri-
tability, and their kindred disabilities and distresses.
Pain in itself is psychically discomposing: headache in-
capacitates; excessive heat prostrates; and a peculiarly
comprehensive alteration of interest and attitude attends
that desperate wretchedness bearing no more formidable
name than seasickness. The conventional inquiries:
How do you feel? and How do you do? are suggestive;
the ''feeling well" or ''not feeling well" is the report to
consciousness — doubtless somatic in source — of the state of
the psychic barometer. Although the welfare of "feeling"
and "doing" is a matter of psychic disposition, the in-
quiry is commonly answered in terms of bodily health.
The psychic expressions of the "feeling well," the eu-
phoria, though in part directly physiological — such as the
ease of breathing, energy, alertness, appetite, keen sensory
zest — are "felt" in the developed psychological medium of
the emotions, the depression, the lassitude, the vague dis-
tress, the apprehension, the irritability, the uncertainty of
self-control, the sense of effort to keep up appearances, the
wandering of attention, the lapse of interest, the general
' ' out of sorts. ' ' The fundamental place of the emotions in
psychic regulation is in no aspect more definitely indi-
cated than in their primacy as indices and media of the
euphoria of mind and body [2].

What is conspicuously true of the direct impress of
physiological upon psychological condition is more subtly
true of indirect influences. Above all are opinions, reflect-
ing the rational nature, supposed to be steadfast and mod-
erately immune from such "somatic" motive. Yet there
is no "pure" thought; "the driest light of the intellect is
colored in infinite ways." The tone of opinion as of at-

306 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

titudes is emotionally, even organically tinged. It is upon
this principle that ''things'' are allowed to lie in the mind
over night, to profit by the light both of the evening and
of the morning reflection. Corresponding to the minor
oscillations of organic welfare are the psychological shifts
of mood and capacity. Observing our own fluctuations, we
await the favoring mood and find the ** going" easy or
sluggish; or observing another, we conclude that so-and-so
is not quite himself today, implying that a below-par con-
dition has impaired the usual poise of his reactions. As
the mental attitude affects the quality and prominence of
the bodily symptoms, it illustrates the mind's influence
upon the body; the reverse influence of the bodily condi-
tions upon mental state is equally familiar. Whatever
may be the pertinence of the expressions, their reference
is clear and indicates different aspects of a unitary pro-
cedure. When we are urged to smile, or not to look so
down-in-the-mouth, the appeal is made to the bodily at-
titude to affect the mood ; when we are invited to cheer up
by thinking of pleasant things, the procedure is reversed,
and our bodily distress is lightened by dismissing our men-
tal woes or worries. When we resort to stimulants, to the
**cup that cheers," or seek to restore poise by prodding
the impeded functions by means of drugs and exercise to
freer elimination of the body's clogging toxins, we aim to
affect the mental tone through direct physiological stimuli.
The unity of the process affords an inlet through either
approach. Bodily welfare is so insistent that its demands
upon the nervous system oust all lesser concerns, which
are in fact the more leisurely occupations of an adjusted
condition. Just as under stress of situation, the finer feel-
ings are apt to reveal their superficial hold and bare the
natural man underneath, so disease bares the vital necessi-
ties of organic satisfaction and makes all else secondary.
The lesser fluctuations of condition have a like motive
source. One is not in the mood to enjoy a concert, or a

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 307

picture gallery, or a comedy, when in physical distress,
when fatigued, or hungry, or uncomfortable; and in the
utter apathy of digestive trouble, even the strongest in-
terests and desires pale.

The more permanent inroads of disease and invalidism
modify the set of responsiveness, the tone of disposition, in
which are read the marks of character. Deviation from
physiological health affects the same order of change . as
temperamental conditioning; it is in a sense part of the
same liability. The natural changes of life enforce the
same principle. Mental aging is the alteration of interest
and mood and responsiveness conditioned by subtle or-
ganic invasion. The alteration of character at the period
of late adolescence is rapid and marked, because it ac-
companies nature's profoundest somatic redisposition. The
psychological conversion that then occurs is not an act of
will, but when real and deep involves and is prompted by
organic maturing. The shedding of the milk-teeth to make
room for their permanent successors (including the belated
wisdom-teeth) offers an organic parallel to the laborious
and deep-seated transformation of the adolescent. Nature
makes a more serviceable set of teeth by two ventures than
by one; the character is likewise twice formed but upon
the same foundation. Throughout, conduct and the dis-
position that shapes it are organically, and by the same
token, temperamentally conditioned. The *' adolescence*'
is a pronounced temperamental product ; yet in each adoles-
cent the native liability persists through the reconstruc-
tive process by which temperamental trends are redisposed,
and the traits of character given their more permanent set.
The true man, the true woman, emerges in and above the
stresses of growing adjustment. The hazards are greatest
at periods of organic change. The abnormal tendencies
then dominant appear in large measure as adolescent lia-
bilities. If we were in the habit of insuring ourselves
against mental losses or misadventures, including the minor

308 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

distresses, maladjustments, extravagances and unprofitable
investments of our minds, the risk and the rate would rise
decidedly for the adolescent period. Yet because such
developmental adjustment is an integral phase in the
original nature of man, the successful issues of normal
maturing constitute the vital assets of a full-grown per-
sonality. It would be an inadequate and a sad life that is
deprived of a true childhood, and no less so would be the
life that fails in due measure of its maturing privileges.
The venture is inherent in the issue. A similarly sig-
nificant period of increased liability is that of the change
of life, when the primary purposes of nature have reached
and passed their function. The genetic unfoldment runs
its course, and stamps the ages of man. Maturity of func-
tion extends to all phases of capacity to meet adequately
all demands of situation. Maturity is centered about the
activities of sex; the critical periods for the life of the
sexual functions become the recognizable foci of the psy-
chological orbit. They become so not exclusively by virtue
of the directive strength of impulses radiating from the
sexual functions, but collaterally by virtue of their stand-
ard position in the genetic series. The most normal en-
dowment is subject to large fluctuations of mood and ca-
pacity, which, in addition to their momentary occasions,
are related to the stages of growth and the conditions of
the environment. It is the maintenance of these fluctua-
tions within fairly prescribed limits that constitutes nor-
mality ; the liabilities of temperament remain, however dis-
ciplined, however controlled. The abnormal tendencies
are harbored in the relations fundamental to human life,
indispensable to the expressions of endowment. How they
reach expression is the subject of the present inquiry.
The more general consideration of the conditioning of psy-
chological expression by physiological fluctuation furnishes
the keynote for the movement of the ''abnormal" theme.
The conception of abnormal tendencies of mind as vio-

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 309

lent or pervasive stresses and strains upon the nervous sys-
tem, expanding normal variations of mood and attitude and
expression into abnormal ones, affords but a partial view.
It is supplemented by the conception of the abnormal as
the revelation of inherent weaknesses of structure. The
mental fabric is prone to give way at the seams and thus
disclose the natural lines of composition, the inherent frail-
ties of temperament, including the mode of meeting the
genetic changes. By reason of weakness of one type or an-
other, the maturing of functions and the decline of func-
tions, as well as the standard streams of responsiveness,
may not follow a normal course but diverge from it. Cer-
tain abnormal mental tendencies reflect distinctly the proc-
esses of faulty maturing. Similarly the disintegration at
the close of life, the manner of one's wearing out, may
proceed normally, or in its deviations reveal inherent
weaknesses of temperament. Premature arrest or exces-
sive enfeeblement of functions appears as the mental coun-
terpart of degenerative changes in the delicate tissues of
the brain. Yet another aspect of the common relation
may be added to complete the basis of interpretation. It
is that of the undue proportion, the excessive growth of
one trend in relation to others. Disproportion is pre-
sumably the most common liability, since it is itself in-
volved in the specialization which the temperamental em-
phasis and the increasing demands of the mode of living
require of the nervous system. The hypertrophy of func-
tion and the consequent maladjustment, the warped re-
sponsiveness to the ordinary appeals of life, constitute fa-
miliar aspects of abnormal tendencies. The resulting in-
terpretation combines the values of these several modes of
approach. The abnormal issue follows in virtue of the na-
tive liability, in virtue of the inducing strain of occasion
or circumstance, and in virtue of the extreme hold which
one phase of responsiveness has acquired. The lack of poise,
the unbalanced tendency, the disqualification, is a com-

310 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

posite product ; its composition follows the scheme of normal
temperamental liability.

The illumination of normal and abnormal is a mutual
one. The abnormal is made more intelligible as the nor-
mal in exaggeration; normal deviations suggest the ab-
normal in miniature. Foibles and failings and all man-
ner of entanglements and disqualifications, present in mi-
nor degree in normal persons, have their significance re-
enforced in the light of the exaggerated appearances of
the abnormal; without this clew they would escape ob-
servation or lose their meaning when displayed in their
miniature counterparts. The abnormal forms a psycho-
logical microscope — ^the specimens, the experimental varia-
tions provided by nature. Yet abnormalities are the
issues of the same general orders of psychic components as
determine normal composition. The underlying faults,
the deeper fractures, must be considered as well as the
superficial fissures to which they give rise. The latter
are the readily observable issues at the surface; they are
the concrete data of study; but their interpretation de-
pends upon the principles of genetic and of abnormal psy-
chology. Not vagaries of mind, but types of mental de-
viations— with reference to their origins and to their nor-
mal correlates — are significant.

The orders of human quality fundamental to normal
character — the sensibilities, the emotions, the sentiments,
the direction and control of energies, the adjustment to
situation, the intellectual elaboration — equally underlie ab-
normal tendencies. Abnormal action is not the result of a
different set of laws; nor has it any different source for
its impulses or different avenues for its expressions ; aliena-
tion implies an altered or peculiar perspective of combina-
tion, a different interaction of the same components. The
abnormal mind follows the same trend of elaboration from
sensibility to emotion to sentiments — all intellectually and
socially developed — but in varied handicap and distortion.

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 311

The abnormal characters in the concrete appear in both
the idiot and the genius, in the criminal and the degenerate,
in the hysterical and the neurasthenic, the melancholic and
the maniacal, the faddist and the ''crank," the tyrant and
the miser, and a host of other exemplars from the gallery of
human frailty, perversity, or eccentricity. They are one
and all the victims of their nervous inheritance. The
presentation of types of deviation proceeds upon the prin-
ciples operative in normal distribution and development,
of which the abnormal tendencies represent extreme de-
partures. Accordingly, the survey proceeds to determine
such tendencies, not by way of the more pronounced in-
sanities— though finding instruction therein — but by way
of the lesser disqualifications that bear upon the vicissi-
tudes of character.

The psychological complexes, summarizing leading
trends in the mental composition, have been presented un-
der the distinctive temperaments interpreted as types of
impressionability in relation to conduct. Considered in
terms of defect and excess and of irregularity of relation,
they reach their abnormal expressions. Of these defect
is the least engaging. Let the phlegmatio inaction reach
an extreme; let the apathy of sensibility and emotion and
the inertia of expression so reduce the mental life that it
burns with a dim, flickering flame, and the condition is one
of feeble-mindedness in various degrees. The extreme re-
duction of the indispensable substrata of human mentality
— impressionability through sensibility and emotion, and
an associated motor responsiveness — almost dehumanizes,
The subnormal in degree becomes the abnormal in type.
The dullness of sensibility, the obtuseness of feeling and
imagination, the impaired control, become the most critical
traits [3] ; the resulting condition is as significant in its
intellectual lack as in its emotional sterility. It is the tem-
perament of the crudely defective.

It is, however, notable that the stronger impulses of

312 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

gratification and self-assertion commonly grow with the
bodily growth, and come forward with a far weaker asser-
tion of the offsetting traits that guide and restrain conduct.
Through such impulsiveness and unrestraint, the high-grade
defectives become at once the inefficient and the socially
troublesome or dangerous classes. So distinctive is the type
that a special term — the moron — ^has been adopted for the
high-grade feeble-minded individual, who in ordinary rela-
tions may not be recognized as abnormal, but who is so lim-
ited in capacity, so wayward in expression, socially as well
as temperamentally so unfit, that the exposure to the stresses
and temptations of modern life is his inevitable undoing.
The disqualification is hereditarily imposed ; it offers a prac-
tical problem, for which a psychological interpretation is in-
dispensable [4]. There is, indeed, no phase of mental de-
viation quite free from the factor of limitation, which con-
stitutes the central determination of defective tempera-
ments. The normal limitations of endowment pass imper-
ceptibly into abnormal ones; weaknesses become deficien-
cies. The brevity of their consideration implies no disre-
gard of their practical import. Educational measures find
in them persistent problems, and industrial and social or-
ganization no less so. For the central purpose of the pres-
ent argument they are rather barren of enlightenment.

Excess as the '' supernormal " presents no simple for-
mula. Considered as an emphasis upon the primary fac-
tors of reaction, it develops upon the basis of the choleric
temperament, which consists in an excitable sensibility com-
bined with eager responsiveness, the latter dominating.
Such violent quality is distinctive of passion and of mani-
acal outbreak. If anger is a brief madness, the developed
madness is a protracted anger — an extreme expression of
the choleric temperament in its abnormal issue. The vio-
lence grows out of a limitation of the field of endeavor and
interests. Through it mania is affiliated with monomania,
which is the exclusion from the mental and emotional hori-

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 313

zon of all but the limited concerns which monopolize atten-
tion or disturb emotional poise. During the fit of anger
for the moment, as during agitated mental obsession for a
longer period, the perspective of values is lost. Expres-
sions are exaggerated, extreme actions carried through in
haste, if not repented at leisure ; words and deeds show the
loss of control as well as the violence of feeling that ousts
reason in the hot pursuit of a narrowed purpose. Energy
is as little considered as judgment; ''working like mad" is
not a vain expression.

The abnormal implies more than a temperamental ex-
treme; deviation involves disturbance of proportion in the
cheek and the offset of one impulse, one relation, one trait
by another. Mechanical analogies are helpful but inade-
quate. High-pressure energies take their quality from the
organization of the impulses which prompt them, but which
they likewise serve. The abnormality lies not barely in
their presence but in the service in which they are enlisted.
The imperious will, brooking no opposition, may have as
opposite issues as a persistent pursuit of a worthy and dif-
ficult project, and a reckless unrestrained passion of indul-
gence or destruction. The imperious pursuit, lacking the
control of reason, lacking also its outlook and the offset of
sympathies, degenerates to the abnormal; truly the mad-
ness does not lack method, but is, however, not thus dom-
inated, but hemmed in by narrow, limited, blinding impul-
sion. The choleric heedless outburst, always narrow-gauged,
is its milder variety. As a frailty of temperament it es-
capes the dominion in which normally it should find re-
straint; in its abnormal expressions, the dominion is too
far abolished to be restored. The psychological mechanism
of the choleric outburst, as of one-ideaed enthusiasm, finds
its formula more explicitly enunciated — with all the terms
writ large — in the compelling obsessions of mania ; the lia-
bility of maniacal dethronement finds its initial clew in the
disqualification of the ardent ''choleric" disposition or

314 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

attack — the ''brain storm" that sweeps over a predisposed
mind to its momentary undoing [5].

More commonly than excess are disproportion and en-
tanglement in the adjustment of the factors of responsive-
ness, the clews to the most interesting abnormalities — those
most closely allied to divergent temperaments. The too
slight dwelling upon consideration with a large attraction
for action forms a typical variety of folly, which is the
characteristic failing of the oversanguine temperament.
This temperament is ever imperfectly sobered by experi-
ence; it indulges the spirit of venture, prone to extrava-
gance; it is responsible for the confident optimism of the
fortunate and the reckless, of the healthy and the young.
*'In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as
fail." The sensibilities and emotions are keen only in
their direct support of action, are felt mainly as prompt-
ings to activity, and are reenforced through the pleasure of
activity and the excitement thereof. Health and vigor open
the motor pathways to the abandon that allies itself with
the optimistic mood ; there is little sense of impediment, of
obstacles and hesitations, but in their place confidence, en-
ergy, daring, ambition, a sense of importance.

The abnormal expression of the temperamental trend is
reached when the inner prompting fails of any adequate
support of resources, material or mental. A state of in-
toxication, literal or figurative, answers to the formula.
Alcohol cheers, expands, releases restraints, drives away
fatigue, dull care, and sober consideration, as well as the
hesitations that make for sobriety. This easement makes
way for vaunting, elation, a sense of power, self-assertion,
extravagance, grandiose projects — all inviting to ardent ex-
pression. Whether the resulting action is foolish, indis-
creet, and extravagant, or brutal, violent and criminal, is in
turn an issue of disposition. Exuberance and violence are
near allied, or separated only by the divisions of disposi-
tion. In either case restraints fall away, sensibilities and

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 315

their intellectual counterpart, considerations, are dulled;
the primitively human, too commonly unrefined and bru-
tally self-assertive, comes forward. Much as the sub-
lime and the ridiculous, ordinarily opposite poles, with an
occasional short-circuit flash between them, have a certain
proximity, so a similar relation obtains between insight and
the occasional drug-released inspiration, the febrile toxemia
that in high-strung natures brings to life the difficult po-
tencies of the genius — ^the superman in the making. In
the more commonly resulting disorganizing rather than re-
organizing tendency, the release of the normal tension be-
tween impulse and conduct, gives rein to cruder, less
schooled dispositions, lays bare the underman.

The principle that an abnormal play of the great sub-
jective inciters — sensibilities, emotions and imagination in
unrestraint — makes directly for mental and motor extrava-
gance of an expansive, sanguine tone, finds a salient con-
summation in the symptoms of a well defined pathological
complex — that of general paralysis. The diagnosis of gen-
eral paralysis implies a specific disorder indicative of a
degenerative process in the higher nervous centers; the
point of interest is that in its course, it exhibits the patho-
logical counterpart of certain phases of a temperament.
General paralysis takes its name from the motor impair-
ment. Its onset is as seemingly trivial as its course is
ominous. Along with slight impediments of speech appear
equally slight emotional and intellectual disorders ; there is
a general coarseness and exaggeration of the thoughts, feel-
ings and conduct, corresponding to the lack of sensory and
motor delicacy in discrimination ; and at first there is often
great overactivity, associated with, and due to, loss of con-
trol. Motor impairment and mental excitement increase as
the brain-tissue is invaded. *' There are very frequently
ideas of grandeur, and Baudelaire's muse, as described by
Swinburne, with deep division of prodigious breasts, is the
characteristic goddess of the general paralytic." A discern,-

316 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ing writer concludes his description of this typically mascu-
line disorder thus : ' ' Such in the rough are the fundamental
characteristics frequently, though by no means invariably,
associated in the victims of general paralysis. Regarded
as a whole, the type is characteristic as much in what it
lacks as in what it possesses. General intelligence and
common sense, ambition and energy, sociability and a large
capacity for enjoyment, a firm belief in one's self, and a
preference for handsome women are all eminently sane
characteristics according to our present standards. On the
other hand, some admirable qualities are notably wanting —
qualities which make for a higher control to temper the
tendency to excess, the selfishness, and the restlessness."
The resemblance to the early stage of alcoholic intoxication
is conspicuous. The tremor, thickened speech, uncertain
movement, coarsened sensibilities, diminution of motor and
moral control, exuberance, extravagant thought and action,
as well as the special susceptibility to sexual excitement, are
common to both states. General paralytics and those dis-
posed thereto, or headed in that direction, present a com-
mon range of character. Intelligent, active, restless, am-
bitious, they drift to the cities and high living. * * As a rule
they are well nourished, and not of a neurotic, phthisical,
or otherwise delicate appearance. On the contrary they
are spoken of as men of 'strong constitution,' full-blooded
and vigorous, well favored men. In short they are good
animals" [6]. The type is *'that of men commonly called
'good.' They are described as men who 'would do nobody
a bad turn,' 'kind-hearted,' 'generous,' 'hard-working,'
sometimes even 'conscientious' "; but their view of life is
essentially a selfish, non-moral view usually devoid of re-
ligious interests. "The characteristic general paralytic is
a man with a large belief in himself, restless, ambitious, and
with a relentless desire for the good things of this life. ' '

General paralysis represents the tragic outcome of a lia-
bility of like order to that inherent in the extreme expres-

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 317

sions of a temperament. Obviously the possession of such
a temperament does not make one a candidate for general
paralysis — far from it. The relation implies only that the
symptoms of such specific impairment offer an impressive
enlargement, an exaggerated picture of features recogniza-
ble in more normal proportions in temperamental expres-
sion. There is a foundation in general human nature, and
yet more so, in this predisposed type, for an excessive and
distinctive ''psychosis." The outcome of a career dom-
inated by such a temperament, far from being tragic, may
retain to the end the joyous tone of successful comedy, or
stirring drama — a little vainglorious, self-important, tend-
ing to overdo, not quite disillusioned, active, hopeful, confi-
dent, strenuous, masterful to the drop of the curtain. The
type is well established in the vicissitudes of character.
Like all temperamental trends it has its due compensations
— its fortes. For the moment it illustrates the close kin-
ship of traits inherent in the varied emphases of the com-
ponents of response, to their pathological expression.

Excesses of sensibility, by way of the complications of
response which they entail, offer the largest variety of minor
deviations from normal functioning. Melancholia ex-
presses one of its emotional moods, one of its conspicuous
issues. The exaggerated sensibility is expressed directly
in hyperesthesia — an oversensitiveness not merely to the
pain-pleasure susceptibilities of sense-excitation, but even
more characteristically to an intensive emotional absorp-
tion [7]. To be painfully affected by slight stimuli or by
those ordinarily indifferent, to be unable to dismiss from
consciousness minor irritations, is a germinal trait of the
abnormal nervous temperament; it is popularly recognized
in the tendency for ''things" — as variable as life's irrita-
tions— "to get on one's nerves." The symptom is charac-
teristic of any lapse from normal adjustment, and is the
common response under the discomposure of fatigue. Sim-
ilarly conditioned is the hesitation of timidity, which in its

318 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

social aspect becomes shyness or more delicately, embar-
rassment— a shrinking from social contacts, or a morbid
apprehension in meeting them. More imaginatively it ap-
pears as dread, a worried emotional anticipation of the un-
pleasant; reflectively it favors brooding, and through this
course reaches the depressed tone of melancholia. Its
motor aspect is vitally significant, though in part a negative
symptom like taciturnity, unresponsiveness. The overem-
phasis of the sensibility-emotional stage in relation to ac-
tion makes for a hesitant irresolution: **the native hue of
resolution all sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought."
For practical issues resolution is the native hue, and sensi-
bilities and emotions serve their normal function in sup-
port of action. When they entangle it, impede it, thwart
its consummation, and thus *'lose the name of action," the
condition approaches the abnormal.

The symptoms of ''nervousness" — which is the most gen-
eral term for the irregularities of response thus indicated
— shift as the irregularity affects more particularly the
heightened sensibility or the impaired responsiveness. The
former develops to the hyperesthesias and the phobias of
various types; the latter take the form of will im-
pediments— aboulias and dysboulias, as they are termed.
They arise in many varieties of conditions from extreme
fatigue to pronounced insanities. In one form the defect
of will is dominantly an enfeeblement of energy or a slug-
gishness in overcoming the psychic inertia; languor is the
subjective symptom of such inertia. The difficulty in bring-
ing the resolution to get up in the morning to an effective
pass is a common if transitory instance; procrastination is
of the same kin. More characteristically the irresolution
expresses an undue prominence of conflicting tendencies.
Pros and cons of motive rather than of reasons toss the
mind helplessly and suspend action. Inaction is the easier
route; resolution, seemingly eager, quickly fades away.
DeQuincy cites some personal instances of this condition.

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 319

aggravated by indulgence in opium. Aboulia may become
the specific hesitation of the embarrassment of an alterna-
tive. In an extreme case a victim of such inactivity stood
helpless in a pool of water for lack of decision whether to
take the first step with the right or with the left foot. But
the indecision, which is a hesitant and an elaborate dwell-
ing upon the preliminaries of action, is most apt to be
emotionally induced, may, indeed, have been so in the illus-
tration cited. Emotional depression of direct organic
origin may result in an apathy that cuts off interest and mo-
tive power ; it is then that one does not act because one does
not care. Or again, there may be desire, but it may be re-
pressed by dread, largely an emotional conflict — of which
the popular verdict reports that one has lost ' ' one 's nerve. ' *
There may be too prudential an attitude, too reflective of
pros and cons, a wavering and indecision of a more intel-
lectual order. All are included under ''nervousness,'^ and
all impede action. Quite distinctive, even contrasted, is the
irregularity of relation, in which the very eagerness of sen-
sibility vitalizes impulse and compels action when excite-
ment runs high, and then subsides to the stage of hesitant
restraint — an irregular, spasmodic, impulsive, capricious
behavior. The selection of occasion is always strongly emo-
tional in type, and typically also removed from ready con-
trol. In brief, the course of action in its relation to mo-
tive, impeding or diverting it from the normal flow, is
various; and in these varieties appear typical complexities
of abnormal trend, relate! to a similar nervous instability.
Such trends though distinctive are not isolated; they com-
bine in their abnormal setting with allied tendencies and
form a complex — a type-form of abnormality, to which an
inclusive name becomes attached. The result is a certain
liability — a liability deviating more or less markedly, in this
or in that direction, from the normal one.

For the study of such liabilities the two most instructive
abnormal tendencies, which may be brought within the con-

320 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ception of an exaggerated temperament, are neurasthenia
and hysteria. So common are these as disqualifications
(rather than as disorders) as to justify the term "hysteri-
cal temperament" for the tendency to exhibit the traits
which when exaggerated develop to hysteria ; for those that
similarly reflect neurasthenic traits, ''neurasthenic tem-
perament." The exaggerated issue points back to the un-
derlying source; the mode of breaking down indicates the
inherent liability of the flaw in composition. A tempera-
ment becomes a more or less marked lidhility to a specific
type of abnormal complex. This conception furnishes the
interpretation for minor details of feeling, thinking, and
doing, insignificant in themselves, but by this principle
given a meaning. It bridges the series from the normal to
abnormal, provides a more sympathetic view of the latter,
and suggests [8] a proper educational treatment of like
tendencies when confined to normal limits.

In portraying the neurasthenic temperament, we may
begin with its compensations. If it be true, as Bergson af-
firms, that the future belongs to those who can overwork,
then th6 world will continue to be largely indebted to the
neurasthenically disposed, since such disposition is asso-
ciated with qualities of distinctive worth as well as of pe-
culiar risk. In virtue of the same relations by which a
temperament is a biological emphasis, may it favor an oc-
cupational specialization. Civilization powerfully magni-
fies the intellectual function, and requires favored individ-
uals to specialize upon the pr, blem-solving trends of a
common nature — thus pushing tc their limit a small group
of centers of a brain fashioned primarily for more varied,
less restricted service. The artificial life brings stresses
and strains upon special areas of endowment, and the ab-
normalities represent the resulting liabilities. The assets
of civilization at its higher levels are science, art, inven-
tions, institutions, organizations, which have been contrib-
uted, perfected, and sustained by individuals fitted to spe-

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 321

cialize upon the cognitive and ratiocinative phases of their
endowment ; and this seems in truth to be part of the white
man's burden. The carrying of the burden may entail a
deviation from the natural proportion of function, too
straining for the endowment to bear. A life of lower ten-
sion, of more balanced activities, might well avoid the risk,
but equally fall short of the prize. It is the tensed string
and the bow bent close to the breaking point, that sends
the arrow farthest in its flight ; the lesser strain and shorter
flight are safer. The practical question of how far each
may specialize, utilizing the superiorities while avoiding
the hazards of his temperament, belongs to the practical
wisdom of mental regimen. The present concern is with
the vicissitudes of temperamental tendencies in their in-
clination to abnormal expression.

The neurasthenic complex presents a keen sensibility,
which takes its direction from the specific nature of the
endowment and of the acquired interests. Artists, poets,
musicians, writers, inventors, students, the bearers of re-
sponsibility, all lean heavily upon it. It is in part because
such persons are peculiarly sensitive that they are artists
and creative individualities. It is the strongly toned sensi-
bility that renders them liable to hyperesthesia, irritability,
fluctuations of mood — to shudders as well as, and more
commonly than, to thrills. The irregular disposition of
Bohemianism is a vagrant expression of the liability. Fun-
damentally the neurasthenic temperament is spurred hy
sensibility beyond its energizing capacity. From another
approach one is neurasthenic when tired ; it is more than a
pleasantry that some individuals are born tired. This con-
sideration is important in that, in neglect of it, one may be
tempted to conclude that the neurasthenic liability is in
itself an unmistakable index of unusual powers, with which
such sensibility is in truth associated. No such comforting
conclusion is available. The energizing capacity may by
nature be so limited, so readily disturbed, that an ordinary

322 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

strain is sufficient to disqualify; what remains true is that
the sensitiveness to strain and shock is pronounced. The
occasions of such overstrain are present in the common
vicissitudes of life, and need not imply any undue absorp-
tion in its more difficult adjustments. For all have tasks
to meet and difficulties in meeting them, have desires that
cannot be fulfilled, disappointments that must be borne,
ambitions that must be clipped, crosses that must be car-
ried. The very simplification of life may ''cure," that is,
lessen the risk of, the neurasthenic liability by lowering the
strain and slowing the pace of the emotional and intellectual
demands. Yet the common features of the disqualification
that ensues, when disaster overtakes the disabled mind, may
be turned to a significant psychological lesson.

The symptoms of developed neurasthenia are suggestive.
A most common one is a pathological fatigue; hence the
popular equivalent, ''nervous prostration." Fatigue-pro-
ducers must be measured in terms of emotion as well as of
energy. Worry — an unfavorable condition for work — is
far more wearing than work itself. Disposition determines
the liability to breakdown, however induced; the nervous
system, if overstrained, will react with the typical symp-
toms. The ability to drive the nervous system beyond its
normal limits with disastrous consequences, is part of the
temperamental liability; the fact that these limits may be
subnormal is another part. Ready fatiguability is as char-
acteristic as are the symptoms to which fatigue gives rise.
Of these a vague nervous apprehension — often accompanied
by localized cerebral pain — is most characteristic. The re-
sulting shrinking from effort for fear of its painful conse-
quences, the clouding of consciousness, the feeling of inca-
pacity, make neurasthenia one of the most distressing of
disorders, since the very sensibility from which it flows
aggravates the intensity of its tortures. The exhausted
nerve-centers are aroused only through such painful sense
of effort, and the expenditure of energy is accompanied by

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 323

such overpowering, if vague, apprehension, that distressful
inactivity is alone possible. Under slighter degrees of its
invasion, brief efforts result in the return of menacing sub-
jective symptoms, often relieved in part by set habits of
recreation. Mental confusion attaches to any severe strain
of attention, and all manner of special irritability occurs;
voices, noises, the presence of strangers, or indeed any
draught upon the attention, distresses. Insomnia may com-
plicate the trouble, and the digestive reaction readily be-
comes impaired; for nervous indigestion results from the
reflex effect upon the digestive process, of eating under
conditions of fatigue and excitement. The exhaustion
points to the somatic focus of the neurasthenic impairment ;
its focus in the psychic mechanism is indicated by the tense
sensibilities and troublesome emotions — the hyperesthesia
that is reflected in feebleness and hesitant responsiveness, or
in peevish, querulous irritability.

It will be true of neurasthenia as of other disabilities
viewed as a temperamental bias — ^the tendency of which is
made clear by the symptoms of the pronounced disorder —
that there will be far more numerous instances of lighter
than of serious forms. This is in obedience to the general
law that the proportion of cases of divergence decreases
markedly with an increase of the degree of deviation from
the normal. Very many individuals of neurasthenic tem-
perament do not develop true neurasthenia. The disquali-
fication may call a halt in time, or the warning may be
heeded. Bankruptcy is not inevitable, but in the career
of this type of mental economy made probable. It may be
regarded as a predominantly masculine liability [9]. The
lesser liability of women is in part accounted for by their
protective exhaustibility ; the machine stops before too seri-
ous damage is done.

Among the characteristic symptoms is the pronounced
introspective tendency — the intellectual phase of sensibility.
The mental attitude is excessively subjective. One form of

324 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

such trend is directed to concern for bodily welfare, and
results in a minute attention to symptoms bodily or mental.
Hypochondria is the name for the trait, the foster-parent
of invalidism — an overattention to regimen, a constant pru-
dential attitude toward health and a timid withdrawal from
every slightest risk. For this reason the restraint of a pre-
scribed diet at times defeats its end by the added attention
and the sense of injury attaching to deprivation, which it
invites. Judicious neglect is often the better rule for the
introspectively disposed: hence the grain of truth — a
truth so long as it is offered or accepted in grain doses —
of the cult of disregard of bodily symptoms which, when
stated or practiced in extreme form, approaches the abnor-
mal at another point of its protean contour. Neurasthenics
are apt to suffer from an overconscientiousness of physiol-
ogy, the freedom from which is a mark of health. The
possessor of a perfect digestion is blissfully ignorant that
he has any; the hypochondriac never forgets that he has a
troublesome one. The chief menace of hypochondria lies
in its ingrowing trend, in that it aggravates its own condi-
tion; just as worry over one's insomnia decreases the
chances of going to sleep. The accredited treatment for re-
lief reenforces the diagnosis. A little venture, fair uncon-
cern, wise disregard for symptoms, small tasks successfully
accomplished, give courage and confidence. Action and
objective interests help vastly. Outdoor life with a succes-
sion of small occupations that occupy without straining,
freedom from worry — all cultivate motor expression and
decrease the subjective symptoms, thus restoring a natural
balance. Back to nature means back to health. In the
scheme of nature, action preponderates and dominates
above reflection, which is but its support. Too violent a
reversal of the natural order exposes to the penalty of dis-
ordered function. The most characteristic violation of the
natural relation through which sensibilities stand as the
supports of action, is their overstrain, whether in emotional

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 325

or intellectual service. The neurasthenic symptoms repre-
sent nature's protest against or penalty for too extreme a
deviation, too exclusive and intense a specialization.

The neurasthenic complex has a rich development on its
more distinctly intellectual side. The bodily symptoms
may then be slight, the mental ones constituting the focus
of the trouble. This variety may properly be termed psy-
chasthenia. It may concentrate upon a few points of least
resistance, of special vulnerability, selected partly by the
organic cause, partly by accident of situation. The specific
phobias arise in that emotion seeks an outlet through an
intellectual attachment; vague apprehension settles about
more definite fears without losing its peculiar organic
alarm and its vascular and motor accompaniment. The
physical symptoms, such as the trembling of fear, are less
prominent than the mental ones, which may amount to
psychic paralysis; such is stage-fright in nervous individ-
uals. Articulation, as the outlet of a fine intellectual ex-
pression, reveals the difficulty; the self-terrified actor may
be rooted to the spot, tongue-tied, or make the movements
of his speech without vocalizing the words. Organic shy-
ness does the same for children — a common issue but a dif-
ferent setting. The voice, always a sensitive index of emo-
tion, betrays the maladjustment keenly. The specialized
phobias may take such forms as the ill-at-easeness in the
presence of strangers or of crowds; dread of open places
or of sitting under a gallery, or more vaguely of impend-
ing disaster, if venturing beyond the familiar environment.
The details are but slightly significant ; the fear attaches it-
self to situations in which some remote anxiety may be real,
or to a situation, such as the social one, that readily induces
embarrassment if the individual is not fully prepared to
meet it. The fixation-point of the phobia is not a wholly
accidental, but yet a merely incidental feature of the psy-
chasthenic failing, which spreads over a large area of con-
duct and renders the adjustment to the ordinary run of

326 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

situations, particularly to socially complicated situations,
difficult and abnormal. By reason of these and allied diffi-
culties and of their setting in traits of responsiveness — of
which they are the unfortunate liabilities — ^this neuras-
thenic mode of responsiveness becomes a type-form of dif-
ferential psychology.

The difficulties, entanglements, perplexities of the neuras-
thenic disqualifications picture what happens when the
psychic *' going" becomes subjectively rough and hazardous
because of the overconsciousness of movement and the ap-
prehensions which the active imagination and enfeebled
resolution set in the path [10]. Obsession and delusion lie
farther along in the road to abnormality, but are hardly
more seriously disturbing. Neurasthenia presents the deso-
lation and the alarm and the inconsequence of a discour-
aged, dispirited, even a terror-stricken mind. It shows
what order of havoc is imminent when the path of action
is encumbered by morbid crowding and hesitation of im-
pulse, by the impotence of exhaustion, or by the dread of
action. It reveals in magnified projection the contingen-
cies which normal functioning blissfully ignores, which it
meets with assurance or unconcern. But a temperament —
not unlike a sport — is directed primarily not by the risks
incurred, but by the satisfactions, even by the thrills, of-
fered. The assets of the temperament, however designated,
fraught with neurasthenic liabilities, are quality of response
and superiority of endeavor. All the components of pro-
gressive adjustments of civilization are included — that is,
the possibility of leadership in them; for these express a
range of qualities which make for a refinement of adjust-
ment, a rank and worth of achievement in one direction or
another. Complexity of situation must be met by discrim-
ination of response ; leadership demands the nicer, tenser
qualities of outlook and responsibility. The life of ad-
justed routine makes a slight and even draught upon re-
sources, but the venture in the unknown puts the highly

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 327

evolved endowment upon its mettle. Such are the assets of
the neurasthenic tendency; not that their pursuit neces-
sarily involves neurasthenic incidents or profits by them,
but that these stand as the risk that is run. Many of those
launched upon the intellectual career will not meet them at
all; most of those who do, only in slight measure. Yet it
remains the risk of a temperament, of the original, creative,
responsible, specialized mind.

An underlying trait common to the neurasthenic and to
the hysterical disposition, is embodied in the protean symp-
tom of ** nervousness. " This symptom has at least a four-
fold reference : as an index of instability ; of oversensitive-
ness; of deficient motor control; of introspective entangle-
ment. It is of a depressive trend as it approaches the
neurasthenic type, and comes forward as fear, apprehen-
sion, worry, hesitancy of decision and action. It is of an
excitable order as it leans to the hysterical type, inducing
impulsiveness, caprice, restlessness, sensational craving for
emotion or action. An endowment prone to be thus de-
pressed or thus excited exhibits a native nervousness ; while
under stress or strain, those with lesser tendency succumb
to like manifestations. Nervousness, like many another sus-
ceptibility, becomes in its diagnosis a matter of degree as
well as of kind; its pressure is measured by the degree of
stress and strain that induces the distinctive symptoms,
which in turn attain their clearest definition in their ab-
normal intensities. Recognizing the symptoms of "nerv-
ousness" and their significance, we recognize through them
the significance of the yet slighter and subtler variations of
mood and attitude (as of the restraints exercised or lacking
in their expression) characteristic in the ordinary play of
temperamental variation under ordinary vicissitudes. It
thus comes to be generally true that the instability, the
petulance, the captiousness of a bad humor is an index of
a slight organic waning in bodily condition. The bad hu-
mor would not have resulted without organic inducement;

328 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

and in a less disposed individual, the same amount of or-
ganic ''drop" would not have consummated the lapse.
For no different reason than that which makes the tired or
hungry babe fretful, is its overstrained mother peevish, or
its dyspeptic father sullen. It takes a surprising amount
of self-study to detect the organic source of such fluctua-
tions and to acquire au adequate control over them. Of
such controllability the difference of attitude in a formal
relation and in the permitted intimacy of friend or family
is convincing. The petulance or sullenness is restrained
or overcome when the social restraint is applied, but finds
a free vent when it is withdrawn. The overconsciousness
of self is an equally common symptom, and equally inter-
feres with normal adjustment and the direction of conduct
to useful channels. It is still more characteristic than ir-
ritability in that the type of situations that arouse its ex-
treme manifestations — such as the embarrassments of so-
cial, particularly of sex relations — stamps the nervousness
with the seal of its disqualifying motive source. The nerv-
ous fears are of like status, and tell their story most clearly
when referable to an original shock. To one who once
broke down in a public appearance, every subsequent pub-
lic occasion became an experience of marked dread, re-
vealed in distressing subjective symptoms. To one of like
disposition who suffered psychically by an experience in a
cyclone, every windy night became a night of sleepless
terror. The common symptoms of neurasthenic and of
hysteric liability indicate their related source in functional
disorders of the finer adjustment of conduct through the
excess functioning of emotional sensibility. Their diver-
gences indicate the difference of setting of such liabilities
in the specific factors of the adjustment [11].

The hysterical variety of ''nervous" responsiveness falls
within the same general formula ; but the subjective involu-
tion follows a different course, proceeds upon a differently
set complex of impulses and motives. The personal tone

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 829

dominates; the keynote of the hysterical tendency is sus-
tained by and in the over personalization of experience — an
overemphasis of a wholly normal, natural trend. In that the
resulting attitude favors contractedness of the mental hori-
zon and an agitated reaction to the moment of interest, the
term ''hysterical" has been applied to any ardent expres-
sions that escape control, that are sustained by high-tension
emotion, with large fluctuations between the extremes of
excitement, and a marked or sporadic impulse for expres-
sion. The excitable, shouting, partisan crowd at an Amer-
ican football game, spurred by intercollegiate rivalry, grows
hysterical; as do Wall Street operators when a panic is
imminent. The loss of a sense of proportion is the natural
issue of any intense emotion, such as anger, fear, revenge,
love, all of which may be madly indulged in ; but the anal-
ogy inadequately reflects the true inwardness of the hys-
terical attitude. Again, all emotion tends to overdo; re-
straint as well as indulgence is prone to excess. The trait
appears in children who in shyness will refuse and persist
in the refusal of a sweetmeat which they really desire.
Similarly a child — and often one of maturer growth —
mildly reproved or besought to refrain from some extreme
indiscretion, will by overaction sulkily refuse to accept the
permitted range of privilege. It is as though the pre-
scription of part of one's diet led to a refusal to eat at all.
That is near of kin to the hysterical ; it is brought into play
by a self-centered, emotional oversensitiveness. Children
and their immature elders do things just to spite another;
that, too, is hysterical, for spite has not the same emotional
genealogy as revenge. Novelists seem to believe that there
is many a woman ^s *'no" which by excess of restraint dis-
guises a real ''yes." In olden days the recoil from disap-
pointment in love was the renunciation by way of the clois-
ter. Quick and violent changes from laughter to tears,
from rapture to despair, reflect the emotional instability,
and a lack of self-control: ^'Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum

330 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Tode hetriibt.*' This oscillation is a fundamental hysteri-
cal trait; and associated with it as its prompting source is
the habit of too personal apperception, too self-centered re-
sponsiveness. To the markedly hysterical all situations are
personal ones. This temperamental habit, nurtured and
matured in dominant self-centered interests, may be car-
ried over to other interests, any of which may come to be
embraced in an exaggerated, passionate, or erratic manner ;
for the hysterical trend craves satisfaction and demands
expression. A good cry is one of its most innocent forms
of relief. Young women who assert that they are "just
crazy'' or **wild" about this, or ''rave" about that, or
"madly dote" on something else, may be free from hys-
teria; but they are using expressions congenial to its tem-
perament. The Germans speak of '^Schwdrmerei^' (gush) ;
of a tense, exaggerated manner as ''iiberspannV (high-
strung) ; of a lack of control in behavior as ^^ausgelassen'^
(unrestrained, broken loose) — all very apt terms for the
miniature trends, which enlarged make directly for the hys-
terical complex [12], and which in themselves suggest a
similarly conditioned susceptibility. An overdone, oscil-
lating, personalized impressionism summarizes the qualities
of the hysterical reaction.

Hysteria is so many-sided that it must be viewed from
several angles. It embraces a vast range of ill-balanced
responsiveness, from trivial caprice to the most serious per-
turbations of personality. The primary emphasis of the
formula remains: an excess of the sensibility-emotion
phases ; a defect in the motor control ; an irregular relation
between them. In the absence of an accredited term to de-
scribe the central factor, it may be called a psychological
subjectivism. The hysterical trend is an emotional sub-
jectivism; the introspective brooding, and depressed reflec-
tion of the neurasthenic temperament is a more intellectual
and yet related subjectivism. The difference in sex-traits
is confirmed, in that the former is more common in women,

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 331

the latter in men. The focus of the hysterical subjectivism
is the personal sensitiveness, the hypertrophy of the emo-
tional self ; it results in an absorption of experience through
the distorted medium of the ever-obtrusive feelings radiat-
ing from the self.

Next important ill the complex is the dominant fact of
conflict. In the social environment self-expression nat-
urally meets with all sorts of checks and oppositions. The
self -feelings are dependent upon the reactions of others ; if
these are not forthcoming accoi'ding to expectation, tragedy
is imminent. Also, high impulses conflict with lower ones ;
conscience is a check from within, and a source of struggle ;
the force of convention imposes a check from without, felt
even when slightingly or rebelliously regarded. The hys-
terical temperament [13] is uncertainly played upon by a
variety of impulses, yields to each in turn and is likely to be
snared in the entanglement of cross-purposes. The pri-
mary emotionality becomes an instability of feeling and
leads to a vacillating caprice in action. When in the uncer-
tain conflict one impulse is released, it is liable to over-
intense expression — the loss of control, which is the third
important factor. Accepting a personalized emotional suh-
jectivism to denote the peculiar hysterical variety of hyper-
esthesia, as the major root, and instaMlity of desire and
impaired volitional control as the two minor roots, closely
bound to it, we may trace the derivation of hysterical traits,
many of which naturally find their sources compositely in
more than one of these trends and in their interaction [14].

Every person is personally centered, and that not merely
in the selfish concern, for ''number one" (which, incident-
ally, as ordinarily displayed may not be a prominent hys-
terical trait — is indeed too Simple to express it), but by vir-
tue at once of the place of self-assertion in the support of
development and of the inevitably intimate character, the
warmth, of individual, perceptual experience. Life is and
must be a personal reaction to experience. The individual

332 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

perspective imposed by his own nature and his own ex-
perience is inevitably far more dominant in the mental
horizon of each individual than reason justifies; but with-
out such foreshortening, confidence and self-esteem — even
self-respect — would suffer. A fault may be the dispropor-
tion of a forte; a vice may be a virtue carried to the ex-
treme. Overconsciousness may be as truly hysterical as
lack of conscience; indulgence and asceticism may both be
hysterical in so far as they are circumscribed and restrict-
ing, and may even alternate. It is the overpersonalized
attitude that is hysterical, judged by such standards as are
pertinent.

An interpretation of the hysterical oversensitiveness must
consider the situations most likely to evoke it. Self-esteem
is derived reflexly from the consideration shown by others ;
it feeds on the social reaction. If markedly present, it be-
comes an extreme sensitiveness to the good opinion of others,
and an ardent craving for it. The intimate role of this
dependence in feminine psychology is elsewhere consid-
ered ; though a trait shared by both sexes, it is centered at
a different point in the two, which may be roughly indi-
cated by saying that such social sensitiveness to admiration
in a woman is centered rather more narrowly about what
she is and appears, in a man about what he does and repre-
sents. The craving for attention, sympathy, admiration,
may become a marked derivative trait of the hysterical
temperament — one of many, and of variable prominence.
Combined with the eager sensitiveness that renders the sub-
ject open to new sensory or emotional appeals, it favors,
when inadequately opposed by moral restraints or dis-
ciplined interests, a ready suggestibility. The suggesti-
bility, though a yielding, feels the undertow of opposed
tendencies, and may so ardently respond to many suitors
as to invite an insincerity, even a duplicity in meeting their
several claims. The sense of conflict is rarely absent, and
in its very suppression may become irregularly assertive.

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 333

Such is the commonly described hysterical type ; its features
are a marked dependence upon others, slight intellectual
tastes, absorption in dress, society, gayety, frivolity, sensa-
tionalism, and personal adventures, in an atmosphere bid-
ding for favor by fair means or foul, with no dominant oc-
cupations, few compensating and steadying objective inter-
ests. The deception, mystification, or affectation is enter-
tained primarily to be interesting ; the pleasure in deception
may be a secondary product ; there is overdoing in the part.
Though in a measure a social product, the type flourishes
in a temperamentally favored soil, and presumably fur-
nishes a considerable share of extreme hysterical cases; its
course may show the development of an hysterical diathesis
into the pronounced disorders which the physician meets
in perplexing variety. From close-to-normal to the mark-
edly abnormal, the type exhibits the annoying duplicity,
the lying that is partly believed in, the affectations that are
partly real, the spurious symptoms [15] masking true dis-
ease, that are not malingering but give way to psychical
appeal — the wide range of partly organic and largely
psychical expressions, which the word hysteria as a func-
tional disorder has come to signify. For the study of
character-traits allied to the normal, the high-grade ''cases"
are hardly less significant, and in cultivated society equally
common, if not more so. Such persons may have well es-
tablished interests and capacities, moral restraints, and ac-
ceptance of standards. Duplicity and falsification may al-
most completely retire; but characteristically they may
withdraw to certain reserved areas where they find a fur-
tive, or even an open outlet. For this reason the hysterical
trend is alike protean and contradictory ; the symptoms and
traits come to expression so variously in the run of cases,
so partially, and selectively in the individual case. The
high-grade hysterical character may display a normal be-
havior in almost all the relations of life, a sustained hon-
esty of purpose in conduct and responsibilities, and yet

S34> CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

harbor, though largely under control, a truly hysterical
nucleus of traits, and reveal to the discerning the slight
hysterical stamp in ordinary behavior. The hysterical tem-
perament, by the nature of its psychological conditioning,
must be abundantly represented among one's everyday
friends and acquaintances; for it is the common liability
of the stresses which civilization has placed upon the over-
sensitive nerve-centers, somewhat disproportionately upon
that of the more frail, more delicately poised, more emo-
tionally centered sex. Also is it true that the hysterical
tendencies represent in some measure the traits which social
ideals undertake to discipline and subdue. The conflict is
one between the earlier, primitively dominant centers of
control and the imposed rule of the later, more highly de-
veloped but less securely evolved regulations. Conse-
quently the strength of the hysterical trend may become as
well the mark of imperfect discipline as of hereditary
handicap — of a shift of control inadequately established in
nature and nurture. The hysterical abnormalities follow
in their expression the stages of emotional cultivation; are
crude and violent when the emotional life is direct and im-
pulsive ; are delicate and evasive when the play of emotions
is intricate,' conflicting, involved, through social complica-
tion. The hysterical trend is broad enough to pervade the
entire individual expression, to color the temperamental
reactions in the ensemble of conduct.

The hysterical trend, though thus comprehensive, oper-
ates so suppressively, so indirectly, as to cover its tracks,
to remain undetected, ignored, it may be, by family and
friends, by the subject himself, or more characteristically,
herself [16]. It would often come as a surprise, even as a
shock, to those intimately acquainted with such a person-
ality, as to the individual concerned, to learn that many of
the traits which are rated as virtues or fortes, as likewise
the trials and difficulties encountered in meeting ordinary
situations, are of hysterical origin. The suggestion is apt

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 335

to be indignantly met and scornfully rejected; the truth
would be more hospitably received if the invidious impli-
cation of the term could be reduced, and its relations to
normal character more sympathetically accepted. It is de-
sirable to recognize that a considerable range of common
character-traits — not without their compensations — are hys-
terical in type, and thus to free the term of too severe an
implication. Somewhat crudely stated, there are traits of
which many a person is proud, which should be cured ; and
traits presented for cure which might well be ignored or
put to service [17]. Accordingly, hysterical traits must
often be looked for in the sporadic expressions, in the in-
cidental activities where vigilance is relaxed and censor-
ship withdrawn, and from the clew thus derived corrobo-
rated in the slighter but partly controlled expressions of
daily attitude and conduct. They must be looked for also in
the realm of indulgences which sporadically break through
the reserve or control, or are cherished in private. It
makes a critical difference whether the hysterical trend
merges with the more stable expressions of the personality
and occasionally breaks through it and displaces it, or
whether it remains repressed, and finds an area of indul-
gence in some by-path of interest, as a psychological com-
pensation. Hysteria may seek or make reserved areas of
expression where impulses banished from the regulated ac-
tivities have a chance to disport themselves. These indeed
may develop as a vent or a safeguard of the hysterical
temperament. The draining of hysterical impulses in con-
stant harmless ways protects against a dangerous overflow ;
yet the direction of the flow is often uncontrollable. Such
by-paths of hysterical invitation are significant. In ado-
lescent cases wholly fictitious personal exploits are indulged
in, or related as true, particularly in the field of sex-capti-
vation ; there may be an irresistible tendency to appropriate
what is not one's own in a limited line of interest — it may
be finery, it may be books. Kleptomania is often the acute

336 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

expression of a culminating minor hysterical attack. The
very nature of such wayward impulses as kleptomania, the
indiscretions of erotic mood, and slighter defections, may
demand secrecy and concealment. Suppressed phases of
interest and conduct thus develop, and, far more commonly,
suppressed phases of thought and desire. Yet the suppres-
sion to self -consciousness — whatever it may be to outsiders
— is incomplete and by its furtive, unacknowledged pres-
ence intrudes and warps the more normal, the still domi-
nant direction of mental affairs.

Such psychic suppression — not unlike a sense of guilt —
is the point of departure of the view of Freud, who gives
to the ignored realm a source in motive. He reminds us that
we all share the tendency to banish unpleasant memories
from the mind, and equally are harassed by their persistent
recurrence; hence ensues the state of conflict so vital in
the hysterical complex. It is this seemingly suppressed
area of concern that keeps on troubling and bubbling in
the undercurrent of mood and emotional tow, disturbing
despite the surface calm. The hysterical consciousness is
keenly responsive to messages from the shunned area, while
yet resisting their invitation. The wall thus erected is
translucent, not opaque. The hysterical consciousness is
selective in its inclusions and exclusions — so are all our
prepossessions — and the peculiar relation results that what
is excluded from the one consciousness is incorporated by
the growing interests of the subconscious realm; divided
consciousness is the pathological result. Alternate asser-
tion of the one or the other set of influences, if developed,
leads to the extreme expression of instability in shifting
personalities. The refuge from the one self is in the de-
velopment of another; the restrained personality lets itself
go so far as to run loose. In milder cases there is merely
a sense of conflict, a liability to loss of control. Freud pro-
poses to relieve this peculiar half -acknowledged kind of suf-
fering by explicit confession. Once the source is known

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 337

and acknowledged the emotion finds its outlet, and the road
to poise is opened.

Freud 's interpretation has an intimate bearing upon char-
acter, for it leads to the inclusion of a number of traits,
usually regarded as innocent expressions of predilections,
within the hysterical complex. He finds that dreams re-
veal such suppressed desires and longings, which reach ex-
pression there because the conscious mentor of the thoughts
admitted to the mental hearth is off guard. He finds sim-
ilar indications in slips of the tongue and in pleasantries
or evasions, all concealing embarrassment; it is his opinion
that the trivial is peculiarly significant because it is un-
revised. Dreams, private romances, and the like speak in
parables; the hysterical subconsciousness develops a my-
thology of its own. The transformation is often dramatic,
since this type of thought moves in vivid pictures to rapid
consummations. It is refined to cover too direct a meaning
— a process which he terms sublimation. The thought, like
the impulse, ostracized or deprived of its natural outlet,
seeks or creates a substitute. The imaginary life replaces
the real life, or itself acquires a spurious touch of reality.
The world becomes a stage, and the staged dramatizations
may become projected upon the actual scene of response, or
confuse its meaning.

The liabilities of pronounced hysteria become more in-
telligible in consideration of the vital situation about which
the hysterical motives naturally circulate. This is no other
than the life of sex, the large inclusive interest, saturated
with emotional tension, that exerts its sway over all, and
reaches its zenith when the hysterical star is in the as-
cendant. Not alone is the sex-relation the dominant one
through which the more conscious and mature personality
has become sensitized to the opinion of others, but it is the
concentration and culmination of all that is most person-
ally intimate. In its most refined expressions it is hal-
lowed, surrounded by tradition, protected by institutions,

338 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

enshrouded in romance, idealized in poetry, yet never di-
vorced from its primary organic vigor, its original core of
sensibility. It implies a refined extension of Freud's in-
terpretation to say that it is sublimated, for it presents two
of the vital conditions : it involves the element of the covert,
the not openly expressed, but privately cherished ; it builds
upon a powerful organic stimulus, and builds elaborately.
To speak of the greater hysterical trend in women is merely
to imply that their natural interests as well as the situa-
tions which are more distinctly feminine have a larger and
a deeper personal reference. The hysterical temperament,
including its pathological forms, lies closer to the normally
feminine than to the masculine. To recognize that the life
of sex, as it grows, attracts to itself, absorbs, and becomes
the medium of expression and expansion of thought and
feeling and desire in the realm of the personally cherished,
from which matures the fullest, richest fruitage of the emo-
tional nature, in which the intimate life moves and has its
being ; to admit that for many reasons — organic, physiologi-
cal, psychological, social — this psychic doiftinion has a
deeper hold upon woman, more comprehensively and in-
tensely engages her nature, is by no means to imply a
stronger sexual inclination or occupation. Many who are
sympathetic with Freud's views decline to accept his de-
tailed deductions which read into conscious and subcon-
scious thought-processes strained and remote sex-symbolisms.
It is apt to be forgotten that sex-interest is but a type, even
though the central type, of intimately personalized ten-
dencies ; and further that its very significance in the upper
levels of expression lies in its infusion of the quality, not
of the literal rendering, of the sex-attitude to other, though
allied, expressions. It is not the sexual passion but the fact
of a susceptibility thereto, and all the complex issues cul-
tivated originally and primarily in that relation, that is
carried over, refined, transformed, overlaid and redisposed
as a quality of response in other spheres of activity. It

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 339

may even be the case that the derived outlets of self-expres-
sion usurp the vigor of the primary ones, and are urged to
this consummation by an hysterical recoil (again an over-
doing) from sex-bondage. Conceding the pertinence and
distinct value of Freud's ^'Leit princip/' one may still in-
terpret its applications in accord with the larger principles
of emotional psychology, not too specifically as marked ex-
pressions of a single trend.

The illustrations cited to show how the hysterical pendu-
lum makes large and violent oscillations — intensity of ac-
tion followed by intensity of reaction^may itself yield a
Freudian parable. The disappointment in love that leads
to renunciation and the nunnery implies that religious min-
istration appeals to a phase of the emotional nature which,
losing the one outlet, finds another, congenial to certain
denied aspects (but not the original impulses) of the range
of emotions evolved as a by-product of sex-suscepti-
bility [18]. A like application may suggest that old maids
lavish attention upon pets because deprived of the natural
outlets of their mothering emotions; that hysterical old
maids leave their fortunes to asylums for stray cats; that
hysterical young maids '^go in" for the prevention of
cruelty to animals and become desperately excited over an
ill-treated horse or a friendless dog, while not oversympa-
thetic with children. In like vein, it may be urged that
the extreme unreason of the anti-vivisection crusade is
similarly supported, and that many an allegiance to fads,
*'isms," and ''ologies" flourishes upon hysterical soil. It
is necessary and desirable to recognize in such interests
philanthropic and humane considerations which the normal-
minded share and set in a proper perspective of values,
while equally recognizing that as pursued not wisely but too
far, they may fall within the expansive net of hysteria.
Such causes when thus supported may represent sympathy
overdone or sympathy distorted toward the abnormal.
The morbid curiosity to see a murderer on trial may lead

S40 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

to the morbid sympathy that sends flowers to his cell; yet
the curiosity, like the sympathy, may be of other origin.
It all depends upon the dominance of motive, the composi-
tion of temperament, the setting of action in the personal
medium, and the reflection of these in their compromise
with disciplined interests.

For the illumination of the liabilities of character in re-
lation to nervous instability, the disqualifications of (mild)
hysteria are more pertinent than the extreme issues of
hysterical disorder. The hysterical instability in its patho-
logical proportions attains to almost incredible conse-
quences; and among these the assertion of conflicting per-
sonalities, contending for the psychical control of an
individual, stands forth as the most remarkable. It seems
strange that fickleness of mood, changeableness of motive,
caprice of conduct should terminate in dual personality —
an alternate dominance, in some measure, of a beneficent
''Dr. Jekyll" and a malicious ''Mr. Hyde." With but one
body, one nervous system, one set of tastes, acquisitions,
habits, proficiencies, adjustments, purposes, social rela-
tions, how can there result anything but a unified per-
sonality expressive of these combined traits and tendencies ?
The question emphasizes the fact that personality is an
achievement, an easy one commonly, a successful one nor-
mally, an irregular and imperfect one abnormally. The
achievement proceeds upon the encounter of an organized
system of responsiveness with the molding forces of the
world of objects and motives. Character is shaped by the
processes by which impulses are fused, desires adjusted,
the elements of growth consolidated, experience integrated.
That all this is accomplished at the cost of a moderate or
considerable stress and strain, risk and uncertainty, is fa-
miliar and normal. In the process traits are acquired and
shed; trends of impulse and desire assert themselves and
are outgrown; character matures. In the resultant indi-
viduality there are still harbored vestiges of several selves —

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 341

their rival claims reduced by compromise, renunciation,
control, favor and disfavor of circumstance, to a reasonable
modus Vivendi. How many of us are what we wish to be ?
How changed these wishes, hopes, expectations, as the years
go by! Adjustment exacts its payment; struggle within
between rival systems of desire is as real as struggle with-
out between competitive interests and urgencies. That a
loosely knit character, an imperfect fusion, a contradictory
tolerance should appear as the issue of this process in the
hysterically disposed, in the hysterically handicapped per-
sonality, is as plausible as that its victims are recognized as
difficult, queer, unreliable, impulsive, spasmodic, restless,
tense, extreme. Conflicting personality becomes no longer
remote but imminent; large emotional oscillations occur,
disturbing and profound; the pendulum for a period re-
mains fixed in one or other extreme of position, and the al-
ternations of the two constitute the shifts of personality.
The hysterical nature, compelled by the stress of the social
forces to appear as one type of person, and compelled by the
inner psychic stress of impulse to harbor another, leads a
precarious existence. Let there ensue a particularly vio-
lent wrench, an upsetting shock, a psychic upheaval, and the
suppressed or dispossessed cluster of impulses gains ex-
pression; and by repetition of the lapse and the growing
organization of the impulses, it mobilizes its forces, estab-
lishes a provisional seat of government, that in turn yields
under other dominance to the established authorities,
though not in an unconditional surrender. Once success-
ful, the rebellious forces succeed again and again, by
strategy or by recruiting of allied secessional interests, in
invading the territory of personality with militant design
and temporary ascendancy. The secretly nourished be-
comes the openly avowed. The assertion is partial; and
the peculiar detachment that divides the house against itself,
selects alliances among the psychological growths congenial
to its purposes, while it wages a warring feud against the

342 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

rest. Such factional expression finds its favoring condi-
tions in the culture-bed of hysteria; conflicting personali-
ties are its most luxurious blossoms.

