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Cornell University Library 
 
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 Human temperaments 
 
 3 1924 031 287 323 
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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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HUMAN 
 
 TEMHRAMENTS 
 
 CHA8. MERCIER, M.D.. F.R.C.P. 
 
 I 
 
 '^ 
 
 \$*, NET. 
 
 THE SCIENTfFIC PRESS. UTD.. 
 28 AND 29. SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, 
 LONDON. W.C. 
 
HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 STUDIES IN CHARACTER 
 
LONDON ; THE SCIENTIFIC PRESS, LTD. 
 
HUMAN 
 TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 Studies in Character 
 
 BY 
 
 CHAS. MERCIER, M.D., F.R.C.P. 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC -PRESS, LTD. 
 
 28 & 29 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND 
 
 LONDON, W.C. 
 
f\.3-I0*l5^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE. 
 
 PREFACE 7 
 
 TEMPERAMENT — WHAT IS MEANT BY TEMPERA- 
 MENT 9 
 
 I. THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT - l6 
 
 II. CLEVERNESS AND CAPABILITY 23 
 
 III. THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE ARTIST - 29 
 
 IV. THE FADDIST - - - 36 
 V. THE MAN OF BUSINESS - 42 
 
 VI. THE RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENT 48 
 
 VII. THE PRACTICAL MAN - 55 
 
 VIII. THE ENVIOUS TEMPERAMENT - 62 
 IX. THE JEALOUS TEMPERAMENT - 68 
 
 X. THE SUSPICIOUS TEMPERAMENT 74 
 
 •XI. THE MAN OF ACTION 80 
 
 XII. THE PHILOSOPHER 86 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ; 
 The proper study of Mankind is Man. 
 
 Especially Woman, as a witty commentator has added. 
 As Pope stole the whole of the shallow philosophy of his 
 most celebrated essay from Bolingbroke, so he stole 
 three-quarters of this, its most often quoted couplet, 
 from others — half his first line from Pythagoras, and 
 all the second from Warburton. From such a pilferer 
 one would not expect much that is original, but the 
 Essay contains one doctrine that is undoubtedly original 
 with Pope, and it is also undoubtedly erroneous: the 
 doctrine, once universally accepted and now almost 
 forgotten, of the ruling passion. 
 
 On diff'rent senses difi'rent passions strike ; 
 Hence difi'rent passions more or less inflame. 
 As strong or weak, the organs of the frame ; 
 And hence one Master Passion in the breast. 
 Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest. 
 As Man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, 
 Receives the lurking principle of death : 
 
 So, cast and mingled with his very frame. 
 The Mind's disease, its Ruling Passion came. 
 
 It needs very little observation of human nature, very 
 little oi- that proper study of mankind which the opening 
 lines of the Second Epistle commend to us, to discover 
 how hopelessly erroneous this doctrine is. Pope 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 derived it, not from the study of mankind which he 
 recommends, but, as the German derived his description 
 of the camel, from his own inner consciousness. No man 
 is dominated, in the way Pope described, by a ruling 
 passion ; but nevertheless different passions, that is to 
 say, different desires, emotions, propensities, capabilities, 
 and so forth, do attain to very different degrees of 
 intensity in different people, and the constitution of 
 what we now call the character, or what our ancestors 
 called the temperament, varies widely, and has been a 
 favourite study ever since the birth of philosophy. The 
 following pages attempt a description of some common 
 types of character, drawn, not from the inner conscious- 
 ness of the writer, but from study of Man — and Woman- 
 
TEMPERAMENT 
 
 WHAT IS MEANT BY TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 The word " temperament " was much used by our 
 forefathers, and had for them a definite and impor- 
 tant meaning ; and the thing it stands for was much 
 considered and studied by them, and formed an 
 important consideration in their practice of medicine. 
 The word is little used nowadays, nor is the thing it 
 stands for much regarded, and we are apt to scoff 
 and sneer at our forefathers for using it at all. 
 A generation ago, unless a thing could be weighed 
 in bulk, seen under the microscope, or identified 
 by chemical reaction, we were inclined to deny 
 its existence. This is perhaps a better attitude 
 than that of general and indiscriminate credulity, 
 but it is apt to result in narrowness of view, and in 
 blindness to important matters that cannot be sub- 
 mitted to physical or chemical tests. That wave has 
 passed on, and we are now in the trough between 
 it and the next. Now we are all devotees of hypno- 
 tism, telepathy, psycho-analysis. Christian Science, 
 suggestion, or psycho-therapy in some form or other ; 
 and our faith in these things is certainly neither wanting 
 in robustness, nor proportioned to the tenuity of the 
 evidence in their favour. Vain and useless as they 
 are for the most part, and pernicious as they are in large 
 
10 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 part, these faiths have at any rate this merit : that 
 they do recognise the importance of things that are 
 not material things. They do recognise the desirability 
 of taking into consideration, in the treatment of disease, 
 the mental constitution as well as the physical 
 constitution of the patient. 
 
 The besetting vice of surgery is that it is apt to look 
 upon disease as affecting a single organ, and to assiune 
 that if the organ is removed the disease will disappear, 
 and the patient will recover. The disease of the organ is 
 removed with the organ, the wound heals, and the 
 surgeon triumphs and departs ; occasionally the patient 
 dies of the rest of his malady, which was unaffected by the 
 operation. The view taken by the physician is less 
 limited, but it is very apt to be incomplete. He regards 
 the patient as a very complicated mechanism which 
 has fallen out of gear in this respect and in that, and 
 his business is to discover the source of the derange- 
 ment and to rectify it as far as possible. When the 
 physical apparatus is again in working order he, too, 
 departs, and considers his patient cured. But very 
 often the patient is not then cured. His physical 
 apparatus may be working competently, but yet there 
 is something wrong. He cannot do his work satis- 
 factorily. He is not happy. His relations with his 
 wife and family are not what they ought to be. There 
 is a hitch somewhere ; there is some weakness, something 
 awry, something that has not been taken into consider- 
 ation, because the patient has been looked upon as an 
 aggregate of organs and tissues performing functions, 
 and not as a man, not as a whole, not as an integrated 
 living being, living by virtue of his relations and his 
 intercourse with the world around him. The physician 
 
TEMPERAMENT ii 
 
 cannot treat his patient satisfactorily unless he looks 
 upon his patient, not as a complicated bundle of organs, 
 one or more of which is deranged in its function, but as 
 a whole — as a man having relations with the world 
 around him, on which he acts and which reacts on him ; 
 and with respect to these actions and reactions the man 
 is summed up, not in his organs and their functions, 
 but in his mind. 
 
 Disease cannot be rightly, comprehensively, or 
 satisfactorily treated unless the treatment is directed, 
 not to the disease, but to the whole man who is suffering 
 from the disease, to the whole man, who may be 
 described as a mind working through and by means of his 
 body. By all means rectify the bodily functions ; but 
 do not think that when you have relieved the patient 
 of his bodily disease you have necessarily cured the 
 patient. This is not done until he is restored to 
 efficiency in dealing with his circumstances, and this 
 is a matter that concerns primarily his mind. Patients 
 used to have faith in the old family doctor because he 
 ' understood their constitutions.' Modern scientific 
 physicians, especially when they are young, are apt to 
 sneer at the phrase, and to consider it an antiquated 
 superstition ; but there was much truth in it. The 
 family doctor, who had brought both the patient and 
 perhaps the patient's future wife into the world ; had 
 attended them in their childish ailments, talked over 
 them with their parents, seen them off to school and 
 welcomed them home again, advised about their occu- 
 pations, and watched their careers, acctmiulated a store 
 of knowledge about them that was invaluable when 
 his services were needed. He knew their weak points 
 and their strong points, both bodily and mental. He 
 
12 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 knew what they could do, and what they could not. He 
 knew how they were likely to react, not only to drugs, 
 but to prosperity and adversity, to kindness and severity, 
 to worry and anxiety. In short, he knew their physique, 
 and he knew their temperament. 
 
 The physique, or, as the mediaeval physicians called 
 it, the corporature, is the bodily constitution of the 
 patient, the order of architecture, as it were, to which 
 his body belongs, the way in which he is compounded ; 
 and so the temperament is his mental constitution, the 
 order of mental architecture to which his mind conforms, 
 the way in which his mind is put together, the absolute 
 and relative magnitude of its ingredients, and the general 
 composition of its structure. The temperament is the 
 physique or corporature of the mind, and the word as well 
 as the idea comes down to us from a remote past. 
 Ancient and medieval medicine was dominated by two 
 theories, which fitted together and reinforced one another. 
 The first of these was Astrology, the supposed influence 
 of the planets on human lives ; the second was the 
 Humoral Pathology, which ascribed all diseases to the 
 excess or defect of one of the four humours — ^yellow 
 bile or choler, black bile, blood, and phlegm. Accord- 
 ing to the first of these theories, not only was every 
 human being under the jurisdiction of one or more of the 
 planets, but also he showed in his physical constitution 
 or corporature — his physique as we now call it — to which 
 of the planets he was subject ; so that mankind was 
 classified on sight into the Jovial, the Saturnine, the 
 Martial, the Mercurial, the Venereal, the Lunar or 
 Lunatic, and the Solar ; for the sun and moon were then 
 included among the planets. Each of these physical 
 constitutions was accompanied by a corresponding 
 
TEMPERAMENT 13 
 
 mental constitution, and it is to these mental constitu- 
 tions, or temperaments that we now refer when we speak, 
 as indeed we seldom do, of a man as a? jovial, or martial 
 or saturnine, or mercurial person, or a lunatic. The 
 jurisdiction of the planets over human dispositions was 
 partly direct and was partly exercised through the 
 humours, over which also the planets extended their 
 sway. The humours abounded or were defective 
 according as the sway of the planet that ruled them 
 was powerful or the reverse, so that jovial and solar 
 persons, in whom blood predominated, were sanguine ; 
 saturnine persons were bilious or, strictly speaking, 
 atrabilious ; martial persons, in whom choler or yellow 
 bile abounded, were choleric ; and venereal persons 
 and lunatics phlegmatic. For some reason that cannot 
 now be traced we have ceased to speak of venereal and 
 solar persons, but we retain in common speech all the 
 other terms, though we retain them with a grip that is 
 much relaxed, and is still relaxing ; and as far as we do 
 retain them we use them in meanings departing a good 
 deal from their original significations. What meaning 
 they still retain, moreover, is limited strictly to the 
 mental constitution or temperament, so that when we 
 now use a term belonging to either set, as, for instance, 
 jovial or sanguine, martial or choleric, we characterise by 
 it a certain bent, or constitution, or disposition of mind, 
 and not of body. By a sanguine person we mean no 
 more than a person of hopeful, optimistic disJ)osition ; 
 by a jovial person no more than a jolly, smiUng, good- 
 humoured, expansive person ; by each astrological 
 or humoral term we mean one mental quaUty and no 
 more ; but it was not thus that the names were originally 
 bestowed. To our ancestors a temperament signified 
 
14 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 the total mental constitution of a man, just as by 
 physique we mean his total bodily constitution. The 
 temperament meant no single quality, but the whole 
 construction of the mind ; and the significance of the 
 astrological or humoral title was that it assumed certain 
 specific combinations of mental quaUties ; it assumed 
 that the mental qualities occur in certain sets, which are 
 met with again and again in different people, of course 
 with individual variations, but substantially true to 
 type. Is there any ground for the supposition that 
 mental qualities do, in fact, thus occur in groups speci- 
 fically alike ? We must remember that this is a matter 
 that requires no microscope or spectroscope, no know- 
 ledge of chemistry or physiology, to determine. It is 
 to be determined by the mere observation of human 
 nature as exhibited in individual men and women, and 
 for this observation our forefathers were just as well 
 equipped as we are. For such observations of human 
 nature the ancient and mediaeval physicians possessed 
 every facility that we possess now, and they were not 
 distracted by having to observe a great multitude of 
 things that we must observe. What they have left on 
 record shows that in many things they were very shrewd 
 and acute observers, and although we cannot accept 
 the astrological and humoral theories that they invented 
 to account for what they observed, we need not on that 
 account reject their observations. We need not empty 
 the baby out with the bath water. The evidence of 
 these latter days goes far to confirm the observation of 
 the ancient and mediaeval physicians, that mental 
 qualities do tend to occur in groups, that there are 
 different temperaments, some very distinct, marking 
 their possessors off from the rest of mankind, others less 
 
TEMPERAMENT 15 
 
 distinct ; some constituted by a cluster of many 
 qualities, others by few ; and that though a tempera- 
 ment is not always present in its purity, or in high degree, 
 yet when it is so present, the persons who possess 
 it present a Ukeness in mental characters to one another 
 such as is rarely presented by the different members of 
 a single family. This being understood, we will now 
 describe some of the more pronounced temperaments. 
 
Chapter I. 
 
 THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 It would be a great mistake to suppose that an artist 
 necessarily possesses the artistic temperament, or that 
 the possessor of this temperament is necessarily an artist. 
 Many artists are very respectable and worthy persons, 
 as excellent in morals as they are in ability ; and the 
 man of artistic temperament is usually neither respec- 
 table nor worthy, and is never excellent in morals, 
 though he has often a fair share — sometimes a consider- 
 able share — of abihty. The man of artistic temperament 
 has in common with the artist his sensitiveness to 
 senusous impressions, his appreciation of beauty and 
 grace, of sound, colour, and form. He is a potential 
 artist, and usually is more or less an actual artist in an 
 amateur way ; but he has not the industry or appli- 
 cation to become an artist in the full sense. He may 
 and usually does, produce v^es, essays, drawings, 
 pictures, music, and other artistic products ; but what- 
 ever he produces is stamped with the ineffaceable mark 
 of the amateur. It is important not to confuse the 
 artistic temperament with the temperament of the 
 artist, which is a very different thing, and a much 
 greater thing. 
 
 If every man embodies the traits of some animal, and 
 will at his death be reincarnated as the animal whose 
 
THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 17 
 
 nature he shares, then the possessor of the artistic 
 temperament will undoubtedly spend the next phase 
 of his existence as a cat. He has the cat's self-ab- 
 sorption and aloofness from his fellows ; the cat's 
 indifference to social ties and obligations ; the cat's 
 sleekness and sedulous care of its person ; the cat's 
 incapacity for steady industry, and habit of acting by 
 fits and starts ; the cat's luxuriousness and self-in- 
 dulgence ; the cat's fondness for play ; and usually the 
 cat's dishonesty and cruelty. 
 
 The man of artistic temperament has usually been 
 a spoilt child, and no doubt a good deal of the undisci- 
 plined excesses of his adult life are due to the want of 
 discipUne in his childhood ; but his traits are inborn, and 
 though judicious discipline in childhood might subdue 
 them, no discipline would eradicate them. Very often 
 in his childhood he has been puny ; his health has been 
 delicate, and so he has been indulged, has escaped 
 the wholesome discipline of school, and has been excused 
 from many a pimishment that a healthy child would 
 have suffered. Often he is the only son, and has been 
 indulged on this account : often he has had a doting 
 mother : often he has lost his father in early life ; but 
 though these conditions all favour the development of 
 the artistic temperament, they do not create it. The 
 disposition is inborn, and though it may be minimised 
 by a sound and judicious bringing up, or fostered by 
 an indulgent and foohsh education, there is no reason 
 to suppose that it can either be created or eradicated. 
 
