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222 THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

THE STUDY OF HUMAN CHARACTER.^

IT is a curious circumstance how little the study of character
has shared in the wonderful progress of science that has taken place
in the last half-century. For it is a subject which is of the most
profound interest and importance, in which the discovery of any
great principle would be certain to excite universal attention. In
1861 Alexander Bain published a book entitled The Study of
Character which was one of the least successful of all his works,
and never reached a second edition. Somewhat earlier John Stuart
Mill had planned a book on character (as I learn from his private
letters); it was to have followed his Logic; but he found he could
make nothing of the subject, and thereafter turned his attention to
Political Economy. Already in the previous century Jean-Jacques
Rousseau had likewise planned a work on character; but he too
found the subject beyond his powers. Ribot and a few other
modern writers in this country and in France have made some
progress with the subject; but the fact remains that our knowledge
is loose and disorganized, existing largely in aphorisms such as
we find in Montaigne's essays, unco-ordinated by any fundamental
principles, and therefore of little use in practical life.
The backwardness of knowledge in this sphere must be due to
the existence of very special difficulties in the study of it: and
accordingly I begin this paper with an account of the main difficul-
ties which appear to me to stand in our way. First and most
obvious is the absence of any advanced general psychology; and
this, as I venture to believe, is due to the intrusion of metaphysical
conceptions into what should be a purely scientific study. Not till
spiritualistic conceptions are finally driven out, not until our
outlook is completely materialistic, can we have a firm basis for the
study of character. The experimental psychology of recent years
is indeed purely materialistic: but up to the present time no
broad general principles have emerged, though a vast mass of
isolated ohservations have been recorded. But a still more
fundamental difficulty lies in the innumerable prejudices and
biasses of all kinds with which the student is brought in contact.
As I shall hope shortly to show, the study of character is to a
great extent the study of emotions: and we cannot study an
emotion with the cold passivity that we can a mathematical formula
or a logical syllogism. An emotion raises heat: our intellectual
analysis requires us to be cold. Our task is like that of stoking a
I. A paper read before the Social Psjrchology Group of the Sociological
Sodcty, March 4, 1913.
 THE STUDY OF HUMAN CHARACTER 223

furnace with a bar of ice: our implement of attack is rendered

impotent by mere contact with the problem. And, finally, I must
mention a third difficulty. The study of character, as I have
already observed, is largely the study of emotions. The emotions
by which men, in common with all other animals, are mainly driven
are those which conserve individual life and those which conserve
the species. But these latter—the reproductive emotions—rest
under the ban of ^ conspiracy of silence. The reproductive
emotions of the people are not reflected in their conversation or in
their literature. This massive under-current of emotion only
manifests itself here and there. Most people can and do go
through the world without affording the least inkling of what their
sexual life may be. Yet in most cases this sexual life is probably a
more important factor in character-formation than any other single
factor whatever. We have therefore to remember that a large
proportion of human motives and activities originates from this
unseen land, and is deceptive in appearance. This difficulty can
only be diminished to some extent by mastering all that is known
of the psychology of sex, and by studying the literature of other
countries and other periods when such concealment was not the
fashion.^
From these preliminaries, I pass to the classification of the
different kinds of human character. There appear to me to be
two useful modes of classification : (i) that of general psychology,
dividing the mind into intellect, feeling, and will. This I may call
a vertical classification; and (2) a horizontal classification into
acquirements and instincts. I propose to touch first upon this
second division.
To what extent is a man's character the product of his environ-
ment ? to what extent is it innate and due to his heredity ? This is
an old biological question, and we shall find that for different
persons the answer is very different. Many people seem to be
completely moulded by their environment, and everybody is so to
some extent; we can usually recognize a soldier or a parson or a
lawyer by the look of his face, and that environment which has
expressed itself on his face has written itself far more deeply in the
pliant substance of the brain, which underlies the mind. I may
put the question somewhat differently. A man's activities are the
resultant of two main sets of forces, the external and the internal.
The former regulate purposive and intelligent actions: the latter
are spontaneous or instinctive. One of the commonest of all errors

1. From this aspect, a vety fmitfu! epoch is fotmd in Uie Preach

literature of the i8th century. Such a work, for instance, as Les liaisons
^ngereuses ot Choderlos de La Clos cotitaitis a aio« prafonnd analysis of
chatscter than any othet work with whkh I ftm accpuinted.
224 THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