The justification of this detailed consideration of hysteria
is that it illustrates not alone the dominance of tempera-
ment in abnormal issues, but also that it offers a fine field
for the exploitation of character-traits. The survey of ab-
normal tendencies of mind as the overgrowth of hyper-
trophy of the primary trends (or of secondary ones deriv-
ing their vitality from a primary emotional source) pro-
ceeds upon the principle that abnormality consists in ex-
cess and lack of proportion. Within the normal range the
practical virtue is found in balance — the serviceable mean
between faults of defect and faults of excess. A well pro-
portioned, all-around development is the ideal, and in fair
measure, the normal issue. Self-respect is the mean be-
tween domineering conceit and abject humility; courage is
the mean between cowardice and bravado; a sense of pro-
priety between shamelessness and prudery ; caution between
timidity and recklessness; thrift between parsimoniousness
and extravagance. The normal self establishes a reasonable
regulation of these several traits. But the very temptation
to excess, together with the range and nature of the re-
sulting disqualification, constitutes the peculiar liabilities
of the abnormal.

Because primary emotional impulses must be strong,
ready, and pervasive, are they liable to excess when sum-
moned, and liable to an inopportune summoning. To be
adequately and efficiently afraid under a large range of
circumstances renders the fear-susceptibility open to the
liabilities of panic and paralyses, of fright and terror, as
well as in minor incidents, to needless worries and im-
aginary dreads. Children and adults continue to struggle
with their fears; mental poise is the balance of fear and
hope. The primacy of the * ' fear ' ' motif not alone makes
timidity a common factor of human expression, and the

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 343

timid a common type of character ; it makes the weakened,
strained, or unbalanced nervous system react characteristic-
ally in terms of fear ; it makes the ' ' fear ' ' symptom and the
**fear" response the ready outlet — ^the index and expres-
sion of tension or loss of adjustment. Such descriptions as
* 'fear-mad,'' ''crazed with terror," "panic-stricken,"
characterize attitudes of response in intense situations, too
''terrible" for the human mind to contemplate or endure.
The situation may be presentative and directly terrifying,
as in war, shipwreck, fire, storm, panic; or the dread may
be representative in terms of loss of honor, consequence of
impropriety, anxiety for health, anticipation of misfortune.
The horse when fear-mad can but blindly run. In the hu-
man brain the fears assume the forms of endless imagined
terrors: for in that sleep what mighty fears may come;
such is the human privilege. The torturers of old knew
that dread and uncertainty aggravated the agony. The
threat is the primitive instrument, founded in nature and
developed by human ingenuity, to expand the realm of
fear. Religious creeds have painted the horrors of the
damned in terms to inspire fear in the living. The fabled
monsters were equipped by an excited imagination with all
the panoply of fear-inspiring adjuncts, many of them, like
horns and stings and claws and teeth, derived from nature 's
fertile laboratory ; but others, like fire, torture, deprivations
and threats, contributed by human ingenuity.

Timidity creates fears and attaches them to objects or
situations, and in such "phobias" reaches its abnormal ex-
pression. Phobias are characteristic of depressed condi-
tions due to lowered vitality (like fatigue, exposure, neu-
rasthenia) and are frequent accompaniments of melan-
cholic states. They may become systematized and take the
forms of delusions of persecution, of suspicion, of dreaded
attack. Corroborations are found in warnings, in fact
purely subjective, that reach the patient through walls and
telephones, in noises and whispered conspiracies, by mystic

344 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

signs and portents. Such is the course of fear in a morbid
mind. The normal mind under sufficient provocation re-
acts similarly, and hears ominous sounds when fearful of
burglars, smells smoke if apprehensive of fire, and becomes
suspicious of mien and attitude and tone, if burdened by
morose brooding and worried apprehension. Fear-madness
varies largely in type and degree because of its complex al-
liance with so many other psychological products. It varies
from organic ill-at-easeness, like the ' ' fear ' ' of thunder, the
alarm of infants aroused by innate aversions, the recoil
from insects and reptiles and crawling things, to endless
definite fears of uncomfortable experience — fear of fire,
fear of drowning, fear of falling, fear of runaway, wrecks or
other accidents, to the remoter avoidances purely rational
— like fear of infection, to the mental fears of punishment,
of financial loss, of dishonor, disgrace, and finally to im-
aginary dreads, of which superstitions are a sufficient em-
bodiment. As practiced by children upon one another and
by foolish nurses, fear invents bogies or makes them by
ascribing evil intentions to innocent persons or objects.
And it is consistent that disturbed sleep — on so physiologi-
cal a foundation as indigestion — should result in a night-
mare, a panic of fear the more awful because irresistible.
In similar fashion waking adult man frightens himself
by conjuring powers to be afraid of ; it is his constitutional
response to the unknown, is part of his ancient racial herit-
age. In human evolution fear has found its only formi-
dable adversary in reason. Though inadequately, reason
liberates from superstition — the primitive bondage of fear.
In earlier stages the devices used to conquer fear are as
' ' superstitious ' ' as the dangers thus avoided ; fears are dis-
missed by the wearing of amulets as protection, by observ-
ing taboos and countercharms. Fear of consequences is
the great social motive of conduct; and prudence, the
shadow of fear, determines conformity. It would require
nothing less than a survey of human institutions to barely

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 34*

summarize the history of the maintenance of psychic con-
trol through fear. Such institutions are effective because
the fear-disposition is not only compatible with, but neces-
sary to normality. Its abnormal liabilities appear in na-
tures predisposed to excess ; but its urgency makes it prone
to sudden enlargement and alliance with the morbid [19].
Fears readily swell like a spring freshet and loosen the
moorings of adjusted conduct; reason is compromised, and
in the extreme capitulates. During the actual obsession
fear, no less than anger, is a brief madness. The dread of
pain, the anxiety of impending disaster, the fear of detec-
tion of guilt, may unbalance as well as enforce prudence,
restraint, and wisdom. Conscience derives part of its
force from a morally directed fear, and ''may make cow-
ards of us all" by excess of functioning. A peculiar sig-
nificance attaches to the mystical element in fear; the un-
known, the dark, the silent, the mysterious, incites an un-
canny feeling, suggestive of some deep ancestral reverbera-
tion. On this side lies its alliance with awe and reverence
and the religious emotions, which in turn may lead to an
abnormal complex, an exclusive dominance in which the
''fear" motive plays a prominent but no longer a simple
part. Because the normal psychology of fear is so exten-
sive and significant are its abnormal liabilities equally so.
In terms of temperament fear exhibits the tendency of a
primary emotion to excess of action and thereby to abnor-
mal issues, which become the characteristic symptoms of
functional disturbances of the nervous system in the in-
sanities. In terms of character, timidity becomes a large
influence in the prevention of normal adjustments. The
shy, the timid, the shrinking, present temperamental types
of sensibility that may readily become the most serious de-
terminant of fortune and career. In this respect the de-
veloped social fears, the dread of breakdown, stage-fright,
loss of self-confidence, become peculiarly disqualifying.
With the disappearance of childish naivete their sway be

S4>6 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

gins; they are aggravated by the confused impulses and
reserves of adolescence, and in the majority of men and
women are rarely outgrown. The appeal to reason and
will is called upon to suppress this interference, which mili-
tates against courage and self-assertion, especially in the
social relation in which the psychic timidities have pre-
dominantly been evolved. To face one's fellow-men in
masses, to address them, to entertain them, to be examined
by them, to become for the moment the target for their
eyes, remains a *' fearful" experience, temperamentally so
by virtue of the liabilities of nature, modified in its expres-
sion by circumstance. It forms the most constant inter-
ference with the true appraisal of capacities by others, and
with the adequate expression of self. In so many relations
of life the courageous rather than the able direct affairs.
Self-confidence and courage are indispensable to poise and
action. Yet too-ready freedom from the sway of timidity
may be suspicious; glibness, boldness, ready confidence are
the equipments of the astute, the deceiver, the traducer, the
shameless as well as the shallow ; for this universal psychic
restraint has its proper place. Its liability to excess and in-
terference with wholesome functioning is as truly part of its
nature as its necessary place in securing psychic control.
Its social status complicates its entire psychology.

This sketch of the pathology of fear is illustrative of the
bearing of abnormal to normal traits. So prominent a nor-
mal trait inevitably develops an equally prominent abnor-
mal dominance. Excess of fear and shrinking lies close to
the inability of the sensitive, the nervous disposition. The
aggressive counterpart of fear is anger, the goad to courage
and attack. Similarly the relation of anger to its patho-
logical expression is indicated in the choleric liability. In
a colloquial usage, "mad" means ''angry." The violence
of mania, of whatever origin — whether expended in distrac-
tion, revenge, hatred, cruelty, or passion unrestrained —
represents its extreme form. It may combine with de-

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 347

nunciation, feed a passion with words or threat and become
a raving madness, delirium. As in fear, judgment and
control are weakened, and emotion rules conduct to its un-
doing. Passion becomes supreme, blinding sense and rea-
son and absorbing the avenues of action. Anger, in nor-
mal measure, is typically brief, and a brief madness. It
is a spasm, a burst, a geyser, long in gathering, quickly over
in its rush. Its abnormal status in the serious insanities of
maniacal form appears in the long maintained, the incessant
explosions, the tirelessness of action through absence of the
sense of fatigue ; the violence rises and falls but seemingly
does not cool below fever heat. In the near-to-normal
ranges anger, unlike fear which persists and haunts, is
sporadic, fitful, occasional. Hence, as applicable to the
normal temperament, it is mainly to the susceptibility to
lapses, to ungovernable moments of passion, that the
pathology of anger is relevant. Such liability is conspicu-
ous in early childhood; it is common enough at all ages
and in all conditions to have attracted to it the term ' ' bad ' '
temper, or, without qualification, temper. In social rela-
tions— whether primitive, crude, or immature — ^where re-
straint is less imposed, passions easily run high; threats
and vituperations abound, and Billingsgate is fluent. The
psychology of the curse, and its degenerate variety in vain
profanity, harks back to primitive outbreaks of irritation.
The lash of the tongue replaces the threat of the fist or the
stamp of the foot. Social regulation and breeding have
controlled the yielding to and expression of this aggressive
trait. It requires a serious situation to justify its public
exhibition. Reduced to the proportions of irritability, it
enters more comprehensively in the minor and major
dramas of life than it is pleasant to acknowledge, so con-
stantly is it deprived of a speaking part.

That so many cultivated persons have to struggle life-
long with a '* temper" (as others struggle with fear) and
at best achieve an imperfect victory, testifies to the readir

348 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ness with which this primary emotion outruns its utility.
There seem to be two common ways of losing one's head:
to become fearful, nervous, in the vernacular of the street,
**to have cold feet," and to be ''hot-headed" — to do or
say more than calm counsel sanctions. In either case emo-
tion outdoes reason. The two are set in a common refer-
ence ; the purpose of anger is at once to induce fear in the
opponent and to energize the attack. It is through fear of
(as well as through respect for) our fellow-men that our
expressions are restrained. Constantly frowned upon and
subdued as anti-social and unmannerly, our too pronounced
selfish trends are restrained, and along with them the re-
straint of anger when frustrated; in due course a proper
ease and self-assertion as well as consideration are estab-
lished. Politeness, even if formal alone, checks personal
aggression, and" checks particularly the incipient signs of
anger. A sense of humor or of fair play draws the sting
of detraction when it is good-natured ; a kind word turneth
aside wrath. The tendency to anger as to fear remains a
natural and a vital asset in that both are instruments for
acquiring psychic control. Anger is primarily summoned
by a blow or the direct threat of injury; its direct re-
sponse is the clenched fist. By natural transfer it is sum-
moned by any detraction of self and its belongings ; we de-
fend by anger and the issues of anger anything that we
hold dear. Its verbal form is familiar, and absorbs much
of the energy that might go to the blow; the angry voice
and tone are as eloquent as the fist. Even in deliberative
assemblies an argumentative encounter may lead to blows.
The mental and moral weapons of injury and attack are
developed along with the complications of civilized inter-
course, and their regulations constitute part of the prob-
lem of legal defense. The primacy and comprehensiveness
of anger appear in the long and sad history of human con-
flicts. Persecution, prejudice, torture, race wars, class
clashes, all inflame to cruel passion, are all sacrifices to the

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 349

maloch of wrath. Justice, the appeal to reason, is the off-
set, too readily forsaken under stress of primitive motive.
It is not alone in its direct expressions and consequences
that anger has a venerable and significant cultural history,
but as well by reason of its collateral products and de-
rivative issues in the emotional nature.

Of these jealousy is characteristic and is character-
istically prone to excess. Its standard reference is to sex-
rivalry, presumably as the most intense and intimate form
of personal assertion. Jealousy as the emotional attitude
toward the rival lies close to revenge, though this may at-
tach mainly to the sense of injury ; fear harks back to life
itself, and a due timidity avoids risks and dangers; a due
anger protects by safeguarding all that is worth fighting
for; out of the same social situations arises the jealousy to-
ward the competitors. Because the sex-relation is an ar-
dent emotional focus, and because the rivalry and the in-
cidental jealousy toward the rival is the natural product,
are all these emotions subject to excess of function. The
presence of the rival jeopardizes possession. Jealousy is
carried along in the pathological liabilities of the intensity
of the sex-passion. The lover is the ardent wooer and
easily becomes unreasonably, even insanely jealous when
favor is shown to a rival. Othello is as intensely wrought
in suspicion of falsity in the attained, as Borneo is ardently
defensive in behalf of the to-be-attained [20].

That the sympathetic emotions may reach the intensity
inclining to pathological excess, is a tribute to their vital
place in human psychology. Grief is a typical expression
of such order. To be able to grieve imaginatively, reflec-
tively, regretfully; to be prostrated over the loss of the
object of tender regard, requires a developed imagination,
an appreciative, comprehensive, sentimental life. The grief
of children is short-lived; it is more the pain of disap-
pointed expectation, or the irritation of thwarted desire;
and this element persists in many phases of mature grief.

350 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

With increasing maturity and experience the power to
grieve increases, and as attachment adds its endearing as-
sociations, it reaches an emotional climax; the severing of
the bond breaks the heart. Presumably those who lose bal-
ance of mind from grief or from disappointed love are
fewer in the annals of medicine than of romantic literature ;
for it is unmistakable that an organic disposition is of it-
self adequate to produce similar manifestations. The de-
pression of melancholia is often the direct issue of subtle
organic change, with no objective inducement. To account
for the imposed depression the patient projects a system of
fears or losses, broods over baseless troubles, and entertains
deluded suspicions. The most hopeless, changeless picture
of grief to be met with in the dismal corridors of the
asylums for the insane is quite certain to be a case of de-
lusional woe associated with organic or functional trouble
of the nervous system. Psychic gi'ief that stuns and for
the time drives the storm-tossed emotions from their moor-
ings, reproduces the relentless, introspective, depressed, im-
movable picture of the despair of melancholia. But in the
course of time, and by effort for brief periods, other inter-
ests are aroused, other appeals heeded, and normality is as-
serted by the versatility and balance of the mental move-
ment. The melancholic is swamped in brooding ; normal sor-
row finds consolation in other memories; resignation in re-
maining interests.

The psycho-pathology of such an emotion as grief — and
its sentimental development — is in several aspects signifi-
cant. It brings forward the general consideration that the
normal emotional state is one of versatile composite inter-
ests, and yet dominantly one of adjusted condition; and
that any sudden or violent demand for readjustment in-
duces strain. The consequence of strain may be shock;
shock is a serious psychic liability in the disposed tempera-
ment. Contemplation of loss or disaster provides a more
gradual adjustment, prepares the mind for the issue,

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 351

though it may be offset by the protracted anxiety which it
induces. The theory of '' shock '^ as a cause of psychic dis-
aster has a large support in experience. The shaking-up in
railroad accidents is often far more serious as a mental per-
turbation than as a physical one. It is the mind rather
than the body that bears the scars of the experience.
Freud's view of hysteria presents such a shock as the in-
ducing occasion of the hysterical liability and regards the
sphere of sex as central in the traumatic vulnerability.
Hystericals suffer from their memories. Disposed by con-
stitution to instability of mental state and to excess of re-
action, the hysterical candidate requires an inducing oc-
casion— the shock or trauma — to precipitate the crisis.
Such an attack so entirely unnerves, induces such a serious
interference with normal consciousness, calls forth such
alarming symptoms of one type or another, that any sub-
sequent emotional exposure or strain, or condition of
anxiety or depletion, or even a suggestive reminder of the
upsetting experience, may induce a repetition of the attack.
The attacks, if recurrent, tend to fuse, to reenforce and re-
instate the liability to an altered mental state ; such liability
tends to develop in ignorance of the source, which must be
discovered by the psycho-analytic skill of the physician.
The shock is unacknowledged by the dominant conscious-
ness, flourishes in an undercurrent of the psychic stream,
and in that respect differs from the normal expressions of
grief. Yet there is an analogy to the common experience of
finding oneself the victir.i of depression for which one is
unable to find a cause, until there is discovered a subcon-
sciously rankling incident, unpleasant to remember, which
the undercurrent of thought drags to the surface as fre-
quently as the interests of the moment submerge it. A
serious, or intensely dreaded danger or loss, an assault upon
the sense of propriety, the witnessing of an accident, ex-
posure to insult, intense disappointment, may act as a
shock, and require effort and time to effect a readjustment.

352 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

The wound remains open ; and by its constant presence in-
terferes with the establishment of normality. Grief and
depression by their relation to so large a range of psychic
values, come almost to equal fear as disturbers of the mental
and moral peace — the happiness and content of assured
joyous adjustment. The abnormal tendency to depression
is a common liability of the nervously disposed.

There is an additional reason why the pain of sorrow ex-
presses deep emotional liabilities. The esthetically sensi-
tive shudder more often than they thrill ; but they shudder
and thrill deeply. Similarly, the intense emotional nature
expands joys and sorrows, but particularly exposes to the
upsetting dominion of grief, brooding, and sadness. The
theme of tragedy is the richest, deepest and most compre-
hensive one ; in a fully matured life it expresses the liabili-
ties of human emotion more adequately than any other.
The refined susceptibility to emotional sway provided by
the nervous temperament is the necessary disposition to the
abnormal liability of the derivatively strong emotions.
Such temperament is also apt to entail a slighter power of
resistance and recuperation on the motor side; for work
alone is the salvation of grief, and occupation in objective
interests its resource. The innate power of recovery, as
well as the seriousness of the wound, determines the in-
jury and the pang.

Grief, typifying the depressive state, suggests the further
consideration that the normal stream of experience must
present a certain minimum of nurplus of pleasure over
pain ; there must be something to live for as also something
to live by. Happiness is a condition of adjustment sus-
tained by the satisfactions of the ordinary run of situations.
In the depth of despair the bare continuance of life seems
impossible; the ultimate urgency, the love of life, may so
far succumb that the tragic portals of suicide seem the
only way out. The tendency to self-destruction in certain
forms of melancholia is its awful menace and stands as the

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 353

culmination of the pathological liabilities. In this view
the normal meeting of the vicissitudes of experience with-
out succumbing to the extremes of depression, despair and
grief, is seen to be in itself an achievement — the avoidance
of an abnormal liability.

The vast group of emotions disposing to excess of func-
tion, stimulated by self-assertion, is more variously played
upon by the added incentives of the social organization than
any other. The sense of elation is the reflex of the strug-
gle for preferment; it serves the will to prevail. Whether
a conquest of muscle or of wit, success carries with it an
emotional self-aggrandizement; it stimulates self-esteem,
pride, triumph, as defeat arouses abasement, despondency,
shame. The simpler abnormal liabilities of the ''elation'*
complex may be briefly considered. They develop upon
an unusual susceptibility to this stimulating emotional by-
product of combat, unfortified by any corresponding ob-
jective support. As such they lie close to frailties or vices
of character; in another development they are allied to the
delusions of insanity.

The relatively innocent exhibitions of vanity, affectation,
conceit, braggadocio, haughty assumption, may imply noth-
ing more than a false sense of values and a narrowing out-
look ; they are likely to be exercised in the struggle for social
preferment which is always largely regulated by convention,
and may be trusted to find their offsets in modesty, con-
sideration, sympathy, in the conventionalized safeguards
of good manners as well as in the disciplines of failures and
losses. Contentiousness (Rechtshaherei) is temperament-
ally more significant, and develops congenially in certain
hysterical and related tendencies. The deeply hysterical
nature, however disciplined, cannot easily be sincerely tol-
erant. When acting under the sway of suggestibility, the
hysterical must go far to get the sensational value of opinion
or allegiance; hence the hysterical devotion to causes and
persons once espoused, and also the violent rejection and

354> CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

quick recourse to another when the first has ceased to
charm. Physicians are familiar with the type of patient
who is an ardent devotee in turn of one and another of
the guild, so long as the services rendered imply a flatter-
ing attention. In the higher, more intellectual types of
hystericals, the personalized appeal, which is the indis-
pensable factor in the hysterical response, is attained
through the injection of personality into opinions and con-
duct, whether trivial or important. The hysterical bias
compels an interest not in opinions but in their adherence
and adherents. The hysterical interest is not in the fact
that the road is the right one, but in the fact that he (or
she) has discovered it, recognized it, charted it, espoused
it. Any opposition to such a view is resented as a slight
to the holder; and the contentious frame of mind results.
The point is mentioned as an example of a diagnostic re-
finement. The pompous vanity of Malvolio invites the ir-
reverence of the practical joker; the waywardness of
Katharine is treated diplomatically, considerately, though
firmly. For the self-confidence of not yet disillusioned
youth, or the buoyancy of exuberant health and spirits, or
the foolish extravagance of vanity, may lead to a self-
assertiveness superficially similar, but in its affiliations of
origin quite distinct from the subtle and insidious self-
assertions of the hysterical trend. More generally stated,
the similarity of symptoms is but an imperfect evidence of
community of source — either of community in the near al-
liance of temperament, or even of a common temperamental
origin. The play of education may establish traits in com-
manding strength; to distinguish between the natural and
the nurtural expression is the problem of psychological wis-
dom; and to this end their differentiation through their
pathologically divergent issues is an instructive means.

From this diagnostic excursion we turn to the varieties
of expression of the self-assertive trends in their approaches
to the abnormal. The megalomania of general paralysis

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 355

represents the extreme picture of the complex: self-asser-
tion run riot, the world of fact disregarded, the subjective
delusion of grandeur enthroned supreme amidst ruins. A
slight disarrangement of the balanced forces of self-asser-
tion and self-control and irresponsible favorable excitement
may bring about a similar issue; intoxication answers to
the formula. That the excited brain reacts by an over-
stimulated sense of importance, with a royal disdain for the
disillusionments of reality, and a tendency to unrestrained
indulgence, is shown by the action of certain drugs. In the
initial stages of alcoholic intoxication, elation, expansion,
release of restraint are common symptoms. The intoxica-
tion may result in a confident, foolish or coarse boasting, or
in a maudlin appeal for sympathy, or a ludicrous exhibition
of self-importance, or the mere suppression of ordinary re-
straint and propriety. Mescal, affecting the sensory phases
of excitation, imparts added values of color, and makes
common scenes partake of an illusory glory; hashish
glorifies by expanding the self-feelings, but distorts and
makes irresponsible as well [21] ; while other drugs have
been sought by primitive and no less by civilized men as an
easy road to an earthly paradise. The temptation of the
drug — when not that of a release from dull routine or care
or pain — is the invitation to reach the values of expansive
exaltation of one order or another; that stages of depletion
and abject misery at times follow upon the excitement, is
accepted as part of the cost.

To present ''megalomania'' in action requires the co-
operation of circumstances to make the intoxication or the
dream come true; it requires a social environment which
makes it possible to carry out the expanded ideas. Yet the
tendency that leads to their manifestation is of the same or-
der, whether occurring within the walls of the asylum or in
the world without. To present it on the extravagant scale
of a madman's fancy implies that the organization of so-
ciety permits the madman to exercise his abnormal will.

356 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

''The insanity of power '^ is Dr. Ireland's phrase for the
issue: ''Unrestrained power always tends toward abuse.
Indeed, save to some rare and fine natures, the luxury of
power consists in its abuse." He cites the examples of
certain of the Claudian-Julian family among the Roman
emperors, recounts the career of Mohammed Toglak, Sultan
of India, of Ivan the Terrible of Russia, and other lesser
instances of the growth of the megalomaniac tendencies
when the means to satisfy their cravings are at command.
Cruelty, the passionate joy in the pain and torture of
others, selfish indulgence of debauchery and notably of
sexual lust, the subjection in others that reflects the slavish
fear of personal power — the pomp, glitter and all the added
sensationalism of extravagance, magnificence, and bigness:
these minister to the sense of power which seems prone to
revert, if circumstances permit, to the more primitive,
barbaric satisfactions. In later days, as instanced in Lud-
wig of Bavaria, the exuberance takes the more sanctioned
form of a passion for elaborate architectural constructions,
of financial extravagance, and of reckless pursuit of per-
sonal impulse. It is clear that in such instances the mani-
festation proceeds upon the neurotic or insane tendencies of
the royal victim.

The temperamental trait thus expressed is a common fail-
ing. Its expressions are naturally less notable, less ex-
treme, less public. That the exercise of authority is
fraught with the danger of excess indicates that it appeals
to the earlier impulses more readily than to the more re-
cently organized restraints. It seems more apt to bring
forth cruelty than philanthropy, the joy of control than the
satisfaction of larger opportunity of service. The benefi-
cent despot may not be a myth ; but despotism stands psy-
chologically closer to the wanton use of power than to
beneficence. The tyrant is a typical figure in the social
struggle for freedom. The political boss, the bully, the
taskmaster, the holders of authority and the abusers of

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 357

privilege represent the same common temperamental lia-
bility, despite the altered expressions which circumstances
create. Masterful captains of industry, domineering com-
mercial magnates, ambitious politicians, seek common sat-
isfactions in the exercise of control, in the command of
deference and obedience. Wealth, retinues, harems,
lackeys, slaves, estates, are but different embodiments of
the sense of importance. The satisfactions which they yield
may be wholly legitimate; but like public adulation which
may turn one's head, in the absence of steadying traits
they grow to a proportion and develop expressions allied
to the abnormal. It is the purpose of society to direct and
control the outward signs of self-esteem — dress, ceremony,
honors, orders, titles, or whatever the form assumed — so as
to satisfy a legitimate self -elevation without encroachment
upon the self-esteem of others, without fostering the extreme
pursuit of the self-assertive trend. That such aims and ex-
pressions may readily overstep themselves and in their ac-
quired hold combine to produce a ''money" madness,
''power" madness, "ambition" madness, is as natural as
is the place of their underlying emotional trends in the
psychology of the ordinary range of the insanities.

The conception thus set forth may be extended to include
an undue susceptibility, a disproportionate and unre-
strained yielding to a trait or Trieh. The basis of the yield-
ing is temperamental; and this gives the hypertrophied
trait a consistent psychic setting — something more than the
aspect of a detached vice or accidental fault of training.
A further extension reaches the domain in which the varie-
ties of excess are at once of native and of readjusted status;
they form composite excesses and disproportions of trends,
shading into vices, faults, foibles. The love-passion becomes
a love-madness ; severance of the attachment to home brings
on an attack of nostalgia (homesickness) ; the pleasures of
the imagination lead to extreme romancing and a conse-
quent feeble adjustment to the realities of life; combined

358 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

with the will to prevail it may lead to lying and decep-
tion; curiosity, normally useful, may by the accent of the
sensational become morbid ; belief, the steady guide of con-
duct, may in superstition or credulity become its enemy;
conscience, useful in curbing impulse, may end in narrow
or even cruel fanaticism. Any of the primal passions may
become a lust or an obsession; any of the dominant re-
directed impulses, answering a worthy purpose in life's de-
mands, may grow to abnormal proportion. The loss of the
sense of proportion becomes the general practical atnormal
liability. By contrast, the normal ideal is a just balance
of impulse, a due proportion of opposed qualities. This is
an ancient and a favorite view. If carried to its literal
issue the conception would seem to lead to an amorphous,
featureless, characterless personality. This danger is un-
real, though the commonplace abounds. Natures are in-
evitably specialized; and the temperament, however seem-
ingly neutral, continues to give distinctive values to the
common factors of personal equations ; the powers by which
we live continue to reflect the powers that we bring to life.
The inherent variations of men and the variations of their
vicissitudes bring forward fortes and weaknesses, stresses
and strains. The normal is not a bare plateau, but a rich
undulating contour providing for a varied topography.
Balance remains a positive virtue, and the unbalanced
trend a real liability.

An abnormal liability of a different order is that of de-
generacy [22] and perversion; its expressions appear in
the faulty adjustment of qualities just reviewed. A per-
verted impulse attaches an emotion to a false object, or —
which is the same thing — reacts to a situation which would
normally arouse one emotion by its opposite. It converts
attraction to recoil, and cherishes the normally feared or
avoided; more broadly, it substitutes pain for pleasure or
pleasure for pain. It is pertinent to recall the principle
that the complete esthetic effect combines stimulation and

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 359

satisfaction ; lacking the former, experience is dull ; lacking
the latter, it is undesirable. The factors mingle; the one
may overcome the other ; the interest of the unpleasant may
be preferred to the dullness of the neutral. Fear and
fascination combine; curiosity holds, while disgust fails to
drive away; sensations remain interesting even when far
from pleasurable; it is tempting to touch a sore spot, to
feel the tingle of the pain. Even sorrow and distress carry
the wave of interest: *^Die Wonne des Leides." In the
primary realm of sense-satisfaction a similar relation ob-
tains; it takes but a slight prominence of either quality to
determine the response. In food-preferences the same
flavor attracts one and offends another; tastes may be ac-
quired, as one grows to like by its piquancy the flavor that
at first is merely unpleasant. Yet the variation has its
limits; it is in the overstepping of these limits that the
abnormal tendency consists. In certain forms of insanity
the ordinarily repulsive becomes attractive; filth gives a
morbid pleasure ; and things are eaten that would be utterly
repugnant to a normal appetite. It is, however, in the
range of emotionalized impulses that the realm of perver-
sion is more characteristic. The sex-relation is liable to
perverted expressions of varied type [23]. The attach-
ment of homo-sexuality shows the infusion of one form of
attraction with the expression and the range of impulses of
another. Mere intensity of reaction or recoil may deter-
mine the abnormal trend; the misogynist among men, the
temperamental spinster among women, are different repre-
sentatives of a factor in the sex-complex that is overstated.
The cruelty practiced by children with a slight nervous
taint is a bondage to sensationalism of a primitive order,
which the appeal of sympathetic considerations is power-
less to oppose. Perversion and degeneracy are allied to
the imperfection of development and retardation of growth,
in which, as a fact, they are most commonly symptoms.
Viewed more generally, the liability lies in the dominant

360 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

growth of the lower brain-centers and the imperfect de-
velopment of those of later origin and of controlling func-
tion in every complex existence. In feeble-mindedness the
lower passions, bound up with biologically ancient nerve-
centers, assert themselves, while the restraining higher cen-
ters are incapable of education. A great mass of criminal-
ity is rooted in this condition. The born criminal is tem-
peramentally disposed not to crime, but to strength of
primitive impulse, and is temperamentally handicapped by
the feebleness of control and of susceptibility to training;
thus weakly armed and set in a complex environment he
turns to crime as the easiest way. The criminal by acci-
dent represents the limit of strain in the same relations.
In both cases the environment counts heavily ; for the pat-
terns of conduct offered in the conditions and opportuni-
ties of social and of anti-social expression, engage a similar
range of qualities; their direction may be moral or im-
moral. The natural attraction of immoral action has its
source in the common liabilities of primary impulses to de-
generate to their earlier, cruder expression and satisfac-
tions. The taint of criminality remains a liability of
heredity; its relation to insanity, its predisposition in al-
coholism, its sexual complications, set it in its actual com-
plex; yet the importance of the environment places the
problem of the criminal more properly in the realm of social
psychology. Criminality as an abnormal tendency is ger-
mane to the present argument as an illustration of the com-
posite issue of defect (arrested development) and unbalance
(hereditary taint) and unfortunate environment (poverty
and vice of the slums). It sets forth from another angle
and a practically significant one, the place of a psychologi-
cal interpretation of the liabilities of character and the con-
sequent direction in such light, of the processes of social
control [24].

A further aspect of deviation, pertinent to interpretation
of character and temperament, is that of the social bear-

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 361

ings of individual abnormality, concentrated in the sense
of being different, and thus falling short of full participa-
tion in standards, activities, competition of the normal-
minded, the normally endowed. The very presence of de-
viation brings with it — and in large measure in conscious
terms — a psychological handicap which is in part deter-
mined by the environmental standards. Dwarfs and
hunchbacks, even the very short and the very tall, have
their psychology altered, not merely by difficulty of adap-
tation, but by the conspicuousness of their divergence from
the physical norm, which so readily becomes the social
norm. In cases of deformity the concessions and sympathy
extended readily make sensitive or depress, and lead to
avoidance of society and to the occupations best carried on
in solitude. The emotional psychology of Cyrano de Ber-
gerae is profoundly affected by the presence of an abnor-
mally large nose. Clearly issues of this order may in small
part follow directly from the deviation or defect — like the
limitations of pursuit open to the blind, or the lame, or the
stuttering, or the abnormally shy — but are reflected from
the social environment back upon the development of the
personality. As normality is the possession of the full
complement of endowment in fair measure, so abnormality
attaches to conspicuous deviations of any order. In the
conception is included the normal reactions to the social
environment, which are either primarily or derivatively dis-
turbed in the cases just cited. Social conspicuousness, how-
ever gained or supported, induces a like effect. Kings and
princes, born and bred to privilege, do not lead normal lives ;
the wielding of unusual power or authority, a constant pub-
licity, notoriety of any order, is a strain on normality.
The annals of royal houses, the history of dictatorship, large
or small, the deterioration ensuing upon a domineering sway
of power, the loss of a sense of proportion due to extreme
popularity, the assumptions of the nouveaux riches — all re-
flect the uncertain poise of character, under too violent, too

362 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

sudden, too extreme change of environment, or too strong
departure from its usual support or corrective. Conversely,
any marked exclusion from social privilege, a social ostra-
cism, such as race-prejudice, may profoundly alter the char-
acter as well as set up obstacles in the paths of expression.
No differently the sense of guilt, of suspicion, of a slur upon
the reputation, may tend to abnormality; the released con-
vict, and he who regards every man's hand against him — the
social pariah — suffers a distortion of qualities that come
within the conception of social abnormality. Such sense of
social exclusion is complicated in some cases with individual
taint, yet in others — as in the victims of racial or social
prejudice — grows out of institutional forces of similar im-
port.

This survey of the abnormal tendencies of mind, how-
ever eclectic and inadequate, cannot fail to suggest the
intimacy of relation between the normal and the abnormal
issues of temperament and the resulting types of responsive-
ness which compose the varieties of character. The assets
and the liabilities of human quality are bound by a com-
mon root in the psychology of humanity. The very pos-
sibility of development to the maximum of use exposes to
the risk of abuse ; hypertrophy and defect, overgrowth and
undergrowth, and the varied distortions of maladjustment
serve to convey a sense of the complication of processes
which must be reasonably consolidated, and consistently as
well as cooperatively amalgamated, to establish a normally
adjusted individual. Specializations, introduced by the
emphases of nature, invite anomaly and deviation, as in
turn when developed and applied they are built upon the
qualities of temperamental origin. In such variation lies a
quality of value, possibly of supreme value. It comes for-
ward in the conception of the genius as at once a rare spe-
cialized variant and as a deviation near allied to madness —
a common risk but a wholly different issue. The concep-
tion is in one sense legitimate and well substantiated by

ABNORMAL TENDENCIES OF MIND 363

the findings. More practically and more generally stated,
it reminds a public, inclined to uniformities and to an im-
patience with departure therefrom, that qualities cost and
must be paid for upon whatever terms nature demands.
The risk of deviation is a venture ; its success or failure may
mark the dividing line of genius and insanity.

The qualities associated with the production of genius
are conditioned by the same liabilities that come into ex-
pression in the insanities — the same tendency to excessive
sensibility, the same entanglements of purpose, the same
absorption in the realm of the imagination, the same handi-
caps to the ordinary ranges of practical adjustment, the
same individual perspective of outlook and interest, the
same protest and disregard of the conventional restraints
and satisfactions, the same sporadic and irregular asser-
tion of impulse. In all such deviation lies the potency of
high value no less than of futility. The vagaries of
paranoia and the flights of genius have a common source
as well as a common risk. Indeed without a small meas-
ure of this order of mental venture, of this trend toward
originality and departure, the normal mind cannot reach
its maximum of potency. In this sense no one is hopelessly
sane — irrevocably bound to routine responsiveness, immune
to all inspiration, fated to a bare, regular, simple treadmill
routine of conduct. The spontaneity of childhood is as
marked as its suggestibility; it expresses the native initia-
tive, all too promptly absorbed in the conventionalized ad-
justments demanded by a prescribed and regulated exist-
ence. The liability to deviation is itself a possible asset.
The bare avoidance of the abnormal does not constitute nor-
mality, which consists more truly in the acceptance of the
venture and in the balanced capacity to adjust conduct at
once to the limitations of capacity and the vicissitudes of
career. In such adjustment the part of the abnormal is to
be considered as a beacon pointing to the dangers of the
route, yet marking the desirable havens of the enterprise.

364 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

The dual aspect has given rise to the conception of genius as
a high order of ordinary talent — the common qualities writ
large, the infinite capacity for taking pains — and to the
conception of it as a rare and irregular exotic growth, prone
to wayward expression, transcending the bounds of human
limitation in an approach to the superman. A survey of
the abnormal tendencies of mind reconciles the two views
by relating them to the assets and liabilities of temperament
and character.

CHAPTER VII
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TKAITS

The individual is to be considered as the concrete issue
of a cumulative series of influences converging in special
variety, measure, and distribution in his heredity and cir-
cumstance. In the broader view his individuality is slight ;
the series of influences determining his ** nature" and con-
duct determine in comparable manner the *' nature" and
conduct of others of close and remote kinship and of similar
social condition. The psychology of human differences is
as directly concerned with the larger communities of qual-
ity as with their slighter variations. In terms of original
nature, the traits shared are more significant than the varia-
tions expressing individual differences. The original com-
munity persists through the revaluation and specialization
of traits introduced by social encouragements and discour-
agements. Civilization gives added values to selected
(small) differences of quality; it does not create the traits
thus cherished and fostered. Nature proves to be anterior
as well as superior to nurture. The group-traits involved
in a common nature, by virtue of a common heredity, re-
main the directive ones.

The difficulty lies in determining which are presump-
tively natural, which nurtural group-traits, or in what
manner a natural trait has been redirected by nurture, or
reenforced, or opposed. Racial and national heritage, im-
mediate ancestry, cultural emphasis, artificial selection, fa-
voring opportunities, stand as momentous but indefinite
forces in the concrete issue. They make uncertain the re-
construction or detection of the traits which an American

365

366 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

"John Smith" of the present generation owes to his direct
family history, to his eighteenth- or seventeenth-century
Puritan ancestry, to his remoter Anglo-Saxon heritage, to
the primitive North European hordes that asserted their
energies and capacities to prevail above the Romanic civili-
zation which they replaced and in part absorbed, to the
generic ethnological group of the genus homo of which, in
turn, they formed but one subdivision; and no less so, of
the traits which he displays in consequence of his Ameri-
canization, his transplanted Westernism in one or more
removes from or toward frontierdom, his occupational
bent, his democratic ideals, his political affiliations, his so-
cial training, his educational opportunities, his class inter-
ests, his absorption and reflection of the ''spirit" of the
day. And ''John Smith" is a type of a composite group
to which leaders of men, or we in our special interests
appeal when we aim to influence the collective *'John
Smith's" conduct — his vote, his views, his ventures, his
activities, his diversions, his social efforts, his ' ' public ' ' sen-
timents, his taste in dress, decoration, music, drama, lit-
erature. The more closely we approach the individual
"John Smith," the larger the play of condition which con-
stitutes the presentative life of the individual as of the
group to which he belongs, and absorbs as well as liberates
individuality. Traditions are strong, but yield to circum-
stance; modern life equalizes and promptly brings into se-
lective rivalry the products of distant and foreign cultures.
Racial and national trends are mixed by intermarriage, as
cultures are mingled by intercourse and contact in the
melting-pot of humanity, making of it a cauldron of human
qualities. In the nearer perspective the historian and the
sociologist undertake the interpretation of the forces that
mold the individual and the group. In the background
stand the sources and relations of natural group-traits,
yielding a psychological basis of interpretation.

There is but one supreme natural differentiation — ^that

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 367

of sex. If there is any distinctive group-psychology, it
must be that of the group of men and the group of women.
For men and women are organically different ; which means
that the physiological differentiation in the reproductive
system involves a contrasted psychology, involves differen-
tiated modes of adjustment, of near and remote relation
to the original requirements of divergent natural function.
The resulting differences are the derivative group-traits of
sex. There are also further degrees and manners of dif-
ferentiation, secondary ranges of contrasted quality in men
and women, growing out of the primary mental differences,
likewise to be regarded as derivative sex-traits. Such later
products are strongly affected by environment, convention,
tradition, collectively as effective as original nature. Sec-
ondary, tertiary, and yet more remotely derivative sex-
traits appear and attain large significance for the actual
situations. In principle they represent a transformation
of by-products of group-traits through the influences of nur-
ture.

We may follow the range of original and derived sex-
differences by the aid of the clews to their expression.
First is the bodily clew. Strictly interpreted, the primary
sex-traits refer to the reproductive system alone; the term
may be extended to include the female mammalian func-
tions from which the order takes its name. All others are
secondary, or more remotely derivative bodily traits and
extend to anatomical (and physiological) details: size, the
skeletal basis of strength, proportion of frame to muscle,
contrast of metabolism, specific sex-demarcations — such as
the beard in man — variations large and small in structure
and associated function. **A man is a man even to his
thumbs, and a woman is a woman down to her little toes. ' '

Second is the genetic clew of development. The term
*' infantilism " summarizes the traits characteristic of im-
mature, constructive stages of growth; ** senility" sum-
marizes the traits characteristic of the completing, disin-

368 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tegrating stages. The feminine traits approach the former,
the masculine the latter. Variability is significant, and
represents a closer adherence to, or freer departure from
the type-traits. This becomes a momentous distinction;
it leads to a conforming stereotyped expression (female),
or a bent for creative and divergent expression (male) —
a conservatism or a liberalism of constitution.

Third is the communal clew. The structures and func-
tions of the two sexes are comprehensively similar ; sex does
not monopolize function, though it may dominate; even
the distinctive sex-features of each sex are found in unde-
veloped form in the other. Supplementary to the fact that
men and women are predominantly human and subject to
like, yet not identical conditions of growth, maturity, varia-
tion, and disease, every man exhibits feminine traits, and
every woman masculine traits. In the derivative sense
masculinity and femininity, though primarily divergent,
are variable in the degree of divergence — in the extent to
which the divergent is assertive above the communal. Com-
bined with the genetic clew, this principle emphasizes the
greater community of traits in immaturity, before sex-dif-
ferentia are fully developed.

Fourth is the clew of physiological expression. Of this
the mode of work is typical: the greater strength of man
leads to a less constant output of more intense energy in
high-tension spurts; woman works by more constant out-
put of energy of lesser strain. The contrast reflects the
catabolic (spending) and anabolic (saving) tendencies of
the metabolism, and is but one of a group of differences,
cumulative and commanding. It occupies a transitional
place between the bodily clew, and

Fifth, the clew of psychological expression ; this has the
largest range, and for present purposes, the largest inter-
est. It embraces the entire compass of human psychology.
It relates to fundamental differences of sensibility and ac-
tion— of the intellectual regulation and its resources in the

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 369

nervous system — and to all that is directive and distinctive
of the psychic process and product, first in primitive situa-
tions and later in primitive orders of expression. Deriva-
tive traits of mind become more significant and prac-
tically important as the situations move away from the
primary conditions in which natural demands are insistent,
and all traits, among them those of sex, come to stand more
largely upon their secondary issues and employments.

Sixth, the environmental clew refers to the reenf orcement,
or suppression, of traits by the environment. The en-
vironment is in the first instance the natural habitat, and
life is a primitive adjustment to it; secondarily, there de-
velops the transformed environment, largely of artificial
order. Yet the earlier demands and forms of adjustment
persist in type, though not in detail. The environment
comes to be more distinctively psychological than biological
or physical. Severe environmental conditions throw the
emphasis of traits back upon primary natural trends ; freer,
richer, transformed situations give play and import to the
acquired characteristics.

Seventh is the pathological clew. The liabilities to dis-
order are to be reckoned among the vicissitudes of growth
and life. The issue appears in the different susceptibility
— and characteristically for the several periods of life —
to disorders, to organic deviations and functional faults ; in
different liabilities in succumbing to the stress and strains
of living; in different risks of accident and disturbance of
economy, including especially the mental economy. Sus-
ceptibility to mental defect and exaggeration, to disorder
and loss of balance, are significant in the individual and in
the pathology of the social life. In these several directions
it is evident that men and women differ comprehensively
and significantly. The typical differences constitute the
primary and the more important secondary, or more re-
motely derivative and favored group-traits of sex [1].

A marked contrast is that of strength: men are half

S70 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

again as strong, even twice as strong, as women. Men are
nearly five inches (eight per cent.) taller than women.
The larger and differently shaped pelvis — ''long, narrow
and strongly built" in men; ''broad, relatively shallow and
delicately made" in women — is the most "conspicuous and
unchangeable of all the bony, human, secondary characters,
and approaches the status of a primary character. Asso-
ciated therewith is the larger thigh and greater distance be-
tween the origins of the thigh-bones in women. The
proportion of the members of the body is distinctive: the
head and trunk longer in women; the neck, legs and arms
longer in men. "Man's bony prominences are usually
more conspicuous, and his muscles are everywhere more
clearly defined " ; in women the muscles ' ' are softly encased
in abundant connective tissue which makes them less obvi-
ous." The fuller, rounder outlines of women appear in the
distinctly larger proportion of fat to muscle. The meas-
ured differences in size and proportion of hand and foot,
even of fingers and toes, extend the structural details. Dif-
ferences in the skull — apart from size as related to height,
and of thickness and muscular prominences as related to
strength — are difficult to formulate — though with excep-
tions, such as the prominence of the glabella in men; yet
the fact that skulls reveal sex by a composite judgment of
measurements and appearance, with a reasonable margin
for error, indicates the reality of the differences. The rela-
tive size of the brain in men and women involves the bodily
proportion; the brain-mass is a minor and not a major
index of the efficiency of that organ. ' ' The superiority in
brain mass, so far as it exists, is on the woman 's side ; this,
however, implies no intellectual superiority, but is merely
a characteristic of short people and children"; the skull
completes its growth earlier in women. The more primary
structural contrasts relate to provisions for reproduction,
the secondary to derivative modifications associated with
them in the resulting adjustment to the mode of life.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 371

A notable physiological trait is the greater specializa-
tion of the male toward action. ^' While the man's form
seems to be instinctively seeking action, the woman's falls
naturally into a state of comparative repose." This con-
trast when extended makes the central physiological trait
of the female to store, to save, to be anabolic in con-
stitution; and that of the male to expend, to react with
vigor, to be catdholic. The mode of the circulation as well
as blood-tests reenforce this conclusion, associating *'a high
specific gravity, red corpuscles, plentiful hemoglobin" with
the catabolic constitution of man. The supporting physi-
ological mechanisms indicate a similar adjustment. "The
lung capacity of women is less, and they consume less
oxygen and produce less carbonic acid than men of equal
weight, although the number of respirations is slightly
higher than in man. On this account women suffer depriva-
tion of air more easily than men." "A comparison of the
waste-products of the body and of the quantity of the ma-
terials consumed in the metabolic process indicates a rela-
tively larger consumption of energy by man" (Thomas).
The more obscure internal economy yields additional data.
Pigmentation and the growth of hair are conspicuous;
women have more abundant as well as darker hair than
men, and darker eyes, but fairer skin. The thyroid gland is
absolutely larger in women than in men, and relatively
large in childhood ; disease thereof — notably goiter — is more
common in women. The action of the gland is con-
nected with intense emotional disturbances of the order
of terror and fear. The association of voice with sex
is a typical issue: it appears in the peculiar transforma-
tion of voice at puberty — far more marked in the male
— in the greater length of the vocal cords in men, in
the better development of larynx and voice in civilized
races, in the relation of quality of voice to breeding.
*'The thoracic organs somewhat predominate in men, and
the abdominal in women"; the strength of men depends

872 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

on the cooperation of heart and lungs. The ancient asso-
ciation of (male) courage with the breast and (female)
compassion with the bowels is suggestive.

The distinctive pathological liabilities of the sexes are
indicated generally in the greater longevity of women. Re-
lated thereto is the well established greater disvulnerability
of women; which means that they endure surgical opera-
tions better, are more tolerant of pain and illness and
physiological maladjustment, resist physiological accident
and invasion more successfully than men. Such tolerance
is shown by surgical records, statistics of recovery from dis-
ease, observation of behavior under illness, endurance of
prison regime, relative freedom from suicide (three men
to one woman) and particularly from suicide due to misery
and want (seven to ten times as frequent among men).
For specific diseases (apart from a large common suscepti-
bility, and apart from diseases peculiar to the reproductive
system and its liabilities), the facts support the statement
that there are many (cases of) diseases common in chil-
dren and women and relatively rare in men, and many
(cases of) diseases rare in children and women and com-
mon in men; but only few cases in which the converse
relation obtains. Woman's liability approaches an "in-
fantile diathesis." The masculine and feminine strengths
and weaknesses of function are consistent secondary is-
sues of the divergent anatomy and physiology of sex.

The nervous system participates in a decisive manner in
the secondary sex-traits; the abnormal there represents an
accentuation of inherent tendencies — a liability of the nat-
ural endowment to succumb to stress of condition. The
greater liability of men to gross lesions and degenerative
changes of the nervous system is established, and equally
the greater occurrence among women of lesser functional
disorders, particularly of the type involving emotional in-
stability and deficient expressional control. Until within
recent years and among the most civilized communities, in-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 373

sanity as a whole has been more prevalent among men;
women continue to show a larger percentage of recovery,
as also a slightly greater tendency to relapse. The types
of disorder to which each sex particularly succumbs are
significant. Chorea, with its strongly emotionalized motor
incoordination, in many ways paralleling the symptoms of
excessive fright, is a characteristic liability of nervous, ado-
lescent girls, but is far less common in boys. Hysteria, as
its etymology implies, was originally recognized as a femi-
nine disorder. It remains the typically feminine form of
functional nervous liability; its psychological complexity
entitles it to the fuller consideration accorded in the pre-
ceding chapter. Speaking broadly, states of melancholic
depression are more common in women, as are also ex-
plosive states of maniacal outbreak ; but the differences in
the mode of expressing such mental unbalance is equally
distinctive. Dementia precox — a characteristic disorder of
early adult life — is consistently more common in women,
and presents different types in men and women; so that
a differential diagnosis shows one variety dominating in
men and another in women.

Among the typically masculine insanities is general
paralysis. Its early stages parallel the symptoms of alco-
holic intoxication: tremor of speech and movement, coarse-
ness of expression, uncertainty of sensory action, and free
indulgence of expansive thought ; it develops quickly to the
later stages with paralytic symptoms, illusions of grandeur,
loss of control, and a generally disordered, excessive func-
tioning— throughout a picture of exaggerated masculine
psychology. In its pathology, it is allied to such other seri-
ous lesions of the nervous system as tabes, brain-tumors,
apoplexy, which are all more common in men. On the
functional side, hypochondria and the exhaustion types of
neurasthenia, present the more typically masculine frailties
of psychic functioning. Relative susceptibility to, or im-
munity from, specific orders of nervous and mental disease,

374 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

details of onset, course, and prominence of symptoms, re-
flect characteristic differences in men and women, in boys
and girls, and corroborate the minute adjustment of the
nervous system to natural vicissitudes by laying bare the
differences in masculine and feminine liabilities and assets,
physiological and psychological.

On the basis of such data there may be developed a dis-
tinctive psychology of sex-traits. Viewed temperamentally,
to be psychologically male implies an organic bias toward
a certain composite of qualities which is a consistent ex-
pression of masculine function ; to be psychologically female
implies a yet more pervasive infusion of primary and deriva-
tive traits, because of the larger radiation of sex in the femi-
nine organism. Temperamentally, however otherwise con-
ditioned, an overwhelmingly influential factor of one's psy-
chology lies in the primal determination of sex : "Male and
female created He them." The derivative issues of sex
extend to differentiations of capacities, endowment, inter-
ests, emotions, sensibilities, responses to social and environ-
mental conditions. The social organization is an outgrowth
of these differences and exerts a reflex influence upon them,
in that social institutions embody and reenforce them.
One such complex issue in the early social organization is
the matriarchal system, which obtains in such conflicting
variety among primitive peoples. Woman there represents
the center of social stability, the point of return of the pro-
vider to his own, the indisputable basis of kinship, and
through it, of family unity and tribal consanguinity, the
nucleus of the arts and of the conservative tendencies, the
cradle of the effective life in the reciprocal relations of
mother and child, and equally the primary school of dis-
cipline and tradition. However modified by natural and
imposed masculine assertion, a core of primitive psychologi-
cal influences is there expressed. The reproductive func-
tion is thus made central in the social structure at a stage
at which natural conditions are commanding, and the re-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 375

adjustment demanded by social-economic relations is but
feebly developed.

The directive masculine quality, related to, though ex-
tending far beyond, the immediate expression of man's
sexual nature, is his superior strength and fitness for stren-
uous activity. Man 's sexual ardor is stronger, and through
its stress he develops in courtship and the struggle for
mates the assertive qualities of his nature. Conversely, the
lesser urgency of the female confers the reserve power of
choice, the exercise of selective preference, and leads to the
employment of qualities connected with the power of at-
traction. Masculine forcefulness finds its expression in
mastery, physical defense, and social authority. The di-
rective leadership in the guidance of life's activities be-
comes the individual and collective expression of the mascu-
line mind, a mind of will. Organization through prowess
and courage, combat and dominance, promptly assumes the
military form as its institutional embodiment. When this
becomes strong enough under favorable traditions, it pre-
vails above considerations of descent; and the patriarchy
replaces the matriarchy. The terms indicate a difference in
the emphasis of relations to which is accorded the recog-
nized as well as the real social control [2].

The existence and the range of sex-differences are thus
established. The degree, the origin, the stability, the sig-
nificance of the differences require interpretation: how far
are these differences the issues of temperamental qualities,
how far the.products of condition, convention, tradition, op-
portunity? The latter group of factors includes the eco-
nomic and political disabilities of women, which, though not
without a basis in nature, may be in the main an institu-
tional product. In considering this vexed issue a correc-
tive to narrow prejudice may be found in the contrasts of
race and nation, time and clime, station and culture, tradi-
tions and ideals. It is, however, a principle of large im-
port that the two sets of influences — natural and nurtural

376 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

— are far more likely to reenforce than to oppose one an-
other, strongly as convention and tradition may set the
trend in the latter direction. There is also the tendency
unreflectively or deliberately to make natural sex-differ-
ences stronger by exaggeration or reenforcement ; this itself
is in accord with nature 's ways. Secondary sex-traits serve
to stamp men as masculine through and through, women
as versatilely feminine; the indices of sex are many and
yet of one meaning.

The same conditioning factors that bind structure, func-
tion, expression, and application, in determining what hu-
manity makes of its endowment, shape the divergent possi-
bilities and natural emphasis of the masculine and feminine
endowments respectively. A series of three factors may be
recognized: the organic (biological) structure, the natural
(physiological) function, the (psychological) application.
The three are correlated: the function associated with the
structure, the application with the function. Primarily
structure conditions function, and function application.
For man, his more powerful structure finds its expression
in his masterful part in the struggle for food and for mates,
vitalized by his aggressive sexuality; it finds its applica-
tion in the freer, more constructive, more variable activi-
ties and in the resulting interests. For woman, with a
larger and more rigid determination — owing to the domi-
nance of her organization — structure makes her reproduc-
tive interests larger, gives her functional activities, once ad-
justed, a steadier, more regular orbit. In the derivative
applications it employs a characteristic range of qualities,
such as a keen affective zest, a conservative trend, a large
impressionistic bias. The yet slighter and more remote is-
sues of this difference in employment of favored aptitudes,
and in determining how the finer claims of the environment
shall be recognized, radiate to all the nicer complexities of
masculine and feminine psychology. They command an
urgent detailed interest, in that they continue to affect the

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 377

larger and the finer contours of human relations. They
determine masculine and feminine institutions as well as
constitute masculine and feminine modes of adjustment.

Primitive emphasis is certain to reflect natural trends;
each sex, like each organism, tends toward the activities
which it can most efficiently accomplish by gift of nature;
interests respond to and develop capacities. Tradition en-
ters to fix what is deemed manly and what womanly; con-
trasted interests and occupations make a different appeal
to boys aild to girls. Sentiment increases the differentia-
tion by reenforcing the contrast through dress, manner of
life, privilege, training, encouragement. Nature sets a sim-
ilar example; part of the meaning of secondary sex-traits
is to render the male and female more unlike, more com-
plementary, more unfamiliar, more mutually attractive.
The difference in growth of hair (of beard in man, of the
richer tresses in woman), the marked difference in voice
(the change of which in the male is a marked adolescent
sign), the roundness of form, the greater delicacy of fea-
ture, the pose, the step, the gentler touch of the woman —
all radiate sex to every feature and action, and in due
course become romantic enhancements, derivative, idealized
attributes of the eternal feminine.

Derivative sex-traits reenforce one another in that they
represent a consistent group of associated traits derived
from a deeper, more fundamental, nearer-to-nature tone
of ''sex" conditioning. The ''greater youthfulness of
physical type in women'' is "a very radical characteristic,
and its influence vibrates to the most remote psychic re-
cesses." The greater normality of woman, bringing her
nearer to the child-type and to the race-norm, are related
to her anabolic habit; and that in turn is of a piece with
her lesser variability and her greater affectability — affecta-
bility being an early form of psychic response. Further-
more, the avoidance of excessive high-pressure energies —
by yielding to initial strain — ^protects woman from many of

378 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the masculine risks, but removes her from the intense con-
centration of high effort and daring initiative. Because
men are organically catabolic, they are prone to be master-
ful by mental habit, and extravagant as well; the larger,
bolder venture is masculine; the closer thrift is feminine.
In each there is a consistent and reenforcing cluster of
tendencies.

Such favoring dispositions, moderately contrasted in-
clinations, consistent groupings of tendencies, come to the
fore in the occupations which men and women seek through
the adjustment of powers to performance, and in which they
find distinction [3]. The low-pressure energies of women
lead to routine employments, requiring patient care, atten-
tion to detail, obedience to directions. The affectability ap-
pears in the fact that the arts in which women excel are
those in which personality dominates, combined with forms
of esthetic expression congenial to the emotional medium.
The drama, the opera, the song, and the dance are elaborate
issues of such inclinations. The minor arts of decoration
and embellishment combine types of occupation conform-
ing to the above requirements in expenditure of effort, with
the esthetic interest issuing from the keen sensibility. Yet
women attain a less notable success than men in original
creation even within the arts making a large appeal to
them, in which their opportunities have not been seriously
handicapped. Literature confirms the verdict; the novel,
reflecting the intimately personal aspects of life, engages
the larger number of women wri ' 'irs with a fair proportion
of merit ; but few women novelists attain the highest rank.
Such evidence is suggestive by reason of the fact that the
traits thus brought to unusual professional expressions in
gifted individuals, represent the generic group-traits that
find a congenial and consistent outlet in the ordinary range
of adjustments. Considered generically the feminine su-
periority of adjustment is to situations requiring social tact,
keen emotional susceptibility, and a ready responsiveness.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 379

Contributory to this aptitude is the strength of attach-
ment, the warmth of allegiance, the lesser tendency to lead-
ership and venture ; by virtue of this trait women become
strong adherents — forces of conservatism — when once their
sympathies are enlisted. The fact that they are ready to
be aroused by a congenial appeal promotes suggestibility.
The religious tendency, however otherwise reenforced, is a
high-level derivative of the devotional phase of responsive-
ness; yet with rare exceptions, religious leaders are
men [4], the exceptions themselves capable of interpreta-
tion as the products of characteristic feminine mental sus-
ceptibility. Women will supply ' ' much of the living spirit-
ual substance, if a man will supply the mold for it to flow
into. ' ' Appreciations seem to follow the same trends. The
slighter objectivity of women keeps them aloof from
philosophical pursuits, and from the scientific devotion that
reconstructs the interests of life away from the personal,
and directs them to theories, systems, principles, rigid con-
clusions, objective, depersonalized relations. A by-prod-
uct of the feminine sex-attitude is the "extreme sensitive-
ness to the judgment of another" and to the persuasive
appeal ; it enters into * ' the technique for the conquest of a
member of the opposite sex," and is not unlike the proc-
esses leading to religious conversion. *'In each case the
will is to be set aside and strong suggestive means are used,
and in both cases the appeal is not of the conflict type, but
of an intimate, sympathetic and pleading kind" (Thomas).
These traits are to be considered primarily not for their
bearing upon sex-differences as exercised under modern
complex conditions, but as derivative consequences of trends
more directly significant in their primitive setting. In
such setting the typical masculine pursuit is the chase and
combat, while the typical feminine occupation is the care
of family and courtship ; not that either is all-absorbing, or
constant, or complete in its range of the qualities which it
engages and matures, but that fitness of these survival ac-

380 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tivities, of which food and race are the foci, is imperative
and elemental. Their organic depth is profound; in the
formative period of the common racial psychology, the set
of the psychic equipment had to be adequate to support
these purposes, or fail. Interpreted in its widest aspect,
the aggressive *' survival' ' activities of the food-quest em-
phasizes one set of qualities of the sex, and the '^ family"
situation another; though both sexes experience the claims
of each through an underlying common organization, man
and woman feel them differently — the masculine getting its
major set from the food-quest, the feminine from the ' ' fam-
ily" interests. The sources of the secondary sex-qualities
lie in these remote beginnings ; in these relations their sig-
nificance is clearer, the favoring advantages in the type of
adjustment which they secure, more direct. In the course
of evolution the sex-qualities assume a more derivative as-
pect; they persist, but are more and more strongly modi-
fied by the conditions of life and by the social institutions
which they require for their expression and regulation.
Furthermore, the resultant qualities of sex are transferred
to other applications in a transferred order of employment,
and in such high-grade adjustment lead to a further psy-
chological differentiation. There is no absolute contrast of
process, but a moderate contrast of favored procedure;
there is a difference of emphasis, a shifting of the center
of influence. Such is the relative play of reason and of
emotion, of seeking adjustment to situation and of exercis-
ing control through cognitive or through affective processes.
The emphasis of the one or the other develops fairly con-
trasted techniques of adjustment. Reason proceeds more
by knowing what the situation is and its causes, emotion
more by gauging how the situation disposes one to response.
The one is the sensitizing of an objective distinction, which
is knowledge vitalized by interest, dominantly masculine;
the other is the rationalizing of intuition, which is an emo-
tional impressionism, dominantly feminine. The contrast

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 381

may be interpreted as the natural kinship of a supporting
process to primary impulse and purpose. The masculine
pursuit as naturally enlists and develops the service of the
one — the cognitive — as does the feminine that of the other
— ^the emotional nature. Application accentuates func-
tional fitness ; and endowment favors the manner of employ-
ment of available qualities. The difference is a contrast
of degree only, a contrast in the relative strength of a com-
mon derivative trend ; for a common psychology makes both
sexes generically susceptible to common orders of appeal,
makes men and women employ both cognition and emotion
in common expression of a common nature. The same qual-
ities that serve intelligent adjustment to situation are
aroused and drawn upon by varied situations, and with
varied emphasis and manner. Situations that naturally
evoke the one predominance of qualities will more and more
attract and fall to the share of the sex in which such pre-
dominance is congenial to endowment; the favored endow-
ment will find or create for itself a field of application in
the occupations supplied by the environment. A moderate
emphasis of a common trait is enough to determine pre-
ferred occupations, later reenforced by tradition and ac-
complishment. Slight superiorities thus lead to widening
differentiations. As the field of expression extends, deriva-
tive forms of minor contrasts come to be as momentous as
the more real, more direct differences in the primary field
of operation [5]. The deviations of sex-interest and pro-
ficiency become established and organized in the institu-
tional life.