 The artistic temperament is certainly not strongly 
 hereditary, and it may be doubted whether it is heredi- 
 tary at all. It may appear sporadically in one member 
 of a large family, the rest of whom are normal ; it may 
 
 2 
 
i8 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 appear in children in whose parents it is absent, and 
 may be absent in the children of a father who possesses 
 it in high degree. It is more frequent in men than in 
 women ; but whatever its origin, it is a calamity to the 
 family of its possessor, though it is not necessarily a 
 calamity to the possessor himself. It does often bring 
 him to irretrievable disaster, it is true, but it does not 
 necessarily do so ; and the very selfishness that is an 
 integral and conspicuous element in it may, if combined 
 with a moderate share of prudence, secure for its 
 possessor that ease and comfort for which he most 
 craves, and make his life, if not prosperous or successful, 
 at least enjoyable. He does not always wreck his own 
 life, but if the temperament is highly developed, he will 
 infallibly wreck the lives of others. 
 
 For the keynote of the artistic temperament is 
 selfishness, the dominant is self-indulgence, and the 
 sub-dominant sensitiveness to sensuous impressions. 
 If men are divided into those who feel, those who 
 think, and those who act, then the men of this temper- 
 ament belong to the first class. They are, indeed, 
 actors, but they are not men of action. They are 
 actors in the histrionic sense. They pose and grimace. 
 They constantly seek to attract attention and interest 
 from others ; but they are not men of action. They 
 are saunterers. They are lookers-on at the battle of 
 life, and restrict their exertions to criticising and sneering 
 at those who do the fighting. In as far as they act at 
 all, their action is recreative. They are dexterous and 
 nimble, and can do neatly and well many useless things. 
 They are skilful at games, and so they should be, for 
 they spend on games a very disproportionate share of 
 their time. They have the musical faculty, and can 
 
THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 19 
 
 sing and play some musical instrument, perhaps several 
 musical instruments, with easy dexterity. They draw 
 and paint, write verses and plays and novels, may even 
 be witty and brilliant in conversation ; but whatever 
 they do they do as amateurs. They are often very good 
 amateurs, but they are no more than amateurs even in the 
 profession they may adopt. To attain professional rank, 
 even in an artistic or purely recreative avocation, such 
 as that of the conjurer, requires persistence in steady 
 industry ; and of steady industry they are incapable. 
 They will occupy themselves only as long as the occu- 
 pation is pleasant and congenial to them. The moment 
 it begins to pall and become tedious, it is thrown aside. 
 This is not work. It is occupation, but it is not work, for 
 work is doing that which is distasteful. If they work 
 at all, it is by fits and starts, in snatches of brief duration ; 
 and in the doing they are inefficient, inattentive, pro- 
 crastinating, dilatory, and leave their tasks half done. 
 As long as the work has the attraction of novelty, they will 
 pursue it with enthusiasm and energy, but they do not 
 persist. As soon as it becomes tedious, it is abandoned. 
 They are unmethodical. They have neither the fore- 
 sight to devise a plan for themselves nor the tenacity 
 to adhere to a plan made for them, and are too lazy to be 
 orderly in business. 
 
 In business affairs they are unthrifty and extravagant. 
 They spend disproportionately on present indulgence, 
 on personal adornment and pleasure, and have little 
 regard to future wants, and none whatever for the 
 welfare of others, even of those nearest to them. They 
 borrow without any intention to repay : they cadge 
 without shame, and care not of how much they may 
 deprive others, so that their own immediate wants eire 
 
20 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 satisfied. Anyone — father, mother, sister, wife, or even 
 child — ^may work for them or want for them, and they 
 take all that is given to them as their natural right, for 
 which they express no gratitude, for they feel none ; and 
 for which they neither own nor feel obhgation. In the 
 extreme instances of this temperament, even the 
 ordinary obligations of morality are not acknowledged 
 as binding or apphcable to themselves, though they are 
 quick to resent any relaxation of these rules by which 
 they may suffer. Such persons will rob, and forge, 
 and swindle without any acknowledgment, without, 
 it seems, any realisation, that they are doing wrong, or 
 that they are doing anything that their victims have 
 any right or reason to resent ; nor do they express or 
 feel any gratitude to the relatives who rescue them from 
 the legal consequences of their depredations. So far 
 from being grateful for what is done for them, 
 they are resentful and indignant that more was 
 not done. 
 
 As none of them is sensitive to the demands of honour, 
 and some are indifferent to the obligations of honesty, 
 it will easily be believed that they are no devotees to 
 truth. They are, indeed, facile, plausible, and un- 
 blushing liars, and display little shame or embarrassment 
 when their lies are exposed. They seem not to appre- 
 ciate the difference between truth and falsehood. They 
 lie and brag about their own achievements, for they are 
 always conceited; and they he in disparagement of 
 others, for they are always envious of those who are 
 more successful or more esteemed than themselves. The 
 same selfishness and laziness that underlie their action 
 in important matters secure that they are wanting in 
 manners ; for good manners and courtesy mean un- 
 
THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 21 
 
 selfishness and willingness to take trouble in little 
 things. To a new acquaintance, indeed, especially if 
 they have anything to gain from him, they can for a 
 time be fascinating, for they are ready of tongue, and 
 their sensitiveness to impressions endows them with 
 tact ; but as in other things, so in this, sustained effort 
 soon becomes wearisome, and they cannot keep it up. 
 To the feelings of those whom they have no motive to 
 propitiate they are frankly indifferent, and care nothing 
 whether they merely jar upon the taste, or whether 
 they outrage the deep consciousness of right and 
 wrong. 
 
 The character that is here described as that of the 
 artistic temperament is not an attractive one, and 
 perhaps may be considered to be painted in colours too 
 gloomy ; but there are few who cannot reckon among 
 their acquaintances one or more to whom the description 
 applies. The possessor of this temperament has few 
 redeeming features to set off against his defects, nor 
 are his good quaUties very important. For a time, and 
 until his egotism asserts itself, he can be very entertain- 
 ing and charming. He is a ready talker, sometimes a 
 witty talker. He can talk entertainingly — chiefly 
 about himself, it is true — but he can talk entertainingly, 
 can organise games and amusements, and take the lead in 
 them; but here, as a rule, his accompUshraents end. 
 He is an acquisition at a dinner party or a picnic, but 
 in any of the serious affairs of hfe he is a clog and a 
 hindrance, if no worse. These superficial and flashy 
 qualities stand him in good stead. There is no one half 
 as objectionable who is so much considered, who has so 
 many allowances made for him, who is so generally 
 excused, who is so often forgiven, who finds so many to 
 
22 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 plead for him, who escapes so many of the just 
 consequences of his acts. 
 
 The man of Artistic Temperament is usually clever, 
 but he is always incapable, and this leads us to the 
 very important distinction between cleverness and 
 capability, which deserves separate consideration. 
 
Chapter II. 
 
 CLEVERNESS AND CAPABILITY. 
 
 These two qualities are not antagonistic. They are 
 often exhibited by the same person, and then that 
 person is a successful person ; but they are often found 
 apart. A clever person is not necessarily incapable, 
 nor is a capable person necessarily stupid ; but still the 
 qualities are quite different from one another ; they are 
 quite independent of one another, and may be developed 
 to very different degrees in the same person; so that we 
 are often surprised to find how very incapable a clever 
 person is, and how very capable may be a person who has 
 no claim to be considered clever. 
 
 Cleverness is much more easy to find than capability, 
 and is much less valuable. Everyone is clever now, 
 and cleverness is a drug in the market ; but capability 
 is far less frequent, and the demand for it never slackens. 
 It is rather remarkable that cleverness should be so 
 much more frequent than capability, for cleverness is an 
 inborn quaUty. If a man is not bom clever, no edu- 
 cation and no training will make him clever ; but every- 
 one may train himself to become capable. Capability is, 
 indeed, natural to some persons, and seems to be innate 
 in them, and if not innate it may be inculcated by a 
 proper training ; but no training will make a stupid 
 person clever. 
 
24 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 In his mental operations the clever boy is ready, 
 quick, nimble. His verbal memory is good, and he 
 learns easily. At school 1ft is high in his class, 
 takes a high place in examinations, and carries off 
 many prizes. The capable boy, if he does not happen to 
 be clever also, makes no mark at school; but he does not 
 fail in after Hfe. The distinguishing character of the 
 capable person is that he singles out the main point 
 and sticks to it. Having once decided on a purpose, he 
 keeps that purpose steadily in view, co-ordinates aU his 
 efforts to attain it, and doggedly refuses to be diverted 
 into side issues. Therefore he is trustworthy. What 
 he undertakes to do he will do. 
 
 The clever man is fertile in devising new ways of 
 meeting circumstances. He likes novelty for its own 
 sake, and will rather try a new method that promises a 
 great but uncertain success than the old tried method 
 that is certainly successful, but is probably tedious. A 
 clever man may be capable also, but he is not always 
 capable ; and when he is not, he is more ornamental than 
 useful. The clever man is usually admired ; the capable 
 man is always valued. The clever incapable is a very 
 common character, and this is much to be deplored"; 
 for, as already said, anyone may become capable who 
 chooses to make himself so. CapabiUty can be acquired, 
 and it should be one of the main objects of education 
 to see that it is acquired ; but unfortunately it is but 
 little inculcated in schools. The clever incapable, if he is 
 a barrister, is fluent and impressive, abounds in argument, 
 is copious in his references to cases, ready to take 
 objections, ingenious in finding technical flaws in his 
 adversary's case ; but he does not go to the heart of the 
 matter. His arguments, clever as they are, are not 
 
CLEVERNESS AND CAPABILITY 25 
 
 addressed to the main point ; his cases are not strictly 
 relevant ; his objections, even if they are sustained, do 
 not matter ; the flaws he discovers in his adversary's 
 case are not in the substance of the case but in the 
 fringes. He makes a brilhant display, but he loses his 
 cause. If he is a general, he devises a brilliant plan of 
 campaign against his enemy, but he does not consistently 
 adhere to it. He allows himself to be diverted from it 
 into making discursive attacks on tempting openings — 
 attacks that, even if they succeed, do not materially 
 affect the campaign, and meanwhile lose time and dis- 
 sipate his forces. If he is a man of science, he is fertile 
 in hypotheses which he does not trouble to verify. As 
 a surgeon, he devises new and ingenious operations, 
 which he executes with deftness and dexterity, for 
 diseases that could be cured without operation. As a 
 physician, he treats, in novel and striking ways, 
 symptoms rather than diseases, diseases rather than 
 patients. In his interest in devising new ways of doing 
 things he loses sight of the relative importance of the 
 things to be done. 
 
 The clever shopman amuses his customers with his 
 chatter, and surprises them with his information — the 
 capable shopman sells his goods. The clever incapable 
 nurse will entertain her patient with interesting conver- 
 sation — when he ought to be asleep. She will arrange 
 the flowers beautifully — and leave crumbs in the bed. 
 She can make pot-pourri — but she cannot boil an egg. 
 She knows enough about doctoring to criticise the doctor 
 under whom she works — but there are things about nurs- 
 ing that she does not know. The clever person has 
 always an excellent excuse for things going wrong or 
 being left undone, and the clever incapable is in constant 
 
26 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 need of excuses. The capable person has no excuse 
 ready, but then he does not need an excuse ; for with 
 him things do not go wrong, and are not left undone. 
 If we give a job to a clever person, we know that if it is 
 done it will be done neatly and dexterously, but we have 
 no great confidence that it will be done in time, or that 
 it will be done at all. If we entrust it to a capable 
 person, it may not be done as neatly or as well, but we 
 know that it will be done, and done in time. 
 
 The clever person knows a great many things, but 
 his knowledge is apt to be inaccurate. The capable 
 person may not have as wide a field of knowledge, but 
 what he does know he knows thoroughly ; and though 
 his knowledge may be confined to his work, it extends to 
 the whole of his work. The clever incapable may 
 have a great range of knowledge of things outside his 
 work, but there are things about his work that he does 
 not know. The clever man has a good verbal memory : 
 the capable man has a good business memory. The 
 clever man remembers what he has read : the capable 
 man remembers what he has to do. He may forget 
 dates, but he remembers prices ; he may forget the 
 difference between the Bill of Rights and the Declar- 
 ation of Right, but he remembers the difference between 
 a bill of exchange and a promissory note : he may forget 
 the chemical formula of strychnine, but he remembers 
 the difference in appearance between strychnine and 
 Epsom salts : he may forget when the East India 
 Company expired, but he does not forget when his 
 licence to drive a motcr-car or the lease of his house 
 expires. He may be imable to read Greek, but he can 
 read a map. He may be unable to write Latin, but he 
 can write clear instructions. The clever traveller 
 
CLEVERNESS AND CAPABILITY 27 
 
 discovers a short cut to his destination, and is apt to 
 arrive late or lose his luggage on the way : the capable 
 person may content himself with the old route, but he 
 gets there in time and carries his luggage with him. 
 The capable traveller does not mips his train or get out 
 at the wrong station : the clever traveller is apt to do one 
 or the other, though he may be very entertaining to his 
 f ello w- 1 ravellers . 
 
 Clever people are apt to make mistakes and go wrong 
 because their attention is discursive. It ranges over 
 many subjects, and is easily diverted from the thing that 
 matters. From this lack of concentration it results 
 that they do not think matters out. They are deficient 
 in foresight, and do not reckon on contingencies that 
 are likely, but are out of the routine. Capable people 
 concentrate their attention on the matter in hand, 
 think it out in all its bearings, and let nothing interfere 
 until everything likely to happen is provided for. For 
 this reason it is not easy to take them by surprise. 
 When there is a hitch, when things do not go as they 
 should, the clever man has to decide on the spur of the 
 moment, and is apt to be flustered and go wrong ; but 
 the capable man has reckoned on things turning out 
 unexpectedly, and has made his dispositions before- 
 hand, so that if they do, he is not taken by surprise. 
 The clever man is apt to presume on his ability to work 
 quickly, and so to make up for lost time ; only to find 
 that he has lost more than he can make up. The 
 capable man does things in the order of their im- 
 portance, arid so is prompt, while the other is pro- 
 crastinating. 
 
 An excellent example of the contrast between clever- 
 ness and capability was recently recorded in the Times 
 
28 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 by Dr. Broadbent. At the International Congress on 
 Infantile Mortality held at Berlin in 1911, the German 
 machinery for the purpose appeared to the visitors from 
 this and other countries to be " .wonderfully impressive ' 
 and ■ absolutely perfect.' The English and American 
 visitors were ' struck dumb with admiration ' and 
 ' well-nigh green from envy.' The English visitors 
 were mortified at the contrast with the methods in 
 London or any part of the United Kingdom. But upon 
 enquiry it was found that all this machinery, ' wonder- 
 fully impressive ' and ' absolutely perfect ' as it was, 
 produced no result at all in diminishing the mortality 
 among infants ; whereas the methods adopted in this 
 country, imperfect and clumsy as they appear, had 
 actually reduced the rate of infantile mortality by 
 twenty-five per cent. The Germans were clever, but 
 the English were capable. The Germans set out to 
 achieve a certain aim, and lost themselves in a wilder- 
 ness of appliances — very clever appliances, no doubt, 
 but apphances that did not achieve their pmpose. The 
 Germans allowed themselves to be diverted from their 
 main purpose, of preventing infant mortahty, to follow 
 the subsidiary purpose of devising elaborate machinery ; 
 and in following this subsidiary purpose they lost sight 
 of the main purpose. That is the mark and the 
 characteristic of the clever incapable. He does very 
 well indeed what is not worth doing ; or if worth doing 
 at all, is only worth doing for the sake of some ulterior 
 purpose which he completely forgets. The English 
 concentrated their attention on the main purpose, and 
 achieved it. That is the difference between cleverness 
 and capability. 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE' ARTIST. 
 
 As has already been said, the temperament of the 
 artist is very different from the artistic temperament. 
 The respects in which they differ will appear in the 
 following examination. They are wholly different 
 temperaments, but they are not wholly incompatible. 
 An artist is no more than other men immune from the 
 artistic temperament. He may have a certain infusion 
 of it, and in as far as he is infected with it he is 
 in so far less capable as an artist. The artistic 
 temperament exists in all grades and degrees, and is far 
 from being always present in its full development. An 
 artist, like anyone else, may be besmirched with some 
 small degreee of it, but many artists, and all the 
 greatest artists, are entirely free from any trace of it- 
 There is no trace of the artistic temperament in 
 Shakespeare, Milton, or Cervantes ; in Purcell, Beet- 
 hoven, Mozart, or Mendelsshon ; in Titian, Rembrandt, 
 Reynolds or Turner ; in Fielding, Scott, Jane Austen, 
 or Thackeray ; in Michael Angelo, Canova, or Flaxman ; 
 but Bsnron had it. Whistler had it, Charles Reade had it. 
 Savage and Wagner had it in high degree. 
 
 There are many definitions of art and of the artist, 
 but there is none that will stand examination. The 
 definition or description of art that is at present most in 
 vogue is that it is ' self-expression.' If this is so. 
 
30 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 then ill-temper is art, for ill-temper is certainly self- 
 expression. It is perhaps this definition or description 
 that persuades the man of artistic temperament that he 
 is an artist, and that the more he expresses himself — that 
 is to say, the less he exercises self-control, and the more 
 he yields to the impulse of the moment — the greater 
 artist he is. This description of art as self-expression is 
 not merely erroneous ; it is pernicious ; and it is 
 necessary to find some more satisfactory formula. 
 
 Whatever else art may be, it is certainly creative ; 
 and the artist, whatever else he may be, is a creator. 
 He does that which no one else has done, and which 
 has never been done before. But stop ! Is n< t the 
 engraver, who copies another man's pictures, an artist, 
 even though he is a copier ? Is not the pianist or the 
 violinist an artist, even though he but reproduces the 
 creation of another mind ? Yes and no. The engraver 
 is not an artist if he but slavishly copies the painting. 
 The pianist or the violinist is not an artist if he but 
 mechanically reproduces the work of the composer. 
 But the engraving becomes a work of art when the 
 engraver, by the exercise of his creative faculty, adds to 
 the engraving qualities which compensate for the loss of 
 colour, and so makes of the engraving not a mere 
 mechanical copy, but in some respects a new creation. 
 The musician may, it is true, be a mere mechanical 
 instrument to reproduce sounds in certain combinations 
 and in a certain order ; but he is no artist unless 
 ~-he reproduces those sounds in such a way as to add to 
 them new meaning, and thus to create for us something 
 we have never experienced before, even though the 
 music he plays may be famiUar enough. The artist is 
 creative. He has originality. He puts things before 
 
THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE ARTIST 31 
 
 us in a new light. The thing that he presents to us may 
 indeed be familiar, but he represents it to us in a way 
 that is new. He is a creator. Is it, then, a sufficient 
 definition of the artist to say that he is a man who creates 
 new things ? > Clearly it is not, for the inventor also 
 creates new things ; and yet the artist and the inventor 
 though they have something, perhaps much, in common, 
 are not the same. The discoverer is also, in a certain 
 sense, a creator ; and discovery and invention go hand 
 in hand. Yet we should not caU Watt or Bessemer 
 or Kelvin an artist ; still less should we so denominate 
 Newton or Darwin. Clearly, although the artist is 
 necessarily a creator, yet he is not the only creator. 
 He is a creator in a certain field only. Some 
 creations are artistic : others are not. 
 
 Evidently, those creations which we call inventions 
 are creations in the realm of utiUty. The inventor 
 creates that which is useful ; but what do we mean by 
 useful ? Do we mean that which increases our comfort, 
 which adds to the amenities of life, and brings new 
 pleasures within our reach ? Scarcely, for the artist also 
 does this. By that which is useful we mean that which 
 assists us to attain our ends, that which enables us to 
 attain our ends with less expenditure of effort, or that 
 which brings new ends within our reach ; in short, 
 that which opens the way to new pleasures. The 
 pleasure that we gain from an invention is not in 
 the contemplation of the invention but in the use 
 of it ; and this is the difference between invention and 
 art. For the pleasure that we gain from an artistic 
 product is not in the use we make of it, but in the 
 contemplation of it. An invention is a means to further 
 ends : an artistic product is an end in itself. 
 
32 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 The artist, whatever the medium that he works in and 
 moulds to his purpose, is one who produces what is 
 pleasing in the mere contemplation ; and this pleasure 
 in contemplation is the end that he sets himself in his 
 creative work. Now, pleasure in mere contemplation 
 is a luxury that we cannot afford until more urgent 
 wants are satisfied. It is an occupation for idle hours, 
 an occupation that is an end in itself and leads to nothing 
 further; and hence the development of art keeps pace 
 with the increase of leisure amongst those who are 
 capable of enjoying art. This undeniable association 
 of art with leisure leads those of artistic temperament 
 to suppose that by living a life of leisure they are culti- 
 vating art ; but this is a verj' erroneous view. The 
 thorough enjo5^ment of artistic products demands 
 leisure, it is true. The very busy man, the man whose 
 whole time and energies are absorbed in the struggle for 
 existence, has no leisure to read poetry, to hear music, to 
 witness the drama, and so forth, and some leisure there 
 must be before these artistic products can be enjoyed ; 
 but no leisure went to the creation of these artistic 
 products. The artist himself must live, and does hve, a 
 very laborious life. Whatever his material, whether 
 language, pigments, building materials, sounds, marble, 
 bronze, or his own elocution and gesture, the artist must 
 serve a long and laborious apprenticeship before he 
 can attain that complete and facile mastery over his 
 material which will enable him to produce the effects he 
 desires. It is this capacity for long and laborious 
 industry, the fruit of self-restraint, self-control, and 
 self-denial, that so eminently distinguishes the artist 
 from the man of artistic temperament. Carlyle 
 described genius as an infinite capacity for taking pains. 
 
THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE ARTIST 33 
 
 The description is ridiculous. If it were true, every ant 
 and bee would be a genius, for no creature has so great a 
 capacity for taking pains ; but the description has this 
 justification, that without great precedent labour 
 no work of genius ever was, or can be, produced. Great 
 capacity for taking pains no more constitutes genius 
 than a strong wrist constitutes a good fencer, or a pair 
 of legs constitutes a good rider ; but it is true that 
 without a strong wrist a man cannot be a good fencer, 
 without legs he cannot be a good rider, and without 
 great capacity for industry he cannot be a great artist ; 
 and this it is, in the main, that distinguishes the artist 
 from the man of artistic temperament. 
 
 Granted this great capacity for industry, which the 
 artist must possess, but which is by no means pecuhar 
 to the artist, what other qualities go to make up the 
 temperament of the artist ? As an artist he is to 
 produce something that pleases by the mere contem- 
 plation of it. His industry has given him mastery over 
 his materials, but what further quaUties must he have 
 to direct this industry toward the desired result ? 
 Whatever gives pleasure by the mere contemplation 
 of it must be something that arouses emotion. To 
 arouse emotion it must express emotion ; and to express 
 emotion it must be the expression of emotion felt more 
 or less vividly by the creator while he is creating it. 
 Hence the artist must be capable of experiencing 
 emotions. No doubt everyone is capable of experiencing 
 emotions in circumstances calculated to produce 
 emotions ; but in such circumstances the emotions are 
 too forcible to allow us to attend to their expression, 
 and the expression is correspondingly crude. In 
 poignant grief, in extreme terror, in racking anxiety, 
 
 3 
 
34 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 in glorious joy, we are too much overwhelmed with 
 the emotion to be able to give to it adequate ex- 
 pression. To do this we must stand aloof and feel, not 
 the emotion itself, but a pale yet accurate image of it, 
 which we must imagine to ourselves. It is this power 
 of imagining emotion in all its complexity, but in 
 attenuated intensity, that lies at the root of the temper- 
 ament of the artist. He must have the dramatic faculty 
 of placing himself in an imaginary situation, of imagining 
 accurately but faintly how a person really in such a 
 situation would feel, and then of expressing those feelings 
 so as to make them intelligible to a spectator, and so as 
 to arouse in him the emotion, not that would be felt by 
 the actual actor, but that is felt by the artist himself. 
 It is from the contemplation of the expression of emotion, 
 and from experiencing the emotions of a spectator of the 
 actual scene, that the pleasure of witnessing artistic 
 products is derived. 
 
 The merit of an artistic product depends on two 
 factors ; first, the depth or elevation of the emotion 
 expressed ; and second, the skill with which it is ex- 
 pressed. Shallow and trivial emotion makes but 
 trifling art, however perfect the techrrique with which 
 it is expressed. Noble emotion of great profundity, 
 expressed crudely and inadequately for want of mastery 
 of technique, is not great art. It is an unsuccessful 
 attempt at great art. The greatest art is that in which 
 the noblest emotion is expressed with the most perfect 
 technique. 
 
 To attain perfect technique in any art, laborious 
 industry is necessary; but laborious industry alone 
 is not enough. There njust be in addition innate 
 aptitude, aptitude that varies, of course, with the 
 
THE TEMPERAMENT OF THE ARTIST 35 
 
 medium chosen for the expression. Without this 
 innate aptitude, no industry will give mastery over 
 technique : without industrious study and practice 
 no aptitude is of much avail. The combination will 
 give exquisite technique, but technique alone will never 
 make a man an artist. In addition, he must have the 
 capacity of realising and picturing emotion. He 
 must be capable of experiencing the emotion that he 
 is to represent. 
 
 Many of these are not expressible in words ; 
 they have no intellectual equivalent ; they can only be 
 felt, and, if expressed, must be expressed inarticulately ; 
 and these are the emotions that iind expression especi- 
 ally in music and in some forms of architecture ; but 
 some of them can also be expressed in gesture, demeanour 
 and facial alteration ; and therefore, in the depicting of 
 these on canvas and in the soHd, the more profound 
 and stirring the emotion the higher the art. 
 
 One more quality must be added in order to complete 
 the temperament of the artist. This is the ability to 
 construct an harmonious and consistent plan. What- 
 ever the medium in which the artist expresses himself, 
 whether he is a poet, a dramatist, a novelist, a musician, 
 an architect, a painter, a sculptor, an actor, or what not, 
 each work of art that he produces must be modelled 
 upon a consistent plan. It must have one leading and" 
 dominant feature to which all the rest are subordinate 
 and subsidiary in various degrees, with which none must 
 be discordant, and to which none must be irrelevant. 
 The simpler the plan, the more harmoniously its parts 
 are interrelated, and the more variously the different 
 parts illustrate and corroborate the central theme, the 
 greater the work of art. 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 THE FADDIST. 
 
 The faddist, or crank, is familiar to everyone. He is 
 familiar because he insists on making himself heard 
 and seen. He is a busy, meddling, intrusive person, 
 who is not content merely to live and let live, but insists 
 that everyone else should live as he would have 
 them live ; in short, should adopt his fad. The faddist 
 is a person who fixes upon some minor phase of 
 conduct and exalts the cult of this mode of conduct 
 into a religion, nay, into more than a religion ; for 
 with most people religion nowadays occupies a very 
 subordinate position among the objects for which 
 life is lived, but the faddist Uves mainly for his 
 fad. He devotes the greater part of his life to its 
 practice and advocacy, and to abuse and detraction of 
 those who refuse to worship the god of his idolatry. 
 
 There are many fads, and many kinds of fads, some 
 of them positive — that is to say, inculcating a certain 
 practice ; others negative — that is to say, opposing a 
 certain practice. Many of them are of very trivial 
 importance, and none of them has a tithe of the im- 
 portance that is attributed to it by the faddist. Of the 
 positive fads, the most numerous are those which are 
 supposed, on very insufhcient evidence, to contribute 
 to health. The health faddist eats strange food. He 
 
THE FADDIST 37 
 
 lives on fruit and nuts, or toast and water; his fruit 
 and nuts, or whatever the faddy food is, must come 
 from a particular source of supply and be of a particular 
 brand. His beverage must be measured to the thimble- 
 ful. If he drinks tea, it must draw for so many seconds 
 by a stop-watch, and the milk must be sterilised. He 
 wears strange clothes ; he must or must not wear certain 
 fabrics next his skin ; his clothes must be of special 
 material, of a special brand, and must be made by a 
 certain tailor and no other. He wears no hat : or his hat 
 must be of a faddy shape or faddy material, or both. 
 He has a certain ritual of exercises : breathing exercises, 
 exercises to strengthen the lungs, the heart, the stomach, 
 the liver, the arms, the legs, and the rest of him ; and 
 this ritual he performs daily with all the zeal of a 
 religious devotee, for to him it is a religion. He must 
 chew each mouthful so many times, and cannot talk at 
 meals because he is engaged in counting the movements 
 of his jaws. All this he does to preserve a Ufe that is not 
 worth preserving : to keep in health a body that serves 
 no useful purpose. His motto is Propter vitam vivendi 
 perdere causas. 
 
 The negative fads are still more numerous and diver- 
 siiied. The negative faddist is anti-alcoholic, anti- 
 carnivorous, anti-tobacconist, anti-vaccinationist, anti- 
 vivisectionist, anti-patriotist, anti-bellumist. He is 
 anti-restraintist, and would abolish the imprisonment 
 of criminals, and the confinement of lunatics. If 
 criminals must be imprisoned, in spite of his efforts to 
 prevent it, they must at any rate be pampered. They 
 must be allowed to have pianos and newspapers, beer 
 and skittles. He is anti-scientist or anti-Christian ; he 
 is an astrologer, a neoteric Buddhist, a flat-earth crank, 
 
38 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 a spiritualist, a telepathist ; in short, the faddist holds 
 any opinion and advocates any cause of action you 
 please so long as it is opposed to the general sense of the 
 community. 
 
 Some of the opinions of the faddist might be held 
 on reasoned conviction, and after examination of the 
 evidence for and against ; but it is not thus that the 
 faddist holds them ; and when so held they are not fads. 
 The convictions of the faddist, if convictions they can be 
 called, are the merest prejudices. Anything that runs 
 contrary to generally received opinion appeals to him 
 with irresistible force, and he is ready to adopt it without 
 any consideration of the evidence : in fact, he is consti- 
 tutionally incapable of weighing evidence, of suspending 
 his judgment, or of entertaining doubts. If he has any 
 knowledge at all that there are reasons against his 
 opinion, he gains this knowledge from those who are 
 already steeped in prejudice against the reasons, and 
 take care to put them so as to render them ridiculous. 
 The faddist is incapable of stating fairly an opinion 
 contrary to his own, or a fact that traverses his opinion- 
 He garbles, misquotes, distorts, and misrepresents facts, 
 quotations, and opinions that are distasteful to him ; 
 and when these expedients will not serve, he suppresses 
 the evidence altogether. What reasons he gives for his 
 faith are childish, but he is incapable of recognising 
 their inconclusive character. The anti-alcoholic, for 
 instance, is never tired of proclaiming that alcohol is not 
 a food, and this is one of his stock arguments against 
 the consumption of alcohol. When he has said that 
 alcohol is not a food he sits down complacently with 
 the conviction that he has said the last and the decisive 
 word. Draw his attention to the fact that the same may 
 
THE FADDIST 39 
 
 be said of tea and coffee, of ginger-beer and lemonade, 
 and even of water, and you incur his detestation and 
 abuse, but you do not shake his confidence in the 
 conclusiveness of his argument. 
 