An original biological emphasis leads to manifold slight
but cumulatively important divergences in the psychologi-
cal and sociological realm. It leads to them through the
transfer of traits from primary and direct fields of appli-
cation to secondary and indirect ones, with a consequent
modification of the trait itself through the quality of its
transferred exercise. Primary endowment and original

382 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

situation are superseded by secondary acquisition and con-
ventionalized application. In the process by-products of
such traits develop, and further complicate the issue.
Moreover, educated persons come to live so largely upon
the derivative issues of their natures, and shape their en-
deavors and value them in terms of these, that the parent
traits and situations are lost sight of, as they become sub-
merged and overlaid. To restore this earlier perspective is
the purpose of the considerations thus reviewed.

However, eclectically, a survey of a masculine and of a
feminine psychology may be attempted. The greater varia-
tional tendency [6] of the human male, particularly in his
physiological expressions, is well established. The trait is
related or leads to his looser social connection, his detach-
ment from the intimate family concerns, and to his freer
movement in the struggle for existence and preferment.
Professor Thomas has neatly termed it the man's ** tangen-
tial disposition." It disposes him to venture, which emo-
tionally is the search for and the welcome of the unfamiliar.
The uncertainty of the chase embodies the zest of varying
fortune. It presents thrilling moments of intense energy,
the "kill" as a stirring climax of keen pursuit and active
endurance. Involved in the complex of qualities is the fac-
tor of strength and the joy of its exercise; it appears in
the fondness for athletic games and sports and the hazard
thereof, which in turn must make their appeal also to the
rivalry situation and the uncertainty of issue. The game is
exercise, but also a challenge and a gamble. Even the out-
sider, who does not play, appreciates its points, bets on the
winner, and vicariously comes into the game. When the
modern business man goes a-fishing, he not only breaks
away from routine but seeks the thrill of the catch, and the
uncertainties of fisherman's luck, and the esteem attaching
to his record. In his livelihood occupations he is ready to
replace industry by risk, labor by shrewdness, to enjoy his
game more when a stake is involved, to become a gambler

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 383

in spirit, whether at Monte Carlo or on Wall Street. The
breaking away from routine is emphasized at the period
of masculine maturity and leads to the Wander jahre, the
frontier, the open road. The ''rolling stone," the life of
the tramp, becomes a significant expression of men "tor-
tured by their vagrant energies" (Ellis). By contrast, the
budding girl, the debutante, at a like period — despite the
instability that produces her variable moods and tenses —
yields more largely to the restraints and shelters of con-
vention, and to the obligations of responsibility. An in-
creased domestication of the one contrasts with the "wild
oats" of the other. The sporting type is not absent in
women, nor should we expect to find it so in the feminine
ensemhle. But it there takes a typical feminine form in
the adventuress, who gambles on her personal qualities, a
craftiness developed in her own more personal technique,
quite as man trades upon his skill in getting the better of
another in his form of the battle of wits.

The intellectual aspect of the group-quality involved in
the combat situation is the shrewdness in meeting a rival
or a situation. Its earlier form is a direct securing of ad-
vantage by strategy rather than by brute force. Shrewd-
ness becomes an aptitude for the management of men and
the functions executive ; it leads to cooperation and organi-
zation and the pursuit of a policy or a cause lying in part
outside of a narrow personal interest, and larger than per-
sonal welfare. The pursuit becomes a problem and a chal-
lenge of mind ; the qualities engaged and matured in solv-
ing the problems of defense, and of the chase and the food-
supply, develop a liking and an aptitude for problems of
other and of wider scope. Such problems remaii;! more char-
acteristically of the presentative type, dealing practically
with things, and the control of their properties and uses.
Mechanical construction, devices, shaping materials to use,
represent the natural outlets of the trait — as typically a
masculine pursuit in the hunter and trapper as in the en-

S84 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

gineer. Resources alter the scope and increase the intri-
cacy of the application of what, at bottom, are similar pro-
ficiencies of similar origin. As invention extends its do-
main, the pursuit involves more and more the principles of
theory and the insight into laws, becomes abstract and rep-
resentative, rather than literally strategical and ingenious.
Yet its outlook is objective, though it looks to the future
and to remote possibilities, constructs ideal situations, and
prepares long-range responses thereto. Combine in varied
measure the tangential disposition, the zest of the unfa-
miliar and of its conquest, the shrewdness of wit, the trend
toward organization, the objective interest, the mastery of
control — all congenial and reenforcing qualities; apply
them to different ends, and you proceed measurably in the
comprehension of masculine superiority as an executive, as
a devotee of science, as a philosopher. All these qualities
he carries in fair measure to his pursuits, and insists upon
their satisfaction, if he is to find incentive and adjustment
therein. A momentous consequence attaches to the yet re-
moter issues of the objective interest and habit of mind.
In its higher reaches it proceeds upon a detachment from
the local, momentary, concrete situation, and thereby fos-
ters a faculty for abstraction, for considerations remote
but not unrelated to the present — the imaginative construc-
tion of what may be, or should be, the enthusiastic devo-
tion to ideals and their promotion. Man is at once a prac-
tical schemer, a gambling spirit, admittedly an unprinci-
pled one at times, but also a venturesome theorist, an ardent
reformer. Such theoretical proficiencies appear most
richly in the scientist and the philosopher, to whose tangen-
tial contributions are due the largest advances of culture
and of the means and standards of living; in contempla-
tion whereof the vagaries of unsound schemes and extrava-
gant ventures and the eccentricities and absurdities of im-
agination seem an insignificant price.

A contrasted emphasis of derivative sex-traits appears in

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 385

the mode of sacrifice which such pursuit entails ; masculine
objectivity promotes devotion to partnerships, movements,
corporations, institutions and causes; women's sacrifice is a
sympathetic renunciation in behalJf of an emotionally cher-
ished "other." Of like '* masculine" origin are the co-
operation, the team-play, the mass movements, the organiza-
tion of armies, the practical skill, the commercial organiza-
tions, the unions, federations, trusts, that develop and are
concentrated upon the varied economic situations, the com-
plexity of which, in the industrial setting of modem com-
merce and the skill and satisfaction in their management,
testify to the strength and educability of this underlying
problem-solving, organizing trend. The failings, the risks,
the neglects, the vices to which the pursuit may lead, are
equally contained in the venture. The selfish ends, the
concern for ''number one," the disregard of other consid-
erations are inherent in the game ; the interest in winning
comes to exceed the interest in the play; personal vantage
tyrannizes; graft is a ready temptation; the promoter is
more common than the philanthropist. By virtue of the
qualities which direct their interests, men are shrewd trad-
ers and relentless bargainers as well as schemers, are not—
in their own vernacular — in business for their health. In
the direct sex-relations men are tangentially disposed, are
prone to lose the ardor of devotion and to seek new alli-
ances. Polygamy, concubinage, represent rival invitations
within the domain of sex. Exogamy, it has been suggested,
is the sanction by custom, of the tendency to seek alliances
outside the clan. The zest in the eager rivalry of other
pursuits and of those of sex has a common basis ; the rival
interests and the qualities which they enlist come to dom-
inate. Because of the absorption in objective projects and
of the ardent adoption of such ends within the scheme of
life, these ends become truly competitive with those of sex,
and compose the manifold interests of the developed mascu-
line mind. They satisfy the masculine desire, irregular and

386 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

vagrant though it be, for expansion, venture, novelty, ex-
ploration, control.

To illustrate the feminine complex, one must return to
the large affectability, which is an emotional dominance in
the technique of adjustment, taking its clew from the ab-
sorbing emotional appeal of the courtship and family con-
cerns. The orders of responsiveness fashioned in direct
relation to these interests and occupations extend to the
interests of life in general ; they set the pattern of endeavor,
response, and satisfaction in other pursuits. The affecta-
bility is associated with, and reenforced by, the conservative
trend; which is in turn coordinated with the lesser varia-
bility, more central normality, closer attachment to primary
interests, to local, concrete, immediately engaging, person-
ally absorbing, persistent and adjusted activities — all typi-
fied in the race-preserving, mothering ministrations. The
affectability may be brought into relation with the organic
conservatism by going back in the history of the race ; for
emotionalism is more natural, genetically earlier and deeper,
than ideo-motor control. Affectability means that primitive
brain-centers are stronger than the more recently developed
ones, and are inclined to revolt against the imposed rule.
This trait is thoroughly characteristic of child-psychology,
and with due modification, of the primitive man and of the
simpler, less developed, more child-like members of so-
ciety.

As a personal liability, the trait appears in the suscepti-
bility to emotional strain, within normal limits and beyond
them [7]. It appears in the greater liability of women to
convulsions, and more particularly in the fact that chorea
(St. Vitus' dance) is a markedly feminine disorder, and
after adolescence an almost exclusively feminine one; the
relation of convulsions — as an elaborate ''startling'' per-
turbation— ^to emotional affectability, particularly to the
emotion of fear, is suggestive. Of like significance is the
part played by young women in religious epidemics and

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 387

hypnotic phenomena. The loss of personality, the assump-
tion of the inspiration of the Delphic oracles, fell to young
women. Mesmer's subjects in the hysterical atmosphere of
the cures of ''animal magnetism '^ were found generally
among women. The somnambules who in the early nine-
teenth century developed clairvoyant and allied powers
were young women ; in the modern instances of altered per-
sonality, and in the cases of mediumistic phenomena involv-
ing trance and trance-like states, women play the larger
role. Obsessions and mental contagions prevail among
women; this factor dominated in the delusions of witch-
craft ; it is responsible for the violence of outbreak, the de-
structiveness, noisiness, depravity in prison and in insane
asylums (tantrums, Zuchthausknall) . Much of this dis-
quietude reaches into the hysterical field; for the feminine
liability to hysteria, as well as the typical invasion of the
disorder, is but another expression of emotional instability
upon the basis of large affectability and motor exuberance.
The greater ease and urgency of expression means that the
routes to the motor centers, when aroused by emotional
states, are more open. Dancing is a characteristic expres-
sion, world-wide and world-old, with peculiar relations to
the feminine nature. So also is the greater talkativeness
or effusiveness of women, which may be socially favored
and, like many another such trait, is grafted upon a natural
disposition. The infrequency of stuttering in girls is a
suggestive fact. Little girls acquire facility in speech
more promptly and efficiently, and use vocal expressions,
particularly as an emotional outlet (shrieking), more read-
ily than do boys. As is true of other complexes, the con-
genial traits and their mode of expression form a character-
istic ensemble, combining original tendencies with associated
derivative forms of expression.

That the feminine ' * prominence ' ' in the technique of ad-
justment— typically a mental impressionability in which
feeling and knowledge are emotionally welded — ^makes

388 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

against a cognitive procedure, is in accord with general
psychological principles. Intense emotion impedes
thought ; abstract or objective reasoning is impassive. The
angry man cannot think clearly, and no more can the anx-
ious, distressed one ; while the lover 's perspective of values
is not standard. Constructive mental work — ^itself a deriv-
ative product of objective interest — requires freedom from
worry and a calm, adjusted frame of mind; yet emotion —
true to its original status — sustains intellectual pursuits, in
some directions, conditions it. Varying with the nature
of the pursuit, sympathies, in that they condition insight,
may interfere with judgment, or be necessary to its fair
conclusions. Unduly emotionalized judgments may appear
as prejudices, or as superstitions in belief or practice.
They affiliate with the conservative trend in custom, in
that the familiar acquires an emotional congeniality, in
turn reenforced by the intimate hold of concrete personal
experience. The contrast may be moderate, yet suggestive
in bearing and momentous in issue. Primitive myth, popu-
lar lore, the earlier philosophies, the simpler types of intel-
lectual attitudes— all proceed largely upon an emotionally
infused reasoning, and tend toward congenial conclusions.
Such products of early excursions into the realm of explana-
tion and interpretation are prominent in the survival of
culture. Customs may survive in a superstitious atmos-
phere; a belief in charms, omens, premonitions, occult rela-
tions, often quite subdued and half-acknowledged, has a
more natural place in feminine psychology, in just such
measure as the emotional bias prevails, which receives such
conclusions as congenial, as ministering to an earlier type
of satisfaction. The same applies to prejudices and predi-
lections, personal and otherwise, which are often partially
reasonable, yet incompletely rationalized. Rationality is
so late and limited a human quality, that preponderances
of this order will be slight and subject to marked influences
of training and tradition. Rationality, as displayed, is as

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 389

typically a cultural trait as a sex trait. A trait stands as a
congenial development of a temperamental trend.

It is hardly necessary to survey the familiar field of the
preferred interests, occupations, proficiencies, enthusiasms,
needs, and expressions of women, in which the tempera-
mental trends, favored in the feminine composite, direct the
issue. Their very versatility points to a less specialized,
less professionally developed, more generic status, truer to
the natural norm. The impress of the ministrations — apti-
tude and fitness for which stamps the psychological as it is
inherent in the physiological endowment — is upon the range
of preferred feminine endeavor and proficiency, and still
more characteristically upon the mood and manner of the
response womanly. The situations that summon it remain
closer than in the masculine psychology to the original type
of appeal ; the appeal is that of the race through sex, and of
the endless derivative qualities developed in its defense.
A marked divergence of traits is expressed in the relative
emphasis of bearing within feminine traits, upon situa-
tions of courtship as contrasted with those of care of the
young. The craving for flattering attention and social con-
tacts, the personal standards of success, the self-centered
reference of the incidents of life seem out of relation to
the ready sacrificial devotion, the sympathetic attitude to
appeals for pity, the absorption in altruistic ministrations.
They find their clews in the fact that charm is the tech-
nique of the maiden, and sacrifice the passion of the mother.
One set of feminine interests expresses more distinctly the
issues of the qualities of courtship and attraction, the other
of qualities of motherhood and devotion. The two come to
their own at different periods of development. Types of
women approximate to divergent composites of character
in which the one or the other group of primary traits dom-
inates, as also the same types of traits dominate differently
in the several occupations, interests, needs and satisfac-
tions which are generically characteristic of women. Fern-

390 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

inine occupations appeal to qualities congenial to derivative
aspects of these distinctive interests, yet combine them with
an appeal to the more generic qualities underlying the
standard human forms of responsiveness.

For the most part the differential psychology of men and
women relates to what both tend to do and learn to do — and
with comparable success — but divergently, and with greater
or less natural fitness and ability. The more heavily the
type or grade of achievement leans upon a strong primitive
differentiation, the larger the consequence of even a slight
superiority — or more neutrally, deviation — which grows
cumulatively in importance as men come to live upon the
slighter diverging advantages of their endowment. The
slighter contrasts of masculine and feminine tendency con-
tinue to be influential while no longer directive, or even im-
portant. Delineations of divergent sex-tendencies, though
less confident and certain, may still carry the truth of con-
sistency, when supported by a related group of well estab-
lished inclinations. Such are for the most part the com-
monly observed differences of men and women. Divergence
in manner and valuation in worth should not be confused.
Compensation enters and makes the question of superiority
"foolish and futile," and the appraisal of value a proper
but delicate undertaking. It is not a question of man's
way or woman's way being better or worse for this situa-
tion or purpose, but of the significance, the source and af-
filiations of the characteristic differences and preponder-
ant tendencies, as confirmations of a general interpretation.
Accepting Mr. Ellis's dictum that in respect to bodily pro-
portion ''taken in the average, a man is a man even to his
thumbs, and a woman is a woman down to her little toes,"
we may likewise conclude that a man's mental habit and
perspective is masculine and a woman's feminine, down to
the details of attitude and tricks of manner, without
thereby ascribing either to thumbs or toes or to minute
psychological peculiarities any inordinate consequence.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 391

Each group of traits, as in turn each trait, is significant as
articulated in a larger consistent system.

The principle is more important than any group of em-
bodiments. One might descend to minute detail and point
/Out as characteristic the tendency of women to report a
conversation subjectively, literally, and dramatically in
the first person, and of men to report it objectively, sketch-
ily, and pertinently in indirect phrase. This seems a trivial
point indeed; but associate with it the feminine concrete
presentative habit that leads to reproducing rather than to
summarizing a situation, the readier dramatic instinct that
confers upon women a mastery of the personal arts, the
more fluid, sympathetic adaptability of women to varying
situations, the readier use of language for expression, the
keener responsiveness to variations in self-esteem and so-
cial appraisal which the literal words and tone convey —
and one may assign the contrast a slight niche in the dif-
ferential psychology of sex. Consider similarly masculine
and feminine manner: persuasion and cajolery seem as
distinctive for the one sex, as enforcement and defense for
the other ; while ruse, disguise of motive, duplicity, is not a
prerogative of either. Yet there is a line, if an uncertain
one, between diplomacy and intrigue, that, traced back-
ward, diverges toward masculine and feminine traits re-
spectively. A finer form of an allied quality, exercised in
social intercourse, is tact — distinctly a feminine forte. Its
contrast is the blunt, masculine masterfulness, often blun-
dering by too great directness. Tact likewise is sympa-
thetically considerate, a moral quality that in women has a
less arduous road to pursue than it meets in reducing the
selfishness of men. In so far as the tact invites duplicity,
it has a place in feminine nature, there being many things
to conceal through weakness, through modesty, in satisfac-
tion of the desire to be interesting and attractive, and prob-
ably, in large measure, through imposed restraint and tra-
ditions. The white lies of women, the reticence in con-

S92 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

fession of age, the attitude toward smuggling, are readily
cited as expressions of a common trait, at times offending
the more literal commandments of law or morality.

In minor yet typical situations, men and women are dif-
ferently disposed toward intellectual pursuits, moral prin-
ciples, and practical activities, yet presumably not so mark-
edly but that tradition and training may equalize them in
favored groups. In so far as the tendencies exist, they
conform to the lines of differentiation. Furthermore, these
nicer distinctions come to expression only in upper-level
conditions, in which freedom from primary stress permits
subtle development of trends. The same elastic interpre-
tation applies to another phase of the intellectual technique
— the ready perceptions, the keen recognition of emotional
changes, that make it more difficult in many relations, de-
spite her natural trustfulness, to deceive a woman than a
man, and also confer an address and an adaptability not
as common in the more deliberate sex. When statements of
personal relations of a fair degree of complexity are re-
quired— the complexity one of analysis rather than synthe-
sis— ^women excel. Lawyers and physicians find women of
the lower (peasant) classes more helpful and ready in re-
citing the details of cases. In rises of fortune requiring
practical adaptations to ampler social standards, women are
more apt at adjustment than men. Indeed, explore as we
may into any characteristic field where men and women
have found and developed their respective careers in a
common yet differentiated social setting, and that despite
the imposed restraints of artifice and custom, or again, in-
vestigate and tabulate by such methods as are available
the resulting preponderant tendencies of the mental ma-
chinery, we find a fairly consistent and corroboratory set of
differences, requiring, however, a judicious interpretation
to gauge their import.

This survey of masculine and feminine psychology indi-
cates the standard procedure desirable, but not unreserv-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 393

edly applicable, in the consideration of other group-traits.
The principles may be thus summarized: (1) Distinctive
group-qualities, if traceable to their source, are referable
to an organic basis ; they also represent a specialized adap-
tation to the demands of the environment. In the case of
sex, the nature of the organic differentiation is clear and
its collateral issues recognizable. In the case of race, the
differences are uncertain in significance and the principle
finds a limited application; yet an original specialized
adaptation, both organic and environmental, is the presump-
tive clew. (2) The group-traits, whatever their source, find
expression in a considerable range of derivative qualities, in
large part of a psychological order. Racial differences im-
ply different modes of reaction of the nervous system. The
group-trait becomes an emphasis, a specialization, approach-
ing the status of a temperamental endowment. (3) The
psychology of group-traits deals largely with the interrela-
tion, the reenforcement and combination of derivative is-
sues; the traits themselves become favored devices of ad-
justment to the environment, which is ever more an arti-
ficial one, created and maintained by the exercise of es-
teemed or dominant trends. In primary situations the en-
vironment directly gives play to and reenforces traits set
in a natural fitness; in complex situations the parallel
process is more indirect, and by the introduction of ideals
may tend to exaggerate or to reduce natural tendencies.
Yet the divergent group-traits remain suggestive, even
when partly the result of training or equalized by it.

Next to sex, which stands in a class by itself, race indi-
cates nature's most comprehensive intention at human dif-
ferentiation ; but the scope and purposes of the racial con-
trasts and emphases thus embodied, are far from clear ; nor
can it be determined definitely which are the more original
and which the more derivative racial traits. Hence racial
psychology proceeds uncertainly and tentatively. The
principles derived from the differential psychology of sex

Sd4f CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

serve at the least to indicate the status of the problem, to
interpret the imperfect data available, and to avoid super-
ficial conclusions. The demarcation lines of race, however
uncertain the principle upon which they are drawn, are
clearly of a wholly different order of significance than those
of sex; the biological divergences which they incorporate
are in such consideration of a slighter, more nearly sec-
ondary order. It is their momentous consequence in the
nearer view of ethnology and in the history of culture, that
gives to racial contrasts their peculiar interest. The sev-
eral races, like the sexes, present distinctive though mod-
erate organic variations (with corresponding physiological
consequences) to which the race breeds true; but what may
be the potencies thus conferred or the limitations imposed
upon one race or another is uncertain. Structure invites
interpretation in terms of function; and function near its
source suggests adjustment, the selective pressure of the
environment. To the nervous system as the central organ
of adjustment of function to environment, there attaches
a special significance. The adaptive capacity of race with
reference to habitat and mode of life primarily determines
racial survival and status. The adaptation becomes ever
more prominently psychological. It is the mental traits of
the human race and of human races that are responsible
for their several conditions, notwithstanding the potent in-
fluence of circumstance. However racial quality may be
shaped by natural condition, it remains true that races
under similar conditions, present marked differences in se-
curing control of the resources and forces of nature and
in directing their progress by the products of their minds.
In all cultures above the simplest, the environment comes
to be man-made, the organ of adjustment to it largely
psychological. The potencies and limitations of race may
be considered to be concrete products of biological forces ;
the forces are in the background, while the foreground is
occupied by the play of the qualities thus conditioned in

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 395

the nearer prospect, which is the actual seat of their pres-
ent operation. Thus closely regarding our own endow-
ment, we are likely to approach it with a favorable preju-
dice [8] ; hence the need of the larger view for a juster in-
terpretation.

In the differentia of race the racial flag of color is most
conspicuous. In the black race and the white, in the yellow
race and the red, pigmentation is the outward clew to a
range of differences of varied character. When a white
man blackens his face, he does not even superficially look
like a negro. Physical anthropology undertakes to enumer-
ate and relate the structural and functional differences as-
sociated with race. Finding in measurement of the skull
and the parts of the skeleton in proportion and ratio a
mass of corroborating details, the anthropologist may con-
clude that a negro is a negro down to his thumbs and little
toes. That the negro's head is dolichocephalic (relatively
long and narrow) ; that his face is prognathous (protrud-
ing jaw) ; that his lips are thick and open, his nostrils
broad and flat; that his arms are long, reaching well to-
ward the knee; that his heel slopes back from the vertical
of the lower leg ; that his skin is glossy and has a character-
istic odor; that his hair is short and curly and in cross-
section oval; that even his blood-crystals show a different
appearance from that of the white man: these may all be
cited as secondary racial traits to which the race breeds
true. But since their origin and meaning are unknown or
obscure, they cannot be brought to bear upon the present
considerations, however legitimate their interest to the
ethnologist. And yet the contrast of black and white is
the most marked within the racial group; that of other
races is slighter, more elusive and variable. What is true
of structural difference holds as well of physiological differ-
entiation in function. Its existence is clear and is dis-
closed under sufficient refinement of test; it appears
markedly in the negro in such immunities as that from

396 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

yellow fever, and in such liabilities as the non-resistance
to phthisis or alcoholism.

At what stage of human or anthropoid evolution the
differentiations of race were made stable is wholly a matter
of conjecture. "We may hold to the original unity of the
human race, to its descent from a single pair of human or
prehuman ancestors; or we may consider the varieties of
races as marked as those on which the zoologist bases his
classifications — such as those of the black bear, the cin-
namon bear, the polar bear — and yet find in such a view
only the most general support of the significance of racial
traits, with no precise clew to their meaning. Further-
more, the differentiations to which we attach importance
are in the nature of derivative traits molded by circum-
stance, and are thus still farther removed from a biological
interpretation. Generic differences in the physiological ca-
pacities of races may be established ; the strength, the hardi-
ness, the fecundity, the ratio of infant mortality, the re-
sistance to specific diseases, the tolerance of unwholesome
vital conditions, the power to acclimatize in extreme or
unaccustomed habitats, and other expressions of the
metabolism and mental stamina, show characteristic differ-
ences, which may be decisive in the severe conflicts of races
and in the economic competition as well. But these varia-
tions are complex resultants, the issues of natural qualities,
of the pressure of distinctive environments, and of control
by training. The *' yellow peril" presents itself to the
white man's outlook as such a conflict of race-qualities in
adjustment to condition. Each race tends to develop the
conditions favorable to its own capacities. The physical
superiority of race is not readily determined even by con-
flict, because wit, strategy, organization prominence of mili-
tary ideals, courage, loyalty, convictions, traditions, affect
the issue. The Negro of the Soudan may be a "first-rate
fightin' man" by virtue of one group of qualities, as was
the Spartan or the Goth, or as is the Japanese for another.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OROUP-TRAITS 397

and the Boer, or the modern Greek, or the Belgian for still
others. The underlying qualities may not be radically
distinct, but yet differently nurtured and sustained. The
fanaticism of the Hindu, the fatalism of the Mohammedan,
and the orderly submission to the "Birkenhead drill," the
call of the defense of the home, may lead to like action, yet
direct the common issue upon quite different qualities,
minutely considered. Such finer differentiation loses its
touch with a primary significance, in that it is maintained
so largely through the institutional environment which ab-
sorbs, energizes, and reflects the racial, tribal, or national
genius; it does so, because through such expressions alone
group-traits find their outlet. In a similar transference of
scope, the physiological assets and liabilities assume an
economic aspect. While seemingly competing with policy
and resources and statesmanship, men are really competing
in terms of race-fertility, capacity to survive to maturity,
immunity from epidemics, hygienic precautions, moral
regulations, as well as in terms of ideals and the educational
provisions that give them efficiency. Yet so fundamental a
trait as energy will be decisive, whatever the direction
which it may take in expression. Where conflict or rivalry
is strong, energetic races are certain to prevail above slug-
gish ones. The tendency to lapse to a stage of inactive,
complacent adjustment is marked; the stress of nature's
demands is needed as a stimulus, even as an irritation.
Particularly potent as a racial trait is the ability to find
zest in mental activity, which leads to original venture,
the trial of the unknown, and the advance of technique.
The racial endowment that confers it, favors it, emphasizes
it, must in the long run lead to a general superiority; its
suppression by the institutional organization constitutes a
serious menace; its natural succumbing to the slavish ten-
dencies of human gregariousness is an equally real danger.
The parts played by the several influences of this order in
the preferment of race may be realized in the story of race-

398 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

conflict, but fail to yield any definite gauge of their values.
Their consideration leads to a critical view of the po-
tencies of race, and give it about the value of a generic
temperamental divergence, a favoring of quality through
organic fitness, yet largely modified in its expressions by
environmental demands and the molding forces of social
and allied encouragement.

Along with racial differences, uncertain but far from
negligible, races present a comprehensive community of
endowment, physical, physiological, and psychological.
Races are predominantly alike, in that the variations of
their specific heredities are consistent with a fundamental
community of inheritance. Biologically such community
is established by the crossing of races of whatever degree
of difference; zoologically the human race is one; psy-
chologically the brotherhood of man is still a difficult ideal.
The racial fusion resulting from the mixture of races, it-
self plays a large part in the composite of qualities which
peoples now present. Races exhibit large overlapping en-
dowments; with them and despite them emerge the dis-
tinctive qualities which remain the specific racial heritage,
its temperamental expression. The differences of race are
not simply of a quantitative order; races are not similarly
endowed in the entire composite of their psychic nature
and present merely an inferior or superior order of such
parts. Degree and variety enter into the racial equation.
Accordingly one race may be no more superior to another
than one sex is superior to the other; their differentiated
endowments may qualify for different orders of expression
in adjustment to different environmental stresses, and thus
represent complex embodiments of specialized *' group-
trait" aptitudes. Yet the organic needs and the environ-
mental conditions to which races may express an organic
adjustment have so large a similarity as to afford some
gauge of the value of the instrument of adjustment through
its operation.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 399

The critical problem is that of the significance of achieve-
ment. How far is accomplishment an index of ability?
Assuming proper standards to compare the cultures which
different races have achieved, how far may we look upon
such achievements as a measure of the racial mental equip-
ment? Apparently if this test fails, no decisive compari-
son is available ; yet its application is by no means simple.
We are prone to apply it at rather short range to the
phases of human history that are well along in the story of
civilization. We must remember that the essential human
qualities were established in pre-historic times; we must
think of the older cultural epochs: the early and the late
Stone Age, the age of bronze, the age of iron, the nomadic
and the primitively agricultural and pastoral types of so-
ciety. The cultural advances of those stages show the
workings of the human mind in the formative period. It
is a remote view but a significant one, and a correction of
the nearer view of modern days in which momentous
achievements have changed the face of the earth, and seem-
ingly the features of the human mind. Yet it is not to be
doubted that all races, including the ancestors of the pres-
ent dominant ones, have had to struggle long and tediously
through the earlier, simpler periods of evolution. Does the
rate of their emergence, their skill in securing control of
natural resources, measure their psychic stature, and thus
furnish a reliable measure of their inherent endowment?
Some peoples seem still to be fixed in the Stone Age or the
Metal Age ; in remote portions of the globe, the step from
savagery to civilization seems to have been made at vari-
ous times, under different stress of conditions, and to have
assumed fairly variable expressions. Cultures embodying
high stages of evolution have come and gone ; cruder races
have conquered more advanced ones and have absorbed
and carried forward the achievements of the vanquished
and the displaced. The European discovery of America
brought a primitive culture in direct contact with a ma-

400 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ture civilization; the contrast of the situation seems
to our outlook overpowering and essentially a picture of
contrasted racial-psychic endowments. The historical con-
sequence seems inevitable — the dominance of the one race,
the extermination of the other. In the stupendous trans-
formation of a continent through four centuries, vastly ac-
celerated in the last two generations, the native American
Indian has taken no part ; his inferiority seems established.
In this view race tells ; blood is decisive.

There is, however, another side to the argument, for
which another American experience furnishes an apt il-
lustration— a great racial experiment in the transplanta-
tion of an alien people from primitive African condition,
and its enforced enlistment in the service of the white
man's pursuits. In a few generations the negro has found
adjustment — doubtless of a somewhat simpler and lowlier
order — to the habits of life that were the slowly maturing
products of centuries of transferred culture, incorporating
the most complex achievements of humanity. Speaking
broadly, the negro mind has been adequate to follow and
adopt the patterns of activity evolved by a culture rated
as vastly superior, infinitely more complex than that in
which he would now find himself, had he remained in his
original habitat. The argument seems to divide at a criti-
cal point: Is the fair criterion the ability of a race to
evolve independently and from within its own resources the
achievements of civilization — in other words, an inherent
aptitude for civilization [9], or is it the ability to find ad-
justment when the machinery is provided, to work under
the scheme when circumstances require or invite? Is it
the capacity to emerge, or the capacity of the race to main-
tain itself on this or that level, however attained?

The reasons for adopting the latter criterion are weighty ;
for these alone are applicable to the vast majority of men,
of whatever race or stage of culture. The racial genius
rises high in a few selected members, who alone invent.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 401

modify, improve, contribute constructively to the ensemble
which the rest utilize, apply, contrive in large or small
measure to adopt and adapt. The few set the patterns;
the many follow them. If we gauge the mental status of
the average of the white race by the actual accomplish-
ments of this average, we may feel secure in concluding
that the average status of the white race is appreciably
higher than of the black race ; but we could hardly ascribe
to the difference any decisive or inordinate degree. It
might be true — to venture a statement in quantitative form
— that the degree of intellectual capacity attained by eighty
or ninety per cent, of the superior race would be
attained only by sixty or seventy per cent, of the in-
ferior race; and what is true of mental is presumably
true of moral, or esthetic considerations. On this supposi-
tion the overlapping community of equipment, parity of
endowment, would be far more conspicuous than the favor-
ing excess. In our own rating of the advantage there
might accrue to the modest measure of superiority a very
momentous consequence, as in turn measured by success
and station in the accredited vocations. In consequence
thereof one race would assert its domination or social
prestige, and the other acquiesce in the relation and accept
the subordinate place. But such an issue may mean that
the one racial equipment is better suited to prevail in such
an environment, and that the environment represents the
slow evolution of forces favorable to such racial endow-
ment. It may be true that to the other race might fall
the advantage in a different environment. Once estab-
lished, the dominant culture absorbs and conditions the ex-
pression of endowment, and selects the individuals capable
of participating in the favored employments. "We are thus
brought face to face with the network of assumptions upon
which, quite subconsciously — with the prejudices in favor
of its own proficiencies, natural to each race and desirable
to maintain its self-respect — we infer the superiority of our

402 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

own race from its creditable achievements, from the re-
sulting cultural contrasts of living thus brought about.
Natural as it is and in some sense legitimate "to count the
gray barbarian lower than the Christian child," and
equally defensible to esteem ''better fifty years of Europe
than a cycle of Cathay," it is well to make clear the basis
of such presumptions; whether the ''lower pleasures" and
the "lower pains" prove the "narrow forehead," or re-
flect the vacancy "of our glorious gains." Do "I, the heir
of all the ages, ' ' find my heritage in a superior capacity and
endowment, or in the ready-to-use contributions of former
generations, to which, from the outset, my capacities are
trained to seek adjustment?

Questions such as these illuminate the issue. A psy-
chological consideration of the criteria of capacity narrows
the breach between higher and lower races; a historical
consideration of achievement and of the contrast of civiliza-
tion with barbarism widens it [10] . The biological attitude
seeks evidences of racial superiority not too markedly af-
fected by the environmental stress, or underlying its ex-
pression. Three orders of such differentiation have been
appealed to. The first is that of affiliation to a simpler
stage in the evolutionary series through which man has
reached his present human dignity. It has been argued
that the inferior races exhibit the traits characteristic of a
simian ancestry in larger variety, in more characteristic
degree than do the more developed races. In parallel man-
ner inferior racial cultures exhibit more prominently the
traits of the early stages of a human culture. We must
a:void the assumption that the Negro or other race is in-
ferior, and then set down the distinctive "negro" traits
of the negro skull or heel as evidences of limited develop-
ment— an argument quite commonly applied to such details
as the flat nose of the Negro and of the Mongolian. The
evidence is ambiguous. "The specifically human features
appear with varying intensity in various races"; "the di-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 403

vergence from the animal ancestor has developed in vary-
ing directions" [11]. Even though the first premise held,
the conclusion of inferiority would still require a second
premise to show that the bodily traits are correlated with
the mental ones; but *'a direct relation between physical
habitus and mental endowment does not exist." Our pre-
sumptions are not disproved, but also not unequivocally
supported. There is the danger of transforming a psy-
chological view to a biological issue, while seemingly gather-
ing support from it. Less developed races seem to us more
savage, more feral in aspect, more brutal in conduct; and
this fact may have a real significance, while not carrying
the significance of an ultimate racial inferiority. It may
indicate a 'more limited development, and by that fact, or
in virtue of it, a more limited capacity for development.

A second biological test is found in variability. The
more variable race is regarded as the higher, since in such
variability, if favorable, lies the possibility of the use-
ful, the progressive, the initiative step that elevates
achievement, and advances the generations that profit by
it. This argument, though complex, has much in its favor.
The appearance of a small group of original, creative minds
in each generation may be accepted as a special manifesta-
tion of the general variability of the group. Races whose
average stature is high, or whose intelligence is high, show
a considerable number of very tall men, or very intelligent
men, and a decided variation between the extremes of
height, as also notable instances of giants and geniuses.
Large uniformity tends to a preponderating mediocrity.
The presence of a few exceptional men may have an enor-
mous influence upon the racial progress as embodied in
achievement ; accordingly the ability to produce these, while
intrinsically a slight differentiation in biological terms,
may prove a momentous one in its issues. This trait is
presumably responsible for much of the contrast of races
in achievement — a rapidly cumulative contrast — and thus

404 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

becomes an index of racial status — a criterion of the rel-
ative (psychological) plasticity or fixity of the racial type.
The greater variability of man as compared with woman
produces a cumulative contrast of like order, and sets the
keynote to the qualities of masculine achievement. The
comparison with physical variability is inconclusive.
Traits of one order may be rigidly limited, of another fairly
plastic, and yet equally carried forward in the racial heri-
tage. Physical racial characteristics are not as stable as
was formerly assumed; they, too, show modification un-
der new environments [12]. Moreover, variability of a
biological and physiological nature may stand in uncertain
relation to the mental variability from which emerges the
individual assertion favorable to progress. For' the fixity,
the non-progressiveness of cultures, is a characteristic of
very widely separated orders of society; it may be an ex-
pression of the strength of the social organization in re-
pressing such individual assertion as appears, rather than
an evidence of its non-existence. Peoples fairly compar-
able as to race, achieve and utilize very different or-
ders of culture; race alone does not suffice to determine
achievement; again, peoples of fairly contrasted and
wholly unrelated racial stock develop and remain in sub-
stantially the same unprogressive conditions. Races
achieving a high order of civilization have degenerated;
regeneration is possible. Until it becomes possible to dis-
entangle the order of variability from their variable con-
ditioning factors, their interpretation must be inconclu-
sive.

A third type of evidence relates to precocity. The
earlier maturity of primitive races, both physiological and
psychological, seems established, though there is some ques-
tion as to its significance as a sign of racial status. But
even with liberal allowance for the effect which domestica-
tion produces in the forcing and retardation of powers,
and with an appreciation of the fact that early arrest of

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 405

development may not be wholly a disadvantage or sign of
inferiority, the argument carries weight. The less developed
races reach maturity, physiological and psychological, and
in turn approach the decline of senility, more quickly than
the higher races. The evolution of race widens the span
of the efficient life, despite the fact, or through the fact,
that it increases the era of preparation. Forcing and re-
tardation are not eliminated; condition may still be effec-
tive. Psychologically, the greater simplicity of the cul-
tural range to which adjustment must be achieved, places
that accomplishment within the range of the earlier age;
the same applies within the social levels of all cultures.
The individual maturity is hastened by responsibility, by
being thrown upon the individual resources, by withdraw-
ing the shelter in which immaturity finds its protection.
Physiological function is less susceptible to this influence
than is psychological expression, but is not withdrawn from
it. Duly considered in kind and degree as earlier inde-
pendence and earlier decay, precocity may be regarded as
a significant clew to differentiation. That girls mature
earlier than boys is likewise a conclusion consistent with
the more infantile status of woman, bringing her at once
closer to the status of the race and to the child. Woman
is also held to preserve the racial type more thoroughly
than man, notably so in primitive races. The consistency
of the argument in its several phases strengthens its
plausibility in its most direct application [13]. Under this
composite view a highly evolved race would present a
greater differentiation from the primitive (physical) type,
a large variability among its members, an extended cycle
of life, slow maturing of maximum powers and late decline,
while yet expressing vigor of endowment in the rapid prog-
ress of early years. Such generic criteria, confessedly in-
adequate, serve but to outline a portion of the background
against which the differentiations of race are projected.
In retrospect, the potencies conferred by dower of sex.

406 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

assets and liabilities alike, remain paramount. Nature is
unwilling to relinquish or subordinate the primary expres-
sion of the specialized organism. Sex stands apart, pre-
eminent, unassailable, enduring, and above all compre-
hensive. Sex does not narrowly condition, but broadly
molds, or, in more delicate manner, colors the mode of ex-
pression of the individual qualities, all carried along in
the common stream of inheritance, at once generically ra-
cial, and more specifically and intimately ancestral. In a
similar view race appears as an original biological emphasis,
uncertain in origin, indefinite in import, and even in its
present mixed assertiveness as a momentous conditioning
factor in the distribution of quality. Racial traits, func-
tion as derivative blendings of more fundamental traits,
by-products of earlier demands of. adjustment now turned
to transferred service ; the presumptive parent racial traits
are accessible only hypothetically in the qualities of their
issues. The racial achievement becomes the historical man-
ifestation— in no sense an historical accident — of the racial
genius in operation; it cannot be regarded as a definite
measure of endowment, but cannot be disregarded in any
appraisal. The racial factor is of all the least susceptible
to experiment. The student of race is never able to ap-
praise pure races living under comparable environments,
but always mixed races subject to complex and variable
condition [14]. The racial factor is overlaid by, and in-
volved with, other types of group-traits, which, along with
sex and race, form the generic determiners of the individual
temperament and character.

Race forms the outermost circle of the hereditary forces
converging upon the individual; remote ancestry and im-
mediate family occupy the intermediate zones. The in-
dividual quality owes its largest determination to the im-
mediate ancestry, the specific influence of any one factor
of the heritage rapidly waning with remoteness of kinship.
The closer community of inheritance, which is read in the

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 407

closer resemblance of traits, demonstrates the tendency of
the stock to breed true, true in detail as well as in type.
Where qualities are pronounced in degree and recognizable
in their bearing, the argument is definite and the evidence
convincing. Galton's study of the ancestry and interrela-
tions of men of genius conclusively showed how largely
the capacity which such distinction involves is a dower of
the family stock [15]. It was shown that the hereditary
factor is more decisive in families producing extremely dis-
tinguished representatives than in those standing high but
not highest in the group. Further studies of eminent men
extended the evidence that general ability and specific
abilities *'run" in families, that the degree of kinship to
an eminent man carries almost a quantitative increase of
probability of decided capacity in the nearest and next of
kin. Although women are themselves far less commonly
distinguished than men, the chances of inheriting the
capacity for distinction are equally distributed in the ma-
ternal and in the paternal lines of relationship. When
further extended to types of qualities of more nearly or-
dinary range, the evidence remains consistent, though often
uncertain by reason of its complexity. Mental and moral
qualities are in some sense heritable; the accumulation of
data tends to strengthen and refine the conclusion. A
richer endowment of the intellectual (psychic) nature is
the prized quality of race and family. Traits, whatever
their bearing upon the endowment in terms of which men
compete and contribute to the work of the world, must be
primarily selected, and then valued and cultivated. Lead-
ers of men form the choicest product of the choicest strains
of mankind. In terms of their common qualities as well
as of their distinctive ones, men find their level. Stand-
ards of attainment, in lieu of standards of endowment or
combining with them, become the means by which society
places its recognitions and expresses its approvals. The
group-traits thus resulting express the tendencies for the

408 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

variable heredities of men to conform to definite types of
endowment.

While specific traits ''run" in families, the same orders
of traits are widely distributed in different hereditary
strains. Different peoples go through comparable stages of
culture; different communities are composed of comparable
types of men. The common trait is convincing when it
presents a definite physical or psychological clew. Physi-
cal strength and musical ability may be selected as typ-
ical instances; both are conspicuously hereditary, widely
distributed, and recognizable. The one, variously service-
able, may lead under Anglo-Saxon auspices to distinc-
tion in athletics; the other is a specific distinction, though
with temperamental affiliations. Men come by their ath-
leticism or their musicianship no differently than they
come by their blue eyes or tall stature. The heredity is
unitary; men, like races, are equipped for life and com-
pete not by one but by a composite of qualities. Physical
strength carries with it a large determination of other qual-
ities; musical ability is a more specialized excellence.
Both serve to develop common interests, expressions, char-
acters.

While the basis for athletic proficiency is laid in natural
endowment, the place which the trait finds in this or in
another expression depends upon the environmental set-
ting. In the life of ancient Greece a man's physique
counted strongly; the winner of the Olympic games be-
came a national hero. Jousts, duels, challenges, sports,
contests of all sorts, express a like appreciation of a com-
mon physical fitness, and of the part belonging to it in the
desirable qualifications of men. Ideals enter to determine
how the appeal is met. The doctrine of ''mens sana in
corpore sano" leads to one perspective; the sentiment that
the body is a lure to passion leads to asceticism and the
castigation of the flesh. The requirement that Khodes
scholars shall excel alike in intellectual capacity and in

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 409

physique reflects the modern view of their integral rela-
tions. Physique is valued for what it brings. Big men
and strong ones are " naturally '^ confident, as small and
slight men are as "naturally" shrinking and deferential.
Presence and bearing confer a dignity that is psychological
as well as physical, and may become an important factor
in preferment. The trait of physique affects and condi-
tions careers directly and indirectly. The explorer or the
frontiersman finds physical fitness an indispensable equip-
ment. The physician, as the exemplar of physical recti-
tude, finds in his physique an aid in his ministrations.
The less specialized callings of an arduous life (sailor,
miner, carrier, hewer, blacksmith) find their work through
the fitness of physique. The fundamental physical endow-
ment determines conduct and career, and sets apart those
who share a common favoring of physique from those who
lack it. In its transferred employment its consequences
are equally significant; for the underlying energy that
maintains vocational activity determines the quality and
measure of response. More derivatively, the common pos-
sessors of a group-trait present a sympathetic bond of
congenial expressions, like interests, and similar tastes, and
"naturally" drift to similar careers. Mental energy and
physical energy have an inherent relation, though by no
means an identical basis. The group-traits selected for
emphasis owe their selection to their prominent parts in
shaping the qualities of men.

The musical gift — equally, though far more delicately,
a matter of endowment — conditions no other fitness than
its own expression. Those who find their careers in this
talent require the sustaining qualities of the artistic tem-
perament; and that in turn may be referred to a mode, a
quality in the adjustment of the ordinary factors of re-
sponse. In the conspicuously musical families the gift de-
termines career; the call of the "muse," and of that one
alone, is insistent. In the wider and less marked distribu-

410 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tion of the trait among the ordinary or selected run of
persons, the possession becomes a modest contributor to
the affective life. Viewed practically its place is slight and
hardly touches the generic factors, the larger determiners
of action. The musician lives a highly specialized life.
The musical endowment in the favored individual supplies
a specialized outlet for emotional expression, leavens the
mass of practical interests, and shapes the inner qualities
of the mind. It is a by-product of luxury and affects not
the fundamental but the leisurely qualities of response.
As the quality is generalized, it becomes the artistic sus-
ceptibility— already adequately considered — and plays its
part in the community of human expression. In so far as
the artistic and the athletic bent may be opposed — marked
vigor of physique tending away from the sensitive endow-
ment of the artist, and responsible for such selective con-
trasts as the erect pose and sturdy build of the soldier and
the stooping shoulders and slight frame of the scholar —
such contrasts indicate the underlying affiliations of the
factors of endowment, the compatibilities of temperamental
traits, individual and in their recurrence generic.

Group-traits yield a more distinctive psychology when
they confer a more or less pronounced deviation from the
type. The psychology of genius [16] is significant through
its large consequence to racial progress; its interpretation
forms a vexed problem. The conception of genius as a
marked superiority of the components of the ordinary man
makes the genius an intelligible r3uperman, a more highly
evolved exemplar of the foremost ranks of men. The con-
ception of genius as a wayward endowment with difficulty
held to a profitable orbit, emphasizes the sanity of normal-
ity and the price of deviation. However the views be rec-
onciled or combined, the specialized nature of high talents
comes forward to reenforce the view that what genius pre-
sents in extreme measure is a 'group-trait of mankind
brought by a fortunate play of circumstance to abundant

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 411

fruition. Men of genius, like their more ordinary coun-
terparts among the well endowed, readily fall into the
groups of men of thought, men of feeling, and men of ac-
tion. The relations underlie the specialized proficiencies;
they represent the indispensable equipment for maintain-
ing the adjustments of life in well ordered efficiency, which,
with the added talent, prepares for the highest service.
In this division the men of feeling unmistakably exhibit
the largest tendency to irregular and difficult expression,
and through this liability exhibit their community with the
qualities of the nervous temperament and its possible dis-
astrous issues in the abnormal. The specialized bent of the
man of genius or the man of parts, indicates the determining
power of a talent to dominate career, to direct effort, to
shape the quality of responsiveness in general. Equally
pertinent is the formulation that what inherently deter-
mines the specialized talent carries a larger and secondary
range of determination; and in this similarity — like the
similarities of sex or race, but of a different orbit of ex-
pression— lies the basis of the group-trait, the recurring
type-forms of character with which the biographer as well
as the observer of all sorts and conditions of men deal
when they record their impressions and estimates of men.
The analysis of a *' social" class such as criminals yields
a contrasted aspect of group-traits. The view of the crim-
inal as one born to such fate places him as a natural type ;
the view of the criminal as the product of his circumstances
makes him an environmental type. In either view crim-
inality is, like all careers, an expression, the result of
exposure of a certain type of endowment to a certain
stress of forces. The defective stock makes the group-
trait [17]. Feebleness of resistance and control, suggesti-
bility to the contagion of the easiest way, susceptibility to
the cruder appeals of passion and desire — such are the psy-
chological fundamentals of the endowment for which a
career of crime is not inevitable but highly probable under

412 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the conditions of modern society. The criminal is not born
to crime but to the liabilities of his defects. The criminal
by accident exemplifies the preponderance of circumstance
in the conflict of impulse. The group-traits of the criminal
classes form a consistent "complex," supplying an outlet
of expression for certain deviating — in this instance
psychologically defective and socially undesirable trends.
In all such "complexes" nature and nurture combine and
cooperate. The group-traits of the criminal classes reflect
the common traits of the psychologically defective and the
acquired community of traits growing out of anti-social
occupations. Neither group of traits is exclusive; all men
present the qualities of their defects; the aptitudes that
find expression in the criminal career are not different
from those entering into the pursuit of more legitimate
occupations. The individual follows the bent of his en-
dowment ; and others of similar endowment by a like proc-
ess develop common group-traits in the pursuit of their
careers. No differently the temperamentally shy and timid
turn to professions — such as the intellectual ones or the
artistic ones — which can be pursued largely in solitude, and
avoid difficult social contacts and the management of men.
The endowments of group-traits qualify and limit; they
confer potencies and impose handicaps as they specialize,
but specialize only generically in types of character.
Group-traits are specialized qualifications and limitations
more or less commonly recurring, distributed by natural
processes and brought to expression by a common type of
responsiveness to a common conditioning environment [18].
The communities established by sex, race, comparable
stocks, and related ancestries, when further fused by ac-
quired traditions, ideals, culture, language, intellectual in-
heritance and standard applications, stand forth as the
underlying bases — democratic in their massive assertive-
ness — of the common and communal enterprises and inter-
ests, the common appeals of the social and the organized

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 413

life. Yet no less are the distinctions of such heredities
and the contrasts of classes in endowment and station di-
rective for the understanding of the qualities of men in-
dividually and collectively. The large practical signifi-
cance of the group-traits of men as the basis of their social
equipment appears in their further issues under the play
of the social structure.

It is pertinent to recall that the group-trait is, in a
sense, a logical construction; the reality is the individual
and his traits. Yet in the natural scale, the distinctive-
ness of the average individual is slight. *'John Smith's'*
traits are generic as well as specific, and in their conven-
tional expression of an average endowment become the
qualities of the generalized ''John Smith," standardized
by the like action of a like range of circumstances. In the
organized, institutionalized world, group-traits of a natural
order are overlaid by differentiations of an artificial or-
der; even the reactions of sex are determined by the ideals
of manliness and womanliness. Kace is absorbed and re-
directed by national qualities ; natural history gives way to
institutional history; group-traits become class-traits; en-
dowments are reflected in careers. That the group-traits
of common or congenial endowment remain real is shown
by the bonds of sympathetic understanding which they
further. Men comprehend men, and women women, to a
measure debarred to the opposite sex. Race appeals to
race, and nation to nation, with a sense of solidarity arti-
ficially cultivated as a racial or a national consciousness,
but thus readily cultivated by reason of an underlying
nucleus of natural favoring. Similarly once established,
the occupational set becomes at once a molding force and
a consistent expression of natural bias, which also binds and
affiliates groups of men. For the most part the trend is
not so strong nor the vocation so specialized as in the case
of the artist, for whom the career is determined by his spe-
cialized proficiency ; the choice of a profession is a practical

414 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

and a critical inquiry as to the nature of one's endowment,
tasks, inclinations, opportunities. The decisive leaning may
be slight, but, if at all congenial, grows by what it feeds
upon. Circumstances control, and changes of occupation
may be less common than the desires for them. By and
large, professional men and business men, farmers and
ranchmen, speculators and politicians, executives and of-
ficials, mechanics and artisans, present within each group
more or less common traits upon a slight natural fitness
readily acted upon by training and tradition. Once de-
veloped the career becomes responsible for the secondary
community of traits, which form the actual group-traits to
which psychological and economical forces make their ap-
peal. In the occupational adjustment lies the practical
regulation and adjustment of the traits of men to the work
of the world.

. Though the vocational bent, which expresses a form of
specialization of a group-trait, controls the dominant ac-
tivity, it may absorb and make articulate but one phase of
energies and interest; it may be a little more than a con-
cession, even an uncongenial one, to the necessity of
earning a livelihood. Avocations and general interests,
reflecting endowment, furnish a wide basis for the sym-
pathies of men, of equal or greater intrinsic import. So-
cial station plays a marked part in fixing community of in-
terest and intercourse, and divides as well as unites. Aris-
tocracy has its distinctive psychology, as bourgeoisie has
its group-traits. The urbanity and cosmopolitanism of
the city, and the rusticity and simplicity of the country,
offer the sharpest contrasts of closely allied stocks of men.
The national psychologies of Briton or Teuton, or still
more narrowly of English, Scotch, or Irish, no less than
of Prussian, Saxon, or Bavarian, are to our specialized
view adequately distinctive, and leave their impress upon

character. North and South, East and West, Occidental
and Oriental, develop group-psychologies as sharply con-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GROUP-TRAITS 415

trasted in traits of mind and habit of response as in ap-
pearance and custom. The individual both naturally
shares in, and acquires, the traits of his group and class;
and the range and composition and mode of expression
of his traits are determined by such participation. "John
Smith" is each and all of these influences merged and
massed, individualized and modified, yet more generically
composed in accordance with the type-forms of traits that
affiliate him to others of his kind. Endowment does not
retire but is overlaid in its expression, conventionalized in
its application, standardized in its issue. Through such
considerations, the analysis of the sources of human qual-
ity leads to an applied psychology of human values, as
natural temperament is embodied in environmental char-
acter.

CHAPTER VIII
CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The statement that life is character in action finds its
complement in the condition that conduct is ever set in
circumstance. Endowment summarizes the subjective, en-
vironment, the objective, determinants of conduct. In the
temperamental aspects of expression endowment is central
in life as in presentation; character as the reflex of
the environment is now to be made the focus of considera-
tion. The environment is primarily a biological setting;
for animal life it is conclusively so. The instincts of wild
animals carry the stamp of Environmental adjustment;
domestication is man's readjustment of them. In the hu-
man kind the natural environment combines with the man-
made artificial one of extended scope, which at higher
levels becomes commanding. For present-day conditions
the environment is substantially what the community —
through the heritage of previous communities — has made
it; it includes the reconstructed material and economic
bases of life, and more distinctively the intellectual, esthetic,
and moral atmosphere — the conventional and institutional
intercourse — in which modern men have their being. Yet
the physical aspects of circumstances continue to exert a
vast influence, to favor or hamper the issues of endowment
even under the complex reconstructions.

In primeval conditions the environment acts as a direct
pressure. Climate and habitat originally condition adapta-
tion; the physical surroundings apply a stress that encour-
ages the trends best adapted to prevail in the struggle for
existence, and compels adjustment through penalty of loss
or retirement. The best adapted individuals and groups

416

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 417

survive; through such favored members the race prevails
as a whole, by virtue of a favorable composite of traits.
The stream of heredity carries the entire range of qualities ;
enduring superiority is possible only through the assurance
of a progeny to inherit and continue the favoring traits.
This eugenic argument illuminates backward as well as
forward. With conditions primitive and constant, advan-
tage fell more directly to reproductive superiority. The
stronger, the more influential, those who satisfied the tribal
standards best, prevailed; and their descendants likewise.
At all levels is it true that any type of superiority that is
too seriously offset by a lowered reproductive vigor cannot
maintain itself [1]. Heredity and environment are the
original forces of selection. Adaptation and elimination
proceed together. The consciousness of racial integrity and
the maintenance of racial tradition pervade the practices of
primitive cultures. There is obviously no explicit compre-
hension— such as is available to our generation — ^that race
improvement must proceed upon such control of heredity
as may be practicable. The appreciation of the sanctity of
natural forces is directly, if naively, expressed in the loy-
alty to tribal custom and tradition. Practices become estab-
lished, based in part upon sensibilities or prejudice, sup-
ported by the belief that conformity strengthens, and that
violation of tribal custom weakens racial vigor and sta-
bility. Such beliefs become effective in the assertive racial
consciousness that unites generations and preserves their
continuity. In the same cultural medium there is de-
veloped a regimen of training directed to the mastery of
the environment and adjustment to it. The organization
of primitive society shows conclusively — in addition to the
influence of physical environment — the powerful ** psy-
chological" regulation of conduct by customs and beliefs.
The dual source of environmental influence underlies the
course of development of civilization, and of the qualities
which civilization selects and fosters.

418 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

While distinctive in his power to react upon the environ-
ment, man, in common with other organisms, found life de-
termined by physical conditions; in this aspect the food-
quest was directive. Man's omnivorous diet facilitated his
adaptability to varieties of habitat; he became a dweller
anywhere from the arctic zone to the tropics, a migratory
exploring animal, predatory by the exercise of wit rather
than of natural armament. Just how the process of adapta-
tion was carried on, how far climatic severities eliminated
the unfit, how far the habitat brought forward traits to
fuller expression and fixed the range of human or racial
endowment, is uncertain. The continued play of like forces
may be observed in all stages of culture in limited, indirect,
refined measure. It may plausibly be argued that the dif-
ferentiation of race itself, like the conspicuous derivative
racial traits, represents an original specialized adjustment
to climate, to the physical environment, and to the mode
of life thus outwardly conditioned. The vigor, resource-
fulness, venture, of Northern races contrast with the less
enterprising unconcern, the leisurely softer qualities of the
Southern ones. More specifically and despite the equaliza-
tions of modern life, the chill gray skies of England con-
tinue to affect the stern reserve and orderly industry of
the British character, as the blue skies of Italy's balmy
atmosphere induces an easy-going direction of life. In
such issues physical conditions join with and play upon
natural inclination. The abundance of semi-tropical climes
makes way for dreamy contemplation and a mystic emo-
tionalism in one aspect, and in another for easy-going leis-
ure and a taste for the amenities of life ; courtesy, affability,
sympathy, combining with traditional benefits of culture,
develop a psychological expansiveness, as they reflect a
climatic exuberance. That, in further contrast, the leisure
thus developed becomes an accepted privilege and industry
retires to a modest place in the scheme of life, while in
more rugged environments leisure or idleness is looked upon

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 419

as a shirking of obligation, is a social-moral by-product in
ideals. Shiftlessness may be the economic price of the one,
a restless unadjusted energy and sensationalism of the
other. Circumstances do not rigidly determine but invite
these issues. Once set, the qualities favored by circum-
stance, are further favored by social ideals, by conformity
to tradition, by approved patterns of conduct.

Adjustment to condition plays a constant part in the de-
termination of conduct and character alike. Adaptability
is itself a quality of adjustment, in satisfaction of the de-
mand asserted by the environment. The changeable un-
certainty and seasonal variation of northern climates impose
requirements of vigor in one response, of industry and fore-
thought in another, to meet the stresses of nature's severer
moods. A meteorological adaptation persists as a favor-
ing condition in psychological expression. A susceptibility
to climate still inheres in the nervous organization, and for
many a temperament makes work under unadapted climatic
conditions trying and shorn of its best issues. Extreme
cold obstructs favorable effort ; extreme heat prostrates the
nervous resources. Despite the artificial control of this
large factor of temperature, men still seek the conditions
that agree with their nervous systems — a climate hot or
cold, exacting or temperate, of high altitude or low, moist
or dry, changeable or equable. It remains a temperamental
decision whether the equability that relieves the necessity
of the seasonal adjustment and the vicissitudes of weather,
leads to a steady output of energy or to a general relaxing
disinclination to effort. The daily and seasonal routine
must be adapted to the exigencies of climate. Custom and
tradition embody the wisdom of experience in such as in
other adaptations. The regularity of employment and its
monotony, as may be demanded by economic ends, cannot
safely ignore psychological and physical condition. The
psychical influences of weather may be traced statistically
in the progress or the refractoriness of school-children, in

420 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the fluctuations of insanity and of suicide — greater in the
late spring when the unaccustomed heat sets in and great-
est in mid-summer — and in many other types of fluctua-
tions. Meteorological sensibility is suggestive of a subcon-
scious, organic type of response — a survival of what
originally may have played a more directive part in secur-
ing adjustment.