 The faddist has a very remarkable conscience. To 
 any infraction of the fad his conscience is morbidly 
 sensitive : it quivers with hyperesthesia ; but in the 
 treatment of the adversaries of his fad it is shockingly 
 callous. Rather than permit the sUghtest infraction 
 of his fad he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his wife and 
 children, and even, within hmits, his own comfort. 
 One distinguished anti-alcoholic faddist electrified the 
 world by proclaiming that if his wife were dying and a 
 drop of alcohol would save her life, he would not allow 
 her to have it. He did not make the same promise for 
 himself, if he should be in the same desperate condition ; 
 but then, of course, an expedient may be permitted, to 
 save the life of a dignitary of the Church, that would be 
 very improper if utilised for a mere woman, and that 
 woman only his wife. Such an extreme sacrifice must not 
 be expected ; but it is certain that a faddist wculd put 
 up with inconvenience, even considerable inconvenience, 
 himself, rather than taste alcohol, or eat meat, or to 
 wear an undergarment of cotton or linen or woollen, or 
 infringe the sanctity of his fad, whatever it happened 
 to be. But the sensitiveness of his conscience in this 
 direction is balanced by its extraordinary callousness in 
 treating opposition to his fad. The fad is to him the 
 main end of life, and justifies any means that he may 
 employ to uphold it, and to damage those who are 
 opposed to it. In support of his fad, the faddist will 
 conscientiously lie, perjure himself, slander and traduce 
 his antagonists with eagerness and rehsh. Recognising 
 
40 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 that the best mode of defence is counter-attack, the 
 faddist considers it more important to carry the war 
 into the enemy's country than even to spread his own 
 fad ; so that it may justly be said of, for instance, the 
 anti-vivisectionist, that he is concerned not so much 
 to save from pain the animals experimented on as to 
 give pain to the experimenters. He condemns with 
 ferocity the ' vivisection ' of a rat, even though the 
 vivisection may be but the infliction of a scratch or a 
 prick ; but he glories in practising moral vivisection on 
 his opponent. He is a sentimentalist and a humani- 
 tarian, and has all the cruelty of these characters. 
 
 What particular fad the faddist may adopt is largely 
 a matter of accident. He is a faddist by temperament, 
 and his mind is so constituted that to him a fad of one 
 kind or another is a necessity ; but it does not much 
 matter what the fad is. Any opinion or mode of 
 conduct that is unusual and can be converted into a fad 
 is as good as any other, and in fact the faddist seldom 
 limits himself to a single fad. Often he cultivates half 
 a dozen. It seems a stupid thing to do, and the im- 
 perviousness of the faddist to reason seems an indication 
 of stupidity ; but the faddist is not necessarily stupid- 
 Many are, no doubt ; and of course faddism implies a 
 certain silliness; but though he is necessarily silly, 
 the faddist is not necessarily stupid. Some faddists are 
 very clever in their folly, and their ingenuity in evading 
 and distorting the arguments of their antagonists is 
 often quite vulpine ; but they never possess the 
 ability to attain by its means the distinction for which 
 they crave.. It is this craving for distinction that is 
 at the root of faddism. The faddist is ambitious. He 
 craves for distinction, but has not the ability to attain 
 
THE FADDIST. 41 
 
 sufficient distinction to satisfy him ; so he is obliged to 
 content himself with the second best. If he cannot 
 attain distinction, he will at any cost attain singularity, 
 and this may lead to notoriety. The adoption of a fad 
 is an easy way of attaining, not distinction, but singu- 
 larity, and the notoriety, httle or much, which singu- 
 larity gives. This is not distinction, but it is the 
 best substitute to distinction that is within reach. 
 
 The faddist is usually an idle person with an active 
 mind. He has no occupation, or what occupation he has 
 is insufficient to occupy his active but narrow mind ; and 
 his fad is an outlet for the part of his activity that is 
 unoccupied. It is his hobby. He takes to it as another 
 person takes to chess, or a third to collecting butter- 
 ffies. It saves him from ennui. It supphes him with 
 an interest in hfe, and with congenial occupation. It 
 gives him an excuse for a pose of superiority, and to 
 some extent satisfies his craving for distinction. It is 
 largely because faddism is the occupation of the idle 
 that it has pretty well disappeared since the war broke 
 out. The faddists have foimd something better to do. 
 
Chapter V. 
 
 THE MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 The business temperament is the contradictory opposite 
 of the artistic temperament. There are plenty of men 
 of artistic temperament in business, and a sad hash 
 they make of it if the temperament is much developed, 
 and there are artists who have the business temperament 
 in addition to that of the artist. The business temper- 
 ament is quite compatible with the temperament of the 
 artist, but quite incompatible with the artistic temper- 
 ament. 
 
 The man of business temperament is he who extracts 
 the maximum of benefit from his circumstances. He 
 need not be clever, though to attain great success some 
 cleverness is, of course, necessary; but he is eminently 
 capable. Nothing is more characteristic of the business 
 man than his power of discerning the main point and of 
 sticking to it. Out of a tangled maze of facts, factors, 
 and considerations, he seizes unerringly upon that which 
 is of most importance to the purpose in view, and never 
 loses sight of it, never allows himself to be diverted from 
 it. Subordinate tasks have to be imdertaken, subsidiary 
 problems must be solved, preparatory arrangements 
 must be made, but the man of business temperament 
 never allows himself, as the merely clever person so often 
 does, to allow the contemplation of the means to obscure 
 
THE MAN OF BUSINESS 43 
 
 his vision of the end, or to allow that which was under- 
 taken as a means to some ulterior end to become an end 
 in itself and for itself. The clever surgeon, in devising 
 the complicated details of an operation, and thinking out 
 in every aspect the best way to perform it, is apt to 
 forget to ask himself the question. Is this operation 
 necessary in this case or not ? Is it better to treat this 
 patient by operation or by some other means ? The 
 operation is not an end in itself. Even to perform 
 the operation successfully is not the main end to be 
 pursued. The main end is to cure the patient ; and this 
 is the end that the surgeon of business temperament will 
 never lose sight of, but that the merely clever surgeon 
 is very apt to lose sight of. 
 
 Promptitude is another prominent characteristic 
 of the business temperament, and one which contrasts 
 sharply with the dilatory and procrastinating habit of 
 the artistic temperament. The man of business temper- 
 ament is prompt in all his doings. His letters are 
 answered by return of post. His accounts go out and 
 his bills are settled to the day. Whatever task presents 
 itself is taken in hand at once. When Napoleon, who 
 was the supreme example of the business temperament, 
 heard of Sir John Moore's dash upon his communi- 
 cations, he started from Madrid within the hour. But 
 it is not only in action that the man of business temper, 
 ament is prompt. He is prompt in decision also. While 
 the man of artistic temperament is wondering what had 
 better be done, hesitating and vacillating, making up 
 cind unmaking his mind, the business temperament has 
 decided what to do and done it. This faciUty of prompt 
 decision rests upon the fundamental business quality of 
 discerning £md selecting without fail the main end to be 
 
44 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 striven for. When this is held in view, a multitude of 
 alternative courses are swept aside as irrelevant. They 
 may be important, but their importance is subsidiary. 
 The business temperament looks to what is vital, and 
 from the constant habit of selecting the thing that is 
 vital acquires a readiness to recognise it and disentangle 
 it from things that are important only, and not vital. 
 Hence the choice becomes cleared. Instead of being 
 among a dozen things, it is limited to two or three 
 alternatives ; and between these the choice of that which 
 most contributes to the main and vital end is more 
 easily, and therefore more promptly, made. With 
 the business temperament promptness of decision, no 
 less than promptitude of action, becomes a habit. 
 
 From the same clear view of the main purpose to 
 be pursued, it follows that the man of business temper- 
 ament is perservering. The fixation of his attention 
 and interest on the main purpose is a safeguard against 
 wandering efforts. He gets through what he is doing, 
 and sticks to it until it is done, for the same reason 
 that the traveller keeps to the road, and does not stray 
 into the adjoining fields and woods ; that is to say, 
 because he looks to the end in view. He never forgets 
 that the subsidiary task on which he is engaged is 
 subsidiary. He does iiot stray aimlessly from the road 
 because the adjoining country is more inviting; but if 
 he sees a path that will take him more directly to his 
 destination, he quits the road instantly and follows the 
 new path. He is shy of novelties only when he does not 
 see clearly that they serve his main purpose, that they 
 lead to his main end ; but he is quick to see and adopt 
 them when they do so. The business man is not often 
 clever at devising new expedients. That is not his 
 
THE MAN OF BUSINESS 45 
 
 business. His business is to examine the expedients 
 proposed by clever men, and to decide whether they will 
 or will not serve his purpose better than those he is 
 using. If they will not, it matters not how clever they 
 are, he will have nothing to do with them. If they will, 
 he sacrifices his existing arrangements without hesitation 
 and without scruple. 
 
 The man of business temperament is a good organ- 
 iser ; that is to say, he is orderly not only in his acts, 
 but in his thoughts. He does not deal with things in the 
 gross, but arranges and classifies them ; and again his 
 power of organisation depends on his power of seeing 
 clearly and adhering closely to the main purpose. For 
 the same things can be classified in as many ways as 
 there are purposes to serve by the classification, and 
 the mode of classification should be governed entirely 
 by the purpose it has to serve. The gardener classifies 
 plants primarily according as they are ornamental or 
 edible, for his purposes are to make one part of the garden 
 ornamental, and to grow edible plants in another. The 
 botanist classifies plants according to their mode of 
 reproduction, for his purpose is to discover their natural 
 affinities. The pharmacist classifies them according to 
 their effects on those who consume them, for his purpose 
 is to produce these effects. The economist classifies 
 them according to their utility and merchantableness, in 
 accordance with his purpose of growing them to a profit. 
 When we say that a man is a good organiser, we mean 
 that he is a good classifier for the purpose he has in view. 
 If he organises a business, he classifies his goods or his 
 operations of manufacture into departments, and he is a 
 good or a bad organiser according as his classification 
 serves well or ill the purpose he has in view. In a 
 
46 ^HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 factory he must so classify his departments that his raw 
 material pursues the easiest and most uninterrupted 
 course from one department to another, imtil it ends as a 
 finished product at the place from which it is easiest to 
 deliver it. He must organise his staff so that he can lay 
 his finger on the particular man who is responsible for 
 any particular operation, and so that every man looks 
 to but one superior for orders, and has full control 
 subject to those orders. He classifies each kind of work 
 into a separate department with a separate staff, and 
 each staff into its own hierarchy of of&cials. From 
 beginning to end, organisation is classification, and as 
 classification always has a reference to purpose, and is 
 good or bad according as the purpose is kept in view 
 and as it serves the purpose, he is the best organiser 
 who keeps the purpose of the organisation most steadily 
 in view. 
 
 In organising or classifying men for any purpose, 
 it is very necessary, not only that the classification should 
 suit for the purpose in view, but that the men should also 
 be fit for the places they take-in the organisation. To 
 put round men into square holes, and vice versd, is bad 
 organisation. The man of business temperament, 
 who is a good organiser, never does this. In order that 
 he should avoid this mistake he must estimate with 
 accuracy, not only the qualities that are required for 
 the place, but also the qualities possessed by the man 
 he proposes to put into the place. In other words, he 
 must have an insight into character. This is the inborn 
 gift of the business temperament. Steady fixation of 
 the attention on purpose may be cultivated ; promptness 
 of action and of decision may develop by exercise ; 
 classification may be learnt ; but insight into character 
 
THE MAN OF BUSINESS 47 
 
 is inborn, and he who has it not as a birthright can never 
 acquire it in any considerable degree. All of us possess 
 some rudiment of it, no doubt, and some quaUties show 
 themselves so conspicuously that there is Uttle difi&culty 
 in gauging them ; but to tell by a single interview 
 whether or not a man is trustworthy, as Charles 
 Darwin's father could, or whether he has the moral 
 courage to bear great responsibilities, or whether he is of 
 prompt decision and clear judgment in important matters, 
 this is a gift which few possess, and which perhaps none 
 can acquire. Anyone can tell on a very short ac- 
 quaintance whether a man is clever or stupid, conceited 
 or modest, reticent or leaky, strong or weak in character, 
 for these are qualities that blaze out conspicuously, that 
 shout aloud, and cannot be overlooked ; but by what 
 fine and subtle indications, elusive to the eye and ear, 
 and discernible only by some sixth sense, it can be 
 discovered whether a man is trustworthy, loyal, 
 courageous, ready in emergencies, capable of inspiring 
 confidence, of leading and managing men, of devotion 
 to a cause, and of steadiness in adversity— these are to 
 most people unknown; but they are in some mysterious 
 way perceived by the man of business temperament, 
 whose most valuable faculty is his ability to read 
 character aright, and to place round men in round holes, 
 and square men in square holes. 
 
Chapter VI. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 The root of religion is sacrifice ; the primary purpose 
 of sacrifice is propitiation. In primitive religions 
 the gods are frankly malignant. They are inspired by 
 mahgnity, and only by sacrifice can they be propitiated 
 and induced to forgo the execution of their malevolent 
 designs. As men become more enlightened, the 
 malignity of their gods becomes molhfied, and at length 
 Christianity attempts to depict the Deity, not as an 
 avenger, for ever on the watch to inflict pain and suffer- 
 ing in revenge for offences committed against Him, but 
 as a loving Father, desiring only the welfare of His 
 votaries. This is the professed ideal of the Christian 
 rehgion ; but it is never maintained. At the one extreme 
 the Roman Cathohcs teach the necessity of propitiation 
 by penances interspersed among the pleasures of life ; 
 at the other extreme, the Puritans teach the necessity 
 of propitiation by renouncing pleasures altogether. 
 
 The religious temperament consists, therefore, in 
 proneness to sacrifice, which is evinced in two ways — self- 
 sacrifice and vicarioiis sacrifice ; and, accordingly, the 
 reUgious temperament is twofold. At the one extreme 
 we see St. Simeon StyUtes and the noble army of self- 
 martyrs, the-self-torturer, the hermit, the Trappist, the 
 monk, the nun, and so on down to the High Church 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENT 49 
 
 lady who deprives herself of sugar in her tea during 
 Lent, or rises at an inconvenient hour to attend early 
 celebration. At the other extreme is the savage who 
 immolates his human victim on the ciltar, the inquisitor 
 who tortures his heretics to propitiate his Deity, and the 
 Puritan who deprives his children of innocent pleasures 
 for the same reason. No doubt in many cases the two 
 forms of sacrifice are practised by the same person. No 
 doubt Abraham, in intending to sacrifice his only son, 
 was torn to the heart with anguish at the necessity ; 
 no doubt Torquemada inflicted penances on himself ; 
 and the Puritan father who deprives his children of 
 their innocent little pleasures may deprive himself also 
 of pleasures equally innocent ; but the vicarious sacri- 
 fice is so much less unpleasant that, human nature being 
 what it is, it is apt to become preponderant ; and as 
 sacrifice, after all, is sacrifice, it may seem superfluous, 
 and tending to foster self-righteousness and spiritual 
 pride, to cultivate both forms. Hence the pleasiu-es that 
 the Puritan denies himself are apt to be those which, 
 even if indulged in, would yield him little pleasure, while 
 those of which he deprives others inflict very real 
 mortification. His abstention from dancing, at his 
 age and with his portly figure, is no great sacrifice to him, 
 but his prohibition of the same exercise for his children 
 is for them a real deprivation. 
 
 The preponderance of vicarious sacrifice over self- 
 sacrifice cannot take place without a certain callousness 
 on the part of the sacrificer to the sufferings of others, 
 and callousness is a half-way house on the road to 
 cruelty ; and thus is explained that streak of cruelty 
 which is so frequent an accompaniment, and, indeed, a 
 manifestation, of the religious temperament. Not all 
 
50 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 persons of this temperament are cruel ; far from it. 
 Many are of the most benevolent and amiable disposition, 
 but these are not addicted to vicarious sacrifice. They 
 sacrifice themselves. They give freely of their money, 
 their time, their labour, their thought, their convenience 
 and comfort, either to forward the welfare of others or 
 ad majorem Dei gloriam ; but they do not demand 
 sacrifices from others. Rather, by their own unselfish- 
 ness and readiness to sacrifice themselves, they foster 
 selfishness in those around them. It is those who make 
 vicarious sacrifices, those who demand and exact sacri- 
 fices from other people, and especially those who make 
 themselves the instruments of other people's sacri- 
 fices, that are apt to become first callous and then cruel, 
 and at length may develop or degenerate into such 
 monsters of cruelty as Torquemada, Bishop Bonner, 
 John Calvin, and John Wesley.* Not satisfied with the 
 sufferings they are able to inflict and to witness, their 
 malignant imaginations revel in describing the torments 
 of hell, to which they hope rather than fear that their 
 victims will be consigned. Cruelty is not a necessary 
 part of the religious temperament, but it is a frequent 
 accompaniment of this temperament ; and it is found, 
 as has been said, in those who prefer to make vicariously 
 the sacrifices that are the root element in reUgion. 
 
 Those examples of the religious temperament that 
 tend to self-sacrifice provide us with some of the most 
 beautiful and admirable specimens of hinnan character, 
 just as those that tend to vicarious sacrifice provide us 
 with some of the worst ; but even self-sacrifice may be 
 pushed to excess, and will then become a vice. Even 
 those beautiful characters that compel our admiration 
 ♦John Wesley's treatment of his erring daughter was devilish. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENT 51 
 
 by their unselfish devotion to others are not always 
 beneficial to those others. The more a person sacri- 
 fices himself, or more often herself, to ministering to the 
 comfort and welfare of others, the more likely is he or she 
 to breed selfishness in those others ; and in experience 
 we find that the most selfish people are those upon whom 
 unselfishness has been most lavished. Self-sacrifice 
 does not, however, always take the form of increasing 
 the comfort of others by renouncing our own. In 
 many cases there is mere renunciation for its own sake, or 
 rather, for the sake of compensations that are expected 
 to accrue after this life ; and it is in these that we see 
 the most extreme degrees of self-sacrifice — of self- 
 sacrifice that often amounts to self-torture. As it is 
 difficult to withhold our admiration from the self- 
 sacrifice of unselfishness, even though itseffect may be to 
 increase the selfishness of others, so it is difficult to 
 bestow admiration upon this kind of self-sacrifice, which 
 is in many cases but a refined and excessive selfishness. 
 The monk and the nun who renounce the pleasures 
 and comforts of what they are pleased to call the world, 
 and who renounce them, not in order to be of service to 
 their fellow men and women, but in order to shirk the 
 burden and the battle of life, and to secure for them- 
 selves a better future in the world to come, do not 
 command our admiration or our sympathy. They 
 are engaged in a commercial transaction, which they 
 believe wiU turn out to their profit, and we admire them 
 no more than we admire the trader who embarks on a 
 speculation for the sake of the return that it will bring ; 
 or, if we do, the admiration is rather for their astuteness 
 than for their virtue. 
 Religion and morality are very different things, and 
 
52 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 although the man of reUgious temperament may be a 
 moral man, true and just in all his dealings, there is no 
 necessity that he should be so, nor is it at all necessary 
 that a highly moral and virtuous man should be religious. 
 Religion and moraUty have no more necessary connection 
 than blueness and hardness. The sea is blue, but it is 
 not hard, and the diamond is hard, but it is very rarely 
 blue. No one can doubt that the Duke of Alva, 
 Louis XL, Louis XIV., Philip IL, and James IL were 
 extremely religious, and no one can doubt that every 
 one of these historic characters was a scoimdrel. On 
 the other hand, Julian the Apostate, though by no means 
 a religious man, was far from the worst of the Roman 
 Emperors, and many a philosopher whose life was 
 blameless, and who is revered as a model of virtue, has 
 had no religion at all. 
 
 Neither is intelligence any monopoly of the religious 
 temperament : there are as many stupid people as 
 clever people who are religious, and as many clever 
 people as stupid people who are not. There is, indeed, 
 a certain antagonism between reason and the religious 
 temperament. Those who possess this temperament 
 in high degree are apt to flout the processes and results 
 of reasoning, and refuse to admit their validity in the 
 realm of religion ; and many very able men of religious 
 temperament refuse to employ their intellect on religious 
 problems. 
 
 The religious temperament is, however, strongly 
 addicted to forms, and strongly infused with emotion. 
 Devotion to form grows with the age of the religion, 
 and the oldest religions not only are the most formal, 
 but also come at length to consist mainly, and at last 
 entirely, of forms. Each religious revolt is a revolt 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENT 53 
 
 against the rigidity of form, but no sooner is form 
 abolished than it settles down again and continually 
 grows stronger. Ritual, liturgy, observance, con- 
 vention, are characteristics of all religions, and the 
 older the religion the more it is bound in these forms. 
 Even the Quakers, who profess to throw off all forms, 
 substituted new forms for those they abolished. They 
 abolished all pecuUar ecclesiastical costume, only to 
 institute a conventional costume of their own ; they 
 abolished the liturgical mode of addressing the Deity, 
 only to introduce a conventional mode of addressing 
 their fellow-men. If they have now abandoned 
 both their conventional costume and their conventional 
 mode of address, it is not because their religion is 
 become less formal, but because they have become less 
 religious. 
 
 The religious temperament is an emotional temper- 
 ament. It is diffused and surcharged with emotion, 
 which finds ready and enthusiastic expression. This 
 does not mean that every professional religious person, 
 every priest, parson, minister, monk, mm, dervish, 
 fakir, and bonze is emotional, for many persons who 
 adopt religion as a profession are not of the reUgious 
 temperament, just as many persons who adopt business 
 as a profession are not of the business temperament ; 
 and vice versa, there are many persons of business temper- 
 ament who are not in business, and many of religious 
 temperament who are not in religion. But the person of 
 religious temperament is prone to feel strongly, and to 
 express his feelings with even exaggerated emphasis. 
 The emotion may not be deep, nor need it be enduring, 
 but while it lasts, it overpowers him and carries him away 
 in a storm of expression. He weeps on small occasion. 
 
54 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 He groans with remorse. He writhes in contortion of 
 agony at the thought of his sins — or of other people's. 
 Under stress of exhortation and contagion he shrieks 
 and sobs, and may fall down in a faint or even in con- 
 vulsions. He gushes with pity, especially with self- 
 pity. He sees visions and hears voices. Under stress 
 of emotion he breaks out into eloquence of which his 
 ordinary speech gives httle promise. So foreign are these 
 manifestations to his customary behaviour that they 
 may be looked upon as the direct results of inspiration; 
 They are, however, the common features of the religious 
 temperament when it is highly developed. 
 
Chapter VII. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL MAN. 
 
 The practical man is, as his title implies, concerned 
 with doing things ; and in as far as he recognises that 
 action is the most important function of animate beings, 
 he has grasped a great truth ; but what he does not 
 appreciate so well is that action, if it is to be successful, 
 must be based upon knowledge, and he is apt to despise 
 knowledge. He has a great contempt for the theorist, 
 whom he calls a theoretical fool, and he does not appre- 
 ciate that, as all action is founded on knowledge, so all 
 knowledge is supposititous ; nor does he appreciate that, 
 much as he despises theory and the theorist, he is him- 
 self the most thorough-going theorist of them all. His 
 favourite expression is ' The fact is ' so-and-so, that 
 which he takes for a fact being usually a wild and 
 groundless speculation. ' The fact is,' the practical 
 doctor tells his hypochondriac patient, ' your liver is 
 out of order, and I shall give you some medicine to 
 stimulate its action.' The supposition that the patient's 
 symptoms are due to derangement of the functions of the 
 liver is a wild speculation, resting on no basis of fact, and 
 on no evidence whatever. The doctor has a very hazy 
 notion of what the functions of the Uver are, and if he 
 were asked to connect these functions with the patient's 
 symptoms, he could not do so. To do him justice, he 
 
 5S 
 
36 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 would not try. He would regard the question as 
 ' theoretical trash,' and if it were pushed, he would 
 probably say, ' How do I know ? Because I am a 
 practical man. I give him some medicine to stimulate 
 his Uver, and you will see that wiU cure him.' Accord- 
 ingly, he administers taraxacum and podophylUn, 
 or calomel and jalap, and his patient does recover. 
 ' There ! ' says he triumphantly, ' Now who was 
 right ? ' He was right in supposing that taraxacum 
 and podophyllin or c. cum. j. would cure his patient, 
 but there is not the shghtest evidence that any of these 
 drugs could or did stimulate the liver ; nor has he any 
 inkUng of what would happen if the fimctions of the 
 liver were stimulated. The supposition that they acted 
 on the liver is as wild and baseless a speculation as the 
 supposition that the functions of the liver were dis- 
 ordered. But, it may be said, What does it matter, as 
 long as the patient recovers ? And it is true that as long 
 as the patient recovers it does not matter — to the 
 patient. But it matters a great deal to the doctor. In 
 this case his speculation did no harm ; but this case is 
 exceptional. He did not, in fact, base his action on his 
 h5^othesis, though no doubt he thought he did. The 
 real reason for the administration of the drugs was 
 neither the belief that the liver was disordered nor the 
 behef that the drugs would rectify this disorder, though 
 no doubt both these beUefs existed. The real reason 
 for his action was that the same drugs had cured a 
 similar disorder in other cases ; and whether they cured 
 the disorder by acting on the liver or in other ways did 
 not matter in the least. In this case no harm was done ; 
 but the harm that has been done, and is daily being 
 done, by the practical man in proceeding on a false 
 
THE PRACTICAL MAN 57 
 
 hypothesis which he does not know to be an hypo- 
 thesis, but fondly believes is an established fact, is 
 incalculable. The number of patients who have been 
 killed by attempts to ' disperse the peccant humour ' 
 or to ' bring on the crisis,' is no doubt very great, but it 
 is to be doubted whether these attempts had more 
 disastrous effects than attempts to purify the blood, or 
 to reduce the acidity, or to correct an alimentary 
 toxaemia, or to diminish the intake of purin. 
 
 The practical man reads little. He is unable to 
 grasp an abstraction. His vocabulary is limited ; but 
 he makes up for the limitation of his knowledge of words 
 by his imphcit beUef in the power of the words that he 
 does possess. He does not distinguish between words 
 and things ; a word is to him as good as a thing ; and a 
 verbal explanation which explains nothing is to him com- 
 pletely satisfactory. He is puzzled by the behaviour of 
 his pears, which turn black and fall off the tree as soon 
 as they have reached the size of a crab or a sloe ; but 
 tell him it is a blight, and he is satisfied, and does not care 
 to inquire further. His rubber syringe, which was so 
 elastic and pliable, is become hard and rigid, and when 
 it is squeezed it cracks and splits. What has happened 
 to it ? Tell the practical man that it is perished, and he 
 is quite satisfied. He knows now as much as he cares 
 to know, and thinks he knows now more than he knew 
 before he was in possession of the explanatory word. He 
 sees that criminality is not prevented by punishing 
 criminals, and declares that the only true remedy is 
 education ; but if you can get at his notion of education 
 it consists of teaching reading and writing, and a few 
 other things, including Latin grammar ; and even 
 the practical man would not consider a knowledge of 
 
58 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 Latin grammar an effectual antidote to criminality. 
 But in using the term ' education ' as a preventive 
 of criminality, he does not attach any meaning to 
 education. He does not go behind the word, and 
 ' education ' is to him as effectual a word as ' blight ' or 
 ' perished.' The word alone is sufi&cient. The passion 
 for giving names to things has been inherent in the human 
 race ever since Adam gave names to all the animals, and 
 no doubt it is convenient, in speaking of things, to have 
 names to speak of them by ; but the practical man is apt 
 to regard the name of a thing as not only an inherent 
 and inseparable quaUty of the thing, but as a key to all 
 its other qualities ; hence to him a name is satisfying. 
 He is not so very far removed from the savage who 
 believes that knowledge of his enemy's name gives 
 him power over that enemy. Hence all the diagnostic 
 efforts of the doctor who is a practical man are devoted 
 to finding a name for his patient's malady ; and when 
 he has attached a name to it, he is content. He now 
 takes it for granted that he knows all that there is to be 
 known about the disease. To picture to himself the 
 train of disordered processes in their sequence is an 
 effort that it never occurs to him to make. Like the 
 savage, he regards possession of the name as possession 
 of power over the thing named. 
 
 The practical man sees what is obvious, and misses 
 what is important if it is not obvious also. The practical 
 man laughed at Copernicus and Galileo, for he saw 
 the sun rise and set, and surely seeing is believing ! 
 Practical men clamour for taxes to be laid on foreign- 
 made goods, so that the money shall go to enrich the 
 British producer and not the foreigner. The payment 
 to the foreigner for his goods is obvious, and cannot be 
 
THE PRACTICAL MAN 59 
 
 overlooked ; what is overlooked is that this payment is 
 made, not in money, but in goods, and that these goods 
 must be produced by the British producer, to whom, and 
 not to the foreigner, the money goes directly ; and 
 another thing that is overlooked is that the British 
 producer does not part with his goods to the foreigner as 
 a gift, nor even upon equal terms, but that he parts with 
 what he does not want in exchange for what he does. He 
 parts with what he can produce in exchange for what 
 he cannot, or with what he can produce easily, and there- 
 fore cheaply, in exchange for what he can produce only 
 with difficulty, and therefore expensively. Practical 
 men clamour for the State to do this and that, or to find 
 the funds for doing this and that, with the implied 
 conviction that the State holds a Fortunatus' purse, and 
 that what the State does is pure gain to everyone, and 
 costs nothing to anyone but the State. That the State 
 has no money except what it takes out of the pockets 
 of its citizens is not sufficiently obvious to impress them. 
 The practical man takes short views. He adapts 
 direct means to immediate ends. If the progress of the 
 horse up the hill is arrested, the remedy of the practical 
 man is not to take some of the bricks out of the cart, but 
 to flog the horse. If the patient is emaciated, exhausted 
 and hungry, the remedy of the practical woman is to give 
 him a good square meal. That her unfortunate victim 
 has turned the corner of t5^hoid fever, and that the good 
 square meal is likely to be fatal, is unknown to her. 
 Rags and dirt are signs of poverty, and poverty is to 
 be relieved by charitable gifts, and therefore the benevo- 
 lent practical man is profuse in almsgiving to the ragged 
 and dirty, and so accentuates poverty instead of 
 relieving it. 
 
6o HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 The practical man is less crudely practical than he 
 was. He has discovered by many an experience 
 and many an example that the longest way roimd is 
 sometimes the shortest way there. He has a glimmering 
 of knowledge that after all the most obvious remedy is 
 not always the best remedy ; that diarrhoea is sometimes 
 best treated, not with astringents and opiates, but with 
 castor oil ; that the true remedy for poverty is not to 
 give alms but to give opportunity ; that the result of 
 manuring his fruit trees is more likely to be increase of 
 wood than increase of fruit ; that the remedy for dis- 
 ^content is not repression and coercion, but the removal of 
 its cause ; that, in short, action, to be efficient, must be 
 founded upon knowledge ; and therefore he craves for 
 knowledge. But his impulsion to immediate action is so 
 strong that he is ready to seize upon anything that 
 purports to be knowledge, and to act upon it. He 
 wants to be doing something to remedy the ills of which 
 he has a keen appreciation, and he has neither the 
 patience to wait for a rational remedy nor usually the 
 intelUgence to judge whether a remedy is rational or not ; 
 so he plunges. While detesting the ' theoretical fool,' 
 he does not recognise that, whatever his action, it must 
 be founded on supposition, and as he cannot distinguish 
 supposition from fact, he is at the mercy of every crank 
 who puts forward a supposition and calls it a fact. He 
 used to believe that gout was due to excessive drinking 
 of port wine ; he now knows that it is due to excessive 
 production of uric acid, and that this is again due 
 to consuming too much purin. He used to believe that 
 poverty could be relieved by almsgiving ; he now knows 
 that the proper way to relieve poverty is by the for- 
 mation of committees and the extensicn of the suffrage. 
 