In individual susceptibility directly, and indirectly in
collective achievement, the impress of physical condition is
felt. In extreme contrasts the influence is marked ; life in
the arctic regions, and hardly less so in the tropics, is in-
compatible with a favorable intellectual development; the
climate is too exacting, too decisively controlling. Climate
in its typical effect loses its controlling direction and com-
bines with other environmental factors of a complex civiliza-
tion to modify the closer details of adjustment, and through
them moderately affects the character of communities and
careers. The frequent necessity of finding adjustment un-
der effort may dispose to the making of effort, which habit
becomes available as a psychic trait directed to all manners
of employment. The seasons change disposition and in-
terests alike; winter and summer by contrast enhance the
appeal of each and supply a wider range of incentive. An
adjustment through habit and the play of temperament may
equalize vantage and disadvantage ; in the larger statistical
run the influence tells. The great cultural movements
standing in closer relation to modern occidental civiliza-
tions, as well as the centers of present-day economic ini-
tiative and intellectual progress, belong to the peoples
dwelling in temperate zones. Historians trace the potent
influence of climate and habitat upon the stream of events,
as upon the characters of peoples participating in them,
but emphasize as well the economic and sociological en-
vironment as the efficient medium of their expression [2].

The joint issues of natural and artificial condition supply
the more pertinent and convincing illustrations. The

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 421

frontier represents not merely a type of physical environ-
ment, attracting and developing selected qualities, but
equally an economic situation, likewise a sociological and a
psychological one. The physical life, and the associated
interests, attitude, standards, develop together and consist-
ently. Dwellers in mountain fastnesses or in the open
plains find their activities determined, as is their physical
horizon, by the prospect that confronts them. The sea
molds occupation and character alike. The insularity of
Great Britain comes to be a psychological rather than a
geographical trait. All local habitations worthy of a
name — and not abused Boston alone — come to be states of
mind rather than positions on the map. However broadly
the term is extended, the original environmental influence
must ever be considered, of which climate and topography
are typical. Such environment not alone determines the
conditions of existence, and thereby develops selected ranges
of quality, but in what it supplies and in what it demands,
further directs the growth of the slighter artificial read-
justments which are distinctive of the civilized, organized
life. Man is above all the animal that makes or remakes
his environment; he changes the face of nature, but more
distinctively the conditions upon which nature yields a live-
lihood. What is true of his physical environment becomes
still truer of his mental one. Cave-dweller or cliff-
dweller, or pitching his tent as he wanders, he repeatedly
shapes his habitat to his needs, and secures control of na-
ture to facilitate the satisfaction of his desires. Nomad,
shepherd, or tiller of the soil, he acquires an economic status
through the fact that he does not inertly accept but reacts
upon the environmental conditions. In the adjustment of
endowment to environment lies the clew to his cultural
development.

The natural food-supply is a comprehensive condition.
When food is abundant without effort, man may vegetate;
when the struggle for existence is severe, the food-quest

422 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

may absorb and exhaust all energies. Luxury enfeebles
and breeds vices in nations as in individuals. Yet more
fundamentally the release from too constant exertion is nec-
essary to secure the leisure for the development of the arts
of life. The wealth of nations is indispensable to intel-
lectual triumphs. Civilization develops needs following
upon the facilities for their satisfaction. The increased
control of natural forces sets new standards of living; the
conformity to such standards and the ability to use the ac-
quired resources make the process of adjustment increas-
ingly more complex and more artificial. Education, casual
or formal, is the means of acquiring fitness for the environ-
mental demands, always more exacting psychologically than
materially. Furthermore, the environment ceases to be
wholly or even largely local; contact with other peoples
leads to compacts as well as to feuds ; if extended, it creates
the world of barter and exchange. Industry adds artificial
resources to the natural ones; wealth grows in hand-made
products as well as in natural property. From the days in
which the stone or shell was fashioned to use or ornament, to
the age of metals following upon the Stone Age, to the age
of machinery and scientific technique, the path of invention
and manufacture developed a growing control of material
and process. By its encouragement of invention, the eco-
nomic life placed a tremendous emphasis upon a derivative
set of qualities, retiring those vital in a more primitive ad-
justment, to a secondary but never negligible place. Yet al-
tered conditions of life radically change the direction and
the perspective of their exercise. However transformed the
environment, adjustment to it must build upon the native
vigor of primary traits, reshaping the relative emphasis of
qualities and their employment, but not too radically alter-
ing their nature. The environment offers to the constant
traits of endowment new and more versatile outlets. It
does so in part through the stimulus of natural resources;
it does so eventually, in far greater measure, through the

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 423

contributions of favored individuals for the benefit of them-
selves and their associates. These, first devised as special
adjustments to circumstance, through the dissemination of
the advantages which they confer, become social-environ-
mental forces changing the mode of life. Through their
dissemination as communal possessions, progress results.
Obvious advantage once experienced creates an attitude fa-
vorable to the encouragement of invention, and extends to a
general alertness of mind in all the details of adjustment of
which the individual life consists. Nature and nurture
combine and interact, but in the issue as it touches the
higher cultural interests, the artificial redirection becomes
commanding, though never exclusive.

The natural conditions the economic environment; and
the economic reacts upon the sociological environment, one
phase of which becomes dominant as the intellectual en-
vironment. These terms are not adequate ; each presents a
distinctive nucleus of a set of composite influences ; yet for
convenience of reference they may stand for the whole.
The natural environment includes climate, soil, topography,
resources — and these in due course with reference to com-
mercial availability and prospects. Countries are rich or
poor in one or another contributing factor to property;
their wealth shapes their development. Agricultural, in-
dustrial, mining, seafaring, manufacturing facilities de-
termine the trends of life; such development assures and
further directs the cultural, social and political relations.
Social condition and environment react upon one another;
unless civilization has proceeded far enough to discover,
utilize, and require the resources, they are practically non-
existent. A primitive hunting people lives on the same
land as the mining or lumber-cutting pioneers who succeed
them ; and their descendants turn to agriculture when the
land is cleared. The resources are such only to those who
can discover and use them. All this is elementary, and
moreover retires in significance in presence of yet more

424 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

artificial aspects of environment. The physical environ-
ment persists, yet may be quite submerged as an influence
in the transformed and transforming mode of life, which,
as cause and as effect, assumes a commanding position in the
determination of the qualities required for adjustment.

Furthermore, as we apply these considerations to our
own advanced status, we appreciate that the economic rela-
tions which determine their being arid value, also more and
more equalize their rating. Facilities of intercourse mingle
and disseminate the economic and the cultural products,
thus making artificial environments less distinctive than in
earlier times when geographical barriers and the strong
bent of tradition which they furthered, had fuller, com-
pleter sway. Similarly the economic environment expands
to include the entire range of institutional growths which
facilitate, protect, and extend the organized relations of
men in society. Though made real in an incorporated em-
bodiment, such products are psychological; they are main-
tained by an indwelling spirit. There may be ultimate ap-
peals to physical power in peace or war, but right prevails
more and more in the spirit of right. Yet more compre-
hensively, institutions reflect views, attitudes, beliefs, de-
sires, sentiments, sensibilities. Their existence, even in
their direct economic relation, is due to the intellectual de-
velopment which is their source and support. In view of
the prominence in such environmental influences of the ra-
tional products of science, arts, and the culture of mind, we
may call it the intellectual environment. In view of the
fact that such relations serve a social purpose and hold to-
gether masses of men and their interplay of interests in a
social organization with all its manifold radiations of atti-
tude and intercourse, we may call it the sooial or sociological
environment. In view of the fact that this massive influ-
ence is primarily effective in redirecting the native qualities
of men, we may call it more generically psychological.
Moreover, as the standards and ideals thus resulting are

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 425

formulated, recorded, and made authoritative, in custom,
in morality, in tradition, in religion, we may call it moral
or spiritual. Of the three — natural, economic, and the
combined sociological, intellectual, psychological, moral, and
spiritual forces — the last dominates in complex environ-
ments, does so indeed in one manner or another in all but
the most primitive stages of human progress; by virtue of
such dominance it becomes the center of theoretical interest
and of practical consideration.

Such are the cumulative influences for which the environ-
ment stands in present human society ; they are maintained
in and by institutional provisions, conditioned by economic
and sociological circumstances, furthered by educational
measures, set in a psychological atmosphere more or less
consciously effective. The same cluster of composite and
interacting influences shape human careers and thereby de-
termine the interests and expressions of men, through which
are interpreted the issues of endowment in traits of char-
acter. Two parallel lines of argument must be maintained :
that generically the environment plays the same part, exer-
cises the same order and direction of influence upon human
traits at whatever level the development, as upon the traits
of organisms under natural surroundings ; that the process
of adjustment is in type similar throughout, and that such
primary type of adjustment persists, though restricted in
scope, modified in its range ; furthermore, that the environ-
ment for the human organism is distinctive through the
artificial factors introduced by the control of natural re-
sources, and most comprehensively by the reflex influence
of the psychological molding forces as expressed in attitude,
belief, conduct, desire, and the rationalized, systematized,
conventionalized direction of endeavor, individual and col-
lective.

A helpful analogy to the transformation of the human
environment by the hand and the mind of man lies in the
domestication of animals. Both involve a transformation

426 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

of traits and their application. The traits of animals avail-
able for such reeducation find their source — the original
nature of the animal paralleled by the original nature of
man — in adaptation to natural condition ; the reconstructed
traits show the same tendency of limitation through ances-
tral fixation. The social and institutional forces act upon
the individual man as an environmental influence of im-
posed origin, much as the utilities of animal traits for hu-
man purposes impose upon the domesticated animal the
direction of its native qualities. Animals are chosen for
domestication because of their adaptability to new condi-
tions. They have in part laid aside their feral nature;
those that have resisted the human overtures reflect the
stronger organic loyalty to their natural history. The bars
of a cage, not unlike those of a prison-cell, express the re-
bellious rejection of the rules of conduct enforced by hu-
man institutions. It would be unfair to infer from such
refractoriness a lesser psychological capacity as tested by
pursuits suitable to the natural order of existence. The
capacity for domestication, like that for civilization, is an
uncertain clew to intelligence. It is but one factor in a
composite, which for the human kind comes to be momen-
tous; yet the pacification of the human race is not accom-
plished, and is not likely to be universal until the lion and
the lamb lie down in peace together. Civilization repre-
sents man^s partial conversion of his own impulses by a
gradual control through a social-moral environment, in the
ever-widening pursuit of increasing purposes. In his do-
mestication of animals he enlists the animal capacities in a
similarly conditioned service; in the reconstructed world,
for animal and man alike, acquired purpose determines the
standards of value [3].

In turning the traits of animals to his uses, man has fol-
lowed a composite method of selection and training, which
natural forces and his distinctive reaction upon experience
have developed in his own "domestication." In this

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 427

process traits developed in one habitat to meet recurrent
natural conditions persist and are turned to other uses in
related situations of artificial status. The strength of the
ox — whose subjection to the yoke formed a momentous step
in agriculture — was developed in the mighty contest for
supremacy among the leaders of the herd. The fleetness
and long-windedness of the horse, which met the herds-
man's needs, and have survived to satisfy man's sporting
nature, were developed to enable the horse to outdistance
the wolves on the open plain. The donkey's mountaineer-
ing skill was the result of his search on the rough hillsides
for shelter from the beasts of prey, with no reference to
later service as a pack-animal. The generous udder of the
cow, that has become the alma mater of the human race,
was developed to meet the needs of the calf while the mother
roamed for fodder, which in further adjustment to condi-
tion she learned hastily to incorporate and later more leis-
urely to digest. The sheep acquired its coat of wool (and
presumably shed it, though now dependent upon a shear-
ing by human hands) as a protection against the cold of
high altitudes. The dog's loyalty to the pack has been
transformed into a fidelity to man and his belongings.
Dogs may be trained to retrieve and point because allied
habits have an instinctive place in the canine nervous sys-
tem. The pig that is used by French truffle-hunters to
''point" their prized delicacy, learned under severe condi-
tions of existence to find roots or die. The animal-traits
thus developed in adjustment to environment, man has fos-
tered and selected, in return providing by his own efforts
and ingenuity a secure livelihood in the service of which
these animal qualities are given a place.

The persistence of other traits which happen to be of no
service to man and may indeed be a disservice, he has either
tolerated, or, despite his selective breeding, has failed to
eradicate or control. The horse shies at a newspaper flut-
tering by the roadside, because a crouching and quickly

428 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

moving form in the grass might have originally indicated
the presence of such an enemy as a snake ; and when fright-
ened, he runs, panic-stricken, to regain the protection of
the herd; the innocence of the newspaper and the absence
of the herd are powerless to check the fright or its expres-
sion. They persist sporadically and yield slowly to the new
adjustment ; blinders that contract vision are not as perma-
nently effective as an altered ''character" that is not sub-
ject to needless fright. The pony bucks, if this impulse
has survived, because such violent contortion would have
dislodged a beast of prey that had jumped upon his de-
fenseless back. Original nature continues in service or dis-
service alike. Horses may be shod with an iron shoe be-
cause of the toughness of hoof, developed through ages of
adaptation to hard and irregular ground. The horse's gait
is elastic, not in order to afford a comfortable seat for his
rider, but to ease the shock to his own organism in travel
over rough ground; and his versatile pace is an adjust-
ment to different forms of locomotion adapted to different
kinds of soil. The donkey is free from the tendency to shy
because his original mountainous habitat offered no such
dangers as surrounded the horse. Traveling in small
herds, his more solitary life made him accustomed to look
out for himself; his persistency — in human estimate, ob-
stinacy— was a useful trait in that it kept him going under
long marches untired, and conferred a strength of will
which his latter-day master may find undesirable. A dog
resents interference when feeding, because in the hunt by
the pack when once the ''kill" was made, his share of the
spoils depended upon the defense of his bone from the on-
slaughts of his mates ; it is on such occasions that his fight-
ing instincts — ^which man breeds for protection or sport —
were formed. The dog 's submission to the whip is a deriva-
tive trait of his submission to the leader of the pack. His
pointing habit goes back to an instinctive strategy that re-
strained his seizure of the bird while hunting with com-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 429

panions. The wagging of his tail in pleasure is a trans-
formation in expression from the pleasurable excitement in
the chase, when the erect tail in the bush as well as the
joyous bark was a sustaining signal of excitement to the
rest of the pack. The stolid placidity of the cow has its
place in bovine psychology and does not express an inclina-
tion to the subjection to the yoke ; nor is the East Indian
bullock's imperturbability in drawing a gun-carriage into
action anything other than the issue of the old habit of the
herd to stand firm with horns ready, when even the boldest
beast of prey feared to attack. The same animal driven to
bay shows the pugnacious quality which man has used by
making a sport of the bull-fight.

No differently from the manner in which man has turned
the stock of the animal qualities to uses serviceable to hu-
man needs, has he also built upon and modified the human
qualities fostered in the primitive human habitat and ex-
tended them to vastly increased and refined service. In
neither case has he, in the relatively short period of civiliza-
tion or domestication, introduced or devised new qualities,
but by selection, natural and artificial, strengthened and
eradicated, encouraged, discouraged and redirected one or
another of the original composite traits. The transformed
emphasis is indeed to present interests far more compre-
hensive, yet hardly more radical for the human range than
for the animal qualities. In the latter case presumably the
stock of ancestral habits and the modifiability are more
limited ; yet the community of method by which the trans-
formation has been accomplished is instructive, particularly
in its simpler types, and at its lower levels.

These considerations propose the problem of the original
and the transformed nature of man — the cultural history of
the transformation of human instincts. Civilization like
domestication places old traits to new service; it checks
traits that prove undesirable in the altered environment, and
reenforces others desirable for more adequate adjustment

430 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

to it. This process is never complete, but finds limitations
through the persistence of older tendencies. Such "sur-
vival ' ' of traits is variously suggestive ; it gives the clew to
the conception of value, through which a virtue or func-
tional aid in one condition becomes a vice or functional dis-
service in another ; education is a process of selecting traits
for survival or retirement.

Fundamentally the original nature of man, which con-
tinues to serve his redirected purposes — however refined or
involved — was established in adjustment to far simpler cir-
cumstances and in them found its justification. Like the
strength of the ox, the fleetness of the horse, the sure-foot-
edness of the donkey, the basic human proficiencies and the
fundamental human intellectual habits present traits of ad-
justment vital or favorable to survival in the primeval
habitat [4]. In tracing the relations of racially old to
racially new types of service, the persistence of animal
traits in use and limitation serve as suggestive clews. The
tractability of the horse, the placidity of the cow, the cora-
panionability and fidelity of the dog — all as exhibited to-
ward man — may be traced to an original serviceability
within the group of their own kind ; and no differently the
animal qualities which by reason of man's prejudiced view
he rates as faults, become intelligible as survivals from older
stages to altered conditions in which their utility is re-
duced, possibly quite eliminated. The horse shies, the
donkey is obstinate, the dog is pugnacious, the cat is a
nocturnal prowler — all to human discomfort; but discount
the *' human" bias, and these qualities become virtues in the
original status of the animal environment. The changed
environment is responsible for the human estimate of ani-
mal traits. The braying and general asinine conduct of
the donkey on city streets, the silly imitativeness and
panicky unrest of sheep in a protected inclosure, the sense-
less behavior of geese in the barnyard, may reflect the un-
suitability of such response to the enforced change of habi-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 431

tat. On the mountain-sides, on the plains, or in the
marshes, these several forms of behavior doubtless were
wholly suitable. Nature places no premium on folly, but
determines the conditions under which action is folly or
wisdom from the point of view of the welfare of the organ-
ism. It is obviously unfair to judge creatures even mod-
erately out of their element; obviously so to test fish out
of water. Yet in applying the lesson to human kind, we
are mindful that the medium of adjustment is more deli-
cate, more variable, and more psychological. "When we
comment upon the occasional or frequent futility of hu-
man behavior, we may, in charity, consider how far the
response is due to the unwonted circumstances rather than
to inherent incapacity. As a Spanish proverb observes:
the most stupid man is more conversant in his own house
than the wise man in a strange dwelling. The primitive
man is wholly out of his element in the institutions of civ-
ilization. The rustic is at a disadvantage in the city, as is
equally the foreigner in a strange land, and the landsman
at sea. Tolerance of judgment is compatible with the criti-
cal appraisal of quality. Yet the conviction remains that
adaptability is itself a quality of supreme value, indis-
pensable to the demands made upon the human adjustment
to circumstance. As the test of adaptability is applied
within comparable ranges of adjustment, and as these fall
more narrowly within the field of artificial environments of
modern civilization, the comparison regains much of its
validity. Men in general, like animal species, and groups
and individuals in special circumstances, are entitled to
judgment in terms of a suitable environment ; traits become
vices or virtues when judged by the suitability of means to
ends; the original environment and natural ends determine
the range of native suitability. The survival of traits
forms a suggestive clew to the effect of an altered environ-
ment, in transforming vantage into disadvantage through a
shifting condition [5].

432 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

It is evident that the simpler cosmic or local environ-
mental conditions act less directly, less cogently, upon the
human endowment. The environment does not yield, it is
true, but neither does the human mind. Man both selects
the environment and adapts it to his uses. In this respect
the great step was taken when man not only foraged but
planted or cleared the ground for his needs, not only hunted
but bred animal life or preserved it. In all environments
his adaptability served him. Fearless of fire, he learned to
cook his food ; his constructive talent made shelters from the
elements and protection for his body. He rose superior to
the grosser demands of physical environment. His distinc-
tive mode of adjustment appears in contrast to those em-
ployed by animal organisms. As against the cold, man
neither became an annual migratory creature, summering
in the North and wintering in the South (and this from
practical considerations of locomotion, which now for the
favored few are overcome by having a winter home in
Florida and a summer one in Maine) ; nor did he grow a
hairy coat and shed it like the original sheep ; nor yet re-
sort to hibernation as do still lower forms of life ; but he ac-
quired acclimatizing adjustments and appropriated the
furry hide of animals, whose possession of such coat evi-
dences the form of adjustment suitable to their habitat and
organization. Still more characteristically he learned to
build a fire, and eventually discovered coal; his house be-
came as artificial as his clothes and his mode of life. He
anticipated the seasons' alternation in his granary or his
woodpile; it is only the primitive Esquimau who lays on
a slight accumulation of fat in addition to gathering and
salting similar nutriment from the provisions made in re-
sponse to a like impulse by the walrus. Civilized man made
his storehouse, and not his organism, the repository of his
goods; still more artificially he deposited his savings in a
bank to be drawn upon as needed. He even, bear-like,
robbed and then cultivated the hoardings of bees that had

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 433

developed a similar habit, and used these instinctive sav-
ings to satisfy his sweet-tooth. But most characteristic is
the intellectual response, the prudential habit that provided
for a rainy day or a lean year. Such is the human adjust-
ment, directing long-range efforts based upon foresight,
upon the comprehension of the sequences of nature, and
upon the possession of an adequate imagination. It is the
cognitive and rational habits of man that form his domi-
nant equipment, and determine his mode of adjustment to
the demands of a variable and complex environment.

The conclusions thus surveyed remain in the background
of consideration. The foreground is to be occupied by the
social-psychological agencies: which means that what I as
an individual, or we as members of a common social group
do, and how we feel and desire, is far more directly deter-
mined by considerations of our common and respective im-
mediate and intimate sociological and intellectual environ-
ments— and of their developmental history — than of the
economic and physical ones, basal as the latter may be or
may have been in preparing and supporting the influences
which the latter now exert. For our further purpose two
excursions into interesting realms of psychology will be
helpful. The first traces the mode of action of the primi-
tive group-mind; the second considers the media through
which the compositely sociological, psychological, and
spiritual forces thus established are manifested and main-
tained.

The source of the psychology of the mass expression —
the collective psyche — lies in the gregarious habit of the
human kind. Men in groups think otherwise, act other-
wise, and are moved otherwise than are the component mem-
bers in their individual responsiveness and capacity. The
aspect of mind that makes it a socially responsive organ
of adjustment intimately affects the entire range of re-
sponsiveness ; the individual psyche is transformed by mem-
bership, by absorption, it may be, in a group. The psychic

434 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

habit of the group — the crowd, the mob, the collective con-
sciousness— affords a clew to the more primitive orders of
mentality, to the generic racial mind, through whose opera-
tions the fundamental achievements of primitive humanity
were wrought. The collective mental responsiveness pro-
ceeds upon the elemental, communal traits of human na-
ture ; it reflects the indispensable, the more nearly original
in mental evolution. It fuses individual differences; it
merges divergent trends; it neutralizes variant peculiari-
ties. Like the composite photograph — which in the mech-
anism of its operation it parallels — it emphasizes the com-
mon features and subdues the scattered divergences. The
psychology of crowd-reactions touches the fundamental, the
elemental, the natural; its expression takes the mind back
to the primitive stages of the intellectual life.

The group-mind — like the child-mind — has but a vague
awareness of its own motives and trends. The source of its
movement is deep, and often incalculable even to a judg-
ment conversant with its. nature. For a like reason is it
difficult to predict what will prove to be popular. In the
individual, though emotion and sentiment are urgent, yet
the still small voice of reason and the mentor of personal
restraint obtain a hearing ; the collective reaction is exposed
far more unreservedly to the primal sway of emotion and
sentiment. Argument enters to influence conduct, but
must be simplified to its lowest terms; it must be per-
suasive in tone, soothing in mood, oratorical in manner [6].
The appeal must also be made real and tangible — crystal-
lized in precept, sanctioned by custom, worked upon by
primary psychic motives. Tradition is so potent a guide
because it sets a rigid example, makes reflection unnec-
essary, and substitutes for it the warm loyalty of tribal cus-
tom. Fashion does the same in a more superficial zone
of influence. It regulates negatively by restraint — even
more powerfully than in its positive form as command-
ment— in the institution of the taboo (the unfashionable as

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 435

well as the unsanctioned), where fear of violation operates
as a more tyrannical force than the obligations of conform-
ity. In both aspects — conformity and taboo — the individ-
ual reaction is a reflex of the social one. The communal
stock of ideas is small in extent, simple in form, strong in
its message; the psychic constitution under which they
operate is correspondingly primitive. The collective men-
tality is uniformly of a lower type than that which its con-
stituent members are capable of attaining.

The intellectual appeal, when effective, is so largely
through the imagination, through ideas strongly emotional-
ized, and dramatically set — a ''fairy-tale" stage of interest.
In practical prudential matters it is the concrete, the actu-
ally presented, and the dramatic that arouses conviction;
for primitive man was a close observer of facts, if a feeble
and sentimental interpreter of their meaning. Myth is a
characteristic issue of the action of the two tendencies ; it
develops a detailed yet fantastic realism as the medium of
its representation. Every people makes its own Heaven
and its own Hell imaginatively, and fills them with the
vivid details of experience. To the medieval populace.
Hell, no differently than the Hellenic Hades, had a familiar
reality in pictures of ready meaning; fiery -tongued and
cloven-hoofed monsters with human victims tortured in
flaming cauldrons, carved in realistic stone, satisfied the
sense of reality, however imaginative the motive. The man
of the people, like the people collectively, demands an im-
mediate, strong, vital, direct impression. Whether in regal
pomp and show, or in the gory contests in the arena, or in
the drastic presentation of the judgments of religion, the
impression is created by a forcible, trenchant, sensational
effect. A like susceptibility obtains even among the most
rationally developed groups of mankind. Statistics are un-
impressive in their slow, drop-by-drop aggregate, and their
cold, colorless abstraction. A calamity of heroic propor-
tions compels attention and arouses action. The sweeping

436 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

horror and distress of a pla^e bring home the lessons of
sanitation, and the overpowering catastrophe of the Titanic
the peril of a mad pursuit of speed on the high seas.

The collective mind is suggestible, and the momentum of
its movement grows by contagion. This conforms to the
law of emotionalism; it applies equally to laughter and to
tears. The jest that in a small company raises a ripple of
a smile, in a crowd creates a gale of merriment. The pa-
thetic tale that momentarily depresses when read alone, in
the larger thrill of the public theater compels the free flow
of tears. The quick impressionism makes for prompt ob-
livion as well; out of sight is out of mind. A crowd is at
once fickle and obstinate; difficult to move by virtue of in-
grained prejudices, yet suggestible through the sway of the
simple stock of prepossessions that have gained a foothold.
Suggestible by virtue of the readiness to yield to the pass-
ing impressions — once the opposition set by momentary
prejudice or by deeper feelings is allayed — the crowd may
be carried with a rush on the superficial current of a dra-
matic enthusiasm. The prompt acceptance and equally
quick rejection when the first impulse is spent and use dulls,
appear in the pursuit of fashions and fads, in the vogue
of phrase and habit of dress or action that strikes the pop-
ular fancy. The pursuit is eager while it lasts, but transi-
tory in its hold and readily displaced by a newer rival. In
the proneness to extremes lies the hysteria of crowds, lack-
ing the steadiness and the restraint which the individual
conduct finds in consideration and in the check which social
disfavor provides for individual waywardness. From such
check the crowd is free, in that it is big enough to create
its own sanction. Its mechanism is ever the same — the
absence of restraint releasing impulses of a cruder nature.
Such impulses may emerge in the privacy of secret indul-
gence, or appear boldly in the license of bacchanalia, or the
unreserve of carnival, or the brutal pillage of war.

The lack of initiative in the mass-consciousness makes

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 437

necessary leadership to give the aggregate mind a set di-
rection. The crowd demands a leader; his central place
as the focus of loyalty is prone to make a hero of him. The
chieftain becomes a god, abjectly followed, or in recollec-
tion shrouded in myth and glorified ; the persecuted become
martyrs. Prestige is a more general and milder expression
of the same tendency. The doings, the sayings, the person-
ality of the leader are invested with exalted significance.
Office, station, hereditary rank, momentary exaltation are
all adequate to create such uncritical aggrandizement. Dis-
tance, actual or psychological, magnifies; the leader must
not be too familiar, not too much one of the crowd, much as
a man is not a hero to his valet, or as prophets are without
honor in their own land. Prestige attaches to the un-
known, the mystic, as well as to the brilliantly advertised
and notorious, to a foreign celebrity, and to show and cere-
mony. Yet more intimately the leader creates his own fol-
lowing among his kind; the orator, the propagandist must
not be too different, too remote from his audience. The
sympathetic appeal depends on a fellow community. The
alien looses the communal touch, and cannot arouse the
genius loci by which the collective consciousness is per-
meated.

In a measure the primitive psychology of man may be
reconstructed from the collective psychology that still comes
forward in the appeal to the masses. Simple in ideas sim-
ply expressed — whence the power of emblems, slogans,
**isms" and catch-words — emotionally swayed by the mo-
mentary impression, more suggestible to manner than to
matter, mediocre and fixed in a limited body of preposses-
sions, suggestible and subject to the spread of contagion,
requiring strong direct address when the avenues of ex-
pression have been cleared but adroit circumvention to al-
lay prejudices or opposition, prone to glorify or crucify,
loud in demand when aroused and eagerly led to excess,
the crowd-mind is at once a prey to the professions of the

438 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

unprincipled and equally the resource of the great enthusi-
asms of mankind. It is in some such medium of the fixa-
tion of beliefs, of the foundation of intellectual loyalty,
that folk-psychology has wrought its slow evolution, and
shaped the institutions of men. It>is with reference to
such a complex of mental habit that the group-traits of
mind must be interpreted.

Group psychology has its distinctive varieties, its en-
vironmental conditions. What may be generally true may
be specifically inapplicable. Crowds are crowds the world
over; but an American crowd, an English crowd, a Ger-
man crowd, a French crowd, an Italian crowd, an Oriental
crowd, no less than a city crowd and a rural crowd, behave
differently under parallel situations. The natural genius
and training emerge even in the simpler responses. The
foreign spokesman finds himself at a loss to gauge the effect
of his words, through ignorance of the psychic reaction of
an audience whose traditional temper he imperfectly under-
stands. The foreigner in the crowd is unmoved by the ag-
gregate response, the Stimmung, which he observes but
through the different set of his sensibilities fails to absorb.
The nature of the bond that unites, as of the prejudice that
separates, carries a psyc,hology of its own. The group is
more than an aggregate; the components must acquire a
unity of spirit, a community of outlook and interest, a mu-
tual sympathy and comprehension. Assemblages, however
heterogeneously composed, must be amalgamated on the
basis of similarity of psychological traits, before concerted
feeling or action is possible. The story of Babel is truer
when interpreted as a confusion of minds than of tongues.
The collective consciousness assumes more and more the as-
pect of an artificial solidarity, yet is the more readily estab-
lished when a temperamental community like that of race
underlies it. As an aspect of group-consciousness, the race
factor stands as a general psychic disposition favoring cer-
tain expressional trends, but is largely modified by circum-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 439

stance, standardized by tradition; it commonly comes for-
ward compositely as a national, local, or communal senti-
ment. Psychic community as observed is typically an in-
stitutional amalgamation through the tradition of the en-
vironment; it is shaped by accepted but not necessarily
rigid or explicit codes of behavior, by prevailing custom
and established usage. Yet a racial factor — like a congenial
temperament — if present may strongly cooperate or even
dominate [7]. The issue in complex civilizations is com-
plex and variable. This original but variable factor ex-
plains why the Americanization of an Italian or a Negro
or a Syrian proceeds differently, why each finds distinctive
limitations. The varied loyalties, the conflicting mentali-
ties of the group-components condition the mode of response
to the group-trait as environmentally fashioned.

The underlying similarity of the collective mind, as of
the human individuals of which it is composed, appears in
the similarity of the essential modes of operation, in
its fundamental constitution, in its natural outlets of ex-
pression; it appears compositely in the communal institu-
tional products of peoples and their generic comparability.
Transferring the argument from the mode of responsive-
ness of the communal mind to its achievements, we observe
that the general outlines which the earlier stages of human
development have followed are strikingly similar. The
material development in terms of invention, the mode of
satisfying needs, social organization, tribal custom, myth,
religion, art, family life, ceremonials, castes, privileges, in-
stitutions, military, industrial, economic, and educational
provisions — -all arise as expressions of common demands
and common solutions, appealing to the common needs,
sensibilities, aptitudes, as collectively expressed. Their ex-
tent and variety does not conceal their significance as the
products of a similar emotional, intellectual, and social na-
ture. The divergences, both in extent and direction, and
in their peculiar issues and distinctive details are obvious

440 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

and become momentous as we approach them in the com-
parative spirit of the anthropologist, the sociologist, the
student of culture and the historian of civilization. Viewed
as expressions of dominant psychological traits, traditions
and institutions are significant as the embodiments and re-
enforcements of the collective spirit which is favored by
affiliation of endowment, but flourishes by the favor of tra-
dition. As organizations and traditions become compre-
hensive, such a spirit reaches its most typical expression
in a national character, the genius of a people. It finds a
powerful and stable medium in the arts — notably in the
more permanent communal achievements of architecture ; in
literature; primitively in myth, saga, poetry, drama; in
religious beliefs and rites; in ceremonial observances; in
family loyalty; in moral sentiment; in the ministrations
and observances of daily life; in legal forms and political
establishments; in codes and practices. Such achievements
are at once historical manifestations and psychological ex-
pressions notably determined by the contributions of priv-
ileged individuals. Achievement thus becomes an index of
the national spirit — a composite result of the dominant
forces playing upon, and becoming articulate through, the
basal qualities of man. Its direction, emphasis, perspective,
its ''soul," reflects the character of the psychological en-
vironment surrounding the individual as formative influ-
ences of development [8].

The formulation thus reached is that the social-psycho-
logical setting acts as an environment for the individual.
To the embodiment of such collective psychic trends
the individual responds; to them he finds adjustment; in
their medium he expresses his personality. This psy-
chological environment includes the ''family" or clan
setting, the local atmosphere, the larger cultural and na-
tional ideas incorporated in institutions; it includes par-
ticularly the inculcated principles of conduct and the con-
ventional direction of endeavor. Together these form an

[ARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 441

all-comprehensive system of influences, a cluster of forces
which mold the individual and set the patterns of his con-
duct. For the individual, education is the process of learn-
ing to employ the institutional system for self-expression.
For the environment, the system is a network of positive
and negative invitations and restrictions, imposing itself
upon the native qualities of the individual and directing
their unfoldment by supplying the media of response and
the direction of effort and ambition. The institutional
forms of these psychological forces merit further consid-
eration.

Institutions — as intellectual products — are developed
from the intellectual resources of a people, yet with a sub-
dued measure of explicitness or deliberation. They pro-
ceed under a generic preferential guidance by sentiment
mingled with insight, under a selective feeling for what is
congenial, and a slow achievement of expression, which is
repeated in the individual before adjustment to the institu-
tional genius is real and secure. This relation forms the
sympathetic bond between social and individual psychology ;
this amalgamation makes the individual a member of the
social structure. When brought about by adoption — an
artificial ''naturalization'' — it becomes a more explicit, but
more superficial process, lacking the virgin quality of a
birthright. Such is the Americanization of the foreigner —
a huge experiment in psychological colonization in which
the qualities of the America of the future are at stake.
The natural history of institutions underlies the formulated
historical movements. The historian of humanitarian in-
terests finds above the story of material conquest, migra-
tion and intercourse, extension of dominion, expansion of
commerce, industry, and technique, the real story of hu-
manity in the assertion of the cultural gains of mankind.
The psychologist finds in this story the revelation of the
qualities of men matured under the stress of the physical
and the institutional environment. Both views interpret

442 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

institutions by reference to intent and the situations of
earlier cultures which marked intermediate and progres-
sive stages. An institutional conservatism parallels an or-
ganic conservatism; survivals, conventions, traditions — as
conservative forces — are characteristic of both. Through
usage and the dominance of social sanction once established,
such institutional forces may assume a distorting or usurp-
ing place. The streams of environmental influence are
massive, imbedded in traditional sentiment, moving by a
slow, organic growth; in the individual as in the body so-
cial the psychological current flows subconsciously, below
the surface as well as on it. Conduct is maintained, traits
are developed by the impressionism and sentimentalism that
appear so prominently in the analysis of individual psy-
chology. This prominence indicates the minor part as-
signed in the order of nature to explicit appreciation of
ends in contrast to the driving force of impulse; it con-
tributes an uncertain factor to all human undertakings,
even to those guided dominantly by reason.

An illuminating example of the mode of operation of the
social forces is supplied by the fixation of conduct through
the medium of morality. The institutional aspect of mo-
rality is developed in the mores, the customs, usages, forms,
etiquettes, observances, codes, which surround the individ-
ual response and secure approval and adjustment when
conduct conforms to the mores, and lead to disapproval and
difficulty when the mores are infringed upon or neglected.
Underlying most such customs i"^ a plain measure of con-
sideration— it may be a supersti'ion, a prejudice, a token
of loyalty, an observance of respect, or a slight altruistic
regard — together with the artificial expression which sur-
vives by the conserving sanction of usage. As one custom
of many, it finds a place in a system fairly artificial and
full of minor inconsistencies. These may be in the nature
of irrelevant survivals more pertinent to past conditions;
they may be due to the inevitable conflicts of standards of

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 443

behavior derived from the different phases of a complex
system, which though in general mutually supporting, in-
troduce complications and alternatives. Hence the fine art
of social intercourse and the perplexities of moral deci-
sions; hence also the need of recognized and standardized
ready-made solutions in forms and conventions. Conven-
tions represent the institutional aspect of regulation and
may be learned and accepted mechanically, yet are prac-
ticed more intelligently when guided by an insight — itself
a sympathetic quality — into their meaning and value. The
psychological habit chiefly responsible for their maintenance
is the tendency to conform, which is in turn an issue of the
social-gregarious habit and of its development. The tend-
ency to conform supplies the groundwork of response, as
convention supplies the pattern of its expression. Yet
equally to be considered is the assertion of the individual
motive and impulse tending to other and opposed action;
therein consists the conflict of the individual and the col-
lective motive, the personal and the larger social will. The
subordination of the former to the latter may proceed upon
direct compulsion; but normally it involves an acceptance
of the imposed standards through the development of a con-
science. Conscience proceeds upon the individual reaction
of fear, or shame, or psychical discomfort of some sort ; it is
a restraining force, setting up irritations and perplexities;
it is also at once a guide and an assurance in that the re-
sistance of the personal invitation replaces the uneasy feel-
ing by the satisfaction of conformity, and the sense of duty
performed. The individual aspect of the process has been
adequately considered : the tendency of impulses to find an
objective outlet, the emotional development of the satisfac-
tion, its elevation to a sentiment, the influence of sugges-
tion and contagion, the socializing and the intellectualizing
of the product, the resulting atmosphere of congenial ad-
justment and established habits of response. Institution-
ally the psychology of conformity develops collective forces

444 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

for its operation in a system of beliefs, customs and tradi-
tions.

Fashion — fashion in personal appearance conspicuously
— projects the products of conformity concretely. It does
so the more saliently when the custom (to our remoteness
from its psychological basis) violates the trend of nature
or the dictates of reason. Conformity then to our eyes be-
comes deformity. The attempts to modify or improve upon
the bodily contour offer a comprehensive example. The
flattening, binding, and ''beehive" distortion of the head
(Chinook, Peruvian, and others) ; the expansion of the ear-
lobes or of the lower lip (Brazil, Eskimo) ; the binding of
the feet among Chinese women; the filing and staining of
the teeth (African, Malay) ; the cultivation of long, curl-
ing finger nails (Siam) ; the piercing of the nose (Aus-
tralia) ; the varieties of tattoo marks, from the elaborate
decoration of the entire body (Polynesia) to the single
brand that forms the ^^Tracht" of local allegiance (Kabyle
people of North Africa) ; the uniform ''dress" of the hair,
like the pig-tail of the Chinese men; these represent more
permanent and conservative fashions. When fashion is
transferred from the body to its investiture, its scope is
enlarged. The national and local costumes of old-world
peoples offer a varied picture of interesting conformities
maintained under a social system allied to that of caste,
and rapidly disappearing under the cosmopolitan uniform-
ities which displace the older and local loyalties. The in-
herent conservation of the tribal cult is more persistent in
religious and similar observances, which do not come so
readily into competition with other institutional establish-
ments of similar import, and are indeed retained to em-
phasize the peculiar, the favored, the esoteric quality of the
tribal ceremonial. Fashion in a developed culture — ^like all
phases of such culture — reaches into the sphere of conscious
sanction and is played upon by the increasing complexities
of the social regulative system [9]. Yet the dominant mo-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 445

tives determining its sway are of much the same order at all
stages of expression. The tribal, the ancestral, or other
local motive is a large and conservative factor; the deco-
rative motive is another source of direction; the emphasis
of natural distinctions is yet another; superstition, his-
torical or commemorative motives, social considerations, and
continuously the satisfaction in conformity, carrying the
social sanction of tribal duty (later the social sense), co-
operate to shape custom and enforce obedience. Under
rigid social systems such conformity is inexorably exacted;
its violation or neglect takes on the aspect of desecration —
the act of a traitor to a common interest. Under advanced
cultures and the freer intercourse of peoples with cosmo-
politan standards, and under the growing realization of the
foundations of the social sanction, conformity loses its arbi-
trary rigidity, and finds a more reasonable place among the
varied interests which the consolidated social purposes di-
rect.

It is only in mature and liberal cultures that the
freedom of individual expression becomes a prized ideal —
the most difficult apparently to establish, the slowest to
come to its own in the national consciousness. The labori-
ous efforts, the slow advances, the painful sacrifices, the
burning hatreds, the fierce prejudices, the cruel persecu-
tions, the ingrained intolerances, the disastrous mental stag-
nation, which the story of social progress records, form a
sadly comprehensive evidence of the iron rule of conform-
ity, and the dead hand of the past. Not alone religious
wars and trials for heresy and the persecution of the non-
conforming, but the imposition of authority to shackle the
spirit of inquiry, the crushing rule of absolutism to impose
a foreign tyranny, the minor ostracisms and losses of caste,
the exclusion from preferment and the subtle intrusions of
prejudice, have all combined to obstruct the course of hu-
man progress and continue to delay the age of reason and
the sway of sympathy. Such is the cost of conformity.

446 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Returning to a more neutral aspect of the play of con-
formity, we readily take the objective view of the cultures
and the customs of other peoples, much as we look with idle
curiosity and a superior wonder at the mementos of their
products displayed in a museum of ethnology. These
labeled specimens of (to us) lifeless motives make a mute
appeal. It is more convincing to survey the living instances
of conformity — in which we form the specimens — though
they concern trivial and incidental regulations. Yet some
of these are of close kin to the cruder customs above cited.
The wasp-like waist, the high-heeled, pointed, tight shoe, the
changing styles that vary the contour of the human figure —
all aim to accentuate features of sex, and are followed pri-
marily not by virtue of an esthetic judgment of approval
nor yet in ignorance or disregard of hygiene or comfort, but
in a conscious, or it may be a complacent or a blind accept-
ance of style, and the satisfaction of following it. More
negatively and more charitably expressed, fashion exacts
its toll because of a lack of initiative or moral courage to
refuse it. Changes of fashion seem arbitrary and ca-
pricious ; in highly civilized communities they follow a com-
plicated system of prestige — such as the label of *' Paris,"
adoption by royalty or leaders of fashion — and an equally
complex and organized esthetic movement, not to mention
the satisfaction of novelty, the pride of wealth, display,
and joy in change for its own sake. Conformity with a
tinge of rationality is the rule; conformity legitimized by
reason, or convenience, or consideration is quite as com-
mon. The prejudice against long-haired men and short-
haired women has a natural basis, yet persists by reason of
the tendency to accentuate sex-differences. The differentia-
tion of clothing is one of its results, that of manners and
codes of behavior another. The decorative instinct of
woman is not merely an expression of the desire for beauty
as a sexual and social attraction — because such attraction
is part of woman's technique — but takes its particular ira-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 447

press from the inculcated emphasis of this factor in femi-
nine psychology, which sentiment and tradition establish
and favor. The hair and the head-dress — more incidentally
and more modernly, also the hat — form a distinctive setting
for the beauty of face. By its natural conspicuousness as
a trait of womanhood, the hair becomes a pride of sex. For
most women, the enforced deprivation of the hair would be
felt as a degradation; while yet a deliberate renunciation
of the adornment might express a rebellious assertion of
liberation from the bonds of social (or sex) conformity.

The essential point is that back of custom lies the psy-
chological or moral or hygienic or esthetic defense which
gives it a slight or a conspicuous place in a defensible sys-
tem of values. Etiquette proceeds upon sensibilities; and
the education of the sensibilities — adequately discussed in
an earlier chapter — is more and more directed upon the
artificial basis, now recognized as the* social-environmental
molding force. In pursuit of such enforcement the stand-
ard psychological process is to establish a feeling of pride
in conformity, a feeling of shame in violation — in general,
a conscience — which, guided in its finer issues by sensibility,
directs conduct and forms traits of character. Such traits
are at once the common expressions of the molding influ-
ence of the environment and of the common susceptibility
to them inherent in the underlying qualities of human na-
ture.

The institutional aspect of the process is shown in the
tyrannical force which convention may assume. In the
primitive setting its type is the taboo, which may go so
far as to regulate to great inconvenience and disadvantage.
The use of articles of dress, or of manufacture, may be ta-
booed; the use of words, particularly of names, may be
tabooed; food taboos are extremely common; the uses of
certain paths or roads or localities may be tabooed ; contact
with certain persons may come under the taboo. That the
prohibition may be imposed for a variety of reasons (for

448 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

reasons of sacredness, of pollution, of respect, of fear —
mainly fear of evil spirits), does not conflict with the com-
mon factor that the enforcement exercises the same order
of psychological pressure. In the end, however brought
about, an established range of prohibitions or injunctions
determines the restrictions of conduct, and in its massive
aggregate constitutes the system of social organization.
Good form, propriety, etiquette, consists of *'Dont's" as
well as of ' * Do thou thus and so. ' ' Thus on the one hand
a set of avoidances — partly intelligible or definable, but
only partly so and variable — and, on the other hand, an
equally extensive system of conformities of like status con-
tinue to surround the individual and to impose conventional
responses. Of peculiar moment in the maintenance of these
environmental products is the fact of survival — the per-
sistence through one stage of culture, or by mere inertia,
of a custom long after its basis in reason or other defense,
has changed or lapsed. The general consequence is an un-
thinking adherence to established usage, an absorption in
routine, and a shrinking from innovation — a fear of
change. An intellectual conservatism parallels a conserv-
atism of custom and becomes a momentous force. An apt,
if extreme, instance, is cited by Tylor : the Dyaks of Borneo
were not accustomed to use the V-shaped cut when chopping
with an ax and showed their scorn of the white man^s inno-
vation by levying a fine upon any native who would use
it; yet they were so convinced of its advantage that they
employed it secretly or when they could rely upon the con-
fidence of companions. Survivals are ordinarily not so
bare or so simple; they exert a resistance to innovation
more subtly. TJie set of habit and the force of tradition
embody a like influence.

The pressure of the institutional environment is more
rigidly expressed in simpler, earlier cultures than in those
of later level, for the very reason that the more developed
mores embody complex social influences and a larger regu-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 449

lation by rationalized systems [10], Intermediately a, con-
siderable group of practices, beliefs, and habits of thought
survive from earlier to later cultures, with, however, a loss
or change of their original aspects and bearing; they come
to persist with a sort of tolerance and indulgence which the
conservative tendency offers as a token of respect. In this
domain practices somewhat removed from the sway of rea-
son and repeating the simpler interests and occupations of
the mind, exhibit the conservative environmental impress,
as do the simpler orders of mental products. Games,
proverbs, riddles, greetings, seasonal customs, forms of ad-
dress offer examples; though under the desire for novelty
subject to innovation, these folklore products of popular
culture have a large vitality in the conventional intercourse,
attitudes, relations of daily life. Such customs as raising
a hat to a lady, or offering an arm, of proposing toasts and
drinking healths, of saying ''God bless you" when one
sneezes, of regarding certain happenings as of ill omen and
others as of good omen, of touching wood to escape dis-
astrous consequences; the semi-beliefs in lucky days; the
flirting with palmistry and similar systems, are all tenden-
cies which in their persistence reflect the type of influence
that invites a complacent acceptance and yet approaches
the intellectual pattern by which more serious types of ad-
herence are propagated and maintained. A superstitious
atmosphere makes the individual readily superstitious; the
severity of the intellectual as of the moral spirit of the
community or the class determines the logical habits of the
individual. The behavior of mind in class and mass is as
characteristic as that of the mores of ceremony and cus-
tom. More serious attitudes, inclinations, conduct, follow
a similar bent, but fall more consciously under the dominion
of reason, or at least of rational defense. They flourish by
virtue of the system of thought in which they are imbed-
ded, by which they are supported [11].

There is a parallel — indeed a close kinship — between the

450 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT ,,

contrasted mental procedures which enter into individual
conduct and those which direct the collective regulation
which the environment supplies. In the individual, the
dominant responses proceed upon primary, instinctive, emo-
tionalized, and vaguely conscious impulses; upon these as
a derivative, secondary product are developed more explicit,
more conscious, more reasoned, more variable, more indi-
vidual orders of response. Similarly in society there is the
earlier, the * 'folk-way,'' the collective, the subconscious, the
tribal, the traditional, the nearer-to-nature regulation im-
pressed by the psychic environment and sanctioned by the
mores in which it finds expression; and in complement
as well as in opposition there is the later, more explicit,
more analytic, more critical, formulated, acquired regula-
tion, which comes forward in policies, principles, codes, and
systems. Intermediately a vast range of social regulation
partakes of both aspects, and in its shifting phases reflects
each of the two attitudes traceable in the general evolu-
tion. Both orders of influence affect particularly the social
mind, the collective environmental background in which
the individual is enveloped. When the influence inclines
more to a feeling tone — a Stimmung — it is called public
sentiment; when inclining to a reasoned statement, public
opinion. Public sentiment and opinion are commonly con-
cerned with issues near the surface of interest; while set-
tled conviction and deeply organized faiths dispose of the
fundamental regulations in an unquestioned directness
of habit. In equally typical relations, customs, manners,
conventions, as well as minor sentiments and popular ver-
dicts are at once loyal to the earlier, unreflective accept-
ance, while yet they move toward the later aspects of
deliberate regulation. Custom is not altogether unrea-
son [12], though in its slower adjustment to environmental
demands it may appear as irrelevant and as futile as the
surviving habits of animals out of relation to their radically
altered surroundings and needs. Law itself, as codified

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 451

sentiment and opinion, lags behind the actually accom-
plished stages of progress. Because conduct reflects the
past and progress awaits the break from it, is adjustment
a living force.

The movement which matures social changes and shifting
environmental stresses is spiral in character. The spring
forward and upward proceeds from the impetus of varia-
tion congenial to the individual, explicit, analytic temper.
The curve of recoil binds it with the past by the security of
an accomplished adjustment, and confers the bond of con-
tinuity of proved experience, along with the natural ven-
eration of the merely venerable. Law, like custom and all
established conformity, is in this view a compromise in the
interests of stability. The pivotal issues of the hour, the
day, the generation, absorb the conscious energies. They
give rise to articulate controversies and explicit inquiries;
they form the turning points of the historical movement
through which the environment shows its vitality — its ca-
pacity to receive the impress of personality as well as to
impose it. Much as present history is past politics, so more
truly because more comprehensively, is present sociology
past psychology; each outgoing generation is old-fashioned
to the next. The rate of cultural movement is most irregu-
lar. The fixity of cultural stages seems the largest fea-
ture of early periods; the violent changes and reconstruc-
tions are often conspicuous in recent ones. Periods of re-
tardation and stagnation, as well as periods of illumina-
tion, renaissance, and expansion, emerge above the more
ordinary, routine advances. The revolution of the indus-
trial world by the spread of machinery is no more compre-
hensive than the revolution of the intellectual world by
the discovery and dissemination of the laws of evolu-
tion and the insight into the working forces of which the
individual and society are alike experimental specimens.
Ideas and the systems which they support become as
readily antiquated as tools or processes. Both are out-

452 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

grown and are replaced by others more in keeping with
the newer demands. The acceptance of the psychological
environment is as essential in fixing the standard of living
as are the economic considerations which more directly em-
body it. Every stage of culture is as unitary as a per-
sonality, and reflects in manners and industry, in art and
science, in morality and in religion, the dominant spirit of
the collective environment, as it has been shaped by the re-
sponses of the genius of a people to its physical surround-
ings and its social-historical heritage [13].

The two opposed massive forces of the environmental
movement — seemingly static for the moment and the indi-
vidual, but dynamic in a wider survey of social progress —
have not received accredited names. The one is more inher-
ent, like nature ; the other more acquired and imposed, like
nurture. The one is conservative and secures adjustment
by the fixity of habit ; the other is variational and secures a
finer adjustment by the readier adaptation to a changing
order. The one operates dominantly below the surface, is
deep, subconscious, pervasive, like an emotional undertow;
the other is the surface agitation, the tentative ripples of
an intellectual intrusion. No phase of cultural progress
is free from the combined influence; conservatism and lib-
eralism are collective as well as individual traits. The con-
trast between the leaders and the led, between the states-
man-philosopher-reformer-inventor type of individual and
the man of the people is largely centered about this divid-
ing point of influence. Each tendency is apt to be over-
stated ; each has its qualities of value as well as of danger.
Extreme radicalism and an assertive rebellion against
things as they are, and a contempt for usage and the estab-
lished routine, are as common and as dissociated from the
insight or the wisdom of the responsible reformer, as are
the complacent acceptance of the status quo, the conven-
tional subservience of the ordinary mind, and the dog-in-
the-manger attitude of the privileged classes. In the psy-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 453

chological aspect the distinctive contrast pertains to the
phases of conduct and attitude in which the one or the other
movement characteristically dominates. Popular move-
ments must always follow the deeper, conservative, temper ;
the spirit of advance must get into the blood as well as be
in the air before it is effective. Quite commonly in the
course of development, there arises a conviction or a senti-
ment that the two orders of influence should be held apart :
the one esoteric for the initiated few, the priestly class,
the illuminati, and the other for the masses — the people
fixed in folk-ways and limited in opportunity and outlook.
The belief in the gods and the fates and the traditional
mythology for the many, but a superior untrammeled
philosophical enlightenment for the elect, is not an excep-
tional incident of Greek culture, but is typical in all stages
in which the genius of progress — the elan vital of the race
— is alive. And the fate of Socrates — the seemingly volun-
tary but in reality imposed cup of hemlock, no differently
than the enforced retraction of Galileo — is typical of the
sacrifice of the variational to the conservative trend, of the
individual to the social dominance when invested with
power, political or spiritual.

It may well be emphasized that the one tendency is
characteristic of the collective mind and conservative in
trend, that the other is distinctive of the individual asser-
tiveness and variational in trend. The individual is more
an individual when he protests than when he conforms,
more when he goes his own way than the way of the crowd.
It takes courage to vote *'No" when the majority votes
*'Aye" — it may be, the courage of a martyr's fate. Yet
equally is there the pride of individuality, the membership
in the minority not of the defeated but of the superior and
the elect. It is however when the same set of forces are at
work not heroically or tragically or even dramatically, but
in the commonplace setting of the everyday issues, that
they exert their most characteristic influence. Certain

454 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

phases of the conduct of life and the conduct of mind fall
as naturally to the collective conservative influences, as
others proceed upon the individual, variational impulses.
In the individual nature there is a basis for the complacent
conformity in the gregarious sociability, and an equal basis
for the assertive, even rebellious individualism in the
egotistical, will-to-prevail, self-interest. In the sophisti-
cated attitude of a modern educated man, there is a more
or less conscious acceptance of the established conventions
of a polite society in manner, custom, observance; but
equally an insistence, born of a slow maturing privilege of
liberty of conscience and spirit of tolerance in all really
vital matters of intellectual decision. However mixed may
be the two streams of influence in determining his religious
or his political affiliations or other adherences of similar
complex antecedents, the twentieth-century man is free to
decide what he shall believe in the realm of fact or science
by the conviction of such evidence as he is able to under-
stand. In reality he frequently depends upon the expert
knowledge of others, and is as often swayed by sentiment
and prejudice, by what he likes to believe and by the satis-
faction of affiliation with congenial minds, as by the logic
of events or the objective contemplation of data. He falls
back upon the accredited beliefs of his kind, and in so far
reverts to the security of the collective sanction. The
practical adjustment of the individual in this realistic re-
lation has come to be the measure of his intelligence — the
most comprehensive gauge of temperament and character
yet evolved. By his intellectual, esthetic, and moral
affiliations is the nature of the individual man revealed.

In the general consideration there may be discerned a
rather constant set of influences which set the stamp of the
social organization in all societies, and cooperatively deter-
mine the major outlines and even the minor variations of
the psychological environment. Such is the physical en-
vironment, a type of the influence from without; and the

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 455

spirit of conformity, which is an inherent influence from
within. Apart from these, there are certain recurrent man-
ifestations of the social-environmental forces which, de-
spite the varieties of cultural products, confer a fair uni-
formity of appearance and function. First in the group is
the inevitable stratification of society. When pronounced
and developed it gives rise to systems of caste. Whether
recognized and formulated, or more democratically subdued
and discountenanced, it none the less exists everywhere and
determines the range and manner of envirbnmental influ-
ence to which the individual responds. Class-distinctions
may follow more rigidly hereditary privilege ; they may be
affected by wealth as well as station ; they may attempt to
recognize natural talents and the qualities of an intellectual,
artistic, or professional order. They are commonly ex-
pressed in economic relations, of which that of master and
servant, employer and employee, become typical. As an in-
evitable consequence social traits are formed, which are
quite as characteristic in their psychological manners and
attitude as in dress, appearance, habit, or prestige. The
different manners in which national ideals express caste-
distinctions form one of the most characteristic aspects of
the psychology of peoples. We think of the rigid and ven-
erable castes of India, or again of the binding distinctions
of the feudal system ; we are apt to regard democracy as it-
self a statement of opposition to such social contrasts, and
find in the doctrines of socialism a theoretical denunciation
of their right to exist. But societies both inherit and
fashion class-distinctions, however subdued in expression,
or modified by consideration, because human nature invites
them. Different forms of behavior, of speech, of manner,
all complicated by results of education, arise and continue
by the operation of the same type of psychological forces as
are responsible for other institutional expressions in earlier
cultures and in later ones.

Over and above the stratification of society which in a

456 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

measure holds men apart or at least in their several places,
while yet it gives them a conventional uniformity, there is
the supporting spirit of the age, the prevalent collective
genius, the Zeitgeist. As an initiative it is apt to proceed
from or reflect the tone of the leading classes in the social
system; it spreads by its congenial appeal to the entire
community, and is itself responsible for the class differ-
entiation through which it operates. For a following im-
plies leadership; and in each phase of activity standard
forms of behavior become established. The patterns of en-
deavor, however stereotyped, are inevitably diversified by
the variety of interests and the differentiation which the
social environment reflects and creates. The Zeitgeist
comes forward in the tone of enterprise and attitude, in
what men do and think and desire; and however humble
their part, something beyond the mere stress of livelihood
or routine of employment, permeates to the mental habits of
men and makes them men of their day and generation as
well as of their class and local conditioning. Men are com-
mercial in a commercial age and nation, and religious in
a religious atmosphere. It is when such a spirit finds sa-
lient and articulate expression and receives an historical bap-
tism that it becomes recognized as a molding force. In the
American environment such an historical attitude is Puri-
tanism. There is no difficulty in recognizing to how large
an expression of the imposing environmental attitude there
clings the Puritanic flavor. It is a social-environmental
force; it is an inheritance from the past, surviving not
merely by the inertia of establishment but by the force of
vital belief which supports the central attitude which it ex-
presses; it colors the slighter reactions and spreads its in-
fluence widely if no longer deeply. In completer control,
it imparts a stern severity of conduct, a serious acceptance
or moral responsibility, an outlook that discourages indul-
gence and keenly resents the encroachment of frivolity as
akin to sin; that in its overstatement it becomes a dis-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 457

courager of the arts as well as of the lighter recreations of
mind and body is an inevitable by-product. It affects the
temper of a community even when it is obsolescent; it is
safe to say that the popular conceptions of propriety in the
typical American community bear the marks of such an-
cestry. It asserts its sway not alone in regard to observ-
ances close to its own religious expression, but equally in
regard to all expressions of custom and manner which must
inevitably be regulated by a larger Kulturanschauung — a
fundamental view of life.

A more ''institutional" illustration is supplied by feudal-
ism, which is also a social, collective, conservative attitude,
still effective in human relations. Subserviency and defer-
ence on the one side, arbitrary and complete expression of
power on the other, may become as real in the industrial re-
lations as in the historical ones which the term records.
In all such regulative systems the inherent principle which
they express cooperates with tradition to determine present
attitudes and pursuits. Diffef ent principles and emphases
find distinctive expressions within the social structure.
The military spirit is one such expression and represents
the primal resort to force and the organization of enforce-
ment as the criterion of the right to prevail. Militarism
is equally an attitude and an organization, an ideal and a
fact. The adjustment of the relations of Church and
State is an expression of the part assigned to each of these
institutions in the social-spiritual environment. Conflicts
of ideals are as real and may be as disastrous as conflicts of
material interests; and the problem of the amalgamation
of peoples in a total national structure is always as much
in the nature of a psychological achievement as of a political
one. The inherent dissensions of race and tradition mean
that people believe differently, entertain different senti-
ments, feel different loyalties, are accustomed to different
ways, speech, standards of living. All this makes the im-
position of a foreign rule and an alien genius an aggressive

458 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

even though a missionary advance. In course of time
political absorption effects a psychological amalgamation;
but the older local loyalties, inherent qualities, and tradi-
tional fealty, may persist and create problems. The Ger-
man-American, the Italian- American, the Slavic-American,
express a dual allegiance which is psychological rather than
political, and recedes rapidly in a few generations. Such
divided fealty persists more strongly when the original ties
are not broken. The problem of the Irish in Great Britain
is complex by reason of just such psychological antago-
nisms ; while such historic reconstructions as the unification
of Italy and the amalgamation of Austria and Hungary
present allied problems of reconciliation of varying tradi-
tions. Colonization is a like process ; the affiliations of the
racial esprit and national temper — representing the older
type of collective conservative forces — remain as effective
as political treaties, ententes and alliances.