THE PRACTICAL MAN 6i 
 
 He used to believe that shirking and cowardice were 
 vices to be punished ; he now knows that they are 
 manifestations of a laudable tenderness of conscience- 
 The practical man must be doing something. He is not 
 content to wait, and watch, and investigate, until he 
 knows the right thing to do. He must do something, 
 even if it is the wrong thing, which it very often is. It 
 if for this reason that we always order two tablespoons- 
 ful three times a day. It is doing something ; and as 
 the majority of our patients are practical persons, they 
 demand that something shall be done. The illness runs 
 its course, and most illnesses run their natural course 
 towards recovery. In these our two tablespoonsful 
 seldom do good, and let us hope they seldom do harm, 
 to the patient. Their real function is not to affect the 
 patient, but to satisfy the urgent need of his practical 
 female relatives to be doing something to help him. 
 
Chapter VIII. 
 
 THE ENVIOUS TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 ' Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able 
 to stand before envy ? ' — Prov. xxvii. 4. 
 
 Envy and jealousy are often used interchangeably, as 
 if they meant the same thing. In fact they are pro- 
 foundly different. Envy regards one person only, and 
 one person directly. Jealousy regards the relation 
 between two other people. Envy is felt towards him 
 or her who is more fortunate than the envious ; jealousy 
 towards him or her who is preferred by some third person 
 to the jealous. In jealousy three people are concerned ; 
 in envy only two. Envy and jealousy often go to- 
 gether, but they do not necessarily go together, either 
 in the sense that they are felt towards the same person 
 or in the sense that they are felt by the same person. 
 The envious person is not necessarily a jealous person, 
 nor is the jealous person necessarily envious ; but 
 nevertheless the two temperaments often go together. 
 
 In the Litany we pray to be deUvered from envy, 
 hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness ; but 
 evidently the form of the prayer leaves it doubtful 
 whether we pray to be saved from experiencing these 
 passions, or whether we pray to be saved from 
 being the object of them. Either fate is undesirable, 
 and we may well pray to be saved from both. In 
 
THE ENVIOUS TEMPERAMENT 63 
 
 experience we find that hatred, malice, and uncharitable- 
 ness are included in envy — included, not as a species are 
 included in a genus, but as ingredients are included in a 
 pudding. They are parts of its composition. Envy 
 is, in fact, that hatred, malice, and imcharitableness 
 that is cherished towards those who are more fortunate 
 than the envious. The envious poor man hates the man 
 who is richer than himself ; the envious plain woman 
 woman hates the woman who is better looking. 
 
 People are not usually envied for what they have 
 achieved or earned. They are envied for that which 
 the caprice of fortune has bestowed upon them. If the 
 man is envied for his achievements, he is envied, not 
 for achieving it, but for the opportunity which came his 
 way. The more of merit that has gone to procure for 
 him the good things of life, the less he is envied for them. 
 It is the unearned, unmerited good fortune for which he 
 is envied. The envier is outraged by a sense cf in- 
 justice. Why should unmerited, rmeamed good fortune 
 come to another rather than to him ! He is not abso- 
 lutely worse off for the good fortune of another, but he is 
 relatively worse off ; and the sense of injury rankles 
 in his mind. The natural effect of injury is to provoke 
 retaUation ; and since the person who feels himself 
 injured by the good fortune of another cannot retaliate 
 upon thegood fortune, or upon the chapter of accidents 
 that bestows the good fortune, he seeks to retaliate 
 upon the recipient of the good fortune. The envious 
 man hates the envied, and ' hates anyone the man he 
 would not injure ? ' The envied man is always in 
 jeopardy from his envier. The retaliation usually takes 
 the form of detraction. Commonly the very fact that 
 the envied is more favoured by fortune than the envier 
 
64 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 lifts him out of the reach of more serious forms of injury, 
 and detraction is the only weapon left to the envier ; 
 but envy has this curious peculiarity, that it is apt to 
 express itself not only — perhaps but shghtly — in attacks 
 upon the envied, but also, and more, in attacks on 
 iimocent third parties. The envious person is consumed 
 by a rage of hatred against the envied, and if the envied 
 is out of his reach, he will strike bUndly against any- 
 one who happens to be within his reach. His unfortu- 
 nate family are his chief victims. Some piece of good 
 fortune has befallen one of his acquaintances, from 
 whom he must, in spite of himself, conceal his envy, 
 and whom perhaps the laws of good breeding compel 
 him, in spite of himself, to congratulate ; and the 
 suppression of his passion weights the safety-valve 
 and increases the internal pressure to the bursting- 
 point. As soon as he finds himself where he can safely 
 blow off steam, he lets himself go, and then woe to his 
 imfortimate subordinates and dependants ! They are 
 amazed by an exhibition of temper for which they have 
 given no provocation, and the source of which is unknown 
 to them. 
 
 If the envious person has no dependants, he, or 
 more often she, for this mode of expressing envy is more 
 frequent in women — is apt to sulk, and the sulkiness 
 is sometimes pushed to such surprising extremes as 
 to raise doubts of the sanity of the sulker. Her family 
 are astounded when the sulker, without rhyme or 
 reason known to them, will refuse to speak, will refuse 
 to eat, will lock herself into her bedroom for days 
 together, will go without fire in the depth of winter, will 
 mortify herself and render the whole household un- 
 comfortable, to all appearance from mere caprice, and 
 
THE ENVIOUS TEMPERAMENT 65 
 
 without provocation or justification of any kind. Such 
 conduct is scarcely sane — it seems so motiveless. But 
 if we could dive into the mind of the actress, if we could 
 extract a candid and complete confession from her, we 
 should find that she has a motive, and that the motive 
 is a frenzy of envy. Such women or girls are usually 
 obstinately dmnb during these attacks, or if they break 
 silence, it is only to utter some viperish vituperation ; 
 but if we are vigilant, we shall often notice a chance 
 word which gives the instructed mind a clue, and reveals 
 a consuming, raging envy as the underl37ing motive of 
 the outbreak. 
 
 ' A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly 
 envious,' so says Bacon. By ' busy ' he meant busy 
 in a sense now obsolete, or rather, in the sense of ' busies 
 himself ' — that is to say, meddling. Bacon's wisdom 
 is much over-rated. He is one of those men who, 
 like Plato, Aristotle, and Mill, have reputations out of 
 all proportion to their deserts. Here he puts the cart 
 before the horse. It is not that meddling and inquisitive 
 people are commonly envious, but that envious people 
 are commonly meddling and inquisitive. Their con- 
 sciousness of their own merits is a raw surface, which 
 is scarified by having the merits of others brought to 
 their notice ; and yet they cannot help tormenting 
 themselves by meddling and inquisitive investigation 
 into the business of other people. In as far as these 
 inquiries discover the defects and misfortunes of other 
 people, in so far the meddler is a happy man or woman ; 
 but alas ! his investigations may bring to light only 
 the merits, or the unmerited good fortune, of their 
 subject, and then the envier writhes in torment. 
 But he does not desist. He still hopes to find something 
 
66 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 to give him consolation, so he still meddles and inquires. 
 Bacon is much nearer the truth when he says ' Neither 
 can he that mindeth but his own business find much mat- 
 ter for envy.' Here he is unquestionably right. Envy 
 arises from the contemplation of other people's fortunes, 
 and the man who confines his attention to his own 
 business is precluded from envy. ' Men of noble birth ' 
 he says ' are noted to be envious towards new men when 
 they rise. For the distance is altered ; and it is like a 
 deceit of the eye that, when others come on, they think 
 themselves go back.' In this he gets near the truth of 
 the matter, that envy arises out of comparison. It is 
 excited by the comparison of the better fortune of others 
 with our own worse fortune. ' Lastly,' he says, ' near 
 kinsfolk and fellows in office, and those that are bred 
 together, are more apt to envy their equals when they 
 are raised.' This is true, but Bacon does not see why 
 it is true. Such cases are peculiarly provocative of 
 envy because there is no ignoring them. They thrust 
 themselves upon our notice, and must be attended to. 
 And, moreover, the comparison is more insistent. We 
 are not compelled to compare ourselves with those who 
 are far from us, who are not personally known to us, 
 and with whom we have had little to do ; but we cannot 
 help comparing ourselves and our fortunes with those im- 
 mediately around usj; and it is as true of envy as of hatred, 
 of love, and of other personal passions, that frequent 
 personal intercourse is necessary for their development 
 in fuU strength. However bitterly we may hate a man, 
 the hatred dies away if he goes to India and we never 
 more hear of him. That absence makes the heart grow 
 fonder is only true when the absence is brief. 
 Envy includes hatred, but it is not the same as ha,tred. 
 
THE ENVIOUS TEMPERAMENT 67 
 
 It is a conditioned hatred, and the hatred lasts only as 
 long as the conditions last — that is to say, as long as 
 the fortune of the envied continues to be better than that 
 of the envier. The hated man is still hated even in 
 misfortune ; but let the envied man meet with disaster 
 and he is no longer an object of hatred. The hatred was 
 conditional, and now the condition is abolished, the 
 hatred goes with it. The envier is quite capable of 
 showing kindness, nay, he finds a genuine delight in 
 showing kindness to the man in his misfortune whom he 
 envied in his good fortune. Envy is the result of com- 
 parison, and the result of the comparison is now favour- 
 able to the envier, so that he envies no longer ; and so 
 delighted is he at the relief to his feelings which the 
 new situation brings, that he is quite capable of active 
 benevolence. Indeed, envy is quite consistent with 
 benevolence and beneficence towards any object that 
 does not inspire envy ; and the further refnoved the 
 object is from inspiring envy, the more immistakably 
 and decidedly worse off the person contemplated than 
 the contemplator, the more active and the more genuine 
 the benevolence of the man who bears nothing but 
 ill-will towards those who are better off than himself. 
 
Chapter IX. 
 
 THE JEALOUS TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 The difference between jealousy and envy was out- 
 lined in the last chapter. Envy is aroused by the contem- 
 plation of but one other person : jealousy depends on the 
 relation'between two other persons ; and it is curious that 
 although jealousy, is a very widespread passion, to 
 which everyone is Uable in some degree, a passion which 
 affects not only mankind, but many of the lower animals 
 also, and frequently produces disastrous consequences, 
 yet the double attitude of the jealous person has never 
 become embodied in language. A man is said to be 
 ' jealous of ' the other man to whom his girl shows an 
 inclination, but there is no phrase to express the 
 corresponding feeling that he entertains towards the 
 girl. 
 
 The type of jealousy is sexual jealousy, but jealousy 
 is by no means exclusively sexual. The sycophant 
 is jealous of the person to whom his patron shows in- 
 clination. The admiring schoolgirl is jealous of the 
 other girl to whom her adored mistress shows inclination. 
 The child that passionately loves its mother is jealous 
 of the new baby on which the mother lavishes caresses. 
 The basis of jealousy is the desire for the exclusive 
 possession of the love, interest, or attention of another 
 person, which the jealous person desires to hold in 
 
 68 
 
THE JEALOUS TEMPERAMENT 69 
 
 monopoly ; and jealousy arises when this monopoly 
 is infringed. Of the love, the interest, the concern, 
 the attention of another person the jealous regards 
 himself as the proprietor, and his jealousy is excited 
 when his proprietary rights are infringed. Thus 
 jealousy is but a special case of a much more general 
 passion. The type of the jealous person commonly 
 accepted is the man whose girl prefers another man ; but a 
 more general type is the dog snarling over a bone. The 
 dog regards the bone as his own property, to which he 
 has the right of exclusive possession, and he is ready to 
 defend his right, and to attack anyone who presumes to 
 infringe it ; and he proclaims this readiness by his snarl, 
 which is a threat of retaliation upon anyone who pre- 
 sumes to interfere with his proprietary right. So the 
 man feels that the affection, regard, concern, and 
 attention of his girl are his own property, to which he 
 has the right of exclusive possession : he is ready to 
 assert his right, and attack anyone who presumes to 
 interfere with it. The man of jealous temperament is he 
 who has his sense of proprietorship strongly developed, 
 and is sensitive to any interference with it — nay, to any 
 approach to interference, to any possibility or pre- 
 sumption of interference. The jealous dog does not 
 wait until an attempt is made to rob him of his bone ; he 
 snarls at the passer-by who is not thinking of him. And 
 the jealous man does not wait to feel jealousy until his 
 exclusive possession is actually interfered with : the 
 mere approach to interference, the possibiUty of inter- 
 ference, is enough to excite his jealousy. 
 
 Jealousy, then, is the feeUng that is aroused in us 
 by interference with our proprietorship. It is usually 
 taken as limited to interference with our proprietorship 
 
70 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 in the affection and regard of a person of the opposite 
 sex, but the feeling thus aroused is indistinguishable 
 from that aroused b}' diverting the affection and regard 
 of anyone, even of the same sex, and is not widely 
 different from the feeling aroused by interference with 
 any other mode of proprietorship. To use a man's 
 horses or motor-car, or his camera or cricket-bat, or to 
 smoke his cigars or drink his wines, without his per- 
 mission, arouses in him an emotion which is scarcely 
 distinguishable from jealousy. 
 
 Jealousy, therefore, is by no means dependent on 
 love. It is often associated with love, but it is not 
 necessarily so. Even sexual jealousy may be felt 
 without any intermixture of love. It is by no means 
 unusual for a woman who does not care a straw for her 
 husband, who may even detest him, to be frantically 
 jealous of his attentions to other women. It is not the 
 outraged love that provokes jealousy ; it is the infringe- 
 ment of proprietorship. Little as she cares for her 
 husband, she has a strong sense of her proprietorship, 
 not over him, but over his attentions, and if they are 
 directed elsewhere, her jealousy is aroused. 
 
 Nor is jealousy by any means exclusively directed 
 towards persons of the sex of the jealous, or towards 
 persons at all. A husband of jealous temperament will 
 be jealous of the man towards whom his wife seems to 
 incline, but he will also be jealous of her woman friend, of 
 her and his own children, even of her lap-dog or her 
 cat. A jealous wife will be jealous not only of her 
 husband's women friends, but also of anytWng that 
 engrosses a share of that attention to which she lays 
 exclusive claim. She will be jealous of his men friends, 
 of his yacht, his golf, his books, his gun, even of his 
 
THE JEALOUS TEMPERAMENT 71 
 
 business, for all of these steal from her a portion of 
 that attention that she seeks solely to engross. 
 
 The natxu-al manifestation of envy is, as we have seen 
 in a previous article, retaUation against the envied 
 person, but is by no means restricted to this mode of 
 expression. If such retaliation is impracticable, or 
 even in addition to it, the envier vents his spleen on 
 innocent third parties, or perhaps, by a strange dis- 
 tortion of purpose, punishes himself. The expression of 
 jealousy is no less diffused and multipUed. It provokes 
 to retaliation ; and the retaUation may be directed 
 against either the person or thing towards which 
 the jealousy is felt, or against the person or thing on 
 account of which the jealousy is felt, or against the 
 jealous person himself, or, though more rarely, against an 
 innocent fourth party. 
 
 The most natural manifestation of jealousy is retali- 
 ation against the intruder — against the person who has 
 infringed the proprietorship of the jealous person, or 
 what he conceives to be his proprietorship — a conception 
 often formed on very inadequate grounds. The person 
 towards whom the jealousy is felt may have taken no 
 active step against the proprietorship, may be ignorant 
 that it has been infringed, may be ignorant that there 
 is any proprietorship, or that any is claimed. A woman 
 may be furiously jealous of the woman to whom her 
 husband or her lover appears to be attracted, even 
 though no such attraction is in fact felt, even though the 
 other woman is ignorant of it if it is felt. A ludicrous 
 instance of jealousy has recently come under the notice 
 of the writer, an instance in which a man conceived a 
 furious jealousy of another who had written upon a 
 subject which the jealous man regarded as his own 
 
72 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 property; and this although the intruder was totally 
 ignorant that the jealous man had written on that 
 subject, and although others had written on it before 
 the jealous man had done so. But however groundless 
 the jealousy, hjwever absurd the grounds that give rise 
 to it, it is one of the most lethal of the passions, and 
 more often than any other passion prompts to acts of 
 deadly animosity. Although, however, the person 
 to whom the jealousy is directed is an object of this 
 animosity, he is not the sole, nor even usually the chief 
 object. In sexual jealousy the retaUation is more often 
 directed upon the person on account of whom the 
 jealousy is felt, than towards the person of whom the 
 jealousy is felt. Of the hundreds of assaults committed 
 on the prompting of jealousy that come before the courts 
 every year, but few are committed upon the rival, and 
 these much more often by the jealous woman than by the 
 jealous man. The jealous man does not as a rule 
 assault his rival ; he beats his wife or his girl, or cuts 
 her throat. The jealous woman does not as a rule 
 assault her husband or her lover. She seeks out her 
 rival and scratches her face, or perhaps throws vitriol 
 over her. 
 
 What would be very surprising if it were not so 
 familiar is that jealousy so frequently prompts the 
 jealous man to injure, neither his rival nor the woman 
 who has given, as he thinks, occasion for jealousy, but 
 himself. That he should try to get his rival out of his 
 way is inteUigible : that he should punish the woman 
 who has transferred her allegiance is intelligible ; but 
 that he should punish himself, often with capital punish- 
 ment, is indeed a strange vagary. When he has mur- 
 dered his faithless wife or lover, it is perhaps not' un- 
 
THE JEALOUS TEMPERAMENT 73 
 
 natural that he should kill himself, both to forestall the 
 punishment of the law, and because he has now deprived 
 himself of that which made his life most worth living ', 
 but that he, or more often she, should kill herself for 
 the motive of jealousy is less explicable. It can be 
 explained, however, by the consideration that has just 
 been mentioned. The deprivation of her lover deprives 
 the girl, for the time being, of her whole motive and 
 purpose in life. Life is to every man, and still more to 
 every woman, not a gift, but a trust, to be handed on to 
 a succeeding generation. Unknown to herself, un- 
 realised by herself, the craving for motherhood dominates 
 her being. As long as the future has in store for her 
 the realisation and satisfaction of this craving, even if 
 oiily in possibility, she can endure in hope and tran- 
 "quillity ; but when, by the securing of a lover, she has 
 been brought within sight of the realisation of her hopes, 
 and when, by his desertion, the cup is dashed from her 
 lips, all interest in life is aboUshed, and she hastens to 
 quit the scene that is become distasteful to her. 
 
 Jealousy, in some degree, is natural to man and 
 woman, and all possess it more or less ; but in the 
 jealous temperament it assumes a dominant influence. 
 The man of jealous temperament is furious if his wife 
 but shows interest in the conversation of her partner at 
 a dinner ; the woman of jealous temperament is furious 
 if her husband is even commonly pohte to a lady guest. 
 Persons of tjiis temperament may be quite aware of the 
 groundlessness and absurdity of their jealousy. They 
 may deplore it and despise themselves for it ; but for 
 all that it dominates them, and they cannot help it. 
 
Chapter X. 
 
 THE SUSPICIOUS TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 The suspicious temperament shows itself to the observ- 
 ing eye in early life, but nevertheless it is often over- 
 looked at this stage, and even when fully developed in 
 early manhood receives insufficient attention. It is 
 important, however, that it should be recognised, for 
 it is apt to develop into one of the most intractable and 
 dangerous forms of madness. 
 
 The child of suspicious temperament is different from 
 other children. He is not given to sociable and 
 boisterous play, but prefers to sit or ramble by himself, 
 indulging in reveries and castle-building. He lives in 
 an imaginary world of romance, in which he is, of course, 
 the central and heroic figure. He is studious, and usually 
 has a fair share of ability, so that he takes a good place in 
 his class, and is well thought of by his masters ; but 
 he is not popular with his schoolmates. He keeps aloof 
 from them, and they reciprocate by sending him to 
 Coventry, not formally and designedly, but practically. 
 Schoolboys are, as a rule, cruel little brutes. They are 
 cruel, not of set purpose, but from want of sympathy. 
 As the embryo starts as an unicellular organism, and 
 passes through the various stages of development that 
 the race has passed through in its progress from the 
 unicellular organism to man, so the child after birth 
 passes through the various stages of human develop- 
 
 74 
 
THE SUSPICIOUS TEMPERAMENT 75 
 
 ment that are traversed by man in his progress from the 
 state of savagery to that of high civilisation. The 
 young schoolboy is a savage, and as he grows older 
 gradually emerges from savagery into barbarism. In 
 both stages he is cruel, and in both stages he 
 shares with the savage and the barbarian their 
 detestation and contempt of the stranger and the 
 independent, non-conforming person who departs 
 from the wonted and accepted ways of customary 
 and common life. The schoolboy who refuses to 
 conform to schoolboy usages, but strikes out an 
 independent line of his own, is not popular with other 
 schoolboys, and is made to feel his unpopularity not 
 only in being sent to Coventry, but also by more positive 
 action, which is the sweetest sorrow to the boy of 
 suspicious temperament. He glories in feeling that he Is 
 under-estimated, misunderstood, unappreciated, and 
 misjudged. He does not complain, but he hugs his 
 misery, indulgies in orgies of self-pity, retires more and 
 more into himself, and accentuates his singularity. 
 
 When he leaves school and goes out into the world, 
 he is already a morbid being. He is self-centred, and 
 his interests and attention are not externalised, but 
 turned inward upon himself. More and more he becomes 
 peculiar and different from other men, and if we can 
 penetrate into his mind, we find at the bottom of his 
 peculiarity a colossal conceit. He is in his own opinion 
 the cleverest, the ablest, the best, the handsomest, the 
 most deserving of men. And yet he cannot disguise from 
 himself that his successes and achievements are by no 
 means proportionate to his merits. For this he has an 
 easy and manifest explanation. He is still under- 
 valued, misjudged, misunderstood, under-estimated. 
 
76 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 His ill-success is due to no deficiency of his own, but to 
 he ignorance, jealousy, favouritism, and malice of 
 other people. The defect is not in his own achieve- 
 ments, which are splendid enough, but in the stupidity 
 or malice of others, which cannot recognise, or refuses 
 to admit, his superiority. He does not complain loudly, 
 but he adds this new grievance to the reckoning, and 
 scores another injustice against mankind. 
 
 He is subject to the little aimoyances and troubles 
 that beset us all, but he takes them much more seriously 
 than other people, and attributes them to different and 
 more sinister causes. Does he mislay a thing ? 
 He is sure it has been stolen. But it is of so Uttle value 
 that it is not worth stealing ? Then it has been stolen 
 out of malice, and for the purpose of annoyance. Does 
 an acquaintance pass him in the street without recognising 
 ing him ? He is sure he has been intentionally cut. He 
 has long suspected that acquaintance of unfriendly 
 feelings towards him, and now his suspicions are con- 
 firmed. Does a tradesman make a mistake in exe- 
 cuting an order for him ? Such carelessness would not 
 be allowed towards anyone else. Other people can be 
 properly served. Other people's orders are executed 
 with care, but he is considered of no account. It does 
 not matter how he is served. Anything is good enough 
 for him. Is one of the breakfast eggs bad ? It is sure 
 to fall to his share, and he wiU never believe that it fell 
 so by accident. It was arranged that he should have 
 it, or at least it came to him by some gross negUgence 
 that would have been avoided in the case of anyone 
 else. And so he goes through life ; always iU-treated ; 
 always selected and singled out for ill-treatment ; always 
 the victim of a carelessness and negligence that would 
 
THE SUSPICIOUS TEMPERAMENT 77 
 
 never have been exercised towards anyone else ; or 
 worse, of malice, and of malice resting upon envy of 
 his manifest superiority. But he does not complain- 
 much. He prefers to hug his grievances, to pose as a 
 martyr, to accept his slights and injuries with an 
 ostentatious resignation that is more theatrical than 
 Christian ; or if he does display resentment, his resent- 
 ment takes the form of sulks rather than of active anger. 
 But if the fire does not blaze up brightly, it is none the 
 less intense. It glows and smoulders in sullen internal 
 fury, which may at length break out in raging flame, 
 upon a provocation that is perhaps trivial in comparison 
 with others that have been passed over. 
 
 If it goes no further than this, the suspicious temper- 
 ament may be regarded as still restricted within the 
 bounds of the normal ; but it is not always thus re- 
 stricted, and at best it is the normal representative 
 or degree of a mental pecuUarity that, when exaggerated 
 so as to pass beyond the boimds of the normal, becomes 
 one of the most striking, the most peculiar, the most 
 dangerous, and the most incurable kinds of insanity. 
 From imagining a constant succession of sUghts, injuries, 
 injustices, and neglects to imagining a common cause for 
 them all is a not long step. It is indeed almost a logical 
 step. So many repeated experiences of the same kind are 
 hardly consistent with fortuitous occurrence. If they 
 really were, as the man of suspicious temperament 
 believes, intentionally directed against him, it would look 
 very much as if they were directed on a common plan 
 from a common source ; and gradually this conviction 
 forces itself upon the suspicious man. He sees in every 
 new occurrence of the kind, and almost everj^hing 
 that happens to him is to him an occurrence of the kind. 
 
78 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 fresh evidence of the existence of a plot against him. If 
 we are much associated with him, we may witness the 
 gradual conversion of the suspicion into a rooted con- 
 viction. Little by httle we see a conjecture grow into 
 a suspicion, the suspicion becomes more and more 
 confirmed until it ripens into complete certainty. Then 
 the delusion of persecution is estabUshed ; then the 
 boundary of sanity is passed; and then whatever of 
 reeison there may have been in the suspicions, which 
 was never very much, is scattered and abandoned. 
 The morbid growth in the mind still continues, and there 
 are now no bounds to its extravagance. Formerly 
 some real annoyance, however slight, was needed in 
 order to arouse the resentment. Now annoyance, and 
 wilful, intentional annoyance, is attached to the most 
 harmless and innocent occurrences, to occurrences that 
 have no connection at all with the suspecting man. In 
 every word, in every gesture and attitude of other 
 people, he sees intention to injure him, or evidence of the 
 plot to injure him. The casual greetings of strangers 
 in the street have some reference to him and to the plot 
 against him. The school children shouting at their 
 play, and regardless of his presence, are jeering at him. 
 Even the articles in the newspapers, while purporting 
 to criticise the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary, 
 really refer to him, and are using these personages as 
 cover to attack him. The whole world is pressed into 
 the service of the plot, and is utilised by his enemies to 
 injure him. What astonishes us in all this is the 
 colossal conceit that underlies it all. According to the 
 diseased imagination of the paranoiac, he is the centre 
 of universal attention. If his imaginings were true, the 
 thoughts, the interests, the efforts and endeavours of the 
 
THE SUSPICIOUS TEMPERAMENT 79 
 
 whole parish, the whole country, the whole world, are 
 concentrated upon him and absorbed in him. In his 
 eyes the rest of creation is as interested in him as he 
 himself is, and devotes to him all its time and attention. 
 This also is carried to its logical [conclusion. If he is 
 so important that everyone is thinking of him, and 
 interested in him, he must be some great personage ; 
 and accordingly he soon begins to imagine, first that he 
 must be, and then that he is, a great personage. It is 
 true that he occupies a very insignificant position, but 
 this is because he is kept out of his rights by the machina- 
 tions of his enemies. It is probable, and it soon becomes 
 certain, that he was changed at birth. He is not the 
 son of a city clerk or a country parson as he has always 
 appeared to be. He is really of ducal, nay, of royal 
 birth. He is the rightful heir to the throne. He should 
 be by rights the actual occupant of the throne. He may 
 go further than this, and arrogate to himself the attri- 
 butes of the Deity. There is no Umit to his arrogance 
 or to his assumptions. Such is the culmination of the 
 suspicious temperament if its vagaries are allowed to 
 proceed unchecked ; and it is very diflicult to put any 
 curb upon them. The foundation of the temperament 
 is conceit, and the most effectual way to take the conceit 
 out of a man is to secure that he shall have plenty of 
 traf&c with the world, and shall be brought into contact 
 with many men, each of whom, we may be sure, will 
 excel him in some respect or other ; but with the man 
 of suspicious temperament this is difficult, for he is 
 unsociable and soUtary in taste and habit. The only 
 method that offers much hope is to catch him young, to 
 recognise and combat the peculiarity while he is still 
 a child. 
 
Chapter XI. 
 
 THE MAN OF ACTION. 
 
 The man of action, or of adventurous temperament, 
 abounds in energy which is well under control. It is 
 not the strong, but the weak, who display perpetual 
 fussy movement. The man of action is distinguished 
 in a mixed company by his tranquilUty. He has 
 tremendous energy, but he keeps it under control, in 
 reserve, out of sight, ready for action if called upon, but 
 not to be expended without good reason. The silent 
 strong man of the popular novelist has incurred a good 
 deal of ridicule, but this is because he has not always been 
 skilfully portrayed, and has sometimes been caricatiired. 
 The type exists, and is, perhaps, produced more 
 frequently in England than in most countries. 
 
 The man of action is bom at all adventure. He 
 springs up as a surprise in the most unexpected quarters. 
 His father may be studious and his mother an invalid, 
 but they both come of good healthy stock. He gets 
 from them a fine, strong, physical constitution, capable 
 of great and long-enduring exertion, slow to feel fatigue, 
 insusceptible to heat and cold, resistant to disease. He 
 can take much exertion with little sleep. He sleeps 
 readily and soundly, but is capable of going long without 
 sleep. His sleep is under control. He can fall asleep 
 when he pleases, wake when he pleases, and take 
 refreshing sleep in snatches when he finds it con- 
 
THE MAN OF ACTION 8i 
 
 venient. He is a fine animal. His senses are keen and 
 he knows how to use them. His sight is neither long nor 
 short, he has a keen ear, a keen nose, and a sensitive 
 touch ; and he is highly observant. He notices things 
 that other people overlook ; in particular he is sensitive 
 to shades of expression, and so divines as if by instinct the 
 attitude and feelings of those with whom he is dealing. 
 