The third factor in the psychological environment is the
local genius — that aspect of the environmental influence
which achieves an immediate loyalty to the smaller group
and the direct tradition. It gives local distinctiveness to
communities and represents the social esprit de corps, not
detached from the larger influences to which the community
responds, but imparting to it a distinctive coloring. As
conduct is composed of small decisions, so equally are con-
tacts inevitably local, with the constant, recurrent, de-
tailed surroundings. The influence of the home is due to
emphatic assertion and reassertion of the local genius.
These experiences of intimate contact with the immediate
environment were in older days far more comprehensively
formative. The detachment of peoples gave to communi-
ties a greater distinctiveness; travel, the dissemination of
knowledge, cosmopolitan ambitions, have rapidly equalized
conditions and given to these older considerations a slighter
value [14]. The local genius is not merely of the people
and of one 's own people ; it equally reflects the special class-

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 459

interest, which is a phase of the local one. It is thus char-
acteristic of the minute, detailed, presentative, intimate
bearing which such psychological forces assume before
they become directly effective, are bred in the bone, woven
in the spirit of the race. It remains consistently true in all
relations that the individual reacts to the immediate, local,
presentative, recurrent experience. Conversely is it true
that the course by which principles and ideas and the
formulation of doctrines are imposed — ^however ardent and
vital the reforming increment — is more indirect, and be-
comes even more remote as principles become detached
from practice, and by such psychological distance are less-
ened in effect. Hence the need of definite ritual and con-
crete observance in religion, as well as positive precepts in
codes of morality, rules of behavior and sanctioned customs,
to give the tangible, visible feeling of conformity, and
thereby carry the lesson of the indwelling spirit as far as
it may. Hence also the danger of lip-service, from the
burnt offering to the subscription list, the prayer machines
and the telling of beads and recital of creeds and mummery
of sentiment with feeble support in practice. Yet how-
ever feeble the comprehension, conformity breeds loyalty.
Compositely such practiced and sanctioned observances per-
meate to every phase of the local environment, and become
a psychic climatic influence, an atmospheric pressure, Sensi-
tive to the coarser and the slighter fluctuations of the col-
lective spirit. It is with this conservative trend that the
variational moods of reformation have constantly to con-
tend.

The fourth consideration, everywhere operative in the
social environment, relates to the dominant regulative sys-
tems. These become more explicit and elaborate in de-
veloped cultures, but may be traced backward to the very
beginnings of organized society. Their earliest expressions
follow the clew of social stratifications. It is through them
that the tribe is organized, that family relations are estab-

460 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

lished, and the proprieties of conduct between classes are
fixed. Customs are older than laws, but naturally lead to
them. Thus codes arise, principles are stated, traditions
become articulate. Of the several systems effective in the
intellectual realm, that of religion may in turn be said to
dominate in the historical perspective; for its ** social" pur-
pose is to afford an all-embracing, spiritual as well as prac-
tical guide to life. It provides sanctioned decisions, confers
uniformity, unites divergent interests. Its relation to the
ethical system is originally intimate, and in that relation
typical [14]. Law, justice, and the political regulations
form other interpenetrating comprehensive systems, con-
trolling both the social and the personal relations, and de-
velop vested and sanctioned rights conferred by the total
social structure. Each system, though asserting a limited
sovereignty, becomes in a measure a rival of the others.
In due course the scientific system, which justifies itself by
proof and practical efficiency, acquires a large place. Men
defend conduct by reason, and in such reason make appeal
to the orderly interpretation of nature as well as of human
experience. Men discover not only what works but why it
works. The establishment of such a system of regulation
represents the most stupendous achievement of the human
mind. Its path is a laborious one; it begins with a super-
naturalism, proceeds through ages of superstition and the
pursuit of false leads; it is expressed in systems of beliefs
inevitably formulated under the auspices of religious tenets
and political establishments. The authority of the high
priest, the divine right of kings, the supremacy of the
orthodox faith, the power of excommunication or ostracism,
are all examples of the survival of religious and political
power into the domain of intellectual truth. Truth like
right has to make terms with might. Knowledge comes to
its own slowly, and may excite a suspicion or distrust sug-
gestive of the attitude of the medieval populace toward the
practitioner of the black arts. As the central principle

CHARACTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT 461

underlying the growth of control over nature as over so-
ciety, rationality makes its slow and devious progress. Its
partial establishment under a composite allegiance has often
been the chief obstacle to the further extension of its do-
minion.

The joint issue of these several forces upon the constitu-
tion of the social-psychological environment may be sum-
marized under the comprehensive rubrics of standards and
ideals. For as a fact both in the larger outlook and in the
nearer prospect, the actual regulation of individual con-
duct by the collective sanction takes the concrete form of
standards of behavior; when the rules as well as the prac-
tices of life are animated and justified in some measure by
the more deliberate understanding and approval of sup-
porting principles, there arise ideals of desirable ends and
justifiable means. Practically, as the direct impress of the
environment, standards prevail; ultimately ideals rule.
Each affects the other, and the two must find a congenial
relation. Ideals are supplied by the imagination and the
individualized expression of the few; they are conveyed
and embodied in standards of attitude and conduct for the
many; through these the solidarity of a national conscious-
ness and the special loyalties of class are expressed.

In retrospect the consideration of the psychological en-
vironment furnishes the clew to the survival value of the
qualities of men as expressed in the prevalent systems of
culture. It presents them as modified adaptations of
original or ancient impulses to modern requirements.
Thus considered the survival of qualities is an issue of na-
ture. Yet values are developed and retained by securing
a place for such natural qualities, or by extending their
function in the actual arena of social competition. Con-
cretely the direction of quality to expression and the place
of any one quality in the total social structure are embodied
in standards accepted and maintained, and selected and fa-
vored as well. As each individual responds to the environ-

462 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

mental system he develops a personal equation, an individ-
ual rendering of the general perspective of values. Sup-
porting the individual and the collective determination of
modes, directions and standards of response, there enters
the guiding principles under which systems are developed,
the ideals under which qualities reach their fullest expres-
sion. There emerges a Lehens-philosophie that carries the
individual through the more conscious and deliberate situa-
tions of life, and constitutes the final phase of the amalga-
mation of character and temperament, and the equally ma-
ture and conclusive expression of the individual, the local,
the national, and the generic cultural appraisal of the
qualities of men.

CHAPTER IX

THE QUALITIES OF MEN

The analysis of the sources of human qualities finds its
consummation in the appraisal of their value as determiners
of conduct in the service of purpose. Endowment and
environment interact; human qualities mature and receive
their finer direction in adaptation to condition; condition
becomes the increasing complication and specialization of
the artificial environment created by the industrial, social,
educational, and institutional provisions of organized com-
munities. The environment becomes a consolidation of in-
fluences even more than a set of conditions. Artificial
selection is imposed upon natural selection, and both act
upon original and derivative qualities to their readjustment.
Encouragement and discouragement act as rewards and
punishments of limited range but decisive bearing. The
selection of qualities proceeds through the favor of adapta-
tion in one direction or another, in major or minor measure,
centrally or incidentally. Qualities become rivals as well
as mutual supports ; their emphasis by and in the environ-
ment introduces a changing perspective of value. With in-
creasing complication, advantage is no longer simple; it is
of many kinds and degrees, with compensations and off-
sets— themselves in the nature of nicer adjustments to more
specialized conditions. A quality conferring relative ad-
vantage in one environment may prove of relative disadvan-
tage in another ; one of major significance may retire to a
minor service; virtues and vices, despite the constancy of
their standard relations, may change places under altered
circumstances.

463

464 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Parallel with the complication of situation is the compli-
cation of qualities, characteristically through the transfer of
a trait particularly adapted to a primary situation, to other
applications and related outlets of expression. There is
also the rivalry of traits, making the issue : which trait shall
prevail for a given type of situation. Cumulatively the
complication attaches to the environmental reconstruction;
for through it primary traits are redirected, are supplied
with new outlets, and transformed. Briefly they are over-
laid by the products of civilized life. The net issue is the
establishment of standards and ideals; in terms of adjust-
ment to these, the redirected traits are appraised. This
collective institutional encouragement and discouragement
operates as a system of values. It confers vantage and
disadvantage as did originally the more direct rewards and
punishments of nature; in further analogy, it brings into
play ever slighter variations and apter adjustments of
selected traits to specialized environments.

A principle of large moment issues from this evolutionary
process. It sets forth that the central effect of civilization
is to make small differences count ; in another formulation it
indicates that we live upon the most highly differentiated
phases, upon the upper ranges of our qualities ; such is the
law of specialization. The biological emphasis, whether of
sex or race or other differentiation, is itself a specialization,
a superiority or particular fitness of adaptation to function
or condition. In the field of ordinary endowment it is a
matter of degree and manner; it summarizes the fact that
what many groups of men, races, nations, communities,
can do, some can do better than others and all do differ-
ently: some predominantly by the support of one set of
qualities, others predominantly through other qualities, in
part related, in part contrasted. What is done and how it
is done reflect the support of achievement in the range of
endowment. The economic specialization of service is de-
pendent upon the biological one of quality ; unskilled labor

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 465

proceeds upon the common aptitudes of men; skilled labor
upon their divergences. The divergence expresses the fact
of emphasis : the fitness of the one is but a higher degree of
aptitude common to the many. What one man does well he
does for others, receiving in turn the benefit of others' spe-
cial gifts or applications. Yet individuals and communi-
ties compete by a composite of qualities; such dependence
upon groupings of traits and the inherent correlation be-
tween them fixes the limit of specialization; versatility re-
tains its value. In simpler conditions each individual ex-
ercises a larger range of common functions ; and communi-
ties like individuals are more self-sufficient. The complica-
tion of the social institutions develops the specialized crafts-
man; society provides useful outlets for the specialized en-
dowments by creating careers for their possessors. Such
endowments have a natural basis, a place in the composite
equipment of the human individual for the normal demands
of an adequate life. Endowment is not developed for
career, but career is shaped to endowment. The place of
what comes to be a directive quality may be central in sur-
vival value, or it may be more or less derivative — a by-
product of a trend of the whole. Men are energetic, ac-
quisitive, masterful, as well as combative and lustful for
power and control, because that set of qualities has a direct
survival value in many a situation. The application of the
quality expands and differentiates widely for different or-
ders of environment. Similarly, the fact that there are
artists among men is an issue of the inherent esthetic trait
in all men. The artist, and no differently the soldier and
the captain of industry or the political ''boss," thrives upon
his specialized qualities.

The principle of specialization sets forth not alone that
the soldier or the organizer of industrial competition or the
artist has one set of qualities highly developed, and that in
one race or nation military ability, organizing ability, or
artistic ability may be marked above others, but that slight

466 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

differences in the degree and manner of such specialized
quality become more and more momentous; to such slight
differences the social differentiation attaches increased
value. As a consequence in the exercise as in the appraisal
of the artistic gifts, finer distinctions, delicate superiorities
count decidedly as standards become more critical. By vir-
tue of the law of distribution the number who can meet an
exacting standard rapidly diminishes as the standard is
made more rigid; the highly superior are few in any call-
ing; hence the saying that there is always room at the top.
It seems fair to assume that the greatest of present-day
American painters — to choose a specialized order of ability
adequate to a career — has but a slight superiority above his
nearest competitors ; yet such added quality at the top may
almost place him in a class by himself. Lower the qualifica-
tions for admission to a national academy of art, and you
admit scores and hundreds of decided ability; lower the
standards once again and by only a slight step, and thou-
sands may rightfully enter. A slight increase in quality
implies rapid elimination of large numbers of competitors ;
in the surviving group finer and finer distinctions must be
made, more careful and balanced judgments be exercised
before the prize is awarded; and the best of those who
lose may lose by a hair's breadth. Selection proceeds
within a selected group; in the upper ranges social selec-
tion becomes decisive, and the establishment and main-
tenance of standards becomes an expert service. Com-
petency becomes a matter of very fine differences, in which
the compensation of one variety of quality must be meas-
ured against another [1].

Expressed in biological terms, the shifting of values in
the process of adjustment indicates that with the necessities
once satisfied, the struggle for preferment is transferred to
the specialized superiorities, all of them derivative prod-
ucts of qualities that owe their existence to phases of serv-
ice in the original types of situations, for the standard f unc-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 467

tions of the human organism. The esthetic satisfaction it-
self illustrates the principle. Under severe conditions
esthetic considerations are feebly developed; they cannot
assert themselves above urgent and immediate necessities.
Though a by-product of luxury, the esthetic quality blos-
soms under the slightest favoring condition, thus proving
the inherent tendency for the perspective of endowment to
expand and transfer its base. Art is an ancient expression,
the art-impulse an early, inherent trait of man. The shift-
ing center of adjustment in human evolution is a movement
of several components. Urgency sets the earlier scale of
value; and later tendencies, however altered the orbit de-
fining the sphere of their action, cannot too radically de-
part from the patterns determined by use. But man does
not live by bread alone. With the major needs satisfied,
the adjustment is transferred to the mode and manner of
the minor satisfactions ; and art has its chance. The primi-
tive expression of an original quality exerts its sway; con-
comitantly, a cluster of derivative qualities develops and
becomes the focus of the shifted adjustment, the transferred
order of satisfaction. An original limited trend gives rise
to an ever extending series of derivative trends. The com-
plications of the environment invite a transfer of value to
the derived and transformed expansions of the original
traits. Under such transformation the expressions of the
distinctive qualities of men absorb conscious consideration;
in such terms the resemblances and differences of men are
felt and acted upon. •

The issue that the finer qualities count because signifi-
cance is attached to them, is as saliently illustrated in the
operations of the differences as of the resemblances of men.
The statement that birds of a feather flock together ex-
presses the natural influence of common standards and
temperamental congeniality. Slight differences of habit or
appearance are enough to estrange ; the psychology of preju-
dice here finds its source. The advocates of the brother-

468 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

hood of mankind rightly contend that in the larger aspects
all men are essentially alike ; but for actual human relations,
these similarities are not adequate, because the congeniality
of intercourse depends upon the slighter differentiations,
the upper ranges of quality. Such divergences, though
artificial, develop upon a natural basis. Through this psy-
chologically altered perspective of significance, broad and
even fundamental similarities are obscured and minute and
superficial differences emphasized. Not alone in the con-
tacts of sharply contrasted races, but even in the intercourse
between foreign peoples of like cultural standards, mis-
understandings arise and approaches are difficult. Cul-
tural differences, which in nature's scheme of values are
skin-deep, engage attention and direct response by the
constant assertiveness of their surface appearance. In an
American's intercourse with a Japanese, he is steadily
aware of persistent psychological differences, despite the
considerable adoption by the latter of the Occidental man-
ners. Even in his relations with a sympathetic German or
Frenchman, or a still more closely affiliated Englishman,
the difference of manner, speech, training, mode of
thought, perspective of importance to be attached to one
set of considerations or another — the * ' f oreignness " — occu-
pies a much larger place than it intrinsically merits. Yet
these slighter differences have acquired a status as means of
adjustment to the specialized environments which Ameri-
can, German, French and English life have established ; they
enter into the national standards and ideals which these di-
vergent forms of culture maintain. Social stratification
produces the same result. One does not readily feel at
home among groups of other social training; embarrass-
ments and restraints, suspicions and antagonisms arise.
A member of the * ' intellectual ' ' classes if set in his mental
habits, may find almost nothing to say to a man of the
people; neighbors at a dinner-table may bore one another,
while a discerning redistribution of the guests may provide

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 469

for each a stimulating congeniality of interest. Social tact
consists largely in the management and minimizing of the
estranging restraints of slighter psychological divergences,
in easing the rapprochements of divergent mental attitudes.
The distinctiveness, the intimate appeal of one's own cul-
ture and the alien nature of another 's, leads to a derogatory
view of the other and an implied superiority of one's own.
To the Greek other peoples were '' barbarians " ; to the Jews
those of other faiths were Gentiles ; to the Christian, heath-
ens; the delicate ^'nous autres^' renders the distinction
more considerately. In latter days tolerance has become
the essence of cosmopolitanism, though nations require to
be interpreted to other faiths and other standards.

It is not merely nor mainly in the regulation of the in-
tercourses of men that the principle is significant; it has
a broader application in the contrast of achievement and
endowment. Achievement absorbs and expresses endow-
ment, but it does so in terms of the specialized endowment
which in turn proceeds upon the upper ranges, the de-
rivative divergences of qualities. Contrasts of achieve-
ment become far more distinctive than the contrasts of en-
dowment which underlie them. Thus compared, the negro
in the United States has proved his fair capacity to use the
machinery of adjustment devised by the white man ; yet in
the established social order the general comparability of
capacity in the two races is inevitably overshadowed by
the wide divergences which even a modest difference of en-
dowment is certain to develop. To such slighter differences
and superiorities civilization accords decisive rewards; it
makes their issues in modes and standards of living, in the
pursuit of ideals and participation in social regulation,
more and more divergent. A complex civilization widens
the contrast in that it proceeds upon the slighter, upper-
range qualities, and in terms of their marked presence or
absence determines the leaders and the led, the controlling
and the controlled, the distinguished and the ordinary.

470 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Similarly between the social classes, it establishes an in-
creasing distinctiveness through the rewards which it be-
stows, the honors which it distributes in the way of esteem
and reputation, and the consequent assumption of divergent
standards of living. The professional classes, the moneyed
classes, the organizers and the organized, the employer and
the employee, the influential and inconsequent become sa-
liently differentiated through the increased importance
attaching to specialized gifts and slighter superiorities, in
the derivative aspects of human quality and in the
several arenas in which they compete. That station, cir-
cumstance and opportunity introduce equally real and yet
more disturbing difficulties in the appraisal of quality will
not be overlooked.

In the practical domain the principle indicates that the
more specialized callings imply and impose a nicer fitness
of quality to vocation ; in such callings a modest failure of
endowment, lack of capacity, judgment, sensibility, or of
any similar departure from a high-grade standard involves
far more disastrous consequences than in less specialized,
less exacting vocations. The readjustment of general types
of quality to the nicer requirements of a complex social or-
der is precisely the demand which the moderately inferior
endowment fails to i^eet; such limitation dooms the one
group to a dependent position or to one of lesser conse-
quence, marks the more primitive races for extinction or
absorption in the presence of a dominant race. Yet circum-
stance is certain to prove momentous, largely by its alterna-
tive of supporting or frustrating the issues of endowment.
Still more effective is the impress and favoring influence of
the social structure in its selective emphasis of one or an-
other of the finer derivative traits ; it turns the balance in
favor of one or another set of qualities. Qualities are thus
made conspicuous and momentous by the social reconstruc-
tion; in which formulated ideals assume an increasing con-
trol. That in such adjustment society possesses an instru-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 471

ment and a responsibility for the fostering of the qualities
of men, is the theme of later considerations.

The reciprocal influence of endowment and the social fa-
voring environment holds the clew to the interaction of
quality and encouragement in the large range of actual
conditions. It illustrates that to him who hath shall be
given ; less nobly it counsels that nothing succeeds like suc-
cess. Psychologically it reminds us that we like to do what
we can do well, and do it well because we like to do it ; we
respond to incentives, and the strength and trend of the
incentives no less than of the responses illuminate human
nature and the institutional forces which the social nature
of man develops for the consummation and transformation
of his endowment. In the concrete issue the dual aspect
readily comes forward. Is the American trait of energy an
outcome of the American mode of life, or is it a factor re-
sponsible for it? It may be argued that the new world
attracted the energetic and the venturesome from the popu-
lations of the older European communities; through this
agency energy was selected as a prime quality of adaptation
for the new life, and was transmitted to the descendants
whose qualities became the standard ones that shaped the
social environment and the spirit of American life. In
terms of the environment it may be argued that the founda-
tion of new settlements, the clearing of the forests, the ex-
ploitation of resources, the expansion of opportunity de-
manded and encouraged qualities of energy and initiative
and gave them a determining importance. The life of the
frontier reflects both aspects : its prospects express the en-
vironmental influence; its spirit the favored quality of
adaptation. Once established, American energy, push, and
hustling grow and become characteristic as a composite
attitude of mind, inculcated by precept and example; the
principle is incorporated in the unwritten constitution of
the psychological platform of typical and cherished Ameri-
canism, It is certain to develop extreme and tangential

472 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

expressions; for the form and the appearance, as the
carriers of the imitable patterns of conduct and the con-
scious focus of expression, engage attention and direct the
response. Hence a love of movement and hurry, a tend-
ency to violent, persistent, partly inconsiderate outputs of
energy; hence also an encouragement of all that is con-
genial to the resulting patterns of behavior and the dis-
couragement of habits seemingly opposed. Ultimately and
consciously strenuosity becomes an ideal, hustling becomes
an accepted social injunction; and a man of sober pace is
looked upon as a weaker member of society, a straggler or a
shirk; while one who too critically questions the pertinence
of ''rapidity" and aims to transfer attention to such other
values as a sense of direction and the appraisal of the goal
arouses the suspicion attaching to disloyalty to an estab-
lished doctrine.

Another instance of American enterprise appears in the
vogue of advertising, which has likewise developed a psy-
chology. On the one side there is the appeal, and on the
other the quality of response appealed to. If the one is
adapted to the other, persuasion is successful and conduct is
affected in the desired direction ; in this technique, as in all
of like pattern, opposing tendencies must be avoided, and
the rivalry of qualities directed to the end sought. Yet the
qualities appealed to in publicity and persuasion are in but
slight measure of an original order, and in very large meas-
ure the result of a special set of customs, fashions, preju-
dices, predilections. They have a slight foundation in nat-
ural psychology, and an elaborate superstructure in ac-
quired psychological architecture. It is to the transformed
set of qualities that the appeal is made. Hence for the psy-
chology of the process — the current style of the architecture,
as it were — it is the specialized psychology of the persons
appealed to, even more than the general psychology of the
appeal, that determines the reaction. Advertising proceeds
upon the specialized divergences, the surface issues of elas-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 473

tic human qualities. A slight shift in the balance of these
complex and derivative traits is sufficient to exert a large
effect upon the result. The very attitude toward the ac-
ceptance of advice or the amenability to persuasion may
notably alter the issue. Fashion might step in and make
it "bad form" to use advertised articles, at least in critical
or pretentious households. Self-assertion might step in and
resent the too familiar or presuming advertisement to v^hich
American complacency now surrenders. Public sentiment
might decide that the disfigurement of modern streets by
glaring and insistent display and the destruction of natural
and architectural lines of beauty, are social crimes to be
avenged by the boycotting of the transgressors. Publicity
would then not attract custom but drive it away. Social
sentiment is setting up an influence of such tendency by re-
quiring that the personal welfare of employees shall be re-
garded as well as the cost and merit of the product. More
generally the habit of reading advertisements and the tend-
ency to act upon their appeals is itself a social product;
it, as well as the conditions of commercial life, enters into
the social standards and directly affects the success of the
advertising medium [2]. The fluctuation in the relations
of stimulus and response results from the fact that the de-
rivative, specialized forms of human qualities are the ef-
ficient ones. These indeed owe their presence and their
strength to their place in a general perspective of human
nature; but this underlying core of common traits is so
heavily overlaid and transformed by the manifold trans-
formations of one type of civilization and another that no
general appeal will answer for all. Though seemingly ef-
fective by the psychology embodied in the appeal, the ad-
vertisement actually proceeds upon the similarities of the
acquired natures of those appealed to. What attracts in
one environment may repel in another, what succeeds in one
community may fall flat in another, because of the differ-
ent set of the responsiveness of the clientele.

474. CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

That in the development of this mutual adjustment of
quality and career, of endowment and environment, each
reflects the other is indeed the standard issue. Tendencies,
attitudes, encouragements grow by what they feed upon;
with the fashion set in one direction, it is increasingly dif-
ficult to turn it in another. That such changes occur is
abundantly demonstrated in every field of human enter-
prise ; that such changes are possible remains the only hope
of progress, the only outlook for reform. There is a large
difference in the views of men upon how far such changes
are determined by the hard realism of the conditions that
confront societies; how far by the deliberate, thoughtful
and tactful efforts of social and intellectual leaders; how
far the entertained and effective ideals arise directly from
practice and the experience of established situations; how
far they are imposed upon means and measures and de-
termine the further directions of endeavor; how far past
experience projects the next stage; how far a constructive
imagination anticipates and then realizes the anticipation.
Recognizing both influences, we may assert that situations
promote the emphasis of certain ranges of qualities, and
that likewise the qualities thus emphasized when put into
operation develop the situation toward the further expan-
sion of such favored qualities. This gathering force of the
set of qualities forming the character of social communities,
is of momentous consequence when it affects the deeper ap-
preciations and the serious occupations and directive atti-
tudes of men.

No relation embodies the operr'ion of these forces more
signiflcantly than the status of women as shaped by the
social control of men. Though ever subject to a similar
range of influences, the spirit of social institutions has ac-
corded women the widest divergence of status. A chattel
and a slave, an idol and a parasite, a companion and a
helpmate, feared and contemned, looked down upon as the
weaker vessel and revered as the holier one, w^oman re-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 475

fleets the views and the culture of the races and nations
whose heritage she transmits. Yet as an economic factor
woman has influenced the communal life, has played a nota-
ble part in the religions, as in the competitions, ambitions
and ideals of societies. She has responded to the demands
of the harem and the suttee, to the appeal of romance and
gallantry, to competitions by display and intrigue as well
as by charm and gracious favor ; she has made economic life
possible and social life rich and worthy by her indispensable
ministrations. It is argued that the position of woman de-
velops directly from the inherent nature of the feminine
qualities, and that these take their set jointly from the ab-
sorbing maternal functions and from the intense interest of
the incidents of courtship. Yet under these common nat-
ural conditions the status of women is as shifting as the
ideals of communities. From the harem to modern co-
education and the emancipation of women in so large meas-
ure socially, economically and politically, seems an impossi-
ble issue of favoring ideals, and yet is substantially nothing
else. The qualities of women, though true to their natural
status, vary sufficiently in the perspective of accepted en-
couragement and discouragement to produce these striking
contrasts and lesser divergences. The environment deter-
mines which qualities shall come forward and which shall be
retired, and how the totality of the possibilities of woman-
hood shall be developed and esteemed. Subject in so many
and such vital relations to the play of masculine control,
masculine desires, or masculine ideals, the qualities of women
have had an additional influence to meet, not quite of the
same order as that which has shaped the qualities of men,
though the latter are decidedly affected by the actual rela-
tions to women and the appreciations expressed in feminine
ideals. What seems most distinctly demonstrated in recent
times is that the removal of prejudice or the change of
fashion in regard to the womanly ideal has brought forward
very different aspects of the womanly character. The eter-

476 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

nal feminine reflecting the fundamental traits is offset by the
plastic responsiveness to a shifting ideal. When the socially
accepted pattern of femininity was a type, delicate, suscepti-
ble, clinging, women in sheltered positions, in which these
upper-range desiderata had free play, were inclined to tears
and swoons, were compromised in every frank expression of
emotion, and shocked by every contact with the realities of
life. When the ideal turned to a sensible, athletic, sel:^-
confident, educated type, women presented these cherished
qualities quite as admirably. That the change in ideal
brought into prominence different types of women who by
endowment were favored in the one direction or the other,
is equally true [3]. That the response may have been too
sudden and too radical, disturbing the established adjust-
ments, and imperiling the stabler qualities of womanhood
is altogether likely; emancipation when overdone leads to
a rebellious attitude toward every association and embodi-
ment of the older, abandoned regime. Literary critics may
complain of the feminization of literature ; the guardians of
the educational interests may deplore the loss of virility in
the educational programmes ; politicians may express alarm
at the invasion by women of a domain which they have come
to regard as a masculine arena ; yet in so far as these prot-
estants appeal to the authority of original nature, they
must recognize that such fields of expression represent re-
constructions of human aptitudes, that they may be carried
on as properly and as efficiently, though differently, upon
one set of qualities as upon another.

The real issue in such considerations is twofold: the as-
sertiveness of the inherent (masculine or feminine) per-
spective in the resulting vocations, and the appraisal of
their value in the social system which one or another ideal
favors [4]. In the first respect it is significant that with
the fairly equal educational opportunities of women and
men, engineers are still with few exceptions men, and the
law remains a predominantly masculine pursuit. In the

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 477

choice of paths of learning, the same order of selection goes
on substantially without external pressure; the election of
studies in a coeducational college reflects the divergence of
feminine and masculine interests and capacities. In aca-
demic work of this or that type, it remains true that the one
or the other group does somewhat better what both do
about equally well; but also that the proficiency of the
one group is in one direction, and that of the other in an-
other; that the proficiency is based on a contrasted per-
spective of qualities ; that men and women react to studies
as to other invitations differently in manner. This is a
subtle and complex difference, and moves toward the upper-
range level; as exercised it may have a modest or an im-
portant bearing upon what each is able to do with his or
her education, which in terms of the curriculum and of
standings has about the same face-value. Judged by the
rough-and-ready appraisals of the educational standards,
women hold their own with men; this is entirely an ex-
pected result, primarily because the proficiencies thus tested
are in large measure of an artificial status. They represent
the by-products of a trend of mind upon which the complex
requirements of civilization place a premium; in such de-
rived products original differences are overlaid and sub-
dued and remain decisive only in so far as their refined
issues direct the transformed pursuits. But the qualities
concerned are so many, and so specialized, and so interact-
ing that comparisons are difficult ; memory and abstract rea-
soning, a presentative grasp and an imaginative construc-
tion, an esthetic appreciation and an analytical shrewdness,
may all be called upon in this or that study and in varying
measure. In addition patience and conscientiousness, a
willingness to submit to routine, or a chafing under dis-
cipline, may have much to do with scholarly success or fail-
ure. Women succeed, as they fail, through one set of quali-
ties and men through another, partly overlapping, in a
fundamental aspect largely so, yet significant in their

478 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

slighter divergences. Only in so far as academic tests re-
flect older varieties of inherent traits, has the argument a
modest weight. For a decisive verdict nothing less than the
tests of life and career are adequate. "Within the upper-
level range, the divergences of manner and the preferences
and proficiencies within a common aptitude acquire signifi-
cance. Such minor differentiations of interests and tastes
form a consistent evidence, though a modest one, of the
characteristics of the masculine and of the feminine mind.
With so much admitted, the practical issue that engages
the controversial interests of protagonists turns the inquiry
to such questions as these : Is not the service of literature
such that certain phases of it may be more adequately ac-
complished by the masculine and others by the feminine
endowment? Are not the educational interests broad
enough to require the diversified talents of both types of
specialized mind? Is it the fixed ideal that politics shall
be carried on as a game and a contest, or is it to assume the
status of a municipal and a state-wide organized house-
keeping? Are there not tasks and situations, concerns of
common interest to the individual and to the community,
which require qualities that owe their strength to the femi-
nine as well as to the masculine roots of human nature?
Is it to be maintained that the qualities indispensable to the
practical wisdom of political measures are so vitally con-
nected with the forceful quality of the masculine nature
or with any other dominantly masculine trait, that only to
those possessed of such qualities may the control be safely
intrusted, that any weakening of the fitter dominance will
react to the disruption of the whole ? It is legitimate that
such questions shall be raised in the course of the practical
dispensations of living issues. It is important that the
answer be reached not alone by the judgment of experience,
but by a conscious consideration of the purposes to be ac-
complished by the social machinery — by a far-reaching view
not alone of what the Jnstitutional life does under its pres-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 47d

ent organization, but of what it may be directed to accom-
plish under the encouragement of wise leaders of men.
Since the fact of sex is ultimate and comprehensive, the
largest social wisdom can be reached only by adjusting op-
portunities and appreciations intelligently to the endow-
ments of both sexes and to each distinctively.

The play of ideals in determining the perspective of op-
eration of human qualities appears distinctively in the im-
portance and the esteem attaching to the several socially
established and esteemed occupations. Of these none is
more characteristic historically and actually than the mili-
tary spirit and ideal, the military institution. The urgency
of self-defense, the safeguard against the aggressive move-
ments of others, as well as the eager ambitions of men,
establish the military regime and develop the military
(Classes. Moreover, the inherent combativeness, the devo-
tions of collective enthusiasms, the foundations of fervid
loyalties, the thrill of conquest, the pitting of strength and
strategy, the culmination of the racial and national hopes,
the appeal of large exploits, have all been sustained
through the institution of war. The tremendous selection
which centuries of warfare have exercised among men is
a biological force of the first magnitude, even though it is
offset by the elimination of the fittest, which leaves the sur-
vival of the race to those escaping its ravages. That older
methods of warfare under personal encounter may have
largely tended in the one direction, while in modern days,
the impersonal mass movements of men and the earlier
enlistment and graver risks of the valorous, have tended
in quite the opposite direction, is a serious consideration.
Questions of fact are supreme in such issues; the possible
utility and the particular utility of war is one issue; its
inevitableness another. It is in the appraisal of the service
for mankind of the military institution and the military
attitude as at present organized, that the psychology of
ihuman qualities is entitled to a hearing. The military tern-

480 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

per and the emphasis of military qualities may readily
dominate the collective ideal of peoples and communities
to the exclusion or retirement of other vital interests. To
point out that such an emphasis furnishes a worthy place
for far-reaching energies, sacrifices, endurance, persistence,
enthusiasm, loyalty, upon an adequate and heroic scale, is
to indicate the value of the institution for the fostering of
desirable qualities. To point out that the thrill of warfare
makes for the triumph of might and for domination in dis-
regard of the equally cherished qualities of justice, mercy,
and self-control; that it encourages cruelty, lust, violence,
pillage and overthrows the restraints upon which rest the
social sanctity of human institutions, is to indicate the
risks and costs of warfare. Nor will an appeal to motive
materially alter the judgment of value, however much wars
for holy causes and in rebellion against oppression be bal-
anced against wars for greed, glory, power, and conquest.
The extension of dominion, the tyrannical imposition of the
will to prevail, the triumph of ruthless control of others,
appeal strongly as motives to qualities of nature, and sup-
port the spirit of warfare; men rally round the flag for
mixed and wholly irreconcilable motives. Above this con-
trast of the qualities appealed to, above the economic and
spiritual costs of the military institution, the argument re-
asserts that war is indispensable to the fullest expression of
the potencies of men. There remains the romance of war,
the hero-worship, the virility of the military ideal, the fac-
ing of the stern realities of life, the bigness of opportunity,
the discipline, the consolidation of loyalties. Nothing else
can project these qualities upon a scale parallel to that em-
bodied in the achievements of war. Some place for such
heroic if only occasional uplifts of enthusiasm, such com-
pelling outbursts of the mass energies of men, should be
provided for in modern life; they cannot be omitted from
the totality of human quality without serious loss.

Thus considered as a great motive force in human prog-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 481

ress, war, despite its terrible costs, receives a powerful de-
fense, an historical justification. But the conclusion that
war must continue to exist, either by reason of the inherent
constitution of human nature and the inevitable conflicts
of organized racial or national wills, or through the im-
possibility of finding any acceptable judicial substitute for
the ordeal of battle, is a rash statement of an intricate sit-
uation ; for it disregards the central trend of the impressive
argument of human evolution. It might similarly be urged
that because the original esthetic tastes of men found satis-
faction only in garish colors, crude forms, strong contrasts
and grotesque exaggerations, such outlets must still be pro-
vided to maintain the esthetic qualities in their native vigor ;
that because the early stages of intellectual inquiry inevita-
bly gave rise to superstition and a limited anthropomorphic
view of nature, superstitions and myths must be main-
tained among mature and educated persons as an exercise
of distinctive phases of mentality; that because the path-
ways to morality wandered uncertainly in the jungle of
entangled emotions and led to cruelties, hatreds, tortures,
inquisitions, and persecutions in the attempt to enforce
moralities, we must continue to provide outlets for these in-
dispensable stages or phases of the moral nature. Let it
be recalled that every assertion of a quality to a posi-
tion of direction comes as the result of and at the cost
of a rivalry among the several conflicting native tendencies,
is itself a decision that such quality shall prevail for a given
range of situation. That such decisions are determined
by circumstance as well as by achieved stages of culture is
unquestioned. But such admissions are wholly compatible
with the ultimate faith in the value, and the considerable
social control, of the transforming process that permeates
human evolution. The argument for the institution of war
either as inevitable or as indispensable is a questioning of
the efficiency, the depth, the reality of the evolutionary
process. It implies that in a sincere appraisal culture is

482 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

but skin-deep, that in all momentous issues primitive na-
ture must prevail and show its modernity mainly in the
refinements of scientific technique available for its persist-
ent ends.

The central position of this essay upholds the in-
trinsic value of the modification of the qualities of men,
the transfer of ancient qualities in a new perspective to
newer applications; to which may now be added that in
the self-conscious, as less effectively in the vaguely con-
scious stages of social evolution, the process is aided by the
force of sentimentally supported or intellectually formu-
lated ideals. Original nature is paramount, but not in its
primitive expressions; circumstances dictate, but not abso-
lutely ; in the rivalry of the phases of human nature stand-
ards and ideals come to have a decisive voice. The danger
of too violent departure from nature's forms of selection is
real, and must be met by intelligent measures ; the benevo-
lent impulses may be overurged and sympathy overdone.
None the less the trend of life is largely its own corrective,
in that living gives little promise to be other than a battle
and a competition. The vocational pursuits and quite as
suggestively the recreational activities continue to engage
the old order of competitive qualities in a newer setting,
with some losses and some gains. Politics and commerce
and professional rivalry represent the transformed arenas
of biological struggle. The fitness that qualifies for sur-
vival changes with the upward movement of the recon-
structed environment to which fitness is adjusted. The
game, whether the game of politics, of business, or of sport,
is a modification of the contest of war; it proceeds upon
a partly similar, partly modified set of qualities, and
through such modification ceases to be warfare and becomes
a game, a battle royal it may be, but played under rules;
the rules the issue of the spirit of humane consideration
and fair play derived from other phases of human nature.
The competitions of the industrial world continue the ac-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 483

tivities that appeal to certain phases of the human endow-
ment and have a place in the system of needs to which man
is subject; they serve to satisfy developed forms of needs,
desires, and interests, but never quite irf the original forms
in which these demands shaped the orders of human quali-
ties. They recognize rival claims, find it necessary to ad-
just motives and measures to such claims. Recent economic
movements indicate that the principle of cooperation may
come to play a far larger part in the future organization
of business, thus supplanting or modifying the principle of
competition, which is an issue of the contests of men and
is cherished as a means of development of sturdy qualties.
As piracy and brigandage and raids have disappeared in
favor of regulated, legalized commerce, the qualities req-
uisite for commercial enterprise have changed (though it
may be with unmistakable vestiges of the earlier trends) to
an altered range. Success still continues the exultation
of triumph, but wit, skill, foresight, coordination, and not
might, are its weapons ; or more truly the mode of combina-
tion of original and acquired nature alters the complexion
of the qualities of competition. Economic power may also
be brutally exercised, and the cruder traits prevail in all
callings, however high in cultural status. In the larger
and more complex social world success, though it yields the
thrill of triumph, must receive the sanction of the social-
moral ideals before it meets with the appreciations of men.
Success thus engages fuller and worthier satisfactions. The
energies of men may be exercised and inspired by equally
self-sacrificing, equally disciplinary movements, by equally
collective and heroic enterprises necessary to the work of
the world, as those that at their best constituted the appeal
of the military organization, the military spirit. The argu-
ment for war must establish itself against the massive valid-
ity of the manifold transfers of human quality for which
the story of human evolution is a convincing vindication.
Qualities as observed and appraised come to expression in

484 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

a system of social forces, which are at once responsible for
the composite institutions of civilization and the issue of
them. Civilization transforms the upper range of human
qualities by reconstructing their perspective; it gives spe-
cial value to selected ranges of derivative capacities. Such
favor, or disfavor, shapes the later, secondary issues of na-
ture under stress of social condition, and thus enters into
the ready responsiveness of the social institutions — and still
more fluidly of the social attitudes and ideals — to the chang-
ing conditions of development. Though in their general
contours of like structure and origin, societies differ widely
in their established mores by reason of the distinctive per-
spective in which they present the constituent trends of
human nature. Social approval releases and encourages
the activities and purposes that shape the lives of men and
remake as they reward their qualities. The stream of in-
terests and activities flows in the channels formed by out-
ward circumstance together with the selective course of
ideals; both reflect a special conditioning, and give to the
psychology of human responsiveness its local character.
The working basis of the intercourse and relations of men,
in which they develop and display their qualities, is vivid,
real, and concrete. In its explicit assertiveness it empha-
sizes the efficient if superficial communities, and establishes
shibboleths of custom, appearance, and attitude as well as
of language, belief, and tradition. By attaching peculiar
value to the established expressions of human trends, the
inevitably local cast of mind may set up prejudices, es-
trangements, and barriers, even as it fosters a helpful
loyalty and supports endeavor. By further expansion dif-
ferent cultural systems come into rivalry, and different
phases within a unitary development likewise compete for
appreciation. Tolerance and hospitality offset the natural
tendency to absorption in one's own system of values and
the disparagement of all others ; but these are late and un-
certain and struggling products of higher levels of culture,

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 485

and have constantly to reckon with the direct and primitive
assertiveness of the "local" cult and its obligations and
antagonisms. In the concrete the individual is swayed by
an unquestioned system of values which is practiced as it
is absorbed subconsciously, and in the same terms, with oc-
casional formulation in codes and principles, is active in the
genius of the people. The direction of this instrument for
the development of the qualities of men shapes the opera-
tion of the social appraisals [5].

In the practical contemplation of the facts of achieve-
ment, of what men and groups do with the capacities which
they command, the dominance of circumstance looms mo-
mentously. The fate of the individual, as the destiny of
nations, seems imposed; and fatalism as a philosophical
theory or a temperamental conviction finds its support. The
biological limitations, and the psychological ones which fol-
low in their train, are less apt to incite rebellion than are the
outward symbols which the social institutional life erects
in the contrasts of favor and handicap, of riches and pov-
erty, of authority and subjection. The injustices, the un-
certainties, the capricious distribution of the fortunes of
life discourage and irritate. The relations of opportunity
and capacity, of reward and desert, seem too seriously dis-
turbed by the inequalities of circumstance [6]. The imag-
ination turns to other states of existence where these imper-
fections of fate fall away, and the true qualities of men are
clearly reflected in purity of motive and singleness of pur-
suit; or it constructs not a ''Paradise" of future reward,
but a "Golden Age" of the past, before the complications of
existence had encroached upon an innocent age, and the ad-
justments of simple content were still adequate and secure;
or it accepts the conditions but disposes of them more justly
by fashioning a Utopia where quality is reflected in station
and esteem, and the false appraisals of circumstance give
way to the assured association of true worth with fitting
reward and noble opportunity.

486 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Every Utopia projects a selective ideal of the desirable;
in so doing it enters a protesting criticism of the actual
play of circumstance. As a proposal for the remedy of
abuses, such an imaginative excursion may carry the profit
of a distant view, that permits the forest to stand out above
the confusion of trees. Its pertinence to the present con-
sideration is that, however idealistic its architecture, it must
build upon the essential qualities and relations of men;
these specifications it retains from the confusion of observed
conditions as the foundation of its juster and happier state.
A Utopia, however patterned, must recognize the special fit-
ness of men to play definite and different roles, while yet
protesting that the roles which they play on the world's
conventional stage are assigned, and the speaking parts ar-
ranged by the stagecraft of circumstance. It will do well
enough as a dramatic device to have the prince and the
pauper exchange robes and each return to his fitter task;
but the actual appraisal of the role of circumstance in shap-
ing the achievements of men is far from simple. For it is
the conditions that make the problems of life; ideal con-
structions are themselves a selection from among the de-
sirable conditions. Truly careers are at best a compromise
between endowment and opportunity; the pressure of cir-
cumstance lays a heavy hand upon many a promising tal-
ent. To a large measure men of high and of low station
might fairly exchange places so far as the fitness of endow-
ment to task is concerned. Yet in the study of condition,
justice is one concern, comprehension another. It is in the
mode of operation of circumstance that illumination lies.
For the most part circumstance is more a track than a bar-
rier ; it guides more than it confines. The ordinary bent of
nature is not so strong that conventional pursuits hamper;
on the contrary a complacent acceptance of condition is
the rule, and convention must be relied upon to sustain such
limited self-expression as matures. It is only for the keenly
assertive mind that the imposed conventions of the coUec-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 487

tive will stand in part as hindrances; for the complacent
average mind they serve as supports. In this contrast,
moderate or extreme, rests a fundamental issue; in this
quality of independence circumstance finds its offset. The
endowments as well as the relations of men separate the
leaders and the led ; their divergence is the more significant
as conditions become more complex. This distinction con-
tinues to mark the great divide in Utopia as in earthly so-
cieties. It is the assertive quality that utilizes as it bends
the established modes of expression to its purposes. Mr.
Wells aptly terms it the "poietic" type of mind; and to
the poietics in his Utopia belong the rule and the honor and
the influence. The creative impulses of the poietic minds
are responsible for the forms of thought and expression that
prevail. It is in the inadequate recognition of their part
in human progress that the defects of earthly societies are
most apparent and disastrous.

But no society can exist upon its poietic classes ; they form
the leaven, not the mass. Next and far more numerous are
the kinetic type of men, the bone and sinew of the nation,
who keep things going and skillfully apply and extend and
adapt the principles and inventions that owe their existence
to the venturesome and imaginative thought of some poietic
mind. Naturally these qualities are not sharply divided
but variously blended — possibly in no decided tones — in the
composite capacities that direct the efforts of men and shape
the work of the world. And lastly there is the vast ma-
jority, the fair average and the duller stretch below them,
to whose capacities the social and economic system must be
adjusted, whose routine employment in simple tasks feed
and clothe and house and serve the peoples of the world
in the supply of their elaborate demands. They may be
curtly dismissed by Utopian writers; but they constitute
the comprehensive condition under which human quality
reaches expression. Every practical outlook must recog-
nize the significant differences among men: that dullness

488 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

takes the form of an unimaginative, formal imitativeness ;
that it gives to the average a conventional set and a limited
responsiveness, which would be the same however altered
the outward ' circumstance ; that the more and more ade-
quate retain and expand the sterling qualities of the masses,
while also responsive to the inspiration and guidance of
leadership. Yet the many rule and set the popular stand-
ards; the natural conservatism of the majority reflects the
impress of condition ; their limited imagination, their short-
range outlook, their feebler powers of discrimination, their
lesser initiative and uncertain suggestibility, as well as their
sturdy, faithful capacities and persistence form the psy-
chological basis upon which communal achievement must be
built.

The progress of mankind is due to the single fact that
not all men are of the type of the average ; it is their dif-
ferences from the average that form the chief asset of hu-
manity. To the biological trait of variability and the psy-
chological one of originality attaches the peculiar value of
the poietic qualities. In their present distribution and rec-
ognition, as likewise in their favorable cooperation with
other desirable types of quality, lies the hope of further
progress. In the manner of recognition of such quality,
a society expresses its temper and asserts its true nature.

It thus becomes intelligible that the problem of problems
is concerned with the kind of leadership which the majority
will accept. Democracy represents a faith in the tendency
of widely distributed political equality to make for wise
leadership. Its menace is that it develops a suspicious at-
titude toward the very instruments of its salvation. It in-
sists upon conformity and uniformity; it is suspicious of
unjust favor; it encourages the feeling that one order of
man if not quality is about as good as another, confusing
an absence of privilege with an assurance of the emergence
of ability to its rightful place. It throws the emphasis upon
a kinetic efficiency and rewards the builders of engines

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 489

rather than the inventors of them. In its disregard of the
inherent limitations of capacity it places its hope upon edu-
cation to remedy deficiency and remove the drawbacks of
incompetency ; it relies upon undirected opportunity to re-
veal and release aptitudes. In spite of this arraignment
of the dangers and the shortcomings of democracy, the dem-
ocratic programme may yet rightfully command the faitl^
and the loyalty of thoughtful men ; but it may do so only
upoii the condition that as an institution or as an ideal, it
must recognize the supreme importance of the poietic quali-
ties of men, must make a place for these in its system of ap-
preciations, and rely upon them for the guidance of its wel-
fare. It is not the qualities of men but the institution of
democracy that is on trial in the issue. If democracy is a
fitting system for the encouragement of the poietic qualities
of men, it is biologically sound ; if it tends toward the rule
of mediocrity and the waste or the feeble encouragement of
the highest evolutionary products that have been wrought
in the qualities of mankind, it constitutes a handicap and
not an aid to the course of evolution.

Accordingly the consideration of the social forces which
make for or against the encouragement of the choicest qual-
ities of men, far from being a remote occupation of the
philosophical mind, is as practical as a map, if not as a
compass, in steering a course in the turbulent currents of
affairs. But the compelling force of condition recurs in the
questioning of the validity or the efficiency of ideals, and
urges that the seeming leadership is in reality a following ;
that ideals emerge to support institutions which exert their
actual hold through their vested interests ; that the pressure
of events is the motive force, and ideals are only the con-
scious registry of their trend. This view is congenial to the
pragmatic position that ideals have value, as theories have
truth, so far as they work or ' * pay, ' ' and also to the practi-
cal position that actual trends arise directly from experience,
and goals as well as policy from achievement ; that economic

490 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

conditions develop cultural movements, which in turn are
responsible for such facts as the commercialism of the
American people, the inevitableness of universal suffrage, or
the contrast between the average American taste in clothes
and in pictures or music. Condition directs activity, and
the satisfactions derived from pursuit and success suggest
the further extension of achievement; incidentally some
sort of justification of purpose becomes articulate in the
form of an ideal, or as a reenforcement of what is largely
done for other motives. Undoubtedly the pragmatic shap-
ing of ideals by practice and circumstance is real and vital ;
and the actual incentives and the formulated motives may
differ widely. Undoubtedly also — as experience shows —
may ideals be carried out unreasonably and unseasonably.
They may be worn as blinders and not as clarifiers of vision.
The student of the qualities of men finds indispensable some
definite position upon the play of ideals in molding charac-
ter and action alike. He observes the proved power of
ideals to shape, indeed to command completely the decisions
of life, as an offset to the skeptical view of their potency,
which in turn he accepts as a reminder of the role of cir-
cumstance. To thoughtful men of however modest parts,
some sense of purpose, some unification of divergent activi-
ties, some congeniality of belief, must be present as a guid-
ing principle to support the individual in the stream of a
larger agency. The choice to the modern mind is not be-
tween having ideals or dispensing with them, but between
an allegiance to one order of ideal or another ; or with what
fervor of pursuit and devotion of purpose one or another
ideal shall be held. To maintain some singleness of pur-
pose in a competitive and crowded existence, to guide de-
cisions by something more than the direct pressure of cir-
cumstance or the push of impulse, requires the sanction of
ideals however vaguely absorbed — an acquired sense of di-
rection as well as a practical understanding of the motive
force of events.

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 491

If life were lived absorbedly in the moment and offered
no problems of long-range adjustment, purpose would
hardly arise above impulse, and habit and convention would
form an adequate guide to conduct. But such simple al-
ternatives are unreal. There are undercurrents as well as
currents of events. An attitude, a belief, a sympathy, is
just as practical a motive as an impulse arising from self-
interest or a pressure of condition; it acts more indirectly
and at a longer range. Seemingly passive and ineffective
at the moment, it eventually holds the balance of power and
decides the nicer issues, even against impulse and interest.
Yet in a more refined form the earlier stress of circum-
stance appears in the high-level direction of human affairs,
as a leaning toward expediency in contrast to principle.
This intellectual predilection represents a tendency to affili-
ate conduct to the earlier pattern, the shorter run of ex-
perience, the simpler situation. In the management of af-
fairs the tendency comes to expression so characteristically
in the political arena that it may properly be termed the
political temper. Thus arises the conflict between the sanc-
tions of principle and the sanctions of practice, between
temporary success and ultimate failure, between a satisfac-
tion of lower and of higher standards. Because of the im-
portance of wise leadership in the massive social movements
of men, is a slight departure in the just disposition of
condition and theory a vital matter. The issue in a measure
becomes that of finding proper places in the social structure
for the poietic and for the kinetic types of men. The na-
tional genius is reflected in the spirit of this adjustment;
out of it grows the favor for which men compete. For
popular favor is itself the large factor of environmental
pressure; success, whether as reward or reputation or
honor, must come from others, who confer it according to
the light which is reflected upon their vision from the col-
lective standards of appraisal. Hence the strong desire to
interpret popular favor not alone in all ventures in which

492 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the supply as well as the discovery of a demand is the cen-
tral purpose, but in those movements in which principles
as well as interests contend. The tendency to veer and
shift with every wind and wave of public favor, to drift
with the momentary popular sentiment, stamps a quality of
mind; in its extreme it is the mark of the unprincipled.
Yet the wisest and the sturdiest must use the method of
compromise, sacrificing the lesser for the greater good and
adjusting the claims of principle to the invitations of op-
portunity. Such conflicts are no more significant as a
moral struggle than as a psychological opposition. In both
the situation arises by virtue of the attachment of value to
the ''spiritual" influences, far-reaching attitudes, ideals
of purpose, standards of pursuit; the rivalry is among the
qualities to which is to be assigned the greater worth, the
right to prevail. The verdict that might shall not make
right is more direct and potent but intrinsically of no dif-
ferent order than the conviction that a larger good shall
not be sacrificed for a momentary advantage. The protest
in both cases is directed by the same conviction that to
yield in so far tends to place one type of quality above an-
other; against such preferment the loyalty to principle,
however supported, arouses the forces of indignation, and
all the transferred pugnacity born of self-defense.

It is not alone in the rivalry of men or principles that the
social appraisal operates and bestows its rewards ; it appears
in the rivalry among the several systems of value which
the social mind establishes and esteems. This consideration,
of similar scope and temper, transfers the decisions to an-
other field. The trend of endeavor expresses something
above the economic pressure, in that it reaches into the field
of spiritual competition. The social genius decides not only
to what "qualities of men," but to which of the human
qualities shall be accorded honor and leadership. If one
age or one people is commercial and another esthetic and a
third religious, this trend is assuredly related to the con-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 493

dition and the racial and national heritage; but it is also
an expression of the esteem which one and another ideal re-
ceives in the composite endeavor. An artistic age, an artis-
tic people expresses its conviction that art has a large place
in life. The conviction that the things of the mind are real
and vital gives rise to a society that maintains institutions
for their promotion, holds in esteem the men v^ho excel
in intellectual contributions, and regulates its intercourse
so that knowledge and acumen shall meet with recognition
and opportunity for their exercise. The spirit of the age,
the genius of the community, affects the selection of men, by
selecting among their various types those that express the
traits cherished by the communal trend. Individual genius
may make its own appreciations and change, yet not radi-
cally, the inherent disposition; for the most part it makes
articulate the struggling emergence of the social mind.
And far more significantly for the practical issue, the dom-
inant trend of the highways and byways of endeavor de-
termines the course and career of even the most favored in-
dividuals. If that trend is commercially minded, it turns
the abler minds of the community to commerce and away
from rival pursuits. If it be urged that it goes farther in
its molding power and deadens the sensibility to interests
and values that lie apart from the practical economic con-
cerns, its limitation becomes far more serious.

In so far as the communal spirit, the local genius, affects
the community, it gives it a characteristic ensemble. It de-
termines what manner of men may congenially thrive there,
what types of interest are likely to be cultivated, what
perspective of importance attaches to this or to that order
of occupation. Something of the relative place of art and
commerce in the social programme is indicated when it is
said that Paris is artistic and Chicago commercial. In so
far as the statement pertains, it refers not to artists alone
but to all the ways and means, the manners and measures
through which the artistic interests of a complex civiliza-

494 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

tion come to expression. Under modern conditions a fur-
ther consequence results; for the spirit of the community
and its reputation may attract or repel as well as select and
mold. In the pursuits dependent upon a nicer adjustment
and thriving upon the specialized quality of men, such
favor counts heavily. Sensitiveness to the social atmos-
phere determines the quality of achievement. The or-
dinary work of the simpler industries may be done almost
anywhere, and the economic pressure may rule. The quali-
ties of luxury imply the established satisfaction of the ne-
cessities. But the peculiar value remains in the poietic
qualities and the specialized capacities of men because the
initiative belongs to the few; the esteem in which they are
held remains a critical factor of progress. Those who set
the patterns shape the trend of affairs. There is a sense
in which nations may exchange their material products and
import from without what they need for the supplies of
ample living; but the qualities of men they must breed
and select from within. No importation of these is possi-
ble except by the assimilation of ideals and of the men in
whom such ideals are expressed. For science, art, morality,
philosophy, are not foodstuffs of the mind, but the tissue
of the assimilative system. To omit or weakly encourage
the *' spiritual" qualities which the intellectual, moral and
esthetic disciplines cultivate, is to curtail and impoverish
human development, to establish the social institutions upon
a crude and imperfect model. No nation can be merely a
nation of shopkeepers, however highly and rightly it values
economic stability as an indispensable asset; nor should it
be forgotten that in a practical sense standards of conduct
and ideals of principle enter into shopkeeping as into every
worthy form of human occupation.

In the sensitive adjustment of these rival claims of hu-
man qualities the social ''psyche" asserts its character.
Compromise between the desirable and the possible is in-
evitable but not colorless ; a positive character emerges from

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 495

the interplay of forces. It is the fate of the individual, who
is thus at the mercy of the institutional forces that concerns
the psychological protagonist. For society must find as
well as breed its leaders, must recognize greatness and many
lesser orders of ability, if it is to profit by its assets. The
most disastrous waste to any community is the waste of its
higher qualities ; and such danger is real. The * * mute, in-
glorious Miltons" are not myths, though silent in their ap-
peal. Monuments testify to recognized greatness and
achievements brought to issue; but how many unmarked
graves may bury equal though unrecognized talent, quali-
ties shorn of their potencies in expression! The reflection
is vitally practical when transferred to the lesser play of
the same appreciations that erect monuments and direct
preferment. For it means that the effect of any lowered
or false standard of appraisal will be to place second-rate
men in first-rate positions, which at once deprives the finer
ability of its full expression and gives to the less worthy a
larger influence. In such decisions societies as well as men,
even more than the men, are judged by the quality of those
elected to the high and the highest places. Let it not be
supposed that the existence of ability and its recognition
are the same problems. The emergence of men is in part
a social product, certainly a social phenomenon. The po-
tential artist may fail to emerge in an uncongenial at-
mosphere, and turn his talents to other directions. Such
unfavorable factors, like the favorable ones, do not act in
such crude and direct suppression; they turn the talent
away from its best and highest expression into a channel
still congenial but shorn of its potency. Impossible as it is
to separate the existence from the emergence of great men,
and uncertain as may be the application of negative argu-
ments, it cannot be doubted that the "mute inglorious Mil-
tons'* are a serious loss, and an actual one, to the worth and
the joy and the profit of living. It cannot be doubted that
under actual conditions a people may be governed by those

496 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

most likely to be placed in control and not by those most
fit for the office. Nor is it merely the limitation and falli-
bility of human judgment that are at fault, but the trend of
institutions and the inadequate consideration of the higher
qualities of men.

In terms of the rival systems of appreciation the same
situation arises and the same moral may be urged. The
danger broadens to the appraisal of the finer types of en-
deavor by unsuitable standards. "When an artist is said to
commercialize his art, it means that a set of considerations
which should be first is placed second; the products of -his
art do not completely degenerate, but lose their finer flavor.
When the public prefers the commercialized art or is quite
indifferent to the esthetic standards, substituting for them
the commercial ones, the supreme injury has been done.
When the question: Does education pay? is judged by a
crude standard of earning-power, regardless of all finer
considerations, its discussion is futile. Honesty does not
pay unless the social system is so arranged that the play of
ultimate and indirect influences makes honesty a superior
and effective policy; the social system is quite capable of
making honesty little else than folly. To judge the effi-
ciency of the educational process by a spurious applica-
tion of the standards derived from manufacturing enter-
prises is to forego the possibility of reaching any proper con-
ception of its value. The fact that the attempt is made and
finds favor in a commercially minded people shows the prac-
tical menace of the encroachment of one standard upon a
domain alien to its spirit ; it also reflects the insensibility to
the appreciations responsible for the attempt. That rival
considerations may and must enter into many decisions is
obvious. It is commonly a question how far use shall pre-
vail above beauty or beauty compromise to use, style above
comfort, or reality above show. It may prove to be a far
more delicate issue how far public welfare shall prevail
above private interest, or again how far the moral effect or

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 497

flavor of a play shall determine its acceptability, or how
far it shall stand purely upon its artistic value. Sound but
cheap morality may go with dramatic mediocrity; a fine
dramatic sense with questionable moral situations. The
grounds of decision hark back to the appraisals of quality ;
the actual decisions reflect the ideals, the standards, and by
the same token the prejudices, the assumptions and the
limited appreciations of men. The moralists and the artists
may each assert their claim to judgment ; but no insistence
of the moralist will deprive the artist of his legitimate de-
termination to judge by the standards suitable to his art;
for the same reason the box-receipt standard will not save
the judgment of a play in the eyes of competent critics.
Judgments of this or that order, however sharp the con-
flicts, are open and assailable ; the misjudgments of educa-
tional values by the intrusion of commercial tests, like the
disguised motives of private interest lurking in public pro-
posals, are more subtly insidious in that they conceal the
issue in a tangle of assumptions or a maze of intrigue.
True efiiciency like sound policy may doubtless be in the
nature of a compromise; but the grounds of the compro-
mise and the appreciation of the interests saved and sac-
rificed form the indispensable basis for the decision [7].

Quality as well as qualities count and should be paid for.
Unless the social approval gives to cherished traits an
actual place in the practical preferments of life, unless a
true sense of value is incorporated in the system of ap-
preciations for which social ideals stand, such qualities can-
not thrive and must yield to others to which intentionally
or by force of circumstances a working premium is at-
tached. Here belongs the true import of the pragmatic
temper, likewise the moral futility of preaching without
practice. It is readily agreed that courtesy, consideration
and good manners are desirable ends ; but unless some place
for these qualities is found in the actual relations of life,
unless men endowed with these qualities get along better and

498 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

move upward in social esteem more assuredly than men
without them, such virtues or graces will not flourish. A
courteous people is one that makes courtesy indispensable
to social recognition, and envelops all its subtle play of pre-
ferment with the quality of courtesy. If the saying that
business is business means that no other considerations than
profit are in place, and that brusqueness of manner, and
brutality of bearing, along with indomitable energy, will
bring the rewards of business, we cannot expect any other
qualities to come out of such occupations than are given an
actual place in their regulation and in the disposal of the re-
wards. If there is anything sordid in money-making, it is
but the reflex of the sordidness of quality that turns men
to such pursuit. To admit that a careful education in the
elements of a cultured life unfits a man for business, casts
a lurid light upon the character of an occupation for which
such interests and such a preparation is a handicap. If
in political relations or in all the difficult positions of honor
and responsibility a society desires to have wise, consid-
erate, responsive and conscientious men, it must see to it
that in all the manifold and minor relations of life these
qualities shall have a vital value, and the men who have
them and cherish them shall find their qualities ready aids
to their chosen pursuits. The redemption of a calling, like
its attraction, lies in the qualities which the pursuit cul-
tivates and demands. Qualities thrive as they find expres-
sion in careers and in their incidents and supports. What
is true of careers is true of the enveloping atmosphere in
which all careers flourish, which sets the tone for the con-
duct of affairs. The responsibility for the curatorship of
the standards and ideals thus effective falls upon the
thoughtful members of the community. What the enlight-
ened social consensus today approves as desirable will in
the future direct the energies of men, and decide what or-
ders of men shall be called to the first places and the next
places in dignity and influence. The quickening of ap-

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 499

preciation is the only assured method of elevating the quali-
ties of men. It is true that fundamentally human nature
remains constant, and we can do little to supply the quali-
ties that we lack. But it is still truer that human nature
is all that we have to work upon, all that we have to work
with. By supplying outlets for the cherished qualities
and so disposing of the social appreciations that the
worthier quality shall have the worthier place, the social
appraisal serves its highest function.

The operation of social esteem proceeds through the estab-
lishment and sensitive adjustment of standards and ideals.
The ideals come poietically from the imaginative resources
and intellectual formulations of the leaders of men, as well
as from the enforcements of experience ; the standards that
prevail are the practical embodiments of like influences.
Men do largely what they are expected to do ; performance
follows the clew of endeavor, as the missile follows the di-
rection of the aim. Careers are definite invitations to the
ambitions of men; social esteem spreads its comprehensive
influence over the entire system of endeavors, and exercises
the balance of power when endowment or inclination is in-
decisive. The motive force is rooted inwardly in qualities
of nature; the direction of its growth and the manner of
its blossoming depend upon the nurturing care and the con-
geniality of the soil and climate. The same selective forces
operate in the finer issues of the social stratification. Edu-
cated men are expected to conform to more exacting stand-
ards, to consider finer discriminations, to respond to larger
appeals and to be affected by broader motives than obtain
for those less favored. The standard stamps the man [8],
in that it indicates the system with which his qualities and
education affiliate him. The ideal of a gentleman imposes
high standards and ideals of conduct, and consideration in
all respects. The present ideal is the result of ages of
social development, and alters its standard in the emphasis
of one or another of the component traits. Lapses pardon-

500 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

able in one social setting fall quite beyond the pale of sanc-
tion or toleration for another age or people or station.

The critical standard, following the clew of civilization
which makes small differences count, attaches significance
to slight deviations whether of manners, morals or achieve-
ment. It takes but a slight fault to mar the effect, to
take the edge off the finish, to lower the quality, when the
rating is exacting ; for such ranking is in terms of the high-
est products of development. The rating, social or other-
wise, to which one conforms, by which one expects to be
measured, is itself rated. The dulling of sensibilities is
the beginning of degeneration; the decline in standards
leads to the acceptance of the good enough. The eternal
vigilance that is the price of safety is a counterpart of the
minute attention to detail that is the cost of quality. For
the many the failure to attain a high standard is in-
evitable by the conditions of endowment ; to that condition
the adjustments of life and its demands must be made to
conform. But the insensibility to the existence or the
worth of standards on the part of those responsible in
any measure for the conduct of affairs is a menace to the
interests of culture. The still more common deliberate
adherence to the lower standards, in practice and prin-
ciple alike, like the unsuitable rating of purpose and
the imposition of a cruder authority, is the actual danger
in the regulation of social control. For here is the arena
of human quality, and these the contests : What knowledge
is of most worth? By what standards shall conduct be
judged? What energies are most worth while? What
shall be the perspective of importance of one set of values
and another? What shall prevail, right or might, knowl-
edge or authority? Who shall be invested with power?
Which standards and ideals shall be decisive? Which are
the eternal values and the ideal qualities of men?

As each thoughtful worker becomes a critic of the system
under which he works, as each individual judges while yet

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 501

he conforms to the collective movement, the spirit of the
day and the place and the class to which he belongs, so the
student of human quality [9] earns or assumes the privilege
of reflecting the temper of his conclusions in the programme
of a desirable trend of affairs. Because of the sensitive
adjustment of the finer qualities to the congeniality of the
milieu, every tendency, every distribution of influence that
turns social approval and public sentiment away from the
higher goal and toward the lower is inimical to the public
welfare. Condition, it is true, confronts and is insistent
in its demands, but it should not confound. Every prac-
tical man seeks to utilize the status quo and the estab-
lished interests and trends, to direct the immediate problems
which constitute the condition of his career. Compromise
with condition is inevitable ; the wisdom of its direction lies
not alone in the Understanding of motives and the command
of resources, but in the interpretation of the spirit of ad-
vance and a firm conception of values. It is the temper of
this adjustment that marks the quality of a man. For the
reason that the higher interests are more delicately sensi-
tive to the influences of the ** spiritual" climate, and the
further reason that the momentous factor in the direction
of human affairs under present-day conditions is the nature
of the leadership which a people demand or secure or may
be induced to accept, the responsiveness of the leaders of
men in whatever callings to the standard of appreciations
expressed in approvals — by action, by votes, by sentiment,
by influence, by social and institutional affiliations — is the
pivotal concern of social welfare. In the conservation of
its intellectual resources, a nation exercises its highest wis-
dom; it is the waste or disregard or inadequate encourage-
ment of the poietic qualities particularly, and the» conse-
quent loss of the uncultivated and unapplied powers of
gifted men, that forms the critical weakness of institutional
systems. Political policy, educational policy, spiritual
policy are all subservient and jointly cooperative to the

502 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

common goal of cultivating the worthiest possibilities of
men and finding the fittest field for their favor.

Viewed more closely, the influences actually at work in
the body social, favorable and antagonistic to this purpose,
present further points of contact with the psychological
perspective of human endowment and expression. The in-
herent conservatism of the human mind on the one side, and
the stress of condition on the other, operate to set the activi-
ties and the loyalties of men in their course and to limit
the scope of their expressions. Convention supplies the
patterns of endeavor and diminishes the need of initiative,
which in its notable and decisive command belongs to the
few. But the attitude of the many toward innovation
governs the trend of opinion as of affairs; they set the re-
wards and dictate the conditions under which the qualities
of the favored shall be exercised. Any failure of sym-
pathy in this relation, any distorted mode of measuring the
values of the manifold and sensitive contributions to human
progress, is peculiarly deplorable. The peril in yielding to
circumstance or the insistence of a less worthy if more
popular or feasible standard, is that the appreciations thus
developed and trusted, the rewards permitted or encour-
aged under stress of immediate advantage, warp the sensi-
bilities and weaken the judging powers, and in so far pre-
vent the restoration of a juster, a more spiritual perspective
when the stress is removed or a movement forward is pos-
sible. It is easy to understand that society cannot permit
fortunes to be accumulated by any sort of means and meas-
ures which individuals will resort to, and look for redemp-
tion in the philanthropic uses to which such fortunes may
be put. The moral welfare of the community requires that
the qualities exercised in commercial competition shall make
for the elevation of integrity and the dissemination of con-
sideration of social rights and humane principles. It is not
so easy to understand that the influences are equally un-
desirable when the infringements involved are more subtle

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 503

and evasive. Obedience to the letter is easier than com-
pliance with the spirit, and is so because the latter proceeds
upon a sensitive appreciation of values, and absorption of
the genius of the comformity. Lip-service is ever a tempta-
tion; an idol is more real than a god. The conception of
democracy as an equality of the ballot and a denunciation
of privilege is simpler to establish than as a just system
for the securing of the fittest places for the several qualities
of men. Life under the form of a monarchy may be
thoroughly democratic in spirit and leave the individual as
free in initiative as obtains under the most constitutional
democracy, where the yielding to circumstance introduces
formidable prejudices, and the restraints imposed by wealth
and other forms of control bind more seriously than tradi-
tion. For it is only to a limited extent that society can
provide the individual with codes of behavior and formu-
lated restrictions of conduct; for its finer assimilation it
depends largely upon collective influences leading to atti-
tudes and views, and to a deposit of standards and ideals.
Outward conformity is significant only as an index of an
inner assimilation. Such collective sentiments are invalu-
able ; the fact that they may be appealed to for the righting
of wrongs as for the elevation of rights makes social prog-
ress possible. Unless men shared similar ideals the esteem
of quality would be dissipated and lost. It is inherent in
the life of ideals as formulated and defended, that they
should be more effectively operative in the few than in the
many; still more significant that their worth should be
observed by the sensitive than by the insensitive. By this
limitation ideals are in advance of practice, as the leaders
of opinion are in advance of the led. The problem returns
to the regulation of public sentiment toward a favorable re-
gard for all those qualities of insight and understanding, of
loftiness of aim and purity of motive, which are indispens-
able to wise leadership.

The difficulties in the way of a reasonable consummation

504 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

of this end are not of one order. Self-interest steps in and
employs established sentiment for narrow ends; flabbiness
of will tires of the struggle and falls back to the easier way ;
conflicts of interest arise in principle and practice; but
most commonly, a callousness born of insensitiveness brings
forward the less noble qualities and retires the finer wis-
dom and the worthier end. For we must remember that
the wrongs of society have moved upward with the elevation
of its secured rights ; new conditions breed new vices as well
as demand new virtues. In every direction are we living
on the upper ranges of our qualities, morally, intellectually,
socially, while yet conserving the fundamental virtues that
have made the finer issues possible. The quality and the
wisdom of adjustment of the finer "social" appreciations
play upon the actual issue of the day and the hour; in-
evitably the removal, in whatever measure, of leadership
from the control of the more worthy and responsible places
it in the hands of the less worthy, the less desirable.
Lowell's loyalty to democracy and his insight may be
trusted when he advises that ' * the highest privilege to which
the majority of mankind can aspire is that of being gov-
erned by those wiser than they. " It is indeed unfortunate
but true that a lapse in appreciation has a doubly disastrous
consequence. It affects precisely those callings and in-
terests that have a difficulty in establishing their claims
amid the insistence of direct and urgent needs ; and the
interests with which they compete, by their nature less sub-
ject to such untoward and delicate invasions, utilize the
retirement of the opposition to further assert their rule.
A departure in standards of appreciation affects both
classes of interests. Men of high endowment and inclina-
tion will under such stress exercise their second-best and
neglect their first-best talents, will yield to opportunity and
engage in measures questionable to a critical standard, but
not disqualifying; best impulses will be sacrificed to next-
best. Nor do the consequences stop here : the more difficult

THE QUALITIES OF MEN 505

orders of achievement will be judged by unsuitable stand-
ards and the workers in the poietic fields will be exposed to
an uncongenial environment. The conspicuous dominance
of the approved occupations^-the callings richly rewarded
by the institutions of the day — sets the standards for the
appraisal of all. The contrast of station and success con-
demns to neglect the interests that cannot compete on this
basis. The disparagement of the one leads to the glori-
fication of the other. More plainly the better man's serv-
ices are lost, and the less worthy extends his influence. The
still small voice of the higher appreciation is drowned in
the roar of practical success; those placed in positions of
influence through their willingness to neglect the finer
values — or their insensibility to them — come to pronounce
upon and decide the careers of the men and the institutions
that alone can minister to the right conduct and progress
of societies.

The practical lesson is plain, however difficult its appli-
cation. It indicates that the need of the moment is a more
charitable consideration of the poietic qualities, a willing-
ness to give men of this type a larger control of the in-
terests which their qualities enable them to serve, a readi-
ness to appreciate the conditions favorable to the growth
and fruition of such qualities. For nothing is more im-
provident and impractical than the policy of ostensibly re-
garding the results and disregarding the conditions under
which they flourish, an expression of the wish to have in
the community a rich representation of men of science,
arts, letters and spiritual guidance, but an unwillingness to
provide the conditions for their encouragement. Of a like
impractical stupidity is the cultivation of such qualities
in the institutions of learning, and their exclusion from
any place in the preferments of life, the voting of funds
for education and the ridicule of the "highbrow" apprecia-
tions which is the aim of education to confer; while to in-
sist that these higher interests must see to it that they

506 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

flourish under such conditions as alone are permitted to ob-
tain, is at once dogmatic and stupid. Without subscribing
to the doctrine of the superman, one may urge that if only
we knew how to find or produce or induce to emerge the
men of genius potentially available in the human product,
we might well bend all energies to that end, even to the
sacrifice of other benefits or comforts. In a yet more
practical vein may it be recognized that the actual
interference with progress and the actual dangers in the
pursuit of false gods or the neglect of true ones are due to
simple homely traits. They may be traced back to a lack
of finer feeling, or of richer opportunity, that tolerates if it
does not invite or defend lower standards, that overrates
cheap success, toadies to the gallery and gains glory for the
inglorious. In so far as such false appraisals obtain, they
doubtless reflect the stress of conditions; and yet no one
with a vestige of optimistic faith, born not of the disregard
of human shortcomings and perversities but of the reliance
upon the compelling power of determination and leadership,
can doubt that they may be overcome. The plasticity of
human nature in its higher reaches is the psychological
guarantee. Such optimistic appreciation is expressed in
the conviction of William James: ** Though it is no small
thing to inoculate seventy millions of people with new
standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to
be done. We must change ourselves from a race that ad-
mires jerk and snap for their own sakes, and looks down
upon low voices and quiet ways cr, dull, to one that, on the
contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for their own sakes
loves harmony, dignity, and ease. ' ' Such a conviction sum-
marizes the significance of the esteem of human qualities
and the mission which awaits the truer appreciation of the
qualities of men.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

Note 1, page 2. The history of Character and Temperament
is involved in the successive contributions that have made modern
psychology possible. See particularly Dessoir: "History of
Psychology." It goes back to the antecedents of psychology,
which, attempted the determination of character-traits. The
most significant of the attempted solutions is the doctrine of the
"temperaments," dating from the early days of Greek philosophy.
Its absorption in medieval and in later medical lore gave it a
currency at once popular and scientific. It invaded literature as
it pervaded practice and diagnosis, and proved most congenial to
the extravagant hypotheses which replaced knowledge in the
speculations of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Of the rival systems that proclaimed solutions of the secrets of
character, astrology, physiognomy, and (as an offshoot of later
vogue) palmistry, are most prominent; while a special place must
be reserved for the peculiar product of science and pseudo-science
in the early nineteenth century that inaugurated the system of
phrenology. As we approach modern times the logical spirit of
these systems of character-reading notably changes; there is a
greater loyalty to proof and demonstrable findings, but a common
subjection to the tyranny of preconceived assumption and a com-
mon blindness to the subjective tendencies which sustained the
propagandum. Systems of belief of this order are not refuted
but outgrown. Their decay followed upon the discovery of sig-
nificant clews in medicine, in physiology, in biology, in psychol-
ogy.

Attention may be directed to the equally ancient literary in-
terest in the delineation of character. The two streams fre^
quently combine; and the control and education of traits offer
an incentive to the application of both orders of knowledge.
The training of character, the determination of vocational fitness,
the comparison and understanding of national traits, the control
of social forces, have all supplied motives for writers and students

507

508 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

throughout the ages. In the nearer perspective these several
interests again unite in a more sober and accredited fashion. A
notable contribution introducing the modern approach to the
subject is the chapter in Mill's "Logic" (1843) bearing the title
"Ethology." The project there outlined was attempted with
indifferent success by Bain in the "Study of Character" (1861).
A series of French writings represent the most extensive contri-
butions to the modern formulation of the problem; of these the
most distinctive are the works of Ribot, Fouillee, Paulhan, Levy,
Malapert and Ribery. I have published an account of the ante-
cedents of this subject in an article in the Popular Science
Monthly for June, 1915.

Note 2, page 7. It may be helpful, by way of contrast, to
refer more explicitly to the ambitious phrenological solution,
which assumed that in its "faculties" it possessed the units of
traits, and in the marked or faulty development of the corre-
sponding areas an adequate index of the degree of their relative
presence or absence; so much "ideality," so much "tune," so much
"love of offspring," so much "pride," so much of this and that
— and you had the measure of a man. It was a delightfully
simple though futile programme. As a fact the result, quite apart
from the defect of the argument, was a caricature by reason of
the uncritical and arbitraiy assumptions involved. It is well
to add that "phrenology" had no means and sought none, of
measuring the "tune," the "pride," the "love of offspring" and
the like, which it so freely used as evidence of its findings. It
relapsed into impressionism and a prejudiced self-deception,
finding the evidence where the "bumps" required, and also the
"bumps" where the obvious marked presence of the "faculties"
demanded them.

Note 3, page 15. No consideration can avoid an assump-
tion in the very statement of the terms. Height is apparently
a single trait; yet it is the resultant of length of leg, of trunk,
etc. The separate consideration of these may disclose relations
which their merged measurement obscures; two men may be
equally tall but differently proportioned. The present argu-
ment states that the terms of measurement of traits, physical and
mental (but especially of the latter) involve confidence in their
significance as well as availability.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I 509

Note 4, page 17. The median or central tendency is often
a truer center of distribution. It represents the degTee of the
trait which is as often exceeded as fallen short of. For most
regular distributions, the average, which is more familiar, will
serve equally well. Correlation expresses to what extent two
traits vary coordinately, independently, or antagonistically; it
illuminates the question of compatibility of traits: in how far
orders of traits are likely to be present with the presence of an-
other trait, or present with its absence, or present without regard
thereto, and to what measure. Correlation, like distribution, is
a precise instrument, which in skilled hands has proved effective
in yielding a graphic picture of the relations of traits. To offset
the emphasis which in this essay is placed upon the qualitative
method and the problems suited to it, such studies as those of
Thomdike: "The Original Nature of Man," Part I of "Educa-
tional Psychology" (1913), are recommended.

Note 5, page 18. This is a further example of the mutual
illumination of quantitative and qualitative considerations. By
the one the rarity of exceptional individuals is made clear; by
the other the enormous importance of such individuals. The
essentially original steps in progress are due to a mere handful
of men of exceptional quality. The rest accept, adopt, adapt,
absorb, apply. The fact that modern schoolboys are far better
equipped to understand, utilize, and control the forces of nature
than was Aristotle is not due to the superiority of the schoolboys
but to the contributions of the Aristotles of past generations.

Note 6, page 20. The equipment related to specific instincts
exposes the organism to, or provides it with, a far larger range
of stimulation than such adaptation alone requires. The capacity
to make and hear sounds is not limited to sounds concerned in
the cry of the infant that leads to relief. The human auditory
and vocal equipment lead to a vast range of expression, and
makes possible language and music. The musical ability is
ultimately dependent upon a native refinement of a specific nei'v-
ous structure and gives no hint of the psychological promise
of the developed susceptibility. Similarly the human eye would
be the same, were there no such thing as the pleasure of color
and the attraction of esthetic form. For the eye would be
necessary to guide conduct, to recognize objects by their forms

510 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

and color-markings. The world of visual art develops upon the
basis of the same equipment as serves the primary need of find-
ing one's way in the world of practical things.

Note 7, page 27. At several points the findings derived
from this engaging field are touched upon. The present work
logically requires a sequel in which the practical field of occu-
pation and career shall be central.

Note 8, page 30. The term "physiological" is equivalent
to biological in the larger sense. It is the more precise in that
it indicates the presence 'of a bodily mechanism, of some re-
sponsive quality of the nervous system through which the stim-
ulus directs the reaction. The term has become current in this
connection since the appearance of Grant Allen's notable book,
"Physiological Esthetics" (1877).

Note 9, page 35. It may be well to repeat that by calling
a trait "intellectual," we bring to bear upon it the entire range
of considerations thus suggested. Since, however, the func-
tional range of the process is so comprehensive, it carries a less
definite meaning than does such a term as "esthetic," with which
it is otherwise comparable. The intellectual trait requires a
more specific reference to the partial process in the general "in-
tellectual" adjustment which this or that trait serves. This in
turn is likely to involve the level of expression of the trait, and
the manner in which it affiliates with other traits of like or
unlike origin. A special interest attaches to the problem-solving
aspect of the intellectual equipment, in that it matures the control
of experience by knowledge. The scientific capacity is in this
sense a by-product of the direct, practical recognitional adjust-
ment. Of all the accessory qualities of men it is the most mo-
mentous for civilization; it changes the face of nature to meet
the developed needs of artificial life.

Note 10, page 44. Such terms as "disgust," "shyness,"
"awe," and their kind have no reality other than that which their
functional play gives them; they mean what they effect. Usage
is content with a rough and ready assignment of meaning, while
the psychologist insists upon tracing the underlying process back
to the realities and the system which he aims to establish.

Note 11, page 48. The subject is rather summarily
treated; it requires the realistic setting: of the several stages of

NOTES TO CHAPTER it 511

transfer to carry the full sense of the importance of the prin-
ciples and the richness of its applications in the several levels of
evohition. The same comment may be made in regard to the
succeeding topic which illustrates the principles governing the
higher phases of psychic regulation, where the sensibilities, emo-
tions, and reasoned actions combine into a system of sentiments
set and operative in an institutional, social milieu. For the mo-
ment the emphasis is upon the mode of reaching the sentimental
stages of psychic regulation.

Note 12, page 56. With a somewhat more limited yet
genuine reference Thorndike says: "What might appear to be
perverse luxuries in the business of keeping one's self and one's
offspring alive, turn out to be, in connection with certain other
tendencies, means of exterminating all enemies, securing food in
regular abundance, and remaking the environment to suit man's
almost indefinite multiplication."

NOTES TO CHAPTER II

Note 1, page 58. The primary meaning of sensibility re-
fers to the capacity to respond (through the sense-feeling
aroused) to stimulation, and to respond differently to situations
presenting variable stimuli. More simply, it refers to the ca-
pacity to be differently affected in the presence of cries or laugh-
ter, of smiles or tears, of blows or caresses, of bitter or of sweet
morsels, of fragrant or of rank odors, of red and of blue, and
so on through the gamut of natural sense-stimuli and their occa-
sions. That the sensibilities in their primitive exercise are part
of original nature may be assumed, though how far the response
is linked to specific types of stimuli is uncertain. Presumably
certain ranges of stimuli by their nature are disposed to' please
or to irritate, or to contribute slightly in the direction of satis-
faction or the reverse. Whatever the range of original sensi-
bility, it is prompted directly by experience and enlarged in scope
as it is applied. Sensibility does not function alone but assumes
complications with other phases of psychic responsiveness.
Hence it would be as futile as undesirable to restrict the term to
this original or early application. Intellectual, ethical and emo-
tional forms of response have an accredited claim to the term,
as responses patterned upon the sensory model.

512 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Note 2, page 59. Psychologists are not agreed upon tlie
nature of feeling or upon the relation of organic and sense-
feelings. The subject is well considered in Ribot: "Psychol-
ogy of the Emotions," especially Chapters VI to XII. Atten-
tion should be directed to the intimate relation of organic "feel-
ings," to the tactile-motor group of special sense-impressions
which come from a far larger physiological area than the limited
specialized tissues sensitive to light or sound or chemical stimu-
lation. When in animal life an odor arouses an intense and
widespread organic disturbance, the sensation sets off a prepared
mechanism (which may also be otherwise discharged) ; the sen-
sory tone of the odor may be pleasant or compositely exciting.
Active contact, as tactually reenforced movement, and freedom
of movement itself, have a direct and distinctive range of pleas-
ure-value, likewise affiliating with the values of organic stimula-
tion, such as breathing. Heat and cold play a similar part in
physiological adjustment. See pages 105 ff.

Note 3, page 60. Note also the tactile ingredient in or-
ganic distress: the dry sensation in thirst, the hollow pressure-
pain of hunger, the burning (temperature) pain of fever, the
numbness of an arm "asleep," the tingling of restored circula-
tion.

Note 4, page 61. Or is it fairer to say that their esthetic
sensibilities are real but crude*? Both may be true. There may
be indifference, weak preference, and so far as it is exercised, it
may follow a low order of appeal. Yet, as will duly appear,
this bespeaks an esthetic incapacity, in that the result is com-
monly so determined by the intrusion of other factors with an
appeal to quite different qualities.

Note 5, page 64. That the olfactory sense may be de-
veloped toward recognitions is familiar. The chemist or the
cook learns to recognize a variety of substances by odor (as,
indeed, we all do) ; the recognition is explicit, though reenforced
by the pleasurable effect or the reverse. Yet in a large view this
is a limited service; for in man, smell is a dethroned sense, of
which the shrunken size of the olfactory lobes in the human
brain gives evidence. To appreciate the nature of a mental
world dominated by odor, we must construct with our unsuitable
imaginations the absorbing experiences of a dog with the ca-

NOTES TO CHAPTER II 513

nine vividness and richness of olfactory recognitions and excite-
ments. Dog and master take the same outing; but the notable
contrasts of their mental, reflecting their sensory occupations,
reveal the vast difference of their psychologies, and of the pre-
ferred channels of employment. It has been suggested that our
pre-human ancestors, arboreal in habit, had a limited use for the
sense of smell. As erect bipeds, their lesser olfactory profi-
ciency led to the keener use of the eyes, and thereby turned the
mental bent to a strongly visualized perception and to manipula-
tion by the liberated hand under visual direction.

Note 6, page Q5. The usage of these terms varies in com-
mon application as well as in philosophical discussions. It is such
directly significant and affective senses as odor that give the set
to the term "sensuous." The need of such distinction shows how
naturally usage absorbs and then reflects the implication of moral
and esthetic values in qualities of psychic regulation.

Note 7, page 69. Language — a derivative product — is at
once the instrument and the embodiment of the sensibilities in
their higher development. The range and nature of the audi-
tory appeal is profoundly modified by the fact that through
it is carried in intimate fashion the phrased argument and the
associative enrichment which words contribute to the movement
and expression of thought. By a natural transfer the word, as
heard and spoken, absorbs the intellectual and esthetic content
and quality of the idea which it conveys. Yet dominantly it is
the music of speech, the roll of oratory, as well as the charm of
phrase that constitute the vocal appeal, which may serve to be-
guile or still the voice of reason. The message of language is
at once esthetic and intellectual, and the management of speech
involves a direct affective influence which the printed word but
feebly recalls. Voice, diction, usage, style, develop a selective
sensibility that occupies a unique place in the intellectual as well
as in the esthetic psychology of man. Artificial language con-
trasts with natural facial and vocal expression; the original af-
fective factor inheres in vocal speech.

Note 8, page 71. A like relation remains imbedded in
sensory experience of a mature and conscious order, where the
primitive organic significance persists. Thus it is sometimes a
nice distinction to detect when and whether, in eating, one gets

514 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

p,rst the agreeableness (or the reverse) or the recognition of
what one tastes. Genetically the pain-pleasure feeling is older
and retains the priority of impression when prompt action — as
in rejecting an intensely bitter or "hot" substance — is demanded.
Familiarity merges pleasure and discrimination; and an effort
of attention gives prominence to either, to the latter more
readily. The most favorable observation is the unexpected one.
If one has an aversion to parsnips and with lax attention con-
veys a morsel to the lips, casually supposing it to be potato, there
is a momentary feeling of distaste, instantly followed by the
recognition, "That^s the detestable parsnips!"

Note 9, page 74. As indicated, the term "hygienic" car-
ries too strongly a civilized flavor. We are prone to limit it to
personal condition, separating it from the food-acceptances reg-
ulated by appetite. More generally considered, the latter is but
a more intimate variety of contact, carrying the specific and orig-
inal reaction of disgust attaching to this order of offense.
For purposes of exposition the "hygienic" sensibilities may carry
with them the "food" situation as a whole, as well as the direct
and indirect contacts of person and belongmgs. Pure food is
part of the pure living to which Hygeia ministers.

^ Note 10, page 75. Even when in the holiday mood of
camping we abandon our customary standards with a certain
zest, we carry our sensibilities with us and insist that however
bare the table or surroundmgs, they shall be clean. That very
insistence is bom of the upper level of sensibility and is serving
a missionary part in its reactions upon the lower. It is not so
easy as is often contended, to separate the one order of sensi-
bility from its kin and its favoring conditions and to maintain
it above or isolated from its kind. Cleanliness costs in labor
and expense and in the general emphasis and standards of life
which it facilitates or requires: hence its true place in the
psychology of the civilizing process.

Note 11, page 77. The naturalness with which terms of
primary hygienic pertinence yield "moral" metaphors testifies to
the affiliation of sensibilities for their kind. We speak of a
clean record, of an unsullied reputation, of a character without
spot or blemish, of a tarnished name, of mud-slinging, of a
dirty low rascal, of washing one's hands of a transaction, of a

NOTES TO CHAPTER II 515

foul deed, of contaminating associates, and of tainted money.

Note 12, page 79. Training and social status are all-im-
portant. It is the issue of such training that falls away in that
profound change of character which we call insanity, and which
when thus lapsing in a high-bred nature, produces the most con-
spicuous and distressing impression of estrangement and aliena-
tion— a passing-out of one's self and out of the social standards
of one's kind.

Note 13, page 79. Social expression and social reenforee-
ment of sensibilities are many-sided. Mere conformity is often
strong enough to enforce, as is the taboo to forbid. Hence the
vast differences in hygienic standards of different countries and
in different directions; hence also the slow advance of meas-
ures of public hygiene — perhaps the most characteristic of all
the self-assumed white man's burden. The unhygienic act may
come to be avoided for different and for mixed reasons, as the
sources of the regulation of conduct and the motives of appeal
are differently effective. Even superstition and the vagaries of
folklore thus serve a large use. The Biblical regulation of what
is clean and unclean, both for food and person, and the ritual
of purification and the symbolism of bodily and spiritual cleans-
ing may be cited as an instance of the reenforcement of measures
— in some part, doubtless, justified by experience — by a sense of
religious and moral obligation.

Note 14, page 80. The fact that abnormal acuteness of
sensibilities (hyperesthesia) as well as of their absence (anes-
thesia) may occur, is true also of the hygienic sensibilities. The
excess is shown in the morbid phobia of contamination and in
an abnormal absence of aversion, or in a perverted order of sen-
sibility in which the thoroughly disgusting attracts.

Note 15, page 81. The social implications of such a term
as "gentleman" serve to illustrate its large subjection to conven-
tion and economic ideals. The phrase "gentleman of leisure"
calls attention to the exemption from toil of the privileged classes
— at least from directly profitable or menial labor — which may
readily become the central connotation of the word. The gen-
tleman having leisure is said to use this leisure for the cultiva-
tion of manners and sensibilities and thereby proves and dis-
plays the possession of the coveted quality. See Veblen:

516 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

"Theory of the Leisure Classes." The sensibilities, themselves the
issue of leisure and luxury in the primitive scale of service, re-
tain that relation in the invidious artificial scale of a stratified
society. Practically the interests of one order compete with
those of another, and retire or prevail according to nearness to
fundamental needs.

Note 16, page 83. The presentation does not consider the
direct effect of the social sanction upon the act of eating. The
very subjection to the need of nourishment has in certain civili-
zations carried a suppressed sense of shame. The seclusion at-
tending the ceremonial in Oriental countries suggests this. We
feel it in the embargo against eating on the street. Wlien young
ladies were subject to ideals of fragile delicacy, their spiritual
life just barely compatible with a bodily one, they nibbled at
food and disdained appetite. A more natural, even athletic
ideal readily dissipated the attitude. Yet the hungry male re-
mains more robust and frank in his desire for nourishment,
more indifferent to circumstances, than his more sensitive mate.

There is further no consideration of the reflex attitude of the
social incorporation of the function of eating upon its indi-
vidual expression. This brings it about that the social occasion
is the excuse for eating, the circumstance that raises it above the
selfish indulgence; its absence makes the solitary meal approach
too closely to the level of unqualified use. The sociability that
is promoted by the companionship of the table is not alone that
of the community of need, but that of the relief of undue at-
tention to the utilitarian aspect of the process. The communion
of sharing salt or breaking bread together acquires a more re-
fined, even a spiritualized significance. Contrariwise, the lean-
ing toward solitary indulgence accentuates the "gourmand" as-
pect of character, the yielding to the tyranny of the flesh, the
absence of the restraints supplied by other considerations so-
cially valued. Still more pointedly does the comment apply to
the luxurious indulgence of private drinking, which seems
grossly unjustifiable without the social motive; hence the habit
of promiscuous "treating" and the abuse thereof.

There is likewise omitted a reference to the preliminary prep-
arations, the getting the house in order when guests are ex-
pected, whereby the cleanliness, tidiness, orderliness and good

NOTES TO CHAPTER II 517

taste of one^s "household" sensibilities are exposed to judgment;
and nothing is said of the pertinent test of table-manners, to
which a social rating is attached. As usual the defections af-
ford the most convincing test. Awkward handling of knife and
fork, or leaving one's spoon in the cup while drinking, seems to
expose a man's antecedents at a glance; yet obviously not for
their intrinsic offensiveness, but for the social rating attached
to them — a force quite sufficient to convert innocence into guilt.
Throughout the series, the sanction of propriety disparages too
direct sensory eagerness, and approves the outer expressions of
finer appreciations of quality and fitness of manner thereto.

Note 17, page 83. By such motor regulation is meant the
direction of sensibility more in the determination of what we do
or refrain from, rather than of what we accept or reject. The
distinction is ever one of degree, but is important. The hygienic
reactions are primarily to what is acceptable to the senses, a
passive responsiveness, which, in turn, true to its natural service,
directs conduct. But speech is conspicuously an active function,
and places the emphasis on the active factor.

Note 18, page 85. The contrast may be indicated in the
distinction between usage directed more by logical distinction
or more by esthetic feeling. The use of "let" for "leave" or
"lay" for "lie," or the reverse, is a stumbling-block in which
insight is a safer guide than inclination. Apt examples of the
social-esthetic feelings are found in the numerous class of things
that should be omitted — the avoidance of the superfluous — al-
ways an excellent test. The current tendency of adding a super-
fluous "all right" to every assertion is correct "all right," but
hopelessly offensive in style. Then those unnecessary preposi-
tions! These offend the "tidiness" which inheres in the spirit of
the English language. The superfluous offends; so likewise does
the meager by its suggestion of poverty of resource.

Note 19, page 86. The same applies to attractions as
well, in which case the desire to complete the stimulation may
be strong. A good example is the attractiveness of polished or
otherwise interesting surfaces to the touch. Few persons resist
the temptation, in passing along a marble corridor, to feel the
smoothness of the stone, the sign of which the eye recognizes by
its bright reflections. The common sign, "Do not touch," indi-

518 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

«ates how much more satisfying is the message conveyed by the
tangible and feelable than by the merely visible.

Note 20, page 86. "Contact" is our conventional "tactile"
Word for the intimate association, in which, however, odor often
plays a notable part.

Note 21, page 89. In further illustration the literary critic
or litterateur differs from the philologist in his larger employ-
ment of esthetic judgments; the bent of the latter is scientific.
Even in so minor an issue as the establishment or defense of
usage, varied importance will be assigned to principles of reason,
precepts of good taste, and the sanction of custom. The question
is more often not as to what the verdicts of either may be, but as
to which shall be accorded the precedence.

Note 22, page 91. As cited in note 8, a certain unpleasant
flavor comes to mean parsnips, the "taste" of parsnips. Instances
diverging from the usual are often instructive. The tactile sen-
sibility as exercised upon the appreciation of form is ordinarily
so subordinated to the visual, that one can hardly realize the
possibilities of its independent development. The blind neces-
sarily are dependent upon it; and blind sculptors and carvers
occasionally appear whose work, conveying the truthful impres-
sion of the hand, is accepted by our visual standards. The bi-
ography of so remarkable an individual as Miss Helen Keller
is replete with instances of the richness of sensibilities which the
hand may develop when its resources (neglecting the clews of
odor) are alone available. Once more we realize that we develop
the sensibilities by support of the senses most fit or convenient
for the purpose.

A slight example of the interference with an established asso-
ciation between the senses may be observed in some of the arti-
ficial "Burbank" fruits. A plum presents the downy skin of a
peach arid is sampled with a sense of surprise, but is accepted by
its flavor as a plum. Such hybrid sense-experiences are rare.
Doubtless, however, our eyes mislead our sensibilities. Things
may look dirty or nasty and actually be quite clean. Fortu-
nately the same susceptibility to education may correct as well as
establish associations.

Note 23, page 93. In this connection Thorndike's conclu-
sion from the point of view of original nature is pertinent. "As

NOTES TO CHAPTER II 519

to the aim seen ah extra, the end as gained rather than as fore-
seen, no instincts have surer utility than the apparently object-
less voice, eye and finger-play. For the end of voice-play is
language; the end of eye- and finger-play is knowledge. In the
long run the apparently random voice-play is more useful to the
species than the specific calls of hunger, pain, fright, protection
and wooing; the puttering with eyes and fingers is more useful
than the movements of flight, pursuit, attack, capture and eat-
ing."

Note 24, page 94. A somewhat grotesque instance of the
disregard of the principle is found in the philanthropic provi-
sions of bath-tubs in tenements the occupants of which find no
place for this prized symbol of hygienic rectitude in their range
of desiderata; the convenience of the tub as a bin for coal or
potatoes determines its use.

Note 25, page 95. Usage is often suggestive as embodying
the insight fixed by a psychological "sense." We speak literally
of a sense of color or of a musical sense; yet also by analogy of
a sense of propriety; a sense of honor, shame, duty; of a dra-
matic sense, and a social sense. The common implication is that
discernment in these varied fields is guided by a selection similar
in function to the sensibility of the ear or eye ; these are natural,
and the others acquired, orders of sensibilities, yet subject to like
cultivation. Once established, they select and protect after the
pattern set by the innate sensibilities.

Note 26, page 100. What from the point of view of sensi-
bility becomes a corollary is in its own setting the leading thesis.
The position of the behaviorists in psychological theory, and no
less the interpretation of the division of function of brain-areas,
derive their psychological basis from the central place of action
in response. Sensibilities become supporting, introductory in-
citers and modifiers of responsiveness and in such service find
their true value; we have our being in doing, constantly and at
all stages. The philosophical implications of the position are
significant; they may be followed in such volumes as Parmalee:
"The Science of Human Behaviour"; Max Meyer: "Fundamen-
tal Laws of Human Behaviour'^; Watson: "Behavior." On the
physiological side the conception favors the view that all brain
functions are fundamentally motor; that kinesthetic factors play

520 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the central part in guidance, and that even the most sensory
aspects of nervous response have a motor trend or tone. This is
in the field of sense; a like application makes the essential part
of the emotion its favoring of impulse and the direction of its
expression. Such is the view of MacDougall: "Social Psychol-
ogy." The bearings of this position will be encountered in later
discussions.

Note 27, page 101. In intellectual adjustment there is
wide room for diversity of process according as the method
of reasoning conforms more closely to the model built upon the
discriminations which grow out of sensibility and the powers
of observation congenial to it, or follows the explicit principles
of a formulated logic and a systematized orderly knowledge.
The former process approaches the wood-lore of the hunter, the
weather wisdom of the farmer, the practical versatility of the
frontiersman, all of whom have to deal with the types of situa-
tions not too remote from those of natural origin. Such native
shrewdness is readily transferred to commercial dealings which
replace the more primitive encounters, and then becomes char-
acteristic of the trader, the promoter, of the horse-dealer prover-
bially. The opposite type is the scholarly habit, the habit of the
thinker, who ponders over relations and the principles of things,
traces events to their causes and eventually acquires the disin-
terested curiosity of the man of science. These divergences of
intellectual traits near their beginnings may prove to be mo-
mentous in their consequences in the later intellectual history of
mankind. Their bearing is at once upon the problem of tem-
peramental differences and upon practical issues.

NOTES TO CHAPTER III

Note 1, page 109. The psychology of the emotions is rich
in problems; most of these must be slighted in the present ex-
position or some plausible conclusion assumed. For their dis-
cussion see Ribot: "The Psychology of the Emotions," particu-
larly the earlier chapters. The James-Lange view, regarding
the somatic reactions as indispensable to the emotion — and ante-
cedently so, holding that I am afraid because I tremble, or grow
pale, and joyous because I smile or chuckle — is (with reserva-
tions) compatible with the applications here to be made of

NOTES TO CHAPTER III 521

analysis; the more common reverse order of emphasis seems to
be better sustained. The three phases of inlet, emotional diffu-
sion, and outlet, merge and fuse ; and the motor aspect of ex-
pression replaces any more explicit outlet, when emotions are
milder, vaguer, broader, remoter in service. The emotion is
drained in the expression; the outlet becomes the expression, as
the natural heir of the motor values of emotion. If sufficiently
alarmed, I run or withdraw, or do something to avoid danger
and escape its consequences; if moderately alarmed or repress-
edly alarmed, my only outward indication is my expression;
when amused there is nothing to do but to smile. Such curtailed
emotional states, shorn of their completing phases or reaching
them partially, circuitously, are altogether the most common ones
in human intercourse. The ordinary emotional play is in terms
of tendencies, attitudes, influences, incipient trends and threats
and approaches of intention, all carrying a motor flavor but
with no more real participation of an executive quality than is
embodied in the expression; yet that element of expression saves
the psychological formula.

The record of the physiological spread of the emotional wave
requires delicate devices. The circulation is a sensitive index of
emotional tone. The traditional designation of the heart as the
seat of the emotions testifies to the popular recognition of the
relation, while such expressions as a "blood-curdling'^ sight, ;re-
flect the consciousness of circulatory changes in extreme agita-
tion. The change of breathing in sleep when the sleeper without
awaking responds to a disturbance and, as it ceases, resumes the
deeper, slower respiration, shows the parallel fluctuations of
states of consciousness and organic condition. The effect of
emotion on the secretion of glands appears in the action of the
salivary glands, and is felt as the parched throat of emotional
distress, or in the fact that the sight or flavor of food makes the
mouth water. We sicken not only at repulsive and at appall-
ing sights, but are digestively upset by emotional strain. That
conversely indigestion induces depression is familiar.

Dr. W. B. Cannon's "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear
and Rage" (1915) gives the experimental evidence that the
adrenal glands are stimulated at times of excitement, that the
secretion enters into the blood, and augments or induces the

522 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

changes which accompany pain and the major emotions. The
whole is an emergency mechanism particularly related to the in-
tense moments when a life struggle or a major excitement is
urgent, and calls forth energies not ordinarily available. That
similar excitements of a transferred order continue to induce the
same variety of effects is shown in the physiological changes of
a like type in students (notably the secretion of sugar) in con-
nection with the excitement of an approaching football game or
of a University examination. The digestive secretions seem
chiefly an emotional product through the zest of appetite.

The most pervasive effect of the emotion is upon the neuro-
muscular tone. Positive or life-enlarging emotions like joy are
dynamogenic, which means that under their sway, the release
of energy is readier and fuller; while negative emotions, like
grief, are literally depressing, diminishing the flow of energy.
In so plastic a nervous system as that of the infant, the waving
of arms and legs, and crowing and chuckling, in the joy of ap-
proaching food, of an attractive toy, of the welcome nurse or
parent, makes a picture of dynamogenic reaction, convincing
without other record. An interesting record is afforded by the
"knee-jerk" (patellar tendon reflex). It may be interpreted as
a result of shifting tension between the higher impulses in their
play upon the lower nervous centers. When the higher centers
are engaged in intellectual work or in an emotional excitement,
the restraining tension is released; the tendon when struck a
constant blow reacts more vigorously. The sound of music, the
slamming of a door, the crying of a child, show decided effect
upon the succeeding records of the "swing" of the knee-jerk.
Equally pertinent are the records of fatigue — fluctuations in
physiological as well as psychological work, emotionally induced,
as by rivalry.

The fact that in some measure we can affect disposition by phy-
siological as well as by psychological stimuli indicates the dual
approach. We may cheer the disposition and release artificial
restraint by alcohol or by sympathy, by good humor or good
news, just as we may keep awake when drowsy by means of a
cup of coffee, or by the help of an interesting novel or an en-
tertaining visit. The restoration of reactive tone by suitable
diet, exercise, elimination of clogging waste-products, is as much

NOTES TO CHAPTER III 523

a part of the regimen in treatment of emotional depression or
brain exhaustion as a cheerful environment, pleasant occupa-
tion, restful diversion. It is further substantially true that by
assuming" the suitable expression of an emotion, we may, in part,
induce or facilitate the inner feeling or at least dispel its op-
posite. A smile will induce good feeling, a scowl dispel it when
no stronger or deeper psycho-physiological conditions determine
the issue.

Note 2, page 110. It is obvious that some measure of affec-
tive excitation accompanies the constant stream of the psychic
life. The affective moment fluctuates about a neutral equilibrium
which is however not a zero, but is itself the issue of the same
range of forces that sends the current up and down. When a
voice rises above the murmur of the affective life and speaks in
distinct tones, it is recognized as the voice of an emotion. It
speaks with a purpose; and the message varies with the occasion.
It rises to explicitness when the occasion is clear; quite as com-
monly it fails to become articulate and merely imbues the re-
sponse with a vague trend of conflicting and interacting incen-
tives. Emotions dip down below the level of conscious report
and derive their "genius" from the deepest strata of the psychic
structure. Yet for the most part their discussion proceeds upon
a recognition of their speciflc character. It is in this sense that
they are defined as the high-points of the affective wave. The
analysis of the component forces of the wave is acknowledged
as the fundamental task of psychology; and its equation, if
it could be written, would contain about the same terms for the
submerged as for the emerged points of the movement.

Note 3, page 112. The experiences of lion-tamers show
that the uncertainty of response of "tamed" animals is similarly
conditioned. An apparently subdued and ordinarily submissive
lion will, with slight warning, suddenly turn upon its trainer
with all the feral instincts of its nature aroused. The far more
frequent cases of incipient rebellion quelled by threat or cowed
by punishment shows the continuous conflict of original and im-
posed nature. The violent outbreak is doubtless induced by an
organic condition, for which the play of the finer rivalries of
emotional impulses of human kind offer a remote but pertinent
parallel.

524. CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Note 4, page 115. It is suggestive that for human kind
there are more sights and experiences that emotionally disturb the
physiological equilibrium than do so directly through offense to sen-
sibility alone. The effect is also more enduring by reason of the
intellectual alliance. With the offensive stimulus removed, read-
justment quickly ensues ; or if it continues to disturb, it does so by
its emotional associations. The impression of a bad odor fades;
but the remembrance of a sickening accident is constantly rein-
stated. It is the emotionalized sensibility that develops a moral
and social sense. Remorse depresses and organically upsets;
criticism rankles and saps the flavor of enjoyment. Yet these
effects involve a mature high-grade susceptibility.

There are various ways of bringing into relief the convergences
and the divergencies of the sensibilities and the emotions. The
community of response is clear; either may dominate in the re-
coil, avoidance, or aversion. The appearance may excite pru-
dential retreat indirectly, or disgust directly; it may be a shy-
ness, a withdrawal from strange contacts and thus fairly emo-
tionalized, or a loathing and distrust close to the shunning by the
affected sensibilities. As already explained, the role of the
senses in the psychic endowment may decide. For human kind
odor is largely exercised in food-rejections and similar situa-
tions (disregarding sex sensibility) ; its emotional play is
limited. For organisms for which a large range of situations
are olfactorily perceived and pursued, odor may form the com-
mon inlet to emotional excitement. The visual dominance of the
human endowment favors the seen appearance as the emotional
inlet; the close alliance of appearance with meaning favors the
indirect intellectual route of emotionalism. When complicated
by imagination — again dominantly a visual procedure — the re-
sponse yet more completely sheds its "sensibility" aspect and
stands forth as emotionally matured and independent. The
variability and intricacy of the response remove it still further
from the limited regulation that alone can be provided for by
and in the mechanism of sensibility. The manner, motive, direc-
tion, and "meaning" reference as well as the esthetic flavor of
an avoidance become more significant than the bare reaction.

Note 5, page l^-O. Flight is here used as a type-form of
the fear-reaction. The emotion may be organically set to engage

NOTES TO CHAPTER III 525

one or another phase of protective expression, or it may present
several trends and leave a choice of response. There need not
be a simple or a single response, since the nervous system is a
mechanism that embodies composite and conflicting trends. The
neglect of this consideration is the fault of such analyses as
MacDougalFs, which makes fear the "flight" emotion, or sets it
too definitely as an instinctive response to one specific emotion.
The natural structure decides. Animals that can run fast and
far will run when frightened, as the horse and deer and hare;
slower ones, or those that run for short spurts, will hide, or run
to cover and then hide, as the mouse, gopher, partridge; still
more sluggish ones will withdraw within the shell, as the tortoise,
or curl up as if dead, as the opossum or the caterpillar; others
will dive, like ducks or frogs; some will shout, like the crow,
and others suddenly keep silent, like the croaking frog; the
young will run to the mother, as do chicks; the gregarious will
run to the protection of the herd, like horses or buffaloes ; though
frightened, the animal may still prepare for attack; like the
mouse, if brought to bay, it may turn and bite, or like some
orders of snake it may change color, curl, and prepare to spring.
Among human kind there are many instinctive responses, and
they may all be observed under the same fear-inducing excite-
ment. A frightened man may run, may hide, may become silent,
may turn pale, may cling to some person or thing, may start,
may shriek, may call for help, may be rooted to the spot, may
fight if restrained; all these expressions together make the bed-
lam of a panic. Such composite tendencies may give color to
the recapitulation theory — making it appear as though all the
expressions of the animal ancestry of man had left a physio-
logical vestige in his reactive system. Yet it is more consistent
to conjecture that the instinct is elaborately set in his general re-
active system, and gradually leans to the expression most suit-
able to the occasion. In the end man "sizes up" the situation,
and the more or less appropriate fear-response is summoned.
He starts, or shrinks, or shouts, or clings, as occasion warrants;
yet he is prone to irrational expressions. The involuntary start
remains beyond his control ; the shriek comes quite within it ; men
learn not to shriek, regarding it as a feminine privilege. Plas-
ticity of instinct and expression is the human privilege — ^not the

526 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

absence of impulse but the choice among many. The choice is
acquired, but upon a natural basis.

Note 6, page 121. Many varieties of attraction or shrink-
ing are composite. Consider an humble instance: A "tender-
foot" fisherman removing the hook from the mouth of a fish,
shrinks from the contact, the clammy sliminess offending his
tactile sensibility; he has a sympathetic recoil from the possible
pain of the operation and the forbidding appearance of it; he
may be prudentially cautious not to cut his fingers on tooth or
fin; and he may entertain the belief that if touched, the fish will
sting. The shrinking is of several sources; the timidity involves
mixed motives. But in most such cases, the timidity is aroused
acutely by presentative moments. Let the fish flop violently, and
the mild but controlled recoil changes to instant retreat and
alarm — like the timid sleeper in a lonely house starting in
terror at a suspicious sound.

Note 7, page 122. Accepting the fact of the ready access
which sound has acquired to the provocation of fear, one may
be inquisitive as to its source. The most obvious suggestion is
that the auditory susceptibility is an index of a gregarious fear.
The tendency to shriek or make a noise when frightened would
be a call or a warning to mates, and the sound more readily
reaches the flock or herd as a signal for a collective stampede. It
is not necessary that each of the flock should individually see the
enemy; all profit by the alarm of any one.

Note 8, page 122. The so-called "fear'' of thunder illus-
trates the composite source ; it is partly organic ; it may be reen-
forced by a knowledge of danger, but is essentially a direct re-
action to the sensory effects upon a sensitive nervous system. To
the sensory effect the atmospheric condition may contribute as well
as the fiash and the rumble. The difficulty of controlling such
fears indicates how slightly the reflective element and how largely
the organic emotional element enters. The same consideration
affects the morbid development of fears against which reason is
of slight avail. We must also be taught to fear (or at least to
shun) natural objects, such as poison-ivy, as well as artificial
ones, "live" electric wires, for instance.

Note 9, page 127. It is clear that with reservation the
view presented favors the "conduct" emphasis of emotion en-

NOTES TO CHAPTER III 527

dorsed by James, Ribot, and MacDougall. The title of this
chapter indicates that what human nature has joined together, the
psychologist shall not put asunder.

Note 10, page 128. Even with this precaution one may
fail to conceive the primitive quite primitively enough. One
might propose the test that no emotion is primary unless it. ap-
pears in the higher animal world, is manifest in early human in-
fancy, has a characteristic (nervous and) physiological expres-
sion, and satisfies a natural need. If adopted, the test will not
lead far astray, but requires correction at two points at least;
for it considers too slightly the "situation" factor. First, it fails
to consider that delayed situations give rise to delayed instincts
and emotions. The sexual instinct and its emotional life is a
notable but not unique example; for walking, flying and other
locomotive instincts are in principle of like deferred status. Sec-
ond, varieties of instinct may be peculiar to the human situation,
or essentially modified by it. Hence one might propose an early
appearance in the race rather than in the individual as a proper
amendment for certain emotions.

Note 11, page 131. Classification serves a useful purpose
in suggesting the range and relations of the emotions. A differ-
ence of emphasis of detail and of allowance for variation modifies
the result. Mr. MacDougall's enumeration will serve as an ex-
ample. He regards all primary emotions as embodiments of pri-
mary instincts. He distinguishes the instinct of flight and the
emotion of fear as its inducing stage; similarly the instinct of
repulsion and the emotion of disgust; next curiosity as an instinct
and wonder as its emotion; pugnacity as an instinct and anger
as its emotion; self-abasement as an instinct and negative self-
feeling or subjection as the emotion; self-assertion as an instinct
and positive self-feeling or elation as the emotion; parental care
as an instinct and the tender emotions as corresponding thereto.
In addition he must find a place in the scheme for the instincts
with more diffuse emotional tendencies; such as the instinct of re-
production— including sexual jealousy and female coyness; the
gregarious instinct; the instincts of acquisition and construction.
All that this enumeration implies is that these human instincts and
the corresponding emotions represent the chief primary varieties
of conduct and modes of feeling.

528

CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

The classification resulting from the analysis in the text yields
the following table:

and applied to the
~ food ]
^preliminary -^ family > situations
play J

riNDIVIDUAL

Primary

Emotions.

are

or
Social .
in
Direction

or

Defensive

in
Attitude

^Agbessive,

or

active in
stage

preliminary

active

food ]
family I situations
play J

food ■]
family \- situations
play J

foodi
family V situations
play J

The above classification may be repeated for the social emotions,
although the situations apply so imperfectly that they may be con-
sidered as merged. There will accordingly be fewer distinctive or
nameable social emotions of primary type. They abound in deriva-
tive varieties, as the text illustrates.

Such a table does not imply that there are just the twelve pri-
mary individual emotions for which spaces are provided, or that
each situation engages but a single emotion. Its purpose is to
place and relate the chief emotions. Thus anger is individual,
aggressive, preliminary, and may be aroused by play, combat,
sex-rivalry, or any derivative situation; it implies self-assertion,
which may be aroused in combat or in the chase. The food-situ-
ations are most specific; the play-situations most variable.
"Family" covers such diverse attitudes as those concerned in
courtship and in the care of the young; yet the coyness of the fe-
male in the one relation makes for tenderness in the other rela-
tion. Curiosity is exercised in nearly all situations. In brief the
fusion of emotions sets a prompt limit to the rigidity and profit
of classification.

Note 12, page 133. The original tendencies of man act
piece-meal and in combinations. The potency of a situation is a
compound of forces. Its bonds are real but there are so many
of them that the best of inventories, if brief, would have to be a
caricature. Original nature is not a set of perfectly independent
mechanisms any more than it is a hodge-podge for chance. It
is a cluster or hierarchy of mechanisms with very many compo-

NOTES TO CHAPTER III 529

nents, of which many cooperate in response to any one situation.
"An approaching man may, by the peculiar combination of size,
rate of approach, gesture, facial expression and cries which he
offers, and by the peculiar combination of darkness, familiar sur-
roundings, human companionship and physical contact, full
stomach, wakefulness and so on characteristic of the concomitant
situation, draw on a score of different responses." — Thomdike.

Note 13, page 142. A characteristic contrast may be ob-
served in the rigid, smooth, intent, featureless set of the face
in certain forms of insanity, in which all outward and social play
of the attention and interest is obliterated, and the environment
exists not at all or only as the object of maniacal determination.
With the alienation of the social impulses the face becomes a
waxen mask; the flexible muscles are deserted by the indwelling
mind. In other types of insanity the muscles obey the physio-
logical impulses and assume the set of features presumably with-
out the accompanying emotion; the vacant expression of idiocy
is of this order.

Note 14, page 142. The emotions expressed by facial and
by other gestures or attitudes are of one nature; and attention
may be limited to the leading role of the face. The senses as
forewarning and forearming heralds become concentrated in the
head — ^the vanguard of the body in advancing movement. The
eyes, as the leaders in reconnoitering, absorb the chief interest
and become the center of attention in guidance of one's own
approach and attack, and in noting and meeting the movements
of the enemy. Teeth (and claws) form an able support or
bodyguard; and the primitive foray is so dominantly conducted
as a food expedition that the mimicry of mastication persists.
With these two foci established, the face becomes the center of
expression. The expressive nostrils guide the food-reactions and
regulate the breath, the organic barometer of effort and excite-
ment; the voice serves for social appeal, intimidation, etc.
Primitive expressions may be more directly traced in the infant
than in the modified and restrained expressions of adults, where,
however, the finer differentiations are to be found. The child,
like the expressive animals, shows the diffuse emotion radiating
over the mobile body, particularly finding an outlet in hands
and feet, even in fingers and toes. The adult becomes by restraint

530 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

largely a facial specialist in expression. Within the face the
mouth is more markedly the center of facial expression in the
child than in the adult.

Note 15, page 144. To continue the problem of expression:
(1) The physiological vents or expressions of emotion posit other
and perplexing queries: Why should the contraction of the
tear-glands serve pain, and by this route grief and the self-
abasing as well as the tender emotions'? Why do we blush, and
seemingly only in connection with a mental stimulus'? Why does
tickling produce laughter, and why the shrinking of fear or of
sensory aversion, why cold shivers or goose-flesh'? (2) The prob-
lems of specialization are many. The release of impulse may
require effort; effort shows itself outwardly, and thus develops
an expressional mien. Redness, restrained breath, muscular
strain are its signs; the brow wrinkles, and certain special fur-
rows form at the root of the nose. This last, as the slightest and
most mobile contraction, becomes the sign of mental effort, in its
most delicate nuance of thoughtfulness, contemplation. Effort
may stand close to pain or in the mental counterpart, to worry.
A worried thoughtfulness is a familiar expression, read largely in
the furrows of the upper face. The specialization may be nearer
to the source; as the sneer of disdain points back directly to the
snarl, which is the raising of the special muscle to expose the
canine tooth. It is likewise associated with the half -closed eye
of aversion, and may be most delicately shaded to so faint a
suggestion of a slighting disregard as to belie its remote descent
from so coarse a mien as a snarl and a baring of a tooth. (3)
The supplementing of expression by the vocal gesture is peculiarly
significant. The smile becomes a laugh, and the index of joy is
more strongly attached to the vocal than to the visual sign;
though the facial mien remains the more specialized. The tone
of voice merges with the set of features in stern command, in
pleading, in pitying, in anger and reproof. Through the medium
of communication in speech, the voice contributes the emotional
value to the word. It plays this part because of its original
qualification in the sob, the sigh, the moan, the groan, the cry, the
laugh. (4) The persistence of expression is shown convincingly
in its dissociation from serviceable habit. Nature cannot be pro-
phetic, for nature is reminiscent. The dog's bark as now exer-

NOTES TO CHAPTER III 531

cised may serve only for the escape of his prey; the expression
seems linked to the wrong occasion through change of situation.
Just why the hen should become so vociferous on laying an egg is
not easy to explain; nor why Chanticleer should so noisily greet
the break of day. That such response is the organized course of
agitation induced by specialized states is clear, and must be ac-
cepted as an index of minor serviceability under other conditions.
(5) As persistence expresses original and uncontrollable nature,
the control or assumption of expression indicates the acquired
factor. The supremacy of the former appears in the inability to
summon the full expressional quality artificially. The "stage"
laugh and the "society" smile are transparent imitations; the real
emotion alone has access to the muscles of expression in minute
detail, and alone can summon the genuine expression. Affecta-
tion has its limits, and therein has true emotion its protection.
Yet training may be carried indefinitely far, particularly in the
direction of repression. Decorum and convention may discourage
facial play almost to its extinction, and thereby impede ready
understanding. To what extent suppression of the expression
suppresses the emotion is doubtful. The search for an authentic
clew when the individual interests require suppression as in case
of guilt, has led to a psychological "third degree" in the method
of psycho-analysis, as well as a reliance upon the physiological
record. (6) The reduction of the sources of expression to a few
explanatory principles is bound to shift its emphasis as the prob-
lem is differently approached. Darwin's original three principles,
despite the legitimacy of the criticism expressed in regard to their
inadequacy, retain a general validity. The "associated serviceable
habit" applies to the more specific expressions. In man these are
early overlaid with the products of imitation. The second prin-
ciple of "antithesis" has been most questioned. It is more de-
fensible if interpreted as an opposing tendency within the nerv-
ous system. Thus, assertive emotions contract the dorsal muscles,
and depressive emotions let the ventral ones prevail. This prin-
ciple supplements the third principle of "nervous discharge" by
organized route, not specifically of associated serviceability.
Much of human facial mimicry is a composite of all the sources;
yet the standard reference of an expression is to the situation
which it suggestively if remotely pictures.

532 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Note 16, page 144. It is possible to connect the instinctive
responses with the later reactions; in this sense nature in its in-
cipient trends may be prophetic of mature ones. The struggling,
fist-clenching, striking movements of the infant when held, and
the similar kicking, stiffening of the back, and skirmishing with
the arms when crying, seem aimless as well as helpless. They
may foreshadow the destructive tendency which induces the smash-
ing of things in rage, and the ready irritability when jostled.
The infant can express only what its motor development com-
mands. In a sense the infant is anticipating the destructive re-
sisting complex, while yet inadequately matured to exhibit it.

Note 17, page 146. A few further instances from animal
life: In the experiments in compatibility made in zoological gar-
dens, it is often an uncertain issue and a matter of critical con-
cern whether a mate or companion offered to the more feral beasts
will arouse the sympathetic play-instincts or the combative ones;
and this applies as well to those of their own kind as to the
strange tolerances and friendships among diverse species. As
an instance of acquired conflict of emotions, note the attitude of
a dog about to receive corporal punishment; he responds to the
call in abject humility, dragging his shrunken body slowly to the
whip, yet controls any tendency to shrink or run away. He forms
a complete picture of physical submission triumphing, though
with evidences of the conflict, over rebellious flight. The situa-
tion finds its higher analogy in moral courage or resignation. A
like uncertainty of emotional response makes necessary the largest
psychological skill in the handling of men.

Note 18, page 154. Clearly objects cannot arouse emotion
and become incitements to response unless they first arouse atten-
tion; the start of fright is the first signal to the mind that any-
thing has occurred. The tendency to be startled is itself a nerv-
ous disposition. For all complex emotional states, the range of
experience is decisive. I may be startled by a sudden noise; but
if it is often repeated I am no longer disturbed.

Note 19, page 159. The emotional point of departure of
such experience appears in the hysterically matured relation in
which the recurrence of a situation or of a reference to it or of
a situation of analogous type precipitates a moment or a period
of distressing psychical agitation; the upset revives the emo-

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 533

tional shock associated directly with an original disaster. Of such
process of revival the dominant consciousness is unaware; yet the
similarity of the inducing occasion is of such high-grade intel-
lectual order, though disguised and indirect, that it requires for
its recognition an intellectual operation, or cooperation.