 Being of boundless and consuming energy, his 
 proclivity is to action ; and since his power of inhibition 
 is great, and his energy is under strong control, it is 
 employed, not in actuating fine movements of small 
 muscles, but in large, vigorous action of the whole man. 
 Over his finer movements the man of action has complete 
 control. His facial muscles, the muscles of expression, 
 are under the mastery of the will, so that when he pleases 
 he wears an impenetrable mask. He never gesticulates. 
 His superabundant energy does not dribble away in Uttle 
 movements of the fingers and hands. Indeed, his hands, 
 and the management of his hands, are alone enough to 
 characterise him. They are large and broad and firm. 
 The thumb is well opposed, and even when at rest is on 
 a plane at right angles with his palm. When you shake 
 hands with him, his fingers and metacarpus do not 
 crumple up into a flabby bunch : the hand is as firm as 
 a piece of wood. And it is always in a position to be 
 instantly available. You never catch him with his 
 hands in his pockets. His eye is steady, but it is well 
 opened and alert. It is not attracted by every move- 
 ment that is going on around him, but nevertheless the 
 movements do not escape him, for he can attend almost 
 equally well to all parts of his field of vision. He is not 
 necessarily very muscular, but he shows in his deep 
 chest the capacity for endurance. 
 
 s 
 
82 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 As his energy is great, and is not dissipated in small 
 movements of small muscles, he demands wide spaces to 
 move in. Sedentary life is unbearable to him. He 
 loves the open air and unrestricted freedom of move- 
 ment. Restriction to the confines of a road is almost 
 as irksome to him as restriction to the confines of a 
 room. He is a man of wide horizons, and the conven- 
 tions and petty restrictions of the highly organised life 
 of towns press upon him with intolerable restraint, the 
 more so because his consciousness of his own power 
 makes him insensible to fear emd contemptuous of danger. 
 He has a well-justified confidence in himself, and longs 
 for the opportunity to put forth the powers that he 
 feels he possesses ; and this is the adventurous spirit. 
 Such men are the explorers and adventurers, travellers, 
 into strange lands, leaders cf romantic expeditions, 
 big-game hunters, mountain-climbers, pioneers, 
 conquerors. Such men were Alexander, Zenghis Khan, 
 Tamerlane, Attila, Pizarro, Cortez, the Cabots, Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, Captain Cook, Napoleon, Sir John 
 Frankhn, Marco Polo, Speke, Burton, and many 
 another. 
 
 Men of this temperament are fearless. Their control 
 over their energy and bodily powers is so complete that 
 no danger can disturb it . However appalling the position 
 they are in, they remain cool, their faculties alert, their 
 judgment imdisturbed. However suddenly the emer- 
 gency arises, they are not flustered nor perturbed. 
 Nay, it is said of some of the greatest men of action 
 that it requires a position of imminent danger to call 
 out their great qualities ; that they were never so cool, 
 their judgment never so well balanced and perfect, as 
 in some great emergency. Thus it is with the hunter of 
 
THE MAN OF ACTION 83 
 
 big game, who reserves his fire till the charging beast is 
 within a few yards of him ; thus it was with the captain 
 of the saiUng ship when the squall struck him un- 
 expectedly ; thus it was with Cromwell when his wing 
 was carried away by Rupert's charge ; thus it was with 
 Warren Hastings when he was outvoted on his Council, 
 and Nimcomar brought forward his accusation ; and 
 thus.it was with Clive when his officers mutinied. 
 
 It is the same completeness of self-control that gives 
 to the man of action his rapidity of decision. All his 
 powers of body and mind are in hand. They do not 
 need to be summoned, sent for, and collected. They 
 are ready at an instant's notice to be applied in this 
 direction or in that. He seems to jump to his con- 
 clusions by an unfailing instinct, but this is very far 
 from his mental process. The alternatives pass through 
 his mind in a flash, and the long habit of rapid decision 
 enables him to select on the instant. 
 
 The man of action is the bom leader of men. His 
 strength, his confidence in himself, his complete control 
 over his own powers, give him a similar control over 
 others. In making up his own mind he makes up the 
 minds of others. Mankind may be divided for different 
 purposes in a variety of ways. We may divide them into 
 men of thought and men of action ; we may divide them 
 into men of inductive mind and men of deductive mind ; 
 we may divide them into those whose passion is for 
 utility and those whose passion is for beauty ; we may, 
 divide them into the civilised, the semi-civihsed, 
 barbarians, savages, and"' Germans ; or we may divide' 
 them into leaders and led. Most men belong to the 
 latter class. They have neither the courage, the 
 initiative, the originality, nor the strength of character to 
 
84 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 strike out a line of conduct for themselves. They are 
 slaves to convention, to fashion, and to custom. They 
 are under the thraldom of what people will think, and 
 no prospect is so terrible to them as that people should 
 think that they are not machine-made and turned out 
 by the gross. Their reUgion is the religion of the 
 jumping cat, and they dare not move xmtil they see 
 which way the cat is going to jump. Such people 
 without a leader are as sheep having no shepherd. They 
 huddle together, trying to gain confidence from contact 
 with their fellows ; and there they will remain, huddled 
 together, without moving this way or that, until a 
 leader appears upon the scene ; but they are ready, 
 wilUng, and anxious to follow anyone who inspires them 
 with confidence, and commands them with an authori- 
 tative voice. They wait for the man of action, and he, 
 with his abounding vitality and self-confidence, can 
 lead them whither he pleases. The confidence that he 
 feels he easily inspires in others, and men instinctively 
 feel and appreciate the quaUty of leadership. If a 
 dozen men meet for the first time round a table in com- 
 mittee, before half an hour is over one will have estab- 
 lished his ascendancy, or they will be divided into two 
 groups, each under the dominance of a leader ; nay, 
 if half a dozen men get into conversation in a railway 
 carriage, one will have established his ascendency before 
 the end of the journey. When many men are engaged 
 for any time in the same enterprise, they soon fall under 
 the dominance of a leader, even if they begin as a mob ; 
 and when once a leader has established his leadership and 
 shown the qualities of the man cf action in high degree, 
 there is no sa,crifice that his followers will refuse him, 
 no task he can set that they will shrink from. During his 
 
THE MAN OF ACTION 85 
 
 life his followers are his slaves, and after his death they 
 deify hira. 
 
 The men of action leave behind them the greatest 
 names, but they are not the greatest revolutionisers- 
 As often as not their achievements are barren; and 
 prodigious as they loomed in the eyes of contemporaries, 
 they produce little effect on subsequent generations. 
 The history neither of Greece nor of India was much 
 affected by the conquests of Alexander, but the history 
 of Europe has been profoundly affected by Aristotle. 
 Attila might as well have remained at home for all the 
 effect he produced on the history of France. It was 
 Erasmus more than Luther, Voltaire and Rousseau 
 rather than Napoleon, who revolutionised Europe. 
 Bismarck was the greatest man of action of the last half 
 of the nineteenth century, but Bismarck's work is now 
 in a fair way to be undone : the effect of Darwin's 
 work increases year by year. The man of action reaps 
 his reward during his hfetime ; the man of thought does 
 not enter into his kingdom till after he is dead. Then 
 
 Nations, slowly wise and meanly just, 
 To buried merit raise the tardy bust. 
 
Chapter XIL 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 " You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried 
 too in my time to be a philosopher ; but, 1 don't know 
 how, cheerfulness was always breaking in." This notion 
 of the philosopher as a scowling, morose, gloomy person 
 was never true, and was certainly not long prevalent, 
 but it seems, from Mr. Edwards' confession to Dr. 
 Johnson, quoted above, that it prevailed in the 
 eighteenth century. Mr. Edwards should have remem- 
 bered that Democritus was called the Laughing 
 Philosopher, and if ever the philosopher was regarded as 
 by nature a pessimist, that time is long past, even 
 although the character of Carlyle gave some countenance 
 to it. We do not now regard the philosopher as a growling, 
 scowling pessimist, but we do regard him as a person 
 who is not put out about little things ; who does not 
 storm when his dinner is late, or, like Carlyle, call down 
 fire from heaven when he cannot lay his hand upon the 
 match-box. Experience scarcely bears out this c pinion. 
 The philosopher has his full share of the infirmities of 
 human nature. Even Dr. Johnson himself was not 
 indifferent to the composition of his dinner, and in the 
 controversy between him and Adam Smith, both of them 
 said things much better left unsaid. In respect of their 
 attitude to agreement and opposition, philosophers are 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER 87 
 
 iruch like other men. Agree with their peculiar 
 doctrines, and they will coo like doves and purr like 
 kittens ; but cast a doubt on their impeccability, and 
 the coo of the dove is apt to change into the scream of 
 the angry parrot, and the kitten bares his teeth and shows 
 his claws. 
 
 No. The philosopher is distinguished, not by the 
 equability of his temper, but by his devotion to thought 
 rather than action, to principles rather than details. He 
 searches for rules. He is a generaliser. To him an 
 "is lated fact has no value ; indeed, he scarcely recog- 
 nises that there can be an isolated fact. A fact is to 
 him of value only as far as it illustrates, corroborates, or 
 contradicts a principle; or is explained by a principle; or 
 needs a new principle to explain it. He is the antithesis 
 of the practical man, who despises general principles, 
 calls the generaliser a theoretical fool, and stores liis 
 memory with disconnected facts ; and he is the com- 
 plement of the man of action, whose function is to 
 apply general principles to particular cases, and especi- 
 ally of the inventor, whose function is to find new 
 appUcations for general principles. 
 
 With action the philosopher as such has nothing to do. 
 His business is to discover general truths ; and though the 
 discovery of a general truth always has, sooner or later 
 a bearing upon action, yet its bearing upon action is not 
 often immediate, and may be very remote. Moreover, 
 the bearing of a general truth on action, and its appli- 
 cation to concrete cases, is rarely apparent at the time 
 of its discovery. No philosopher ever sets out deliber- 
 ately to discover what shall be of practical use and 
 application. He sets out to discover truth ; and the 
 practical application comes afterwards, it may be a long 
 
88 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 time afterwards, and is seldom made by the philosopher 
 himself. Neither Copernicus nor Galileo had any 
 expectation that the discovery of the rotation of the 
 earth would be applied to navigation, and enable the 
 course of a ship to be as accurately laid and kept as the 
 course of a land journey. Clerk-Maxwell little thought 
 that his recfndite mathematical speculations would 
 render wireless telegraphy possible. Faraday pursued 
 his researches into electricity and magnetism without 
 a thought of the electric telegraph and the electric 
 motor in which they resulted, Mendel pursued his 
 researches into inheritance with no view to the 
 improvements in methods of breeding to which they have 
 directly led. Pasteur never dreamed that his researches 
 into the action of yeast would lead to the abolition 
 of sepsis in wounds and the sensible prolongation of 
 human life. It would be scarcely too much to say that 
 those investigations which have been made with a direct 
 view to utility have been the least useful. It is so at 
 least with investigations into the incidence of the weather. 
 A vivid but rather confused recognition of these truths 
 leads the philosopher to loik askance upon researches 
 that have a direct utiUtarian object, a feeling that finds 
 expression, in the toast reputed to have been proposed 
 at a dinner of the Royal Society : ' Here's to the latest 
 scientific discovery, and may it never be of the sUghtest 
 use to anyone ! ' It would be vain for philosophers to 
 attempt to exclude usefulness from their discoveries, 
 even if the attempt were to be seriously made. We 
 can never foresee in what unexpected ways a recondite 
 and apparently fanciful discovery may prove useful. 
 But though the attempt is never seriously made, and 
 must be unsuccessful if it were made, yet it is most 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER 89 
 
 desirable that investigations should never be discouraged 
 on the ground that their utility is not apparent. 
 
 It has been said that everyone is from his birth 
 either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. The universaUty 
 of the saying is to seek, but if for everyone we substi- 
 tute every philosopher, and if for a Platonist or an 
 Aristotehan we substitute a man of deductive or of 
 inductive mind, which is approximately what the 
 sasdng means, we shaU not be far astray. It is thus 
 that men of philosophic temperaments may be divided. 
 The man of deductive mind revels in abstractions. 
 He formulates in the widest terms a general principle, 
 and proceeds to deduce from it subsidiary principles, 
 until he has erected a comprehensive and coherent 
 system, whose principles explain all the facts within 
 its ambit. The inductive mind begins by collecting 
 and examining facts. After a sufficient number have 
 been examined, their resemblances and differences noted, 
 there seems to be a principle running through them. 
 This principle the inductive philosopher is quick to 
 seize ; but he does not yet build a system upon it. He 
 looks round for relevant facts, and as he finds them he 
 applies his principle to them and notes whether they 
 sustain it. If they do, well and good. So far he is 
 justified ; but he does not stop here, he looks round for 
 more. If amongst them all he finds a single one that 
 is irreconcilable vnth his principle, the principle must 
 go. It is abandoned at once and without hesitation, 
 and another is substituted and submitted to the same 
 ordeal, to be perhaps abandoned in its turn. Not until 
 every relevant fact that he can find is shown to be 
 consistent with his principle is that principle accepted. 
 
 Each of these kinds of mind has its value, and each 
 
90 HUMAN TEMPERAMENTS 
 
 is the complement of the other. The dedurer finds it 
 easy to frame an hypothesis that will explain the facts, 
 but he is apt to take insufficient account of the facts, and 
 to forget or ignore facts that conflict with his principle. 
 The inducer is apt to become entangled and confused 
 in a mass of facts for which he can find no explanatory 
 principle. He is apt to want the wide comprehensive 
 grasp of his facts, and the penetrating insight that 
 discovers a principle running through them. The 
 caricature of the deducer is the architect who designs 
 a three-storeyed building without stairs, whose rooms 
 are inaccessible, and whose windows give no light : 
 the caricature of the inducer is he who piles up a heap 
 of bricks and calls it a building. Pythagoras, who 
 explained everything by the principle of number, is the 
 type of the crazy deducer ; the mere collector, who 
 compiles statistical tables, is the type of the crazy 
 inducer. In Kepler and Darwin both the inductive 
 and the deductive turn of mind were well developed, with 
 a decided preponderance of the inductive : in Newton 
 and Locke they were both well developed, with a 
 decided preponderance of deduction. 
 
 The inducer, with his keen appreciation of the value 
 of fact, finding that facts seldom present themselves in 
 Nature sufficiently pure and free from ambiguity for 
 his purposes, usually devises means of isolating his facts. 
 In other words, he is an experimenter. The deducer, 
 perhaps because of his defective appreciation of the 
 value of facts, is rarely an experimenter. When he does 
 apply his principles to practical purposes, his applications 
 border on the ludicrous. Kant, who elaborated the 
 Categorical Imperative, invented suspenders for his 
 stockings to take the place of garters ; Herbert Spencer, 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER 91 
 
 the formulator of the Theory of Evolution, invented 
 ear-plugs to keep out trivial conversation. All the 
 great inductive philosophers have been experimenters ; 
 none of the deductive philosophers has been an experi- 
 menter. The deducer looks upon his theories as his 
 children, and resents any inconvenient fact that tends 
 to injure them. He is apt first to resent and then 
 ignore it ; and at length be becomes able to ignore 
 immense classes of facts. Bentham and his followers of 
 the utihtarian school steadily refused to admit that 
 men ought to be actuated by any motive but that of 
 material interest, and at length succeeded in convincing 
 themselves that men are not actuated by any other 
 motive ; and this they held in spite of the whole e\'idence 
 of history, which shows that for one war that has been 
 waged for material gain, two have been waged for 
 religion, and two more for some other ideal. Hegel is 
 another conspicuous example of the crazy deducer. 
 His philosophy may be put briefly thus : Everything 
 is nothing, and nothing may be anything, must be some- 
 thing, and perhaps is everything. The purely deductive 
 philosopher is a moonraker, and his native place is 
 Gotham ; but this must not blind us to the truth that 
 inductive philosophy owes all its value to the deductive 
 element that it contains. In other words, it is only by 
 imagination, iy speculation, that principles can be 
 devised : and heaps of facts unvifalised by a principle 
 are not knowledge : they are only the material out of 
 which knowledge can be constructed, and by themselves 
 are worthless. Speculation and fact are to each other 
 as male and female, as sperm and germ. Each by itself 
 is barren ; but unite them, and the offspring is 
 knowledge.