The abnormal expression reveals a tendency to overdo, to de-
velop an extreme or a distorted proportion. The vitality for such
overgrowth is derived from the transfer of the primitive vigor to a
related or remote issue of the original emotional impulse. With
this tendency there combines the natural trend of emotion, once
attaining mastery, to grow by its own momentum — much as when
once the center of gravity is lost, the further crash is inevitable.

Note 20, page 170. Of the more specific individual appli-
cation little need be added at this juncture. To say that one is
irritable, combative, proud, shy, timid, sensitive, sympathetic,
harsh, critical, complacent, gullible, is a casual judgment that one
set of qualities is more readily summoned by the ordinary run
of situations than another.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV

Note 1, page 176. This type of argument appeared in the
discussion of facial and related expression. Primitive emotions
took possession of all the available muscles; later emotions had
to utilize the same outlets and modify and refine their use to later
purposes. The psychological analogy is close. The socialized
and intellectualized "expressions" continue the earlier, self-cen-
tered trends, and are conditioned by them.

Note 2, page 177. The comparison of animal emotions with
those of children is beset with the difficulty that the situations un-
der which the emotional impulse develops are so widely divergent
in the two. The capacity for development of infant emotion
makes it a different emotion at the outset. In the animal the
emotion can (largely) at once take the trend of its mature nature.
The difference appears in the use of the terms — all of them de-
rived from human psychology — ^which we are willing to apply to
the animal mind. Thus we are more ready to admit that dogs
show jealousy than that they show shyness. If we interpret shy-
ness as an impulsive shrinking from certain contacts, particularly
unfamiliar ones, there is no difficulty in comparing the instinctive

534 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

shrinkings of children, and those of dogs, and recognizing how
much they have in common. But if we have in mind the fonn
that shyness soon assumes in children, with its element of self-
consciousness added to the organic factor, we prefer to restrict
the term to the humanized variety of shrinking. The two begin
on much the same level; but shyness moves so rapidly away
from this bare organic shrinking that we find it desirable to make
the distinction. Jealousy seems to maintain a more intimate rela-
tion to the situation which is its common emotional stimulus. It
develops to a very much richer status in the human kind, but
retains enough of its primitive character to warrant the statement
that dogs as well as children may be jealous. Adolescent shyness
and the jealousy of sex rivalry may require no new terms, but
they imply new areas of emotional enlargement.

A similar comment applies to imitation. If it occurs at all in
animals, it is limited to high-grade organisms. In infant psy-
chology, imitation is limited to the more deliberate actions estab-
lished upon the basis of habit and training. Cases of apparent
imitation abound, but find their explanation in the like appeal
of like situations to like endowments. Once within the field in
which training enters, the scope of imitation rapidly enlarges.

Note 3, page 183. Such emotional attitudes as jealousy,
envy, shame, pity, surprise may be so defined as to limit the
quality to man, possibly to man of higher mental development;
the latter would imply an introspective reflection, a deliberate
intent — the whole set in a system of emotional and intellectual
tendencies. It is also possible so to define jealousy (and more or
less the other emotional states) that the behavior of the higher
animals and of infants meets the qualifications. Confined to its
full-blown issue, jealousy is undoubtedly a "sentiment" in the
strict sense presently to be defined. Considered as a social com-
plication of a close-to-nature competitive impulse, the trait be-
comes an example of the course of a primary impulse which germi-
nates early, flourishes in the middle psychological zone, and grows
to a considerable sentimental elaboration in its highest products.

The term "social" cannot be confined to a single sense. The
dominant usage has been set by sociological considerations; its
connotations hamper, yet without seriously disturbing psycholog-
ical p'urposes. "Sociability" has come to mean an exercise, in

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 535

the favorable and friendly sense, of a social trait; "anti-sociaP'
means opposed to the purposes which society cherishes. The so-
ciological usage makes the value prominent; the psychological
sense is more neutral, and thus broader. The contrast with "in-
dividual" is inevitably uncertain. When the self-seeking trends
are systematized and explicitly realized they become "individual-
istic"; yet "individualism" refers to a philosophical position,
making a claim for an intellectual and social liberty released
from the imperious sway of the imposed conventions of society;
while "socialism," which should designate the opposite conten-
tion, has drifted to imply a special and peculiarly limited pro-
gramme or policy. Under such circumstances the psychologist has
no course available but to place large reliance upon the context
and bearing of his analyses to convey the significant features
of his usage. "Individual," as 'here used, describes the bearing
of a trait with reference to self-interest; it is the self -centered
aspect; and where there is no social play, it is the primary and
exclusive functional import of the trait. The "social" is the
group-aspect of the trait; it includes the reflex effect upon the
individual aspect induced by the social reference, and it includes
particularly the aspects of traits which would not emerge at all
without the presence of the social factor and setting.

Note 4, page 184. The rivalry inherent in the competitive
struggle for existence develops both jealousy and emulation. As
these two trends diverge, jealousy becomes the attitude of injured
self-esteem due to the absence of expected preferment and the
painful enhancement of desire by the thwarting of impulse.
Emulation is the positive spur of effort by the added zest of ex-
celling above another, above all competitors; it is the transfer of
the joy of possessing to the joy of defeating, and is thus allied
to triumph. MacDougall suggests that the impulse of rivalry
may be the impulse "to playful fighting, the impulse of an instinct
differentiated from the combative instinct in the first instance in
the animal world to secure practice in the movements of combat."
He points out that the impulse to emulation is strong where the
combative impulses are strong, and weak where the latter are
weak. He cites the traits of the mild Hindoo and Burman, in
contrast to those of the strenuous Anglo-Saxon ; the one is peace-
able and finds no interest in games of rivalry, the other boasts

536 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

that its heroes are trained on the cricket-field. To the unwarlike
people such games as football seem irrational, while the warlike
Maoris take them up with zest and success.

Note 5, page 192. Mere contagion is limited also in the
gregariousness of animals. It becomes much more than a slav-
ish following of another's responses; for the actual "following"
becomes selection upon a (limited) intellectual basis. When a
pack of hounds has lost the scent, there ensues a scattered and
random search among the more energetic or knowing members of
the pack; the more confident alarm of the hound that regains the
trail brings the pack- after him, each follower possibly proving
the scent as he runs. Leadership is provided for in the gre-
garious response when it is set in an elaborate system of in-
stincts. The social endowment thus includes a double impulse:
the tendency to follow and submit, and the tendency to lead and
impose. The former matures the submissive, the latter the as-
sertive qualities of the self in the social relation. The gregarious
habit must not be thought of as a simple contagion of disposed
impulse; it is capable of complex psychological expression ac-
cording to the psychic capacities of the constituent individuals.
Gregariousness takes its set from the status of the natural unit
of grouping. If this is the family — strictly or liberally defined
— the helpful relations developed by the care-of -young situation
will play a large part in the collective impulses of the larger
groups or flocks bred in different nests. The social capacities of
man are so much more versatile and so much more highly in-
tellectualized than those of animal societies that their adequate
consideration requires the resources of a sociological system for
their interpretation.

The topic is more involved than is indicated in this treatment,
which is intended only to outline the place of gregarious respon-
siveness in the evolution of sympathetic emotion. Sympathy
must assert itself against the stress of other impulses. It has a
precarious hold in man and is readily silenced by the primitive
stress of stronger, earlier impulses; the impulses of mastery
readily include subjugation, and the signs of subjugation are
suffering as well as cringing — both incompatible with the emer-
gence of sympathy. It is the less urgent and more playful situ-
ation that favors the emergence of sympathy; the "fair play"

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 537

spirit — one of the sources of the sense of justice — ^may assert
itself, feebly suggestive of the golden rule, while its elimination
from love and war in which all is fair, places those contests upon
the non-sympathetic basis of urgency.

Note 6, page 195. The use of the term "ideo-motor'' to
express the motive force of an intellectual or an intellectualized
process, though challenged, is legitimate if it means only that
the idea is an acquired inlet to the sensory discharge. Imitation
is ideo-motorj suggestion is still largely sensori-motor ; contagious
sympathetic response wholly so. The distinction between strongly
intellectualized channels of impression, with a weak sensory tone,
and strongly sensualized impressions, with a weak intellectual
flavor, points to a significant evolutionary contrast. The fact may
be otherwise stated : it means that the mind comes to respond to a
mental situation as it would to a physical one, to one of repre-
sentative status as to one of presentative status. The latter is
the original experience and remains imbedded in and supports
the other; the latter is a weaker, derivative appeal. It is the
weak hold of representative experience that limits its influence;
it requires as a rule a strong dramatic incident to enforce ac-
tion, where argument fails. The older type of response dom-
inates; nothing can replace the warmth and cogency of expe-
rience. The emotional reenforcement is one of the ways of giv-
ing to an "intellectual" situation, an imagined situation, a like
vitality as attaches to the actual experience. Description is
vivid as it summons the presentative values of the scene and its
emotional impressions.

Note 7, page 197. The fixation of this boundary line forms
one of the perplexing problems of psychology. Experimental
studies have proven that imitation is a high-level product. Al-
lowing for possible and limited exceptions, animals do not learn
by imitating one another; children do. The apparent "aping" of
apes is due to their strong curiosity, the similarity of their re-
sponses to similar stimuli. The training of animals must be
imposed from first to last upon each animal. Their gregarious
responsiveness does not specifically help the trainer's task.

Note 8, page 202. Maternal devotion means the arousing
of tender feelings by the sight, touch, call of the young; it im-
plies a strength of such feelings sufficient to assert themselves

538 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

instantly and above the appeals of other emotional responses
which the trials and cares of the young may present. This
favorably prejudiced attitude toward the child matures the sen-
timent of love, makes the child the object of love. Upon the
child are concentrated the full richness of tender feelings, long-
ings, hopes, solicitudes, endearments, which in psychologically
qualified persons release the sympathies, and create a sense of
satisfaction in the joys, a sense of grief in the pains and sor-
rows of the child, and a striving to further the one and prevent
the other by any measures, in disregard of the sacrifices of self
which they may entail. Altruism in the actual range of its exer-
cise is a vast expansion by artificial protection, of a slender
root, thriving uncertainly in the rigors of the natural habi-
tat. It is essentially a garden product, a cultivated variety of
human response. The altruistic quality enters vitally into many
relations: patriotism, religious zeal, moral reform, social service.
All are supported by a disciplined and elevated human sym-
pathy.

Note 9, page 209. The development of plays and games
parallels in its appeal the development of real experience. Soli-
taire is but a pastime, lacking the true quality of an opponent or
participant or the expression of sociability. The social quality
becomes the core of the play. Good luck or skill brings approval
that enhances self-esteem; losing and winning may carry the
burden of the interest, yet are socially reenforced. As diverse as
the fortunes which plays and games are devised to provide — com-
monly simulating the fortunes of life itself — are the social mo-
tives from which they spring, to which they appeal. The enjoy-
ment of play is saturated in the medium of sociability and pro-
ceeds upon the lead of sympathy. That play also illustrates the
battle of wits will not be overlooked; yet it is sustained by the
competitive rivalry and the pleasure of gain; playing may be
gambling as well; the financial stake is at best but an added zest,
and to many, because of its economical-moral intrusions, a mar-
ring of the play interest.

Note 10, page 228. The theory of modesty is not clear,
especially in relation to modesty of person and demeanor. The
physiological "record" of blushing complicates rather than aids
explanation. Even if capable of the expression, animals could

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 539

not blush for shame, or feel shame in exposure of the body,
though in man blushing is most readily called forth by bodily ex-
posure or its suggestions. Yet it has been drawn into the psychic
field rather than belongs there by natural status. Self-conscious-
ness of any kind induces blushing in those disposed thereto. It
is aggravated at the period of late adolescence and is weakened in
later years. It is most readily aroused by social embarrass-
ment; there is presumably more blushing by reason of shyness
than by reason of shame, despite the readier association with
the latter. Yet embarrassment is in one sense a delicate, refined
and innocent form of shame. The subjection of shame to the so-
cial influence is more than an indication of the direct pressure of
that sentiment alone. It is markedly affected by the general sense
of conformity which is the common exaction imposed by society
for a share in its benefits. It is a violation of conformity, how-
ever innocent or even morally commendable the course taken, that
brings the sense of shame. This is true of modesty in clothing
(such as the prejudice against the ride-astride saddle for women)
or of non-conformity to a social custom, such as the giving of
fees, which continues as Thomdike observes, because "no man is
brave enough to withstand the scorn of a line of lackeys whom he
heartily despises, or a few onlookers whom he will never see
again." Similarly a man in formal dress without his necktie
would be as intensely ashamed as though the rest of his apparel
were quite insignificant.

Social standards affect the readiness with which we yield to
and display sentiments or the emotions which inspire them. By
this influence they affect the occasions of expression of the more
primaiy emotions, such as fear. Girls and women are permitted
to feel and exhibit fears which would be repressed so far as they
are felt by boys and men. The more intimate relation of shame
and modesty to the feminine psychology equally modifies the con-
ventionally permissible for the two sexes. In the man it is as
much a difference in the outlets of the emotions as of their pres-
ence. Courage is held up as an ideal for boys more conspicuously
than for girls ; but feminine courage is still more significantly dif-
ferently expressed than is masculine courage. The two sexes are
in a measure proud and ashamed of different things more than
they vary in their participation in the sentiments of pride and

540 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

shame. Racial and national ideals are similarly operative. The
effusive emotionalism of the Latin races may indicate a readier
play of sympathy or a more sanctioned approval of its expres-
sion.

Note 11, page 229. The fact that we also regret what we
fear does not impair the pertinence of the analysis. Sorrow
also goes out to losses, failures, frustrations, actual or imminent;
the unpleasant affect spreads over both. Fear and dread are
painful, at the least, unpleasant experiences. By the similar
analysis hope and joy share in a common tone and go out to like
welcome and pleasant experiences in realization and anticipation.

Note 12, page 231. A practicable scheme for the classifica-
tion of the sentiments is the following: Sentiments are (1) gen-
eral emotional; (2) intellectual; (3) esthetic; (4) moral; (5) in-
stitutional; (6) special complexes. Many of the sentiments result
from the interaction of the tendencies which these group-headings
specify, and accordingly belong to or spread across several
groups; sub-types are readily distinguished.

(1) The general emotional elaborations are represented by
those reviewed. Their central reference is to the welfare of the
self; their most constant application is in the standard contacts
of men in "social" intercourse; they grow more directly out of
primitive relations and present significant stages of develop-
ment. Jealousy, pride, sympathy, solicitude, humility, love, hate,
revenge, joy, sorrow, despair, repugnance, etc., are its forms.

(2) The intellectual sentiments represent an emphasis, the di-
rective play of a function present in sentiments in general; there
are similarly no purely intellectual sentiments but many domi-
nantly intellectual ones. The type-form is curiosity, an attitude
of motive interest in the pursuit of knowledge. The satisfac-
tions of consistency, logicality, and the several allegiances and
enthusiasms characteristic of the scientific temper are examples
of its play. The presence of the intellectual flavor in sentiments
elsewhere centered is notable.

(3) The esthetic sentiment bears the general name of the sense
of beauty. It dominates in all the arts, and subdivides finely as
these arts develop special techniques. The picturesque, the dra-
matic, the comic, the tragic, the sublime, the romantic, are dom-
inantly (or even exclusively) esthetic. They merge readily with

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 541

intellectual, and, in a different issue, with the moral sentiments.
The esthetic quality frequently plays the part of contributing
the form, tone, color, or manner of the sentimental regulation,
when the content is contributed by another (typically, the intel-
lectual) phase of human interest.

(4) Morality is rich in sentimental products. It is itself in
such close relation to emotions and their social expression that
the sentiment is its characteristic issue, though its formulation in
principles requires intellectual support. Conscience summarizes
its attitude. It may claim truthfulness, chastity, altruism, rever-
ence, loyalty, justice and other virtues; sin, guilt, indulgence,
brutality, covetousness, insolence, cruelty and other vices. The
virtues of morality and the graces of beauty are frequently al-
lied.

(5) Institutions as naturally develop sentimental specializa-
tions as they grow upon them. Justice as fair dealing is a
moral sentiment, but is conceived and practiced under institu-
tional provisions. Such sentiments as conservatism, patriotism,
democracy, socialism, are strongly institutionalized. The same
may be said of courtesy and similar formal regulations.

(6) This division is strictly unnecessary, as all sentiments not
referable to one or another of the groups enumerated may be
referred to variations, combinations and derivative forms of the
others. Yet it may be useful to indicate the comprehensiveness
of such sentiments as gentlemanliness ; the "gentleman" is both
an ideal, an emphasis of sentiments, and an institution. Chiv-
alry, piety, religiosity, individualism, Christianity, Puritanism,
Hellenism, Americanism have similar bearings. Selecting a typ-
ical quality from each group, we may reach an ideal of human-
ity as a sympathetic, discriminating, conscientious, just, refined
gentleman.

Sentimental fusions abound. Fastidiousness is esthetic and
moral; mysticism, pessimism, liberalism, tolerance, epicureanism,
asceticism, stoicism are intellectual, moral, and, it may be, es-
thetic. Wonder, awe, surprise, admiration, are intellectual and
social in the first instance. The ancestral sentiment is general
(pride), institutional, and social. Democracy is a composite
sentiment, as are also charity, opportunism, the esprit de corps
of professions. Language develops sentimental associations with

542 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

words and usages; in the attempt to analyze the basis of offense
in non-conformity to usage in speech, manners, fashions, we
come upon the compositeness of sentimental regulation. To ex-
plain the status of nobility, vulgarity, Philistinism, ceremonial-
ism. Chauvinism, slavery to fashion, sensationalism, requires a
reference to the several type-forms of sentiment. The spirit of
different ages, communities, movements, proceeds upon distinctive
perspectives of sentimental components.

Note 13, page 234. The social sentiment determines the at-
titude toward offenses as toward criminals, and it is thus itself
gauged by the general cultural status in which it finds a place.
Medieval tortures seem to us inconceivable and to disclose the
imperfect moral advance of the days in which they flourished.
They seem at once cruel and unenlightened. Social sentiment in
its composite reflects the place of the several sentiments in the
social structure; the ordering of life indicates which types of
sentiment are supported and which slighted, and how each group
comes to expression. It is also pertinent to add that such social
sentiment is not of one order or stratum, but promptly subdi-
vides along the distinctive lines of the social organization. The
sentiment of one class diverges in part from that of another;
each group imposes upon its members the code and the power of
its traditions. There is honor amongst thieves; and the attitude
of the offender toward the machinery of justice as well as toward
the social establishments which he slights or attacks, must also be
taken account of in the psychology of criminality. It is in these
aspects that the social sentiment develops and may be considered
as the traits of organized groups of individuals. See Chapter
VII.

Note 14, page 239. It is neither possible nor desirable to
supply a survey of the psychology of the rational processes. Of
the accounts available in psychological treatises, that of Lloyd
Morgan: "Introduction to Comparative Psychology" may be
recommended in connection with the present exposition. The
type-forms of thinking and the place of thought in the securing
of control are on the whole but few. It is the delicacy and
intricacy of their application and the enormous consequence of
the thought-processes in securing a rational control of nature's
ways and resources and of an understanding of human behavior.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 543

that makes the world of reason so dominant in the shaping of
the world as we see it and respond in it and to it. See Chapter
VII.

Note 15, page 241. The similar bearing of intelligence and
sensibility (Chapter II) should be recalled. It leads to the dis-
tinction between dullness of perception and stupidity in adjust-
ment— the imperviousness to relations. The primary service of
the intellect is in differentiating situations; and this process con-
tinues to ever-increasing accuracy and refinement, in classifica-
tion, association, systematization, and in the association of their
products with proper responses or preparatory attitudes. In
such primary service the intellect is greatly aided by sensibility.
The intellectual specialization thus initiated leads to far-reaching
consequences in the reconstruction of the human estate.

Note 16, page 243. It will not escape attention that the
development of concepts and the introduction of standards and
ideals, of attitude and belief, and of the systems of thought
and institutions in which all these are embodied, play the largest
part in the actual measures of establishing social control.

Note 17, page 247. The omission of the moral sentiments
in the lineage of the higher phases of psychic control may ap-
pear to be as fatal as the omission of Hamlet from the play.
Perhaps the simplest of the sentiments clearly moral in stature
is justice; to find a place for it in original nature or in its early
derivative issues is far from simple. Its growth is substantially
a social product. Why society should aim at justice is clear;
why the individual should be so inclined is not. For these and
related reasons it is better to review this problem in connection
with the mature products of the moral sentiments in the social
fabric of the environment.

NOTES TO CHAPTER V

Note 1, page 248. An application of the recent reconstruc-
tions of the theories of heredity would be premature. A critical
point is the determination of the unit-character. Are there such
characters, and what are they*? In how far are such qualities
as musical ability, or a refined color-sense, or a general intellectual
aptitude, or a special mathematical gift, or a moral sense, or man-

544. CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ual skill, comparable to tallness, eye-color, early aging, mus-
cular strength, longevity, a tendency to gout, to adipose tissue,
baldness or other failing? What is the clew to the alphabet of
heredity ? These questions are imperfectly answered. An impor-
tant aid to their comprehension is afforded by the heredity of
defects and extreme variations. Idiocy and genius, color-blind-
ness and musical incapacity, neurasthenic and hysterical as well as
phthisical and diabetic dispositions, mental and physical signs of
degeneracy, illustrate the scope of hereditary factors, and through
their presence in families and stocks reveal a similarity of mecha-
nism. A somatic unit-character is a tendency toward a definite
mode of response. Temperament as a special disposition is
hereditarj^; and psychic abnormality is the exaggeration of a
marked temperamental trend. See Chapter VI.

Note 2, page 252. Gross defect is rarely enlightening. One
does not speak of the temperament of the idiotic or feeble-
minded, because the term is reserved for the middle scale of
psychological variation. Idiocy may be viewed as the extreme
stage of the inert, apathetic, phlegmatic temperament, with sensi-
bilities, impulses, emotions, coordinations, severely reduced, or even
distorted. For the feeble-minded and the high-grade idiot, the
formula is not so simple; and it may require expert tests to re-
veal the departure from normality. Disproportion and limita-
tion of development both enter. In a comparable sense genius
represents the extreme variation of a temperamental trend. It
follows as a rule a strong, specialized disposition, based upon
native endowment. Excess offers more complicated departures
from normality than does defect, yet in its extreme departure
approaches the abnormal. The alliances of genius, in its major
and minor exemplars, to the liabilities and assets of the nervous
temperament, have ever attracted attention. The problem is con-
sidered more fully in Chapter VI.

Note 3, page 256. Products of deductive psychology such
as this scheme embodies must be accepted with caution. Their
general validity may be granted; their application is a matter of
judgment. They tell a partial story only, and often distort rela-
tions. Promptness and vigor and scope and nice adjustment of
reaction are not indicated in the bare emphasis upon the vigor of
the process, which, however, remains significant. Sensibility and

NOTES TO CHAPTER V 545

action are neither coordinate nor so strictly separable as are the
terms of an equation. Classifications serve as clews or memo-
randa; they must not be imposed upon the exposition or replace
it, but direct attention to its truer, finer conclusions.

Note 4, page 258. It is a proper deduction that the SEN-
siTiYK-active and the sensitive-ACTTVB types are more strictly
representative temperaments and contrasted ones, than those
assuming a comparable or like presence of the two qual-
ities. The conclusion is sound. The emphasis upon sensibility
detracts from action, and upon action detracts from sensibility.
Even in the older delineations "melancholic" and "sanguine"
figured more distinctively than the other groups. There is a
certain strain in interpretation in bringing the other tempera-
ments within the necessary formula, something of a shift in the
values of the component factors of the equation. One who really
combined the strong points of both temperaments would have a
superior advantage. The "choleric" is not the equivalent of this
relation; the added implication is that the emphasis is possible
only by limitation of the field of application. Similarly the
"phlegmatic" may be said to combine the weak points of both
temperaments, but by that fact to be saved from the risks of the
more pronounced developments. It is in view of this relation
that a "balanced" temperament, not answering strictly to any
of the four usually scheduled, is recognized and may well repre-
sent the standard relation. It combines the middle-range pres-
ence of the components common to all the temperamental for-
mulae. The average is always the most common.

Note 5, page 261. A corollary may be added, suggested by
the adage that the child is father to the man; yet prediction is
far less secure than retrospection. In anticipation judgment
must decide how far conspicuous traits are developmental and
transitory — like milk teeth — in due course to give way to the
more permanent qualities, as yet obscured by immature expres-
sion. How far they are temperamental and developmental cu-
mulatively, the more permanent stamp, persisting in altered rela-
tion through the transformations of childhood and adolescence,
alone decides. It is easier, as parents and intimate friends tes-
tify, to go back and find the reflections or suggestions of mature
character in childhood traits than to predict mature from im-

546 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

mature responsiveness. The problem is germane to the practical
one of adjusting training to disposition. It also involves the
problem of the play of reenforcing and of antagonistic factors,
all temperamental, but shifting in assertiveness : those of sex,
age, constitution, heredity, specific bent, emotional trend. Such
complex forces make the determination of leading factors or con-
sistent composites of character a matter of insight — the insight
that makes mankind the proper study of man.

Note 6, page 265. Even biography, the most individual of
studies, accepts the "type" view. It does not attempt to give an
exhaustively complete description of the subject's personal
traits, but to characterize them; to give them a setting and rela-
tion in a generic view of life and lives. Comparative biography,
apart from attempting a mutual illumination by comparison and
contrast of related interests, products and careers, would in a
sense form the complement of differential psychology by in-
ductively reaching the type-traits through a study of notable ex-
emplars.

Note 7, page 266. Temperament may be viewed as an im-
posed psycho-physiological budget. The body-machine takes its
type of efficiency from its metabolism, its adaptability of output
to income; and this is reflected in the emotional tone as well
as in the order and quality of achievement. Under this view
temperaments whose incomes exceed the drafts upon them, which
expend their resources cautiously, are saving (anabolic) in their
physiological and psychological economy; the converse, generous
or extravagant temperaments, expend freely, are catabolic. The
sanguine, like children, are impulsive ; they assimilate and express
predominantly through excess of nutrition, have quick reactions
but not deep or durable ones. In them slight incentives release
responses and prompt a brief sporadic strenuousness ; they crave
new excitements — ever up and doing — because old ones, having
spent their force, are dismissed and forgotten. They have a
short-lived budget of quick returns, but large ones. The budget
of the phlegmatic is perforce arranged on the opposite plan ; they
are living simply, even meagerly, with fewer needs, upon a fixed
capital; income and outgo are both reduced. The choleric bud-
get makes a fitful splurge, goes bankrupt, again expands on
slight capital, alternates between periods of normal and of ab-

NOTES TO CHAPTER V 547

normal activity — is irregular in its accounts. The nervous bud-
get is difficult mainly because of the adjustment in manner and
direction of expenditure; the mechanism of exchange is involved;
obligations are complex, and discharged uncertainly — some with
conscientious avidity, others with painful effort. The "budget"
view suggests a phase of temperamental regulation, but inade-
quately reflects the involved relations. The budget here con-
cerned deals in quality. Face-values are not decisive; the influ-
ences that maintain values above and below par are complex.
The budget is real; mental output is conditioned by physiological
supplies. But the condition is only one of many, and in many
cases a subordinate consideration. The quality of the product is
an inherent complication.

Note 8, page 267. The advantage of the term Anlage is
that it implies, as no English word in common use adequately
suggests, the aptitude in terms of sensory or intellectual power
along with the emotional disposition, inclination, susceptibility;
it might be rendered as "aptitude of disposition."

Kote 9, page 275. In simple hoarding the actual glitter
and weight and size of the piles of gold offer a tangible satisfac-
tion for which the contemplation of a bank-book is but a feeble
substitute. Yet gold and bank-account alike are socially and rep-
resentatively effective. Credit, and the repute of wealth, the
solace of thrift, the contrast with less fortunate fellow-men, be-
come the avenues through which self-assertion comes forward.
Furthermore, it is the inability of other appeals to gain a hearing
and thus reduce the indulged satisfactions to a proper place in the
perspective of values, that makes possible the trait of niggardli-
ness. The sources of the tendencies that make for thrift and the
tendencies that make for extravagance have each a place in orig-
inal nature, and may be directed to a valuable motive in the
social life. Most of us are saved from miserliness by the merely
partial hold which any one trend exercises in the composite
psychic regulation. We are all susceptible to the satisfactions of
thrift, and practice petty economies that are more serviceable in
giving a sense of satisfaction and in correcting the natural ex-
travagance of reckless unconcern, than in their true thriftiness.
In cultured and disciplined persons ideals direct the adjustment,
and establish a rational perspective of motives to replace impulses.

548 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

We may indulge the hoarding trait by collecting anything from
postage-stamps up or down, and give such interests a deeper hold
on our energies and attention than their intrinsic worth merits;
but in so doing we present the redeeming quality of a disinter-
ested motive, an "amateur" love of the pursuit and its object,
that makes the bare expression of acquisitiveness in the two cases
a merely incidental resemblance. The diagnosis must reach psycho-
logical realities and appraise symptoms by their place in such a
systematic interpretation. Symptoms derive their significance from
the complex in which they are set. It is such setting and propor-
tion that makes them innocent or dangerous, significant or trivial.

Note 10, page 278. Studies of this nature have extended
applied psychology toward the "vocational" analysis of endow-
ment. For the groundwork of musical capacity see Seashore on
the "Measure of a Musician" in "The Psychology of Daily Life"
(Conduct of Mind Series). Compatibilities are quite as likely to
be generic as specific. The psychology of painters and that of
musicians overlaps in so far as both are expressions of the artistic
endowment; they diverge in the media of their expression and
accordingly in the proficiencies of endowment. It is the contrast
of endowment between musician or painter and that of captain of
industry or military leader that is fundamental in the direction of
specialization. See Dauriac: "Psychologic du Musicien" (1891);
Feiss : "Genealogie und Psychologic der Musiker" ; Arreat : "Psy-
chologic du Peintre" (1892).

Note 11, page 287. The senses of smell and taste contribute
but modestly to the intellectual callings. Their chief role is in
the appreciation of the composite zests of life ; their direction of
appetite is typical. They help to shape the satisfactions of exist-
ence, the euphoria of being. Good appetite and good digestion
make for sanity of mind as well as of body; the control that en-
joys their wholesome activity yet releases from too tyrannical a
dependence, is the established normal relation, the product of a
trained will. Esthetic sensibility is distinctly enriched by its
olfactory flavor. Individual differences in these respects are most
difficult to formulate; they shade over into idiosyncrasies and
caprice. Variability is proverbially recognized in the statement
that tastes differ. Psychology does not give up the hope of ac-
counting for them.

NOTES TO CHAPTER V 549

Note 12, page 297. The standardized tests of mature at-
tainment are largely of an academic status, the things that edu-
cated persons of certain stations are expected to know or to be
able to do; that is, they test familiarity and a certain power of
acquisition under encouragement and instruction. The experimen-
tal method aims so far as possible to eliminate or allow for this
element by testing the power to form new acquisitions — reactions
to the unfamiliar — also to find collateral evidence in the rate and
manner of acquisition. A significant clew lies in the prompt and
efficient transfer from the solution of problems by the method of
trial to the method of rational insight into principles.

Tests for normal development and the determination of the de-
gree to which backward or defective children are retarded (Binet-
Simon tests) reflect both capacity and familiarity. These tests
are empirical and must be presented in terms that are readily un-
derstood. The fact that they yield useful differentiations shows
that even data of this order may be valuable under proper inter-
pretation.

A more specific difficulty should be noted. When an answer
to a question is ready because the data are familiar, the solution,
which is the test, is of one psychological status; when ready,
despite the unfamiliarity, it is evidence of a different psycho-
logical proficiency. If I have once been taught the solution or
told the answer, I merely recall it when put to the test ; by direct
or indirect clew I remember; memory is, then, the quality chiefly
tested. If I work it out freshly without aids, my logical capacity
is tested. Once more the inference of capacity from achieve-
ment becomes uncertain. We do not doubt that college seniors
have larger intellectual proficiencies than freshmen; yet most
seniors would have difficulty in passing their entrance examina-
tions. And the specific difficulty still applies; that the qualities
constituting the progress may be put down as intellectual without
indicating their type. In brief, capacity and attainment move in
overlapping and yet dissimilar orbits ; furthermore, while we may
devise tests to show what individuals can do or what they know,
the tests are adequate only when they indicate as well how they
do it and by what steps the knowledge is sustained, the process
carried on.

Note 13, page 303. The limitations of the programme of in-

550 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

dividual psychology on the emotional side are quite as marked
and of a similar nature. The laboratoiy tests cannot supply the
proper situations to engage or test the strength and quality of
emotion as it is effective in conduct ; for this nothing less real and
less adequate than the situations of life itself suffices. Psycho-
analysis is an experimental method that aims at once to deter-
mine the intellectual play of psychic elements in general and of
their emotional hold specifically. For the most part emotional
trends are included in the survey of individual nature by the
method of the questionaire asking for self-analysis, or by the
method of observation and impression or judgment of the compe-
tent observer. No measure of a man is at all complete or funda-
mental which does not fully recognize the standard importance of
this aspect.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI

Note 1, page 304. The field of mental abnormality has been
studied mainly in the interests of mental disease; abnormal psy-
chology attempts an interpretation of the abnormal phenomena —
in part common to psychiatry and in part distinct — for the inter-
ests of psychology. It emphasizes the minor deviations in dis-
position and in psychological manifestation, and looks upon the
grosser disorders as the terminal issues of trends related to the
liabilities of the normal. The human mind is subject to dis-
tinctive forms of loss and impairment by reason of the natural
demands made upon the psychic endowment, and of the complex
systems of impulses which it harbors to meet them. Its failures
and aberrations are significant to the psychologist; hence the in-
terest in the abnormal tendencies of mind, which forms the sub-
ject of this chapter. Such tendencies are set within the normal
range of variation; and the interpretation embraces both the in-
cipient tendencies and the extreme issues.

Note 2, page 305. A peculiarly instructive illustration is
that of the periodical fluctuation in the mental life of women in
direct response to a rhythmical physiological liability. The emo-
tional tone, the mental impressionability, the self-control, the ener-
gies, vary characteristically at such periods; even crimes and sui-
cides and offenses against the social order show a striking increase

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 551

in relation to this aggravating organic factor of instability. "A
woman always lives on the upward or downward slope of a
curve ; men, though likewise not uniformly at their best or at their
worst, live more on a level of efficiency. The susceptibility to
abnormal mental disturbances in women is organically related to
the periodic factor and to the reproductive function of which it
is the primary expression." See Havelock Ellis: "Man and
Woman," chapter XI.

It is because the sexual factor is more pervasive and more im-
perious (as well as organically more distinctive) in the feminine
cycle that its liabilities at critical periods are fraught with greater
risks. Here belong the wayward lapses of adolescent hysteria;
here belong also the abnormal liabilities of the later period of
sexual wane, the significance of which is so commonly overlooked.
In every large community there occur baffling instances to which
this factor supplies the clew. It may be the case of the mother
of an only child who develops delusions regarding her son's pecca-
dillos, falls for some months into a true melancholia, and in due
course recovers. It may be the case of a highly esteemed, capable
mother of a family who develops the delusion that a bachelor of
mature years is paying undue attention to her. Or it may be the
case of an unmarried woman who magnifies the congenial interest
of a male associate in intellectual or other enterprise into an im-
plied, more serious attention. In yet other cases there occurs a
period of reckless extravagance for finery or other forms of dis-
play, or of restless dissatisfaction with interests hitherto absorbing
and adequate, without marked irregularity, yet distinctly verging
upon the abnormal. What is significant throughout is the subtle
invasion of the psychological realm, wherein the accredited traits
of character are displayed, by a deep-seated physiological unrest,
whose surface tendencies are apt to attach themselves with some
measure of accident to one or another phase of the emotional life,
and through such attachment to disguise their true origin. Of
similar import are the sporadic hysterical incidents in late ado-
lescence— a single kleptomaniac outbreak, a single venture in the
field of improprieties — in an otherwise normal life.

Note 3, page 311. A distinction must be drawn between de-
privation of the convenient avenues of sense-discrimination re-
sulting in blindness or deafness, which involve substantially no in-

552 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

herent defect of sensibilities so far as their reports reach the
brain, and the subnormal reception of such messages for which
the instruments of transmission may be fairly normal. The blind
and deaf, despite their handicap, attain a development in all es-
sentials parallel to that of the seeing and hearing, though they re-
flect in their derivative qualities the issues of their deprivations.
The feeble-minded are cut off from all but a small measure of de-
velopment. It is thus evident that the mental impressionability
and responsiveness form the basal qualities of the nervous en-
dowment that make or mar the possibilities of development; they
use the sense-equipment in this process, in turn adjusting employ-
ment to endowment. It is accordingly an extreme subnormality
of nervous sensibility — not of sensory function — that is to be con-
sidered as vital. It is this fundamental defect, or its distorted
relation, that constitutes idiocy, doubtless conditioned by a specific
organic abnormality of the nervous system. See Goddard : "The
Kallikak Family" (1912), and Goddard: "Feeble-mindedness"
(1914).

Note 4, page 312. The psychology of minor mental defect
is beginning to receive a more careful attention. Backwardness,
arrest of development, premature decline as well as simple stu-
pidity are phases of its appearance. Surveys of children of
school-age indicate that at least two in a hundred are feeble-
minded ; and presumably three, four, five, or six in every hundred
are subnormal to such a degree as to remove them from full par-
ticipation in the training provided for the average mind. By the
law of distribution of mental qualities, it follows that for every
distinctive case of defect, there must be several times as many
cases of less pronounced deficiency of the same order. It is thus
established that a considerable number of the persons employed
in the simpler occupations are mentally below par; the arrange-
ments of life must be simplified, or even made "fool-proof," to
permit of their adjustment to them, much as the sheltered environ-
ment of an institution is alone possible for the truly feeble-
minded. It is not so much the democratic distribution of stupid-
ity or its relation to the strain of the environment that is here
pertinent as the insight into its nature. Mere insensibility is in-
volved; likewise lack of observation, feeble impressionability,
shortness of memory, inability to hold much at a time in the mind,

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 553

limited interests, a mechanical responsiveness, disregard of dif-
ferences, lowered energies, are all factors in the psychology of
stupidity, in the complex that makes the mental movement stale,
flat, and unprofitable. The liabilities of defect mingle with those
of distortion; they thus complicate the types of mental impair-
ment and disability and make the analogy between the pronounced
forms of disease and the deviating trends of temperament uncer-
tain and limited. The fact that development may proceed nor-
mally to a given point and then disclose its inherent limitations
or abnormal taint, is shown in cases of childish precocity and
peculiarity, promising marked if uncertain intellectual capacities,
which at adolescence reveal their true basis in a deviation that
then turns to what is substantially a high-grade feeble-minded-
ness.

Note 5, page 314. In the typical choleric action, it is not
the bare excess of action but as well the limitation of the type
of action and attitude which it favors, that makes it choleric.
The excess and the limitation go together. Moreover the same
type of issues — violent explosions of anger, and of other primary
personal emotions like grief, passion, hatred — are such catholic
forms of psychic excitement that they may appear in any tem-
peramental setting. Hysterical persons give way to outbursts
that are choleric. Yet when the energetic and expansive disposi-
tion directs the enterprise, the choleric outburst is more typical;
this in the extreme is in line with the maniacal symptoms. Like
symptoms occur in different temperamental liabilities.

The dominance of action on the sanguine basis is again to be
differentiated from the action of choleric type. A differently dis-
posed range of sensibility underlies it. Excitement, folly, wild
oats, extravagance, and the open temptations of sport, venture,
contagion, together with a limited sway of the restraining moral,
intellectual, esthetic considerations, give the setting under which
the liability to excess operates. It may be akin to mere weakness
of character; it may be low taste and vulgarity. It is the
formula of intoxication acting upon favoring disposition, in
which the exuberance of ready action invites, and excitement
further leads on, and restraints are by nature weak. Vigor is
itself a temptation as well as a resource, as weakness may be a
protection against excess. The manner of expression of the

554> CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

excited (erethic) temperament is likewise characteristic, and em-
phasizes the optimistic trend of the energetically endowed.

Note 6, page 316. Dr. G. R. Wilson in Journal of Mental
Science, Jan., 1892.

Note 7, page 317. Such terms as sensitiveness, perception,
imagination, are readily transferred from the sensory to the
emotional field. "Sensitiveness" applies ordinarily to the sus-
ceptibility to the slight encouragement and disparagement of
self-esteem. The fine "touch" of the pianist combines both the
sensory and the emotional order of affect. Similarly, morbid sen-
sitiveness may be of the sensory order, as hyperesthesia of touch,
sensitiveness to sounds; but even in these cases the sensitiveness
is associated with the emotionally disturbing (or soothing) char-
acter. For the most part the quality that is involved in the ab-
normal tendencies is an emotional hyperesthesia in the realm of
the self-centered emotions.

Note 8, page 320. The types of normal temperaments and
abnormal disorders are but partly parallel. The term "diath-
esis" expresses the fact of an hereditary trend toward a certain
disorder. "Hysterical" is a term readily carried over from the
abnormal, where it originates, to the normal, where it expresses
a diathesis.

Note 9, page 323. The contrary statement is often made;
there is no real contradiction. With neurasthenia as a general
nervous disorder, hysteria becomes one of its varieties, and the
group as a whole, including hysteria, becomes more common in
women. Neurasthenia as a specific disorder is distinctly more
common in men. This is but one way of saying that when the
masculine nervous system breaks down, it tends to break down in
one way, the neurasthenic way; and when the woman's nervous
system breaks down, it breaks down in its typical way, the hysteri-
cal way. It seems far better to specialize the terms since they
represent divergent tendencies and sources. There are characteris-
tic phases in each as well as common liabilities : neurasthenia pros-
trates, hysteria tends to action. The phobias that paralyze, like
the fear of social contact, of open places, of contamination, are
neurasthenic; the manias, like kleptomania, or other inordinate
tendencies, are hysterical. The confusion is also due to the fact
that in concrete cases the two groups of symptoms overlap.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 555

Neurasthenics quite commonly exhibit some hysterical symptoms,
but may be free from them; the converse is true of hystericals.
Also hysteria in men assumes a neurasthenic color, neurasthenia
in women an hysterical color.

The prostration of the neurasthenic is the persistent obstacle in
the regaining of poise ; the vagrant uncertainty and sporadic lapse
of the hysterical marks the course of conquest. The neurasthenic
learns to become less alarmed and disturbed by the recurrence
of symptoms; the hysterical, fairly oblivious of symptoms, learns
to summon the greater resisting power of reacquired habits to
ward off periods of tense temptation. Both dispositions repre-
sent bad mental habits nurtured upon a nature offering positive
invitation to the formation of such vicious trends. Hysteria is as
much outgrown as cured. It leaves a scar, but a very different
kind of a scar from that of neurasthenia.

Note 10, page 326. The impediment may be more charac-
teristically a motor or a sensory one. The phobia, worry, self-
consciousness may dominate, or the difficulty become acute only
when action is demanded. A decided interference with intel-
lectual work may occur because of a subjective dwelling on the
articulatory images. In one such instance a lawyer could not
plead his cause because of the dominance in his consciousness
of the sound and "feel" of his own articulation. The manner
of psychic impediment varies widely; but it remains true to the
type, — namely, an overabsorption in the realm of sensibility and
emotion, a consequent hesitation and entangled action.

Note 11, page 328. Stammering and stuttering furnish
pointed examples of the inducing occasions of nervousness.
There are many persons disposed to this type of motor insta-
bility (and the most secure of speech hesitate under nervous ten-
sion) who have outgrown or conquered the impediment for ordi-
nary occasions; but in whom fatigue, strain, excitement, worry,
even the departure from established routine, will bring back the
trouble in slight or marked measure. In some cases the degree
of excitement that will induce it — and the degree of its presence
— becomes a reliable index of nervous condition, almost a diag-
nostic clew to nervous tone. Such specific irregularities demon-
strate how a physiological condition plays upon the most sensi-
tive and highly developed portions of the nervous mechanism.

556 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Note 12, page 330. It is undesirable to carry a point too
far; yet the fact that hysteria permeates to the minutest details
of expression, forms part of the conception. Thus the readiness
to use a louder, higher-pitched voice than is necessary, to laugh
more boisterously than convention approves and to be unable to
stop, to follow a statement with a slight guttural sound of ap-
proval, may readily reveal the hysterical tendency, because these
are all miniature instances of slight motor impulses overflowing
their confines; they show the absence of clear-cut, well poised
reactions. Of themselves they are trivial, but combined with
other symptoms they are corroborative. It is this type of diag-
nosis that leads to the early detection of abnormal tendencies, and
thus practically to treatment and prevention of more serious de-
velopments. It also differentiates one type of defect from others
allied to it.

Note 13, page 331. The naming of a temperament by the
risk which it entails has no other justification than the sugges-
tiveness of the term and its convenience; yet the procedure has
the special warrant that in the contemplation of the natural
liabilities, the distinctive qualities of the venture come to the
fore. The temperament is the positive reality, the condition of
achievement, and the neurasthenia is one of its risks made real.
The neurasthenic risk may be, yet need not be bound up with
an unusual degree of the valued qualities of the "nervous" tem-
perament. It will take but a slight oversensibility to precipitate
the disasters of neurasthenia or of hysteria when the powers
of resistance are slight, the heredity enfeebled. Many quite
ordinaiy minds succumb to neurasthenia; still more of the same
caliber to hysteria. The mode of their succumbing commonly
reflects the strain of their psychological nature. What re-
mains true and characteristic is that the neurasthenic risk ob-
tains in cases of sensitive adjustment to complex intellectual
situations, and that out of such sensitiveness may issue, and have
issued, the rarer and finer products of the human mind. Dis-
qualifications may come to many and in much the same terms;
for each has something to lose, and in such loss suffers similarly.
It is just this similarity of symptom under loss that is significant,
though not necessarily indicative of a like possession, boyond
the fundamental similarities of endowment.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 557

Note 14, page 331. The analogy in natural child-traits may
be summarized. Its foremost condition lies in the undeveloped
control. The irritability, the passionate anger, the quick changes
of mood, the ready forgetfulness, the caprice of taste and pre-
dilection, the guidance of action by feeling, the subjection to the
interests of the moment, the prompt fatigue, the need of new
stimuli, the eager absorption when occupied, the ready imagina-
tion, find a place in the earlier stages of mental growth, but in
their disproportionate development furnish the basis of hysteria.

Note 15, page 333. Hysterical tendencies, even if fairly
pronounced, are commonly remote from the disorders of hysteria
as standardized in the medical literature. The bodily symptoms
are important in diagnosis. Hysterical patients may present
areas of anesthesia often strictly defined, or curious limitations
of vision. Paralyses may be present that show their psychic
origin by their disappearance under distraction, and their limi-
tation to actions requiring voluntary control. Symptoms indicat-
ing disturbances of nutrition and circulation are common. With
these may be associated the tendencies in milder hysteria that
result in blushing, ticklishness, giggling, spasmodic action (hic-
cough, globus, choreic movement, uncontrollable tears and laugh-
ter). The interpretation of these symptoms varies; the point
at issue is whether they are primarily psychic in origin, forming
points of fixation in the physiology of disowned or marooned
phases of consciousness; or whether they are primarily physio-
logical and the actual instigators of the hysterical dissociation
in the mental realm. What is unmistakable is that organic fluc-
tuations and mental ones go together. The patient is in one
mental condition, is in one mood, is indeed one personality,
when the anesthesias or paralyses are present, and is another per-
sonality when they disappear; there may be several cycles of
such sensory and motor (psychic) defect, and concomitantly
with them shifts of personality, with different tastes, resources,
expressions. Characteristic are the rifts and bridges of memory
separating and yet bridging the several personalities. Such
manifestations, physiological and psychological, are the extreme
issues of hysterical disintegration. They seem remote from the
lesser liabilities, yet are connected by manifold resemblances
arguing a common source.

558 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

The dissociation which is responsible for a large range of the
symptoms may be imposed, accepted, encouraged, and even, it
has been sug;gested, assumed. Yet one must proceed cautiously.
As belief and make-belief, self-deception and intentional decep-
tion are often uncertainly divided, so may hysterical incidents
suggest one or the other interpretation. Yet the practical reality
of the conflicting state finds its evidence in the amnesias and
anesthesias, in the struggles and fusions that mark the course
of the disorder and its treatment. The hysterical nature of the
functional malady gives it a distinctive status in the abnormal
realm where truth and falsity, subjective and objective, lose the
ordinary sharpness of their boundaries.

It would lead too far afield to dwell more explicitly upon the
genesis of conflicting personality. In the extreme case it is the
depth of dissociation and its complete organization that is strik-
ing. The disruption is then disastrous in that it affects mem-
ories, tastes, attitudes, habits, social relations, conduct in all its
phases; divorce is impossible since both organized trends occupy
the same tenement of clay, are bound to the same nervous and
muscular system for their expressions. "Personality One" in-
dulges in tastes abhorrent to "Personality Two," plays pranks
by which the "Other" suffers, loses her property, plots her un-
doing, forgets her commissions, taunts her for remissness, ousts
her from the ascendancy momentarily gained, is bold where the
"Other" is shy, is strong where the "Other" is weak, is gay where
the "Other" is morose, is frivolous where the "Other" is sedate,
is conscientious where the "Other" is irresponsible, is kind where
the "Other" is spiteful. The evidence, though complex, is con-
vincing that the detached psychic cluster of trends and qualities
is organized about some central assertion of motive; that it is
partial in its invasion, handicapped in its composition, rebellious
in its attitude; and particularly that it is related to the dominant
or more stable consciousness in the manner of a subconscious
secession, and carries on a peculiar intercourse with it. It is this
intercourse that forms at once the clew to treatment and fusion
by a sort of psychical surgery, and establishes the entire com-
plex as a form of deep "suggestive" product similar to the
altered personalities that may be obtained in hypnosis, sleep-
walking, and allied trance-states. Altered, detached, warring,

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 559

handicapped personalities are brought into relation with the
many manifestations of hysteria, of cultural and historical sig-
nificance (oracles, witches, somnambules; victims of contagion,
tantrums, obsessions, delusions, etc.), and thus complete the inter-
pretation of extreme hysterical liability. The physiological
symptoms — anesthesia, pseudo-paralysis, loss of sensory or mo-
tor proficiencies, peculiar susceptibilities — deserve special con-
sideration and often afford a clew to the disorder. A brief re-
view of the subject together with the citation in abstract of
typical cases will be found in my volume on ''The Subconscious"
(1906), especially Part Two, Chapter V.

Note 16, page 334. The suggestion that hysterical natures
are such as incompletely mature, proposes the pertinent query:
What is implied in being psychologically adult? It is not so sim-
ple a question as it appears. On the intellectual side it implies a
ripening of powers of insight and application, and a command
of resources. One grows intellectually so long as his powers do
not begin to fail; the adult stage is launched when mature and
consistent purpose directs the enterprise. A writer may so out-
grow his earlier outlook (and he, or any of us, outgrows tastes
and inclinations) as to look upon his youthful writings as alien
to his present personality ; yet they formed a stage in his develop-
ment. Experience promotes the ripening medium; desire and
purpose support the mind's fruition. Fundamentally, to be
adult is mainly an emotional matter, a balance and poise of the
self-centering impulses. Allowances are made for childhood
and, in different terms, for youth, before the onset of years of
discretion. The undue persistence of the youthful fluctuations,
the belated coming to one's own, forms a significant factor in the
genetic life-history. Varying widely in its normal expression
through temperament, circumstance, opportunity, encouragement,
it assumes characteristic deviations in its abnormal course. The
hysterical temperament (though not it alone) is the persistently
youthful one, the dominantly adolescent character, the personality
that never grows up. Even the youthful appearance of the
more fortunately hysterical types impresses the observer; they do
not show their years. Such generalization is, however, hazard-
ous. There are fortunately normal ways of keeping young by
retaining wide interests, by richly sustained energies, by living

560 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

eagerly upon genuine sympathies; yet the gift is primarily a
temperamental asset and forms a compensation of the hysterical,
or more generally, of the nervous type. The view, accepted for
its suggestive value, yields as a conception of psychological ma-
turity, the attainment of that in which those hysterically handi-
capped conspicuously fail: the acquisition of a depersonalized
attitude, the pursuit of objective interests in life. To be "grown
up" means to achieve an adjusted poise of the self -centered emo-
tional economy, to have an objective system of interests and
activities, a reflective and independent outlook upon the world,
a sane and sobered view of self: to see life steadily and to see
it whole. Doubtless this is too exacting a criterion to be indis-
criminately applied; but with a charitable leniency in gauging its
fulfillment, it may serve to indicate the true nature of the matur-
ing process in complex individuals. In such manner does the
view of the abnormal reflect upon the understanding of the
normal mental life, and present the abnormal as a deviation from
its standard course or issue.

Note 17, page 335. In accord with such a view of the hys-
terical liability is the conclusion that a large number of "candi-
dates" for its snares successfully avoid them. Brilliant examples
of suppressed and controlled hysterical tendencies are available
for those who have the insight to discern them, or the necessary
confidence of their victims to entice the confession of the private
battle and the unrecorded victory. Possibly the most fortunate
of such temperamental victims are those who occasionally yield
to a rush of impulse, a passionate tantrum, a geyser-like out-
burst of pent-up tension, an emotional "jag," and then return
to periods of composure. But by its very temperamental set-
ting hysteria, even in its mildest form, is not apt to be simple,
not barely violent, but subtle, disguised, circuitous, evasive, elab-
orate. In trend it is abnormal, though a commonplace tempta-
tion. In the average nature, either because the emotional tide
does not run as strongly, or because the controlling dams are
built more solidly, adjustment ensues even to difficult crises,
though at the cost of severe effort. Hysterical tendencies are
as often overcome as expressed. Circumstance plays its part.
Vacancy of employment, the mischief that the devil of undisci-
plined impulse finds for idle hands or neurotic minds to do, may

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 561

tempt a repressed emotionalism to wayward expression, where
wholesome interests would drain the flow innocently. Undue
stress may overthrow the natural defenses, which are strong
enough to weather the ordinary storm. Overrestraint as well as
indulgence may precipitate disaster. Morality and the varied
checks that social organization erects in the interests of sanity,
have to reckon with the hysterical temperament. Character, the
embodiment of personality, is an achievement; consistency is a
jewel, yet a jewel, though not flawless, possessed by most and
unconcernedly worn. The hazard of hysteria is often present,
but successfully avoided. Many a personality owes its emergence
to the overcoming of the hysteria that threatened its undoing.
It may then continue to profit by the assets of its endowment,
and feel confident that the further career will be undisturbed by
the uncertainties of urgent impulse. Part of the compromise is
due to the waning of impulse consequent upon the settling
process of years.

Note 18, page 339. The argument and the evidence are in-
volved. The religions of lower culture abound in symbolic and
ceremonial expressions of the sex-relations from direct cult of
the passion to all manners of indirect usages reflecting its per-
vasive influence. As religion develops the institutional means of
exercising control over impulse, it becomes more refined and
spiritualized, but even in its highest stages reveals the strength
of the hold of the earlier ones. What is more significant to the
present argument is that a considerable portion of the expres-
sions upon which hysteria builds may also come forward in
religious interests and their expression. The psychology of con-
version and extreme religious devotion has been interpreted in
this light. Revivals, camp-meeting phenomena, spiritualistic
seances, the experiences of mystics, the selection of adolescent
maidens as oracles, certain aspects of the witchcraft delusion,
the growth of peculiar sects, the contagion of motor manifesta-
tions in ecstatic rapture or religious absorption, as well as minor
devotions and "possessions" have been reviewed as partial, way-
ward or complex outlets of hysterical tendencies. See Star-
buck: "The Psychology of Religion"; Hall: "Adolescence."
Though readily overstated, the thesis unmistakably includes a
real relation, which cannot be ignored in determining the nature,

562 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

the assets and liabilities, of the religious temperament and the
religious sentiment. The tendency to fanaticism and excess in
connection with so powerful and absorbing an emotional expe-
rience as religious feeling is the natural liability. The entire
series of experiences thus referred to forms an important con-
tribution to the data of abnormal psychology.

Note 19, page 345. One of the most remarkable examples
in recent times — remarkable because of its actual influence in
shaping the beliefs of a large constituency — is the role of fear
in the personal history of Mrs. Eddy and in the doctrines of
Christian Science, in which the "fear-thought" plays the part of
bogey. Mrs. Eddy's delusions were focused upon "malicious
animal magnetism," the product of her own abnormal brain. Of
this practice she accused others; the precautions which she exer-
cised to avoid its menace are typical of morbid fear, though her
mental vagaries have a more specific and complex basis. See my
article in Hampton's Magazine, 1911.

Note 20, page 349. The pathological aspects of the "love"
passion seem to come forward more characteristically in the ag-
gressive "jealousy" complex than in the subdued setting of ten-
derness and longing and devotion, though the latter also develops
a "complex" allied to the plaintive mood of sorrow and pity,
yearning and affection. It is suggestive that the one group of
emotions is congenial to the ancient setting of courtship as con-
quest, while the other places it in the modern atmosphere of per-
suasion, romance, and appeal. The challenge and the duel reflect
the hostility of anger; the rivalry motive appears in the saying
that all is fair in love and war. In the by-products that enter
into its abnormal expression, the two phases may merge or al-
ternate. Jealousy reflects the tender as well as the aggressive
source. Yet it seems to act more directly in feeding anger, and
in arousing the attacking impulse to action. Jealousy goes out
to the offending rival and to every aspect of his offending pres-
ence. It turns to hatred; it affiliates with vindictiveness and
revenge. The added pang that one's own loss should be another's
gain is the counterpart in the jealous setting of rivalry, of the
added zest of triumph that one's own victory should debase the
rival. Jealousy thus becomes a passion of violence and follows
the clew of anger. Merging with revenge, it feeds the fires of

NOTES TO CHAPTER Vl 563

feuds through generations of Montagues and Capulets. Even-
tually it is lost in hatred and prejudice that crowd out all other
considerations, and give rise to the emotional excesses of antag-
onism and persecution. The point of interest is the common
tendency of such passions to carry away the defenses of the
mind and lapse back to primitive violence of expression. The
result may also be expressed by saying that the "love" complex
and the "rivalry" complex, tli^ "anger^' complex and the "re-
venge and hatred" complex, have overlapping fields of applica-
tion. The fact that such developments may spread to a group,
and give rise to racial and social enmities gives them a momen-
tous place in the history of man's emotionalism in its pathological
phases.

Note 21, page 355. To cite a single instance: A medical
student experimenting with a dose of hashish was overcome by a
compelling sense of expansion of personal worth. His route
homeward from the scene of the experiment was by way of the
street-car; he felt impelled to remark to the conductor upon the
streng-th and the beauty of his own person, and advised the of-
ficial to eject the other passengers as unworthy to ride with so
august a personage as himself. He was able to reach his home
safely; the portal of the modest dwelling seemed grand, the set-
ting palatial, his wife a great lady. Then followed a series of
delusior\s of distorted rather than of exalted value; for the drug,
like most such "psychic" poisons, releases now one and now
another of the constitutent "centers" that jointly regulate feeling
and thought. Such abnormal liabilities are the issues of the se-
lective stimulation of the brain-centers, as the drug plays upon
the stops of the mind. The "psychic poison" weakens the checks
which the control of experience has gradually established, and in
so far leaves the higher centers, which are the custodians of
sanity, at the mercy of the direct stimulation of the lower ones.
It allays the critical powers to see things as they are, to use
memory, judgment, knowledge, for the control of impulse and
imagination. The loss of the muscular sense of effort and the
further loss of mental impediment and of moral hesitation are
allied, in that they represent different phases of control. In the
tirelessness of pursuit effort vanishes; the controls of desire are
dismissed, and the natural friction of fatigue is reduced. Mania

564 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

implies intensity of impulse, excitement, inconsiderate action or
illusory, contemplative satisfactions; monomania emphasizes the
narrowness of the mental movement. The critical adjustment
fades away. The pretense and the delusional state attract atten-
tion in the maniacal exaltation of insanity. The patient is to
himself a king, a man of might, controlling destinies, holding
dominion over hordes; the owner of fabulous wealth, extrava-
gant, indulgent, arrogant, honored, feared, splendid in mien and
manner; yet his surroundings are of the plainest, and he defers
to an attendant. The "alcoholic" behavior presents similar incon-
gruities in miniature.

Note 22, page 358. The significant aspect of degeneracy
of the atavistic trend biologically considered, is the strong asser-
tion of traits characteristic of lower stages of development.
The bad heredity of a defective stock appears in the inability
to meet the established standards of normality, in the succumb-
ing to primitive tendencies and unrestrained passion. The un-
remitting effort that is the price of social safety demands a cer-
tain standard brain-development to balance and restrain the older
tendencies of primitive man ; the reassertion of these in primitive
strength, with an inability to use the established cultural ma-
chinery for their adjustment to modern needs, constitutes the
defect. Insanity as well as criminality is conspicuous for the
degenerative trends which it exhibits; refinements disappear, sen-
sibilities are lost; there is a marked dropping to a lower plane
of existence. Degeneracy thus lays bare the underman, yet ex-
poses the undeveloped psychic powers to the stresses and strains
and temptations of a complex social system. It exposes the
old vices to new sins. It plays a large part in social pathol-
ogy.

Note 23, page 359. The pathological liabilities of the sex-
impulse in the warping of the mind are many-sided. The sub-
jection to the love-passion engenders an emotional erethism favor-
able to the abnormal. The imperiousness of its sway subordi-
nates all interests, judgment, restraint; in that way lies madness
as well as strength and inspiration. The relation to mental in-
stability, from aggravation of chronic liabilities to outbreaks
of pronounced insanity, sufficiently demonstrates the vital part
of sex in psychic determination. When sex monopolizes thought

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI 565

and motive, the victim of the monomania becomes the picture
of the enslavement that makes insanity, the degradation of the
psychic nature when reduced to one incessant round. The fur-
ther relations of sexual depravity and the morbid expressions of
the impulse to degenerative tendencies is likewise a notable factor
in its psychopathology. See Havelock Ellis: "Studies in the Psy-
chology of Sex."

Note 24, page 360. It is also characteristic that the ex-
pressions of abnormal emotionalism and of the sensibilities
underlying them may incorporate the acquired phases of the
sensitive life. On the one hand the loss of sensibility and the
lapse back to primitive, cruder, coarser tolerances and expres-
sions appears in the abnormality of defect; and on the other
hand the extremes of sensibilities and the harassing subjection
to the finer maladjustments appear in the excesses of neurasthenia
and hysteria. Of the acquired sensibilities, the attitude toward
pollution or taint, as the excess of the hygienic response, is char-
acteristic. The transfer of disgust, and the refinements of its ex-
ercise in the avoidance of unpleasant contacts, brings about a mor-
bid reaction — a constant fear of contamination, an incessant
washing of the hands, a suspicion of pollution. The sensory
basis combines with a sensitive emotional shrinking from the un-
pleasant: an hyperesthesia that resents even the contacts of ten-
derness, and may also develop in an atmosphere of self-accusa-
tion, or self-pity, and move toward the complex of a depressed
mood or of religious exacting overconscientiousness and sense of
unworthiness.

NOTES TO CHARTER VII

Note 1, page 369. Traits and their objects merge; if we
say that men are conceited and women vain, we may regard
the two as different expressions of the same trait — the desire for
esteem, and the satisfaction in its evidence, being the common
quality; or we may find it desirable to enumerate these traits as
distinct, because of the difference in expression. Traits must be
considered primarily as to their source, secondarily in relation to
their natural outlets in expression and the situations arousing
them.

566 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

Primitive stress emphasizes both the primarily human and pri-
marily "sex" traits, affording lesser play to the as yet feebly de-
veloped, derivative traits. Civilization tends to reverse the per-
spective by giving men and women larger ranges of (derivative)
conduct within which to express their distinctive trends. Other-
wise expressed, this means that primitive societies emphasize pri-
mary traits and through these the contrast of men and women;
but primitive men and women are strongly alike in the expression
of common primary traits. Civilized men and women are strongly
contrasted in the derivative fields.

Note 2, page 375. Anthropologists are not agreed upon the
positions of the patriarchal and the matriarchal dominance in the
evolution of societies. That such institutions, along with the
many other embodiments of social contrasts in the customs and
obligations of sex, express the inherent issues of the psychology of
masculinity and femininity, remains the common conviction. The
position of Thomas in "Sex and Society," is followed in the inter-
pretation here given.

Note 3, page 378. From the economic to the literary dis-
cussions of "woman's sphere," opinions vary widely; facts are
challenged by counterfacts, experiences and judgments favorable
opposed by contrary ones. Similar emotional judgments abound
in history and lead to adoration and idolatry of the feminine, and
to suspicion and denunciation as well as renunciation, to gallantry
and contempt, to prejudices crystallized in customs, that surround
and bind the expression of femininity, and lead to varied efforts to
secure emancipation from the (largely masculine) views and
standards. For a more systematic survey, see Gross: "Crim-
inal Psychology," pages 300 to 364; Haveloek Ellis: "Man and
Woman."

Note 4, page 379. Two modern American contributions to
religious movements present the contrast conspicuously: those of
Mrs. Eddy and of John Alexander Dowie. What is character-
istic is the personal form of expression: the constant leaning of
Mrs. Eddy upon the support of men, the passive acceptance of
a "mother-worship," the peculiar personal timidities, the absorp-
tion in a mystical-emotional phrasing of doctrine and a "sex" com-
plement of ritual; the bombastic vehemence of assertive denunci-
ation of Dowie, his bold ventures and large projects, his master-

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 567

ful dominance of men, and insistence upon personal influence
through threat, abuse, intimidation.

Note 5, page 381. The degree of confirmation of sex-differ-
ences to be expected of an experimental test among men and
women of the ordinary range of sensory, intellectual, emotional,
and volitional capacities may be said to be well met by the data
accumulated. Miss Thompson presents comprehensive data in
"The Mental Traits of Sex." The marked superiority of men
is in physical strength and the qualities of motor response as-
sociated with a greater muscular development and control;
women show a greater readiness in acquiring novel motor re-
sponses. The marked mental superiority of women is in mem-
ory. Minor differences in other fields occur, but leave undeter-
mined how far they result from the different educational tradi-
tions and stresses of men and of women. It is entirely to be
expected that in tests of facilities largely derivative in status,
the two sexes should show comparable proficiency. In a review
of recent literature {Psychological Bulletin, October, 1914) the
same author (Mrs. Woolley) finds corroboration of the more sig-
nificant differences in a fair proportion of the results. Sug-
gested generalizations are that girls develop more rapidly than
boys; that boys excel girls in rapidity of movements under fixed
attention, with the reverse the case when the attention is shifting;
that tactile and color sensibility are better in women, pressure-
sense (lifting) and sense of space-areas in men; that women
excel in rote memory, men are better in free associations, women
better in practiced systems; men somewhat excel in tests of
judgment and reasoning; in schools there are more accelerated
girls than boys, more retarded boys than girls; boys excel in per-
spective drawing and girls in decorative drawing. In a large
number of general and miscellaneous mental tests no significant
differences appear. See Havelock Ellis : "Man and Woman" (re-
vised edition).

Note 6, page 382. The greater -variational tendency of man
is a fact of the widest significance. Despite exceptions in de-
tails, the fact grows in certainty and scope since Darwin indi-
cated its import. The greater tendency to abnorihality — of de-
fect and excess alike — is a comprehensive expression of the qual-
ity. Its derivative consequences in the psychic nature are like-

568 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

wise momentous; in this respect also exceptions will occur in re-
gard to expressions of derivative status not closely connected
with primary significance. Psychologically the greater varia-
tional tendency of men, as likewise the greater conservative tend-
ency of women, radiates to every distinctive aspect of their con-
trasted natures and expressions. "The center of gravity is
lower in women and less easily disturbed." This is fundamen-
tally a biological, not a sociological or more narrowly political
distinction; the transference of the conception from the one
field to the other is hazardous, yet not impertinent, since the
divergent tendency is a major clew to the psychology of mascu-
linity. See the chapter in Havelock Ellis's "Man and Woman"
on "The Variational Tendency of Men."

Note 7, page 386. Any such characterization of feminine
psychology is so obviously eclectic that its only purpose is to
direct attention to the salient and typical distinctions, and thus
to suggest a correct perspective of interpretation. See Havelock
Ellis: "Man and Woman," especially the chapter on "The Af-
fectability of Woman."

Note 8, page 395. The origin of human races is bound up
with the origin of the human race in its divergence from a pre-
human ancestry. It has been suggested that along with the in-
crease in size of the simian ancestor and the tendency to descend
from his arboreal habitat, came an increased adjustment to the
vertical position; hence a larger skull and brain-mass could be
carried; the foot, losing its equal prehensibility with the hand,
could be shaped for adequate support, and the released hand
further specialized. Thus was man started on the career of
homo sapiens. In this view the differentiation of races is a mat-
ter of subordinate magnitude.

The dominance of a psychic order of adjustment in the human
kind appears saliently in contrast with that of the animal world.
If by some "sport" an individual of the intelligence of "Br'er
Rabbit" should really appear in a rabbit colony, he might profit
individually by his shrewdness, and extend his benefits slightly
to the group. The next generation of rabbits would be unaf-
fected by his exploits. Animals live more strongly upon their
group-qualities; their individualized expression remains merely
a fact of variation.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 569

Note 9, page 400. Civilization, ancient or modern, is not
the product of the genius of a single people. The historical
stages show the widest borrowing and mutual influence of cul-
tural products. The talent for rapid assimilation seems in this
view the determining trait, and in such adaptability may lie
a true source of racial emergence. The modem experience of a
highly evolved race meeting and dispossessing a primitive one
clearly presents a superlative contrast, whereas in primitive times
the degrees of superiority were decidedly more moderate, and
assimilation of the less developed race a far more likely issue
than extermination. If the negro stocks, which the North Amer-
ican and the South American nations have attempted to assim-
ilate by such divergent methods, and those which the white Mo-
hammedans of North Africa have incorporated, are comparable,
the vast importance of mode of treatment, of esteem or prejudice,
of intermarriage or exclusion from equality of opportunity, is
demonstrated. However strongly by personal inclination the
prepotency of the racial endowment — the elan vital of race —
is favored, the difficulties which that view encounters must be
faced. If it be argued that the half-century career of the en-
franchised negro in the United States could be no other than
it is by reason of his racial quality, other experiences must be
considered to offset this verdict. There are no direct means of
converting this contrast, however inevitable it may be, into terms
of differences of inherent racial ability. Galton is inclined to
judge races by their ability to produce great men. In this view
he places the Greeks of the fifth century before Christ as much
above the dominant races of to-day as the latter rank above the
Negro. The validity of the criterion is disputable.

Note 10, page 402. Thomas says: "It is probable that
brain efficiency [speaking from the biological standpoint] has
been, on the average, approximately the same in all races and in
both sexes since nature first made up a good working model, and
that differences in intellectual expression are mainly social rather
than biological, dependent upon the fact that different stages of
culture present different experiences to the mind, and adventi-
tious circumstances direct the attention to different fields of in-
terest." We shall thus be led to "reduce very much our usual
estimate of the difference in mental capacity between ourselves

570 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

and the lower races, if we do not eliminate it altogether; and we
shall perhaps have to abandon altogether the view that there has
been an increase in the mental capacity of the white race since
prehistoric times."

Note 11, page 403. "The European and Mongol have the
largest brains; the European has a small face and a high nose —
all features farther removed from the probable animal ancestor
of man than the corresponding features of other races. On the
other hand the European shares lower characteristics with the
Australian, both retaining in the strongest degree the hairiness
of the animal ancestor, while the specifically human development
of the red lip is developed most markedly in the negro. The
proportions of the limbs of the negro are also more markedly dis-
tinct from the corresponding proportions in the higher apes than
those of Europeans." (This citation, as well as the others in the
text, is from Boas: "The Mind of Primitive Man.") While other
writers make out a stronger case for the correlation of cultural
achievements with structural development, the case remains un-
certain at best. In such a view all traits are not of equal value;
the argument follows the more significant traits, but finds diffi-
culty in determining significance. The consideration of the order
of descent from the presumptive animal ancestor, might yield a
clew in the most generalized, least specialized human type; this
may be the less markedly colored (Mongolian) type, from which
the darker races (Negro) on the one hand, and the lighter races
(White) on the other, may have been differentiated in adapta-
tion to environment.

Note 12, page 404. Professor Boas presents a considerable
range of evidence for changes in bodily form of European-bom
and American-born emigrants of like racial affiliation — and that
for such different races as those of Southern Italy and the Jews
of Russia. The change suggests an approach to the American
type. In brief, the circumstances that affect variations also af-
fect variability, so that the fixity of structure loses much of its
unequivocal prestige. Mixture of races complicates the issue.
Pure races of whatever grade of capacity or culture may be more
uniform than mixed ones; we cannot observe like races under
radically different conditions, or unlike races under comparable
ones, nor in so doing correlate the contrast more with the factor

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 571

of race or more with that of condition. We must also remember
that physical qualities, no less than mental ones, require the
differentiation between factors determined primarily by inheri-
tance, and factors largely amenable to environmental stress.
Even so apparently structural a character as height, or propor-
tion of skull, may receive its more definite impress (which deli-
cate measurements reveal) at a relatively late stage of develop-
ment. This would mean that the heredity brings the structure
in a more or less plastic determination to the stage at which it
is subject to the play of condition. The laws of physical
heredity and the variations due to them serve as suggestive clews
for the interpretation of the parallel relations in the mental
world; but the special conditions affecting the latter alone re-
main decisive in the argument here followed.

Note 13, page 405. This is one of the cases in which we
can, in a measure, offset the argument of race by that of en-
vironment as represented by climate. There is a fair range of
evidence that the inhabitants of tropical and semi-tropical climates
mature earlier than those of temperate and frigid ones. But
race seems to outweigh climate; for the primitive inhabitants of
the arctic regions show a comparable precocity of function with
those of the South and a contrast with the cultured peoples of
the North. The fact seems to throw the decisive influence back
upon the stress of the habit of life. Furthermore, the data for
gauging precocity vary considerably in their availability and may
have a variable significance; those most commonly employed are
the appearance of sex maturity in girls, the age of walking in
children, the onset of the infirmities of years.

Note 14, page 406. The one type is furnished, as nearly as
conditions approximate, by the Chinese. With a high racial
unity and a distinctive cultural expression, the Chinese for many
generations developed an independent national life. In that
consummation the great masses of the people appear to show a
fairly stagnant, limited, mediocre endowment. That much of
this expression was due to an imposed conservative system can-
not be doubted; that the race was able to produce leaders who
could maintain the system and organize it as well as direct the
large intellectual and technical progress under it, is also estab-
lished. Yet in recent years the evidence that the Chinese mind

572 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

could adopt a western point of view and go forward rapidly in its
application, came with a sense of surprise. The ready conclusion
that the Chinese were an inferior race had to be revised. Ac-
customed to our own standards of expression, we appreciate the
mental endowments of other peoples only when they turn to
similar ends by similar means. Professor Thomas's statement
may be added in corroboration.

"The Chinese afford a fine example of a people of great nat-
ural ability letting their intelligence run to waste from lack of
a scientific standpoint. As indicated above, they are not defec-
tive in brain weight, and their application to study is long con-
tinued and very severe; but their attention is directed to matters
which cannot possibly make them wise from the occidental stand-
point." He adds prophetically: "But when this people is in
possession of the technique of the western world — a logic, general
ideas and experimentation — ^we cannot reasonably doubt that
they will be able to work the western system as their cousins,
the Japanese, are doing, and perhaps they, too, may better the
instruction."

The opposite type of instance is furnished by the Jews. An
unorganized, scattered people, living among scores of different
nations under wholly different institutional conditions, yet main-
taining a high degree of racial purity through restrictive mar-
riage traditions, they present a rare approximation to the scien-
tifically desired status. What distinctive qualities they have
must be largely racial. Individually and in groups, the expres-
sion of such racial traits comes under the influence of the several
environmental conditions and ideals, to which, however, they
bring the superimposed capacities and distinctive ideals, which
they have maintained in a spiritual medium of culture with-
out outward embodiment. There can be no doubt that the racial
capacity of the modem Jew is of a high order — in the broad
terms of the present comparison, of an unmistakably higher or-
der than obtains among most, if not all, of the peoples among
which this race has found a dwelling place. Their history is
long; their conditions have, with few exceptions, been unfavor-
able, frequently overwhelmingly so. To have maintained them-
selves against such severe hostility, such heavy cultural odds, is
itself an evidence of superiority. Taken in its ensemble the his-

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 573

tory of the Jew forms the most convincing evidence of the po-
tency of race — an evidence the more convincing by reason of the
varied types of excellence which the members of this race have
displayed when opportunities were favorable.

Note 15, page 407. In his study of noteworthy fam-
ilies derived from about four hundred members of the Royal So-
ciety, Galton finds that to have a father thus distinguished makes
one's own chance of being "noteworthy" 24 times as great as
that of the average individual without such notable kin; with a
brother thus noteworthy, the chances rise to 31 times as great
as those of the undistinguished average; for a grandfather they
fall to 12, for an uncle to 14, for a male cousin to 7. Ob-
viously no special significance attaches to these precise numbers;
they express approximately a relation of hereditary intimacy.
The degree of noteworthiness of this group, though not extra-
ordinarily high, is high enough to be recognizable; it carries an
even great directness of application because the qualities con-
cerned are so closely related to the common bases of the group-
traits of men.

The intimate as well as the specialized nature of the heredi-
tary factor appears in the comprehensive resemblances of those
most closely sharing a common inheritance — brothers, sisters,
and most of all, twins — and the dominance of a common trend in
the family heredity, however variable the traits of the individual
members in other respects.

Note 16, page 410. The psychology of the "genius" group
has developed a notable literature. Facts are accessible in re-
gard to illustrious and eminent men which are not ordinarily
available for average persons, unless specifically collected for
comparative study. The view that the man of genius is an "ab-
normal" variation does not indorse the notion that "genius" is a
disease, nor does it regard insanity as the mental condition which
holds the clew to its comprehension. Insanity is significant as
the risk that is run; it is the "Nemesis" of genius, but nothing
more. Feeble-mindedness and genius, statistically considered,
present common traits, the clew to which is again in essence that
they represent abnormal variations. Both are more common in
the male ; both are more common in the eldest and in the youngest
child (son) ; both are more commou in children born to parent^

574 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

with considerable discrepancy of age; both show an uncommon
percentage of weakly infancy; both show a difficulty in achieving
ordinary adjustment to the average situation. Like every tem-
perament, its fortes must be paid for in risks and defects. The
general position of Mr. Havelock Ellis ("A Study of British
Genius"), from whose work are cited several of the above con-
clusions, is particularly to be commended.

Note 17, page 411. In regard to the hereditary factor in
the genesis of crime, Lombroso is so convinced of the abnormality
of the criminal class as to regard every physical variation which
the class presents as a sign of degeneracy ; he forgets how common
are the same types of stigma and variations in the normal, or at
least, the non-criminal classes. The truer view places in the first
order of consequence the fact of defect — which is unmistakably
hereditary — and looks upon the crime as a significant incident in
the ensemble, a direct issue of the defective character. The hered-
itary affiliations of such defect are particularly well established.
The experiment of contrast is shown in the case of the "Kallikak"
family; for the progenitor of this stock presenting such a heavy
criminal and defective record, has also a legitimate posterity, which
is normal and includes many examples of creditable achievement.
Statistically expressed, in the illegitimate line of descent there
were 143 of 480 persons known to be feeble-minded, and only 46
known to be normal (the rest unknown) ; in the legitimate line,
of 490 persons all were normal so far as records are available.
Of 41 matings in which both parents were feeble-minded, there
were 222 feeble-minded children and only two ranked as normal.

Recent investigations indicate that under favorable circum-
stances it is possible to obtain a statistical demonstration of the
hereditary character of such a quality as a "bad temper." It
comes forward in the mass of contributory factors to social way-
wardness and iiregularity of conduct. Similarly, good and bad
qualities alike show the strong tendency to "run" in families when
adequate data are available. Sir Francis Galton showed the
"run" of like qualities in prominent English families. Mr.
Woods has carefully shown the parallel conclusion among royal
families, indicating further the correlation of mental and moral
qualities of good and bad type. Sommers has traced through
several generations the reappearance of special strains of ability.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 575

Such conclusions suggest how very different would be the natural
history of "John Smith," if he had happened to be a Hapsburg
or a Bach, a Soldan or an Edwards. The family strain, in its
determination of the dominance of qualities, determines the group
to which the individual belongs by virtue of similar traits,
whether of bad temper or criminality, of musical ability or men-
tal or moral superiority. See F. A. Woods : "Mental and Moral
Heredity in Royalty" (1906); Robert Sommers: "Eamilien-
forschung und Vererbungslehre" (1907).

Note 18, page 412. Within the field in which native trends
and applied proficiencies combine, group-traits of any desired
degree of refinement may be distinguished. It would be possible
to develop a "group-psychology" of any of the professional or
industrial classes : of doctors or lawyers, of professors or minis-
ters, of bankers and officials, of artisans and craftsmen, of clerks
and subordinates, of day-laborers and odd-job men; or, adding
the environmental conditions, of farmers and villagers, of cosmo-
politan and provincial, of seamen and landsmen, of mountain folk
and dwellers on plain or seaside, of North and South, of equable
and changeable climates, in deserts or in fertile lands, of woods-
men and ranchmen, of the frontier and the old-settled regions ; or
considering the further complications of the intellectual heritage,
of aristocracy and bourgeoisie, of extreme conservative economic
regulation and the free opportunity of newer democracy or colo-
nial development, of pious orthodoxy or liberal tolerance of belief,
of the educated and the uneducated, of the poor and the rich or the
favored middle classes, of the ambitious struggling climbers and
the arrived settled possessors of station. All these groups have
among themselves something in common ; and although the classi-
fications cross one another's tracks and yield varied composites
of allegiance, they are subject to a moderately definite delineation.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

Note 1, page 417. Statements so summary are inevitably
partial. Selection is exercised by the environment, by sex, by
social forces. Survival stands closer to sex-selection. The fact
that this is not freely exercised but itself comes under the sway
of custom and tenet and the stratification of society, gives its
operation an uncertain trend. In the extreme case — as amongst

576 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

seals — the males are gradually eliminated by successive combats,
and the pugnacious victor becomes the progenitor of the rookery.
Valor is thus given a supreme reproductive advantage. As an
opposite extreme amongst human kind, there may arise an order
of voluntary celibacy which would leave the future to those un-
affected by its appeal. In high-grade communities in which in-
dividual worth has a larger value for the social status, quality
comes to its own; small families of high quality may offset re-
productive vigor. The argument of the birth-rate is always final,
and the question of what persons are to be bom no less so; but
in the actual complexities of modern life the play of these bio-
logical forces is so largely redirected by sociological ones, that the
bearing of the argument is altered as well as complicated. Eu-
genics sets an explicit ideal to the goal of selection.

Note 2, page 420. "Let us remember that practically noth-
ing of invention, art, literature, science or constructive leadership
has come from the untold millions of our own race who have been
bom and bred and spent their languid lives within the torrid heat.
. . . This uncounted toll of the dull, monotonous never-ending
heat — how different would history have been had our race been
born to withstand its merciless suppression." (A. G. Mayer: "A
History of Tahiti," in Popular Science Monthly, Feb., 1915.)

For a presentation of the data indicating the statistical fluctu-
ations of mental processes under meteorological changes, see Dex-
ter : "Weather Influences : An Empirical Study of the Mental and
Physiological Effects of Definite Meteorological Conditions."

Note 3, page 426. In the plant world the analogy of proc-
ess diminishes; the more radical measure of selective control
emphasizes a common factor in the transformation of qualities.
As man finds the seeds in the "natural" orange inconvenient, he
alters their arrangement and grows a navel orange. In the cac-
tus the spininess is in the order of nature a plant virtue; for
human edible use it is a nuisance (which Mr. Burbank accordingly
eliminates) and is such because the plant's mode of protection ap-
plies against man as well. Similarly, hardy varieties, late and
early blooming varieties, may be developed in adaptation to cli-
mates. To breed a "shyless" horse offers a more complex prob-
lem; nature might accomplish it with or without human aid.
Fearlessness and hardiness in human kind are similarly qualities

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 577

that may be selected and encouraged ; but they at once encounter
a far more complex range of qualities with which they must con-
tend. The medium of enforcement and encouragement becomes
predominantly psychological, the similarly efficient agency being
of human origin. Men cannot be changed so quickly nor so
radically as plants, not alone because removed from the possi-
bility of experimental breeding, but because of the vast compli-
cation of human qualities and of the varied play in the mainte-
nance of normal adjustment.

"In the same way the exigencies of natural selection and of hu-
man need have divided the qualities inherent in the equine race
between the hardihood of the Shetland pony, the strength of the
Clydesdale or Shire horse, and the speed and mettle of the thor-
oughbred racer. No one animal could possess the qualities of
all three." — Whetham.

Note 4, page 430. Human nature in its general outlines re-
ceived its set at an early period; the brain as its instrument was
evolved slowly, but in all essentials reached a stage comparable
to its present endowment, when the prehistoric ancestor acquired
human traits. "It is probable that brain efficiency (observed
from the biological standpoint) has been, on the average, ap-
proximately the same in all races and in both sexes, since nature
first made up a good working model ; and that differences in intel-
lectual expression are mainly social rather than biological, de-
pendent upon the fact that differentiations of culture present dif-
ferent experiences to the mind, and adventitious circumstances
direct the attention to different fields of interest." — Thomas.

From the environmental aspect the varied cultural products
emphasize the divergences of race, while yet the fixity of culture
stamps the acquisitions with the security of tradition and by that
very process lowers the capacity to respond to other invitations.
It thus makes a great difference in the final contrast of races
whether the intellectual capacities actually present were exercised'
in a favorable direction, or were wasted in false leads and in sat-
isfying the requirements, even the restrictions and oppressions of
tradition. Such considerations project the individual quality as
a mastery over the environment, a refusal to yield to circum-
stance whether in the form of fortune or convention. The as-
sertive dominance of primitive regulation made such emergence

578 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

difficult; the single fact of tribal allegiance determined the entire
life, regulated its every significant act and issue.

Note 5, page 431. This is clearly not the whole of the story.
The persistence of "undesirable" traits in the human kind —
partly also in the higher animals — results from the uncertain re-
lease of impulse in complex situations, and the resultant conflict
among the contending impulses for the mastery. If it be urged
that the one set of impulses represents tendencies more closely
related to primitive condition, and the other tendencies artificially
nurtured by education, the argument returns to the influence of
environment in retiring or reenforcing traits.

Note 6, page 434. The classic example in the field of ora-
tory is the address of Marc Antony: at first allaying distrust,
then covertly inviting sympathy, later appealing for support, and
at the last arousing to rebellion. Political shrewdness has been de-
veloped largely upon a practical mastery of crowd-psychology,
favored by mass meetings and the collective method of conduct-
ing a campaign. The catering to the prepossessions of the people
is the generally acknowledged instrument of persuasion, whether
in seeking political favor, in selling goods, in enlisting interest,
in overcoming opposition of any type. It is as much at the serv-
ice of the promoter and the "confidence man" as of the reformer
and worthy advocate. Yet the psychology of persuasion like the
psychology of advertising (which is one of its aspects) develops
specialized techniques according to the type of response aimed at,
and yet more distinctively according to the phases of response
represented by the particular character — which comes to mean the
reaction to the social environment — of those to whom the appeal
is addressed.

Note 7, page 439. "It is because persons belonging to the
same race have certain definite characters in common that they
are capable of thriving in the same conditions of climate, in the
same mental and moral atmosphere, of undertaking the same
class of labor, of resisting the same diseases." (Whetham:
"Heredity and Society.") The application of the argument, as
of the fact which it expresses, is twofold: it indicates the basis
upon which the differentiation of class has proceeded, each doing
best that which it is called upon to do in the' increasing differen-
tiation of social needs; and it indicates that the environmental

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 579

collective forces are also responsible for the specific expression of
the needs, the mental and moral atmosphere, even the orders of
labor which win distinction and reward. That the responsibility
is referable to such influences rather than to the adjustment to
climate and resistance to disease, is obvious, and further empha-
sizes the distinctive relations of cause and effect that apply to the
psychological environment.

Note 8, page 440. The individual response sets a condition
to the action of the psychic environment. Primary in develop-
ment is the direct gregarious susceptibility, the tendency to take
on sympathetically the mood of others; cumulatively there arises
the emotional contagion that is characteristic of children and so
readily takes hold of a crowd to its enthusiastic uplift or its
temporary undoing. A popular charitable subscription or a pub-
lic indignation meeting, even a mob on lynching bent, in so far as
feeling runs high, proceeds upon a common psychological nature.
Such social responsiveness is as primary for the collective mind
as for the individual component. Upon a like basis there ap-
pears the imitativeness which is the expression of the like trend
in the intellectual field. In mature and calm situations a truer
and more conscious sympathy arises which is more in the way
of an acquisition and is fostered by precept and influenced by
example. It combines with suggestibility, docility, educability,
all of which are thus the instruments of adaptation, yet by no
means to the extinction of desire, rather as a guide to its ex-
pression, and a medium for its application.

The individual is sensitized to the psychic environment by his
sensitiveness to the esteem and good opinion of others. This
personal reaction directs the spirit of conformity, yet does so
with the cumulative force of other allied motives and tendencies
which are equally an integral part of the (social) human nature.
The transfer of traits is involved, the earlier helplessness, com-
placency, suggestibility are carried over to more mature and so-
cial situations; similarly the esteem nurtured in the sex-relation
is carried over to relations in general, and gives the feminine ex-
pressions of conformity to the collective sanction a peculiar
flavor. The environment supplies the unfolding impulses with
appropriate objects, substituting the fear of infringement for
the fear of pain, the satisfaction of approbation and compliment

580 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

for the satisfaction of direct sensory pleasure. The environment
determines what it is that one is proud of, though ever along the
line of the natural incentives of pride. The sense of conformity
may thus be presented as very complex development of the social
consciousness of the individual, reflecting each and all of its
varied stages. The individual is not a savage and society is not
a mob, largely because society can surround the individual with a
traditional system of restraints and guidance.

Note 9, page 444. The expression of ideals and sentiment
through dress is interesting. The garb of religious orders is
characteristic ; in the garb of monk or nun it becomes a sign of a
life of renunciation. It may be refined to the cut or the black-
ness of the cloth, or find its last vestige in the whiteness of a
necktie. It may express a protest against the vanity of dress in
the gray garb of the Society of Friends (Quakers). The use
of dress for class distinctions as well as an evidence of official po-
sition is still current, and in a democratic society open to pro-
test as well as approbation. The same conventional evening-
dress is worn by the guests and by the waiters; the dress is a
livery or a symbol of social adequacy, according to the manners
of the wearer. In many parts of the United States housemaids
refuse to wear a cap, while trained nurses accept it as an hon-
orable badge. Policemen, conductors, and other officials must
carry the sign of their authority conspicuously when on duty; at
other times they may prefer to retire to a civilian obscurity. In-
teresting is the reenforcement of custom by intentional differen-
tiation, making boy and girl and man and woman as unlike as
possible. Every slight detail of costume acquires a feminine or a
masculine touch. Even so purely conventional a matter as but-
toning a left button-hole over a right button, which is the way of
male attire, is reversed for women's garments. Obviously a series
of customs so elaborately considered and so conspicuously exposed
to the social influences, are certain to assume complicated conven-
tional forms; which means that they respond to a variety of psy-
chological motives. But through the network of motives, esthetic,
economical, hygienic, distinctive, runs the thread of conformity;
the simpler complacency that accepts the feeling of satisfaction in
the "stylishness," the consolation of "correct" adjustment that di-
rects behavior. To express social value through dress, individual-

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 581

ity amidst conformity, a general conformity to style along with
the particular conformity to the fashion of one's own class,
makes the art of dressing a fine art indeed. Yet the more philo-
sophic conformer cares only to avoid conspicuousness either by
marked neglect or by extreme pursuit of the latest departure.

Note 10, page 449. The Biblical record of a people living
under a system of established tribal rule offers the most familiar
example. The rite of circumcision became the act of covenant of
a chosen people with their God. To the dietary laws was
attached the solemnity of a religious prescription and proscrip-
tion. The cleanliness thus inculcated was as much spiritual as
hygienic. To a believer the partaking of forbidden food aroused
the emotional sense of guilt or sin, which remains the standard
medium of enforcement of moral regulations. The ceremonialism
of Oriental life develops an elaboration of ritual in and out of
the religioils domain. It presents also the tendency to extreme
enforcement and literal application. It develops a symbolism of
custom and representation, itself satisfying the sense of literal
conformity. The prohibition presents the most definite and the
most intense appeal, acquiring the sanctity of a taboo, while its
violation became a desecration. The verbal taboo appears in the
prohibition of the utterance of the sacred name of Jehovah. In
the Biblical code, agricultural, hygienic, economic, social, and re-
ligious regulations were consolidated in a communal system,
fusing the sanction of law, usage, morality, and religion. To
minute conformity to the rich ritualistic, symbolic tradition was
attached the unitary tribal approval, and to transgression a like
disapproval, converting the sense of violation to one of personal
guilt. The individual conscience, even in the more elastic social
systems of the present day, takes its direction almost entirely
from the reflex of the social system of obligation.

Note 11, page 449. The variable play of the social en-
vironment in sliaping conventions appears in the use of gesture.
The Italian, and the Latin races of Europe generally, use it
freely; the Anglo-Saxon uses it sparingly and is offended by any
intrusion of it, even to the useful habit of pointing to insure at-
tention. Yet all this is a natural issue of the ideal underlying
the proscription. Restraint, repression, even to the extinction of
any emotional play that intrudes upon another's attention, follows

582 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

from the idea of consideration to others; it counsels a low voice
and a modest address, and makes any assumption a rudeness.
Whether and when it goes too far is not for the moment relevant.
The Anglo-Saxon ideal is consistent with a desire for privacy and
a regulation of social contacts, just as obvious in the manners of
the street or the arrangements of house and garden, in the develop-
ment of a public cafe-life in one country and its total uncon-
geniality to the ideals of another. If one considers such customs
as the giving of fees, the prominence of the dowry and the ar-
rangement of marriages by parents, the respect for old age and
the attitude of young to old, the dread amongst women of becom-
ing old maids, the (American) habit of "treating," one has ample
opportunity to note the varieties and the vagaries of fashion, yet
ever with a consistent reference to a system of appreciations es-
tablished or highly regarded in the one milieu and less so or differ-
ently in another. Inconsistencies are not absent : it seems strange
to the American, sharing so many ideals with the Englishman, that
the latter should permit and even expect his guests to pay his
private servants. That economic conditions are responsible for
some of the differences in attitude and observance just cited is
obvious; that they move with as well as reflect the spirit of the
community in which they are observed, is equally so. No more
suggestive index to such standards and the principles underlying
them is available than in the minor infringements of propriety.
The freedom of speech permits the German to say, "Ach, GottF'
or the Frenchman, ^'Mon Dieu" to express mild consternation. A
similar appeal in English would be warranted only by tragic
despair.

Note 12, page 450. The utility of convention will readily be
understood. Mere uniformity is useful, as in determining the
rule of the road, or the adjustment of the fittings of the table
to right-handed usage. It dispenses with the need of initiative,
and settles once for all in modern society how a man may dress
for formal appearance. So usage determines good form in
speech and manners. The tendency for such obvious utility — in
such instances perfectly consistent with a dictatorial finality — to
encroach upon weightier and more disputable matters is one of
the serious dangers of convention. When thus extended, far
from being a utility, convention may become a millstone and

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 588

drag the victim through a weary round of ceremonial etiquette
with little profit and much trial. The elasticity of social forms
in thus providing for freedom and initiative is a rather signifi-
cant mark of the measure to which the spirit of conformity is
understood, and the letter assigned to its proper and subordinate
place. Not unrelated to the same appreciation or lack of it is
the vulgarian notion that etiquette consists in such routine ob-
servance— as it does in small part — and may be adequately
learned out of a book. The very fact that manners depend upon
appreciation gives them a value in the social regulation. It is al-
ways a mixed product, partly of tradition, partly of an under-
lying consideration defensible in its bearing as an expression of
a valued quality. Manners are no more arbitrary than speech,
though both contain an arbitrary factor ; they involve an appreci-
ation of the genius of the people that set the standards; and
their inculcation must ever remain an important part of a liberal
education. The differentiation of social classes is certain to pro-
ceed upon the manners, speech and considerations to be expected
or tolerated or excused because of lack of opportunity and social
connections. Thus conformity comes to express the response of
the individual to the selective pressure of the environment; it
expresses his conformity along with his individuality; for he
selects the specific type and order of manners of his own class.

Note 13, page 452. The attitudes and observances expected
of women reveal the cultural tone unmistakably. Supporting such
custom is the idea of modesty and retirement. It may proceed to
the Oriental extreme of the inviolate harem, to the ultimate sac-
rifice of the suttee, the absolute dictation of marriage, the disgrace
of even the slightest exposure of the person. Outwardly the veil
comes to be its symbol, a concealment of the face. It survives in
the use of the bridal veil and again in the ceremonies of the
church, in "taking the veil" as a renunciation of the worldly life,
as also in the veil of widowhood. That like a fan or a lattice it
may become both a screen and a shelter, and direct attention in
esthetic mood to the facial charm, shows how divergently custom
may reflect principles. Quite the same is true of the conventional
acts of devotion. The contact of the lips is the act of love, and
is introduced in the administration of the oath in kissing the
Bible, or in the sign of devotion or subjection or veneration to a

584 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

superior power, spiritual or political. The lover beseeches upon
bended knee, which is also the attitude of the devout in church.

Dress and manner as the outward index of attitude carry
a special significance. Modesty, vulgarity, station, age are all
indicated by dress, but ever under the shifting ideals of one view
of life or another. Jewelry and ornamentation are as carefully
scrutinized in expression of individual quality as speech or
action; cosmetics and the aids to beauty carry a like implication
from a mere conventional habit to the motives of "the painted
lady." The index of coveted leisure and station may be as obvi-
ous in the manicured hand as in the inch-long finger nails of
Siamese ladies or in the tortured foot of Chinese ladies. The
age of powdered wigs and lace for men inevitably expressed a
different perspective of the social system. But to return to the
feminine embodiment: such a custom as the ride-astride habit
could prevail only because of its support in the greater freedom
of feminine behavior already established. The significance of
details is derived from their place in the larger sj^stem of which
they form a slight part; that significance in turn is derived from
the ideals and principles which direct approval. The system is
always but partially logical and in its adjustment meets with
shifting standards; none the less it is by such adherence saved
from caprice, and saved for a useful function in the effective sol-
idarity of the communal spirit.

Note 14, page 460. The cosmopolitanism of modern occiden-
tal life and the directive leadership of the centers of culture,
the free interchange of ideas, the formulated political relation-
ships and interchanges of institutions, have all conspired to im-
part a universality to modern life in notable contrast to the dis-
tinctive, isolated, and self-sufficient insularity of older conditions.
The tendency to lose the local distinctiveness has led to the re-
action in favor of various national movements in language,
literature, customs. The assimilation of divergent stocks seems
the inevitable issue of the massive trends of modem civilization.
All this makes it difficult for the humanitarian sociologist to
reconstruct the local quality of allegiance to standards and tra-
ditions. Yet the assertiveness of race or nation persists, and
persists quite too commonly in the assumption of superiority
and a prejudiced indifference to the divergent qualities of other

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 585

races. That culture consists in a certain magnanimity of outlook
is not an unfair deduction for present-day considerations. Yet
the adjustment of one's loyalties to the several phases of the en-
vironmental influences responsible for the opportunity to live
the life of one's consummation, is a practical problem; its solu-
tion lies in nothing less comprehensive and irrevocable than the
experiences of life itself.

Note 15, page 460. The regulative value of the religious
system is of the highest significance in the historical consideration.
Supreme by the nature of its authority, it may determine di-
rectly the total range of life and interests, and become biologically
significant in that it directs the customs of marriage and dictates
which order of qualities shall prevail and continue in the race
or people. The perspective of older cultures is that of a unitary
regulative system in which the religious features form the cen-
tral moments; all other regulative systems must make terms with
this supreme direction and either receive its sanction or extend
its dominion. With Church, State, and Society as one, the re-
ligious sanction dominates as the expression of the superior
source of influence, a tutelary protection by divine powers. In
this aspect the central function of religion is to provide a super-
natural sanction for the restraint of individual impulse and for
its subjection to the collective will. Loyalty, sacrifice, devotion be-
come duties prescribed by custom, at times dominantly political,
yet more commonly religious in type of obligation imposed.

Incidentally in this relation may be traced the environmental
aspect in the dominance of the natural phenomena or of social
organization in the color and mood of the religious cults. The
relation of the original religious mood to the dominance of moun-
tain and sea, forest and desert, thunder and windstorm, and the
mighty forces of nature, is direct; it has brought it about that
religions have been conceived and wrought to expression in soli-
tary and impressive places, and that they change their character
and wane in importance under the dominance of the crowded
artificial habitations of men. In changing the emphasis of the
relation to be regulated from that of man to nature and to na-
ture's God, to that between man and man, and man and society,
the regulative system inevitably comes into rivalry — it may be,
into conflict — with other systems; and the gods acquire a nar-

586 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

rower tutelary, tribal character. The regulation of man's rela-
tion with nature through science represents the limitation of the
older views in the first aspect. The reconciliation of the several
systems as of their practical interests, is a constant and signifi-
cant problem.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX

Note 1, page 466. It is clear that artists cannot be graded
in any such mechanical manner, because each expression of the
artistic gift is or may be specialized, and present yet finer dis-
tinctions; merits and excellences are variously combined and
have shifting values in a critical appraisal. One painter excels
in the handling of color, another in truth of drawing, another in
originality of conception, another in skill of composition. The
specialization within a specialty — dominance of the qualities that
make the portrait painter, the landscape painter, the decorative
painter, the animal painter — is itself an expression of the nicer
adjustment of talents to chosen tasks, under the influence of
tastes, opportunities or circumstance.

Exacting careers require a favorable social environment as well
as specialized endowments. The psychology of skill illustrates
the relation. In coarse movements, like scrubbing a floor or
digging a ditch, it matters little whether the movements vary a
few inches one way or the other; in the handling of the artist's
brush or pencil, in the jeweler's or the surgeon's craft, the slightest
deviation is disastrous. Artists, jewelers, and surgeons must be
more carefully selected than scrubbers of floors and diggers of
ditches. Their finer fitness involves a nicer adjustment of condi-
tions ; it takes less to throw them out of condition. The sensitive-
ness of the finer callings to delicate fluctuations is but another as-
pect of the effect of civilization to make finer differences count.

Note 2, page 473. The citation of the advertising process
is for the single purpose of indicating the specialized nature of
the appeal, which in other phases incorporates general laws of
attention, interest, motive, persuasion, etc. It is a highly spe-
cialized psychological art; hence inference and generalization
are hazardous. Advertising may pay for economic reasons;
business may be good enough to make the purchaser able to pay
both for the article and for the advertisement; the independence

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX 587

of a local market, the need of a widely distributed one, may
support or require publicity. Yet in the end, the place of per-
suasibility, though exercised as an individual response, is reflected
from the socially acquired phase of responsiveness, which is al-
ways of a specialized order.

Note 3, page 476. In the socializing of the emotional regu-
lations of the individual response {see Chapter IV) nature
supplies inherent tendencies to fear, to be ashamed, to love, to de-
sire, to expand the self, to be stimulated or depressed, but
the social environment steps in to determine what shall be
feared and what shall induce shame, what shall be desired
and thus develop self-esteem, and cause joy or grief. So strong
is the acquired habit that the bare opinion of one's neighbors,
however unjust, is enough to induce a sense of guilt or shame.
Pride is similarly socially acquired, and esteem becomes a potent
force in the redirection of quality. The environment as the
medium of operation determines the objects that stimulate se-
lected qualities: hence the shifting ideals of the desirable and
the undesirable; and hence also the responsibility of the leaders
of m6n in attaching the rewards of social esteem to the qualities
of men.

Note 4, page 476. The tests of life differ from the inevi-
tably artificial tests of the school, for the very reason that prefer-
ment in the open is exposed to the sum total of the social influ-
ences that exert a strong hold upon the sentiments and judgments
that award success. It would be foolish to suppose that a mem-
ber of the black race competes upon equal terms with a white
man in the desirable careers for which he may have a special
fitness or training. Discrimination is inevitable, though its de-
gree and manner vary with the attitude assumed by the dominant
race toward those of other lineage. Prejudice is subtle and per-
meates to all the finer appraisals that practically form aids or
hindrances to success. Every factor counts; and no platform of
equal opportunity will remove the disqualifications attaching to
a social-sentimental exclusion from the spontaneous admission to
"one's own kind." Similarly, women do not and cannot compete
on like terms with men in the professions to which they have
gained access. Allowances and considerations for sex intrude,
favorably or unfavorably; the avenues of preferment, though

588 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

ostensibly open, are really barred by invisible barriers of social
prejudice. The suppressed play of such influences appears in
the slighter and often resisted prejudices of a dominant caste
against the foreig-ner or the descendant of an alien stock. There
are castes within castes, loyalties within loyalties, all of which
play upon the composite of qualities that lead to success. Such
is the role of circumstance in the intricacy of the social organiza-
tion; such is the difficulty of adjusting reward to endowment.
The favored swim with the current and rise to positions above
their merits; the less favored struggle against the current and
reach stations below their attainments. It takes but a slight
difference in circumstance to divide the issue. Each social milieu
establishes its peculiar perspective of importance of one set of
qualities or another. Failure in one respect may disqualify; for
men compete and prevail with the composite of their qualities,
while the environment may determine that they shall be called
by one dominantly.

Note 5, page 485. The congeniality of the intellectual cli-
mate is a factor of prime importance in the issues of endeavor.
Happiness lies in the adjustment of task to inclination as well
as to capacity. An uncongenial climate is the most irritating,
as it is the most constant disturber of endeavor. Content is in-
dispensable; like interest in one's work, it is a psychological
factor that disappears in the records of hours or product, and
yields only to the finer appraisals of quality. It is indeed pre-
dominantly a temperamental matter, but is none the less keenly
sensitive to the approvals of social esteem. One of the most
practical methods of making men efficient is to make them happy.
But content, like all else, becomes a more delicate adjustment
with the complication of nature and task and condition. The
provision of an environment stimulating to the choicest forms of
endeavor thus becomes the true social mission. To neglect or
disregard this vital factor in encouragement is most impractical.
Social esteem in its operation may at least attain the negative
virtue of removing distinct hindrances in false standards of ap-
praisal. The more positive creation of a congenial milieu re-
quires the placing of control in the hands of those fitted to the
poietic callings, together with a sensitive elevation of the social
appreciation.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX 589

Note 6, page 485. Standards of approval, as instruments of
social selection, respond to f=upply and demand. Society rewards
the qualities which it needs. With increased refinement and
complexity of needs, the basis of selection alters. Critical ap-
preciations and ideals determine the scale of value attached to
the qualifications for service. Qualities cherished in one social
environment may actually become a handicap is another less
developed in appreciation. A candidate may be too good as
well as not good enough for the place. Such consideration is
real, though often irrelevant to account for failure. Communi-
ties compete upon similar terms; in the freer competitions of
modern times, men select among communities those that offer
the opportunities and appreciations congenial to their parts.
Adjustment is always mutual between the basis of selection and
the selection itself.

Note 7, page 497. The adjustment of esteem to performance
appears in the judgments and the values attaching to the prac-
tical idol of success. Incomes determine standards of living and
thus exert a considerable influence upon all manners of apprecia-
tions. An exclusive, or crude, or irrelevant use of such a
standard impedes spiritual welfare more obstinately than any
other single influence. It diverts the energies of men un-
duly from pursuits indispensable for social welfare and ap-
pealing in vain to the highest types of ability; it obscures the
true value of the poietic endeavors; it requires of them either to
justify themselves in terms wholly foreign to their character, or
intrudes a false perspective of the relations of means and ends.
It leads to a ready support of applied science and a grudging
recognition of the spirit of research from which all application
proceeds. It substitutes popularity for distinction and leads
to a confusion of appreciations. What it overlooks is that the
standard by which success is conferred is as much judged in the
verdict of success as is the person or performance thus approved.
The succes d'estime precisely indicates the distinction and pro-
vides for the critical sense. Reputations are the most deceptive,
of encomiums — like personal testimonials — because their value
depends wholly upon the standards of those who confer them.
The holding of office is unthinkingly accepted as a mark of abil-
ity. Money, office, reputation are the inevitable outward indices,

590 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT

presumptive evidences and no more, of the attainment of a cer-
tain standard of success. But the standards themselves must be
critically examined, are indeed most critically considered m the
nicer judgments of men, before verdicts inspire confidence. Suc-
cess may properly please but should not dazzle; it may en-
courage but should not confuse. Hence the constant pertinence
of the gospel of appreciation.

Note 8, page 499. As a popular choice or social appreciation
can be exercised only among available or presented candidates,
success — in terms of sales, box-receipts, or circulation — shows
what people will accept, rather than what they want. Such ac-
ceptance, however, tends to fix the standards of taste and to
make further substitution difficult. Yet taste improves precisely
by rejecting what it formerly accepted; in this sense, inertia
and complacency, though efficient, are negative forces. Through
response to new enterprises, to more critical appeals, is the eleva-
tion of opinion made possible.

A statement of the same relation in individual terms indicates
that mental, moral, social or esthetic growth means the constant
outgrowing of older standards. What once gave satisfaction is
now neutral or decidedly objectionable. The "ages of man" rep-
resent not alone a change of interests but of standards. Experi-
ence, if combined with the capacity to grow, means the develop-
ment of a more critical sense, and the elevation of sentiment.
Such change forms the actual support of all movements for
betterment.

Note 9, page 501. The theme of the closing portions of
this chapter, together with a proper introductory survey of the
source and play of human endowment, is developed in a volume
issued under the title, "The Qualities of Men" (Houghton, Mifflin
& Co., 1910). That "Essay in Appreciation" is intended to make
a more general appeal and a more practical one. For the rea-
son that the "Qualities of Men" (to which the reader's attention
is indulgently invited) provides an expansion of the present
theme, is its statement reduced in the present connection to a
brief indication of its message.

INDEX

Ability; mathematical, 17
musical, 16, 409
See also Traits, esthetic;
Traits, intellectual
Abnormal tendencies of mind,
238, 277, 304 flF.
and age, 307-310, 559-560
and criminality, 574
and defect, 311, 544, 552-553,

574
and deviation, 361 ff., 565
and disproportion, 314 fF., 358

ff.
and excess, 312 ff., 317 ff., 345

ff., 533, 556, 564-565
and excitation, 315 ff., 353 ff.,

563-564
and genius, 363, 410, 573
and organic condition, 304 ff.,

550-551
and perversion, 359 ff., 411
and the normal, 310 ff., 342
Affective. See Emotions ; Traits,

esthetic
Allen, Grant, 510
Altruism, 208 ff., 213, 237, 537-

538
Anger, 106, 107, 124 ff., 132, 140,
143, 144, 191, 262
pathology of, 347 ff.
Animal traits. See Traits, trans-
formation of, in animals
Arreat, 548

Bain, 508
Binet-Simon, 549
Boas, 570
Burbank, 518, 576

Cannon, W. B., 521

Character and Temperament, ix
and psychology, 1
as a general inquiry, 7

Character and Temperament
historical aspect of, 2, 507-

508
practical aspect of, 57, 510
Character reading, ix, x, 7
Character training, ix, x, 578
Chinese, 572

Choleric. See Temperament.
Civilization, x-xi, 211, 464 ff.,

569
Community of traits. See Traits,

community of
Complex, 53, 311, 319
Conduct, the emotions and. See

Emotions
Conformity, 443, 447, 502, 503,
515, 579-582
See also Group-mind
Conscience. See Morality.
Convention. See Conformity
Cooperation. See Socialization
Correlation. See Endowment
Criminality. See Abnormal tend-
encies of mind and perver-
sion
Crowd. See Group-mind
Curiosity, 49, 152, 155, 186, 240 ff
Cyrano de Bergerac, 361

Darwin, 139, 140, 141, 144, 531,
567

Dauriac, 548

Degeneracy. See Abnormal tend-
encies of mind and per-
version

De Quincy, 318

Dessoir, 507

Dexter, 576

Differences, human, 10 ff., 23
See also Temperament

Disgust, 108, 115, 141, 510

Distinction. See Traits, intel-
lectual; Emotions, and in-
tellect

591

592

INDEX

Domestication, 152, 211, 426-431
Dowie, 566

Eddy, 562, 566

Ellis, Havelock, 383, 390, 551,

565, 566, 567, 568, 574
Emotionalization, 97, 116
Emotions, 104 flF.

aggressive, 109, 128, 130, 132

ff., 188, 222 ff., 354
and conduct, 113
and instinct, 118 ff., 124 ff., 151

ff., 532
and intellect, 155 ff., 195 ff., 216

ff., 239 ff., 532
and object, 156, 159, 199
and sensibilities, 112 ff., 523,

524
and situation, 122 ff., 126, 128

ff., 131, 134 ff., 527
and will, 244 ff.
as motive. 111, 113, 225
as personal quality, 169 ff., 205
as zest, 109 ff.
classification of, 527-528
complexity of, 114 ff., 117, 146

ff. 222 526
derivative, 'l 17 ff., 138, 150 ff.,

171, 208 ff., 229 ff., 535
development of, 533-534
expression of, 106, 121 ff., 123

ff., 126, 138, 139 ff., 164

ff., 515, 521 ff., 529-531,

533
function of, 106 ff., 127, 131,

522-523
luxurious, 110 ff.
organic aspect of, 106 ff., 126,

172, 185, 520 ff.
pathology of, 356 ff.
preliminary and active stages

of, 131 ff., 148
primary, 104, 118, 119 ff., 134

ff., 170, 525, 536
retreating, 109, 120, 128, 130,

132 ff., 184 ff., 227 ff.
sensory inlet of, 121 ff., 141,

520-521, 526, 527
social, 52, 109, 130, 133, 146

ff., 163, 177 ff., 181 ff., 191

ff., 534
See also Socialization

Emotions,

specialization of, 153
transformation of, 117 ff.
urgency of, 106 ff.

Endowment, 408

and achievement, 296 ff., 399
ff., 469 ff., 577, 589

and the psychic environ-
ment, 471 ff., 474 ff., 486
ff., 501

and will, 297 ff.

constancy of, 12, 175

correlation of, 287 ff.

intellectual, 285 ff., 290 ff.

motor, 286 ff.

original, 175, 576-577

sensory, 282 ff., 511
Energy. See Will
Environment,

adjustment to, 420 ff., 432 ff.

and heredity, 46. See also
Heredity ; Group-traits,
and the environment

and institutions^ 425, 440 ff,,
447 ff., 457 ff., 459 ff., 578-
579, 584-585, 588

and race, 418

artificial, 419, 451, 463

as biological emphasis, 416

as conserving, 452

economic, 423

effect of, 44

physical, 417, 420 ff., 576

psychological, 423 ff.

transformation effected by, 425,
576-577
in animal life, 426
Esthetic. See Traits, esthetic
Excitation. See Abnormal tend-
encies of mind and excita-
tion
Expression, 45, 54

of emotion. See Emotions, ex-
pression of

of traits. See Traits, expres-
sion of

"Family" situation, 128 ff., 200
Fashion, 434, 444 ff., 446, 580-
581. See also Group-
mind

INDEX

593

Fear, 108, 115, 119 ff., 124 flF.,
132, 190, 229 flF., 262,
343 flF., 524-525, 539, 540
pathology of, 343 flF., 555, 562

Feeling. See Sensibilities; Emo-
tions; AflFective
tender. See Sympathy

Feeling-value, 64, 73, 89

Feiss, 548

Food-sensibilities. See Sensibili-
ties

Food-situation, 78, 128 flF.

Fouill^e, 508

Freud, 336, 337, 338, 339, 351

Galton, 407, 573, 574
Genius. See Abnormal tenden-
cies of mind and genius
Goddard, 552

Gregariousness. See Socializa-
tion ; Sympathy
Grief, 135 flF., 143
pathology of, 350 flF.
See also Pain
Gross, 566
Group-mind, 433 ff., 579

and public sentiment, 450 flF.,

471 flF.
as local genius, 458, 493
as Zeitgeist, 456
constancy^f, 439
varieties m, 438 flF.
Group-traits,

and family, 408 flF., 573, 574-

575
and heredity, 407
and the environment, 412 flF.
and the individual, 365, 366
and vocation, 414, 482, 575
derivative, 377-382, 390-393
feminine, 386-390, 566, 567
masculine, 382-386, 567-568
pathological, 372-374
psychological, 374-376
interrelation of, 406 flF.
of race, 393 flF., 568

and achievement, 399 flF., 569,

572
and precocity, 404
and primitive type, 402, 670
and variability, 403
derivative, 397

Group-traits,

of sex, 367 flF., 566, 567

bodily, 370, 371
psychology of, 365 flF.
See also Group-mind

Hall, G. S., 561

Heredity, 8, 15, 543-544, 571,
574-575
and environment, 46, 417

See also Environment
traits of. See Traits, heredity
of
Honor, 52
Hypochondria, 324
Hysteria, 328 flF., 553, 554-555
and shock, 351

minor traits of, 330 flF., 556,
557, 559, 560, 561

Ideals and standards, 55, 461,
476 flF., 490, 496, 539, 583-
586, 589
See also Standards

Ideo-motor, 537

Idol, of interest, 4, 5 flF.

of the practical mind, 3, 5 flF.

Imitation, 195 flF., 537

Impressionism, 87

Impulse. See Emotions and in-
stinct

Individual diflFerences. See Tem-
perament
and group-traits. See Group-
traits and the individual

Individuality, 445, 453, 493

Instinct. See Emotions and in-
stinct

Institutions. See Environment
and institutions

Intellect. See Emotions and in-
tellect

Intellectualization, 160 flF., 176 flF.,
186, 215 flF.

Intelligence, general. See En-
dowment, intellectual

Intoxication. See Abnormal
tendencies of mind and ex-
citation

Ireland, 356

Irresolution, 318 flF.

Irritability. See Anger

Ivan the ferrible, 366

594

INDEX

James, 205, 520, 527
Jealousy, 124 ff., 181 ff., 203

pathology of, 349 ff., 562
See also Anger
Jews, 572
Joy, 135 ff.

See also Pleasure

Kaffir, 46
Kallikak, 552, 574
Keller, Miss, 518
Kinetic, 487
Knowledge-value, 64, 73, 89

Lange, 520

Language. See Sensibilities, lan-

guage-
L6vy, 508
Lombroso, 574
Love, 202, 208 ff., 214. See also

Sympathy
Ludwig of Bavaria, 356

MacDougall, xii, 520, 525, 527,
535

Malapert, 508

Manners. See Fashion

Mayer, A. G., 576

Megalomania. See Abnormal
tendencies of mind and
excitation

Melancholic. See Temperament

Mesmer, 387

Meyer, Max, 519

Militarism, 457 ff., 479 ff.

Mill, J. S., 508

Mind, primitive. See Group-
mind

Miser, traits of, 274 ff., 547

Modesty, 227, 538-539

Mood, 113, 262, 268, 301, 305

Morality, 442 ff., 449, 543

Mores, 442, 444, 449, 581-582
See also Morality; Fashion;
Conformity

Morgan, Lloyd, 542

Needs and their satisfaction, 25
Nervousness, 62, 317 ff., 327 ff.,

343 ff., 555
Neurasthenia, 320 ff., 554-555
minor traits of, 323 ff.

Pains, 59 ff., 105, 144

Palmistry, 2

Paralysis, general, 315 ff.

Parmalee, 519

Paulhan, 508

Persecution, 52

Personality, 188, 222, 558. See
also Hysteria

Perversion. See Abnormal tend-
encies of mind and per-
version

Phlegmatic. See Temperament

Phobia. See Fear

Phrenology, 2

Physiognomv, 2

Play-situation, 128 ff., 146, 177 ff.,
538

Pleasures, 59 ff., 105

Poietic, 487, 491, 505

Presentative, 68 ff., 158, 161,
526-527

Pride, 45, 223 ff.

Problem-solving, 50, 240 ff., 292,
295
See also Curiosity

Psychic control, 174 ff.

Psycho-analysis, 550

Psychology, 35

See also Character and Tem-
perament

Pugnacity. See Anger

Punishment, psychology of, 48,
233 ff.

Qualitative method, 14, 509
Qualities of men, 463 ff., 590
encouragement of, 489, 495,

498 ff
See also Traits
Quantitative method, 9 ff., 12, 14,
17, 508, 509

Race, traits of, 13
Representative, 68 ff., 158, 161
Resemblances, human, 23
Ribery, 508

Sanguine. See Temperament
Seashore, 548
Self-esteem, 48

INDEX

595

Sensibilities, 58 ff.
and conduct, 66
and discrimination, 40
and emotions. See Emotions,

and sensibilities
and feeling, 512
and intellect, 73, 78, 99, 520,

543
composite nature of, 93, 95,

511, 518, 519
delicacy of, 62, 76 ff., 87 ff., 100,

586
derivative, 102, 519
development of, 91
food-, 81 ff.

function of, 64, 70, 91, 94, 97 ff.
hygienic, 74 ff,, 514
language, 83 ff., 517
orders of, 63
organic root of, 59, 105, 513-

514, 518
overlay of, 67, 516
regulation by, 79, 96, 517, 519-

520
special-sense, root of, 59, 512,

513, 514, 518, 548
standards of, 80, 516-517
supporting sense of, 91 ff., 514
Sentiments, 49, 199, 208 ff., 215,
220 ff., 228, 534
system of, 51 ff., 231 ff., 540-
542
Sex, traits of, 13, 49, 115, 200-

202, 213, 337 ff., 367 ff.
Shame, 234 ff., 538 ff.

Bee also Modesty
Shand, xii
Shyness, 184 ff., 187, 188, 203,

510
Situation. See Food; Family;

Play
Skill. See Endowment, motor
Socialization, 131, 149, 163,
176 ff., 196, 203 ff., 206, 587
stages of, 177ff., 536-537
Society, stratification of, 455
See also Environment, and in-
stitutions
Sommer, 575

Specialization. See Traits, spe-
cialization of ; Emotions,
specialization of

Standards, 461

See also Ideals and standards

Starbuck, 561

Suggestion, 195 ff., 203, 578

Suppression, psychic, 336
See also Hysteria

Sympathy, 108, 145, 149, 189 ff.,
207 ff., 536

System. See Sentiments, system
of; Environment, and in-
stitutions

Taboo, 443, 447 ff., 515, 581
Taste. See Traits, esthetic
Temper. See Anger, pathology

of
Temperament,

and age, 251 ff., 259 ff., 546

and emotion, 271 ff.

and esthetic susceptibility,

267 ff.
and fixed bent, 258 ff., 270,

272 ff.
and heredity, 250
and individual differences,
281 ff., 548
See also Endowment
and primary traits, 253
and sex, 250, 252
and temperamental traits, 252,

266 ff., 272 ff., 278 ff.
budget view of, 546-547
emotional emphasis of, 256
intellectual emphasis of, 256
melancholic, 266
organic conditioning of, 248,

264
sanguine, 265 ff., 553
types of, 249 ff., 255 ff., 545
See also Character and Tem-
perament
Thomas, 382, 666, 569-570, 672,

577
Thompson, Miss, 567
Thorndike, xii, 9, 187, 509, 611,

518, 529, 539
Toglak, Mohammed, 356
Traits,

and the nervous system, 20,

40-42
biological aspect of, 28, 466

596

INDEX

Traits,

community of, 10 ff.

compatibility of, 279 ff.

derivative, 22, 24, 25, 37 ff.

directive trend of, 42, 44

distribution of, 17-19

encouragement of, 55, 56, 588

esthetic, 30 ff., 43, 60, 65, 67,
70, 82 ff., 85 ff., 267 ff.,
512, 518

evolution of, 43, 45, 51, 71

expression of, 40, 42, 44

function of, 22, 83

group-. See Group-traits, psy-
chology of

heredity of, 15 ff.

intellectual, 34 ff., 51, 99,
195 ff., 218 ff., 240 ff.,
288 ff., 510, 542, 549

maturing of, 38, 43

national, 467 ff.

nature of, 19 ff., 27

orders of, 21 ff.

persistence of, 42

primary, 20, 523

racial. See Race, traits of

sex. See Sex, traits of

sources of, 8 ff.

specialization of, 36 ff., 45, 465,
470, 586-587

Traits,

temperamental. See Tempera-
ment
transfer of. See Transfer,

principle of
transformation of, 426 ff., 429,
482 ff., 506, 578
in animals, 427 ff., 430-433
value of, 24, 55, 484 ff., 492
Transfer, 43, 48, 583-584

principle of, 162 ff., 211, 481,
510-511

Utopia, 485 ff.

Value, 231

of traits. See Traits, value of
Vanity, 45
Veblen, 515

Vocation. See Group-traits and
vocation

Wallas, xii
Watson, 519
Whetham, '577, 578
Will, 244 ff.

See also Endowment and will;
Emotions and will
Wilson, G. R., 554
Woman, status of, 474 ff.
Woods, F. A., 575
Woolley, Mrs., 567 (2)

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