in reading character is in overestimating the influence of the

external forces at the expense of the internal. To take a concrete
instance: we ask ourselves why X has performed some particular
action. We commonly think the question answered when we are
informed of the external events which led up to it. But a more
fundamental answer would in many cases be, because it is the
nature of X to perform such actions : though partly purp>osive, they
are still more instinctive. What I mean is that the energy taken
into the body as food has a tendency to discharge itself in particular
directions: and that a man's entire life will be coloured by that
tendency. He will be Especially successful in pursuits demanding
that kind of energy which his body-machine produces most
abundantly : he will be likely to fail in pursuits which demand a
kind of energy not easily manufactured by his body-machine. A
number of instances will elucidate my meaning, and I will take one
first from among the lower vertebrates.
If you are walking in the country in the summer-time and come
suddenly upon a nest-full of young partridges, you will observe
that the old mother partridge hobbles away with apparently broken
wings. You, or your dog, think she may be easily caught; you
go in pursuit, but she kee{>s just out of reach, till at length having
led you half across a large field, she rises and flies away. There-
upon if you resemble an ordinary Christian, you will go home and
relate to your admiring friends how you were cheated by a
partridge, which shammed an injury to draw you away from its
young. Now this is a type of a large part of erroneous reasoning
about character. Any properly educated schoolboy would know by
a glance at the size of a partridge's brain that it could not conceiv-
ably act in the highly anthropomorphic manner attributed to it.
The incompetent observer credits the partridge with motives which
its brain is too small by a hundredfold to entertain. The true
explanation, of course, is that trailing of the wings is the normal
mode of expression of emotion among birds, as anyone may see
at this time of year among sparrows making love. The partridge
in the case mentioned is half-paralyzed by the powerful emotion
which seizes her, and does not recover sufficiently to fly away, until
after she has moved some distance from the young. This purely
fortuitous mode of expressing emotion may, of course, have been
developed by natural selection; my point is that it is instinctive and
spontaneous in character, not purposive as the uninitiated imagine.
And so it is with human conduct. Men do things in many cases
not for the purposes they imagine, but because it is natural for them
to do those things. Take, for instance, an association formed for
charitable purposes, such as the relief of sickness. The ostensible
nu^ve of the members of the association is to do good; but the
fundamentai motive is nevertheleas a blind impulsion' of sympathetic
 THE STUDV OF HUMAN CHARACTER 225

emotions straining to find relief in action. So it is with many

political organizations. I was once on the committee of a political
organization myself, formed for a purpose which never had the
remotest chance of being attained. Once a fortnight we used to
meet round a table and curse the Government for ignoring our
schemes- What was the use of it? It had none, save this—that
it relieved our feelings in a perfectly harmless way- It was the
expression of a blind instinct to do something: not of a truly
purposeful character- And so with a great part of human activi-
ties : they are not brought about with specific purposes, but are
the blind product of our physiological organization.
Let me observe here that the principle I have indicated exhibits
a great contrast between men and lower animals. The actions of a
bird, for example, are almost exclusively instinctive : a man, on the
contrary, has fewer instincts than any other creature. In the lower
mammals the minute structure of the brain is predetermined at
birth within very narrow limits. In man that predetermination is
far less rigid and permits considerable fluctuations in future
development- The human brain at birth is not indeed the tabula
rasa alleged by Helvetius; but it approaches that ideal by compari-
son with the brain of other animals. A man is more purposive,
more a product of environment, and less limited by heredity, than
any other kind of beast.
It appears to be distinctive of genius that the factor of environ-
ment counts for less than among ordinary people and the congenital
tendencies for more. A genius is born with a particular cast of
mind of excessively strong hereditary quality. He views every
occurrence from his own individual standpoint; and those subjects
which interest him he pursues with a relentlessness far exceeding
any concentration that could be brought about by an effort of will
on the part of an ordinary man. Genius is a sort of idie fixe, 30
strongly implanted by heredity as to force itself to the front at
every turn and become the guiding principle in life. But of
course there are many other elements in genius: one of the most
obvious being intellectual power. No amount of idie fuee will
constitute a genius, unless the fwwer of intellectual association Is
adequate. In other kinds of persons, it produces different qualities.
Boyd Alexander was driven out to Africa by ah idie fi*e of this
kind, practically against his will. If he had been intellectually
disposed, he wouid have been a genius: as it was, he had the active
temperament, and has come to be known as a great explorer.
Lombroso's theory that genius is a form of d^eneration is
ricUculous, almost as ridiculous as his theory of criminology. I
^ almost, because, whereat his theory of the deUnquente noto is
nuticalty erroneous, there is occa-otionaliy aflsociation betwem genius
and degeneration. A strong natural bettt kt a certeift (jlfarectkm is
226 THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVTCW

likely to have perturbing effects on the remainder of the mind:

these may be bad, but they may, on the contrary, be good, and I
was interested to note the publication in Paris last year of a book
by Drs. R6mond et Voivenel, to show that genius was not de-
generation, but progeneration. One theory is about as good as the
other: neither goes far into the matter: the element of genius
which marks it off is that it is more instinctive and less acquired
than average mental qualities. The man (whoever he may have
been) who first said that genius was the capacity for taking pains
came near the truth : it is really an instinct |)erpetually forcing the
subject to do things or some particular thing that would be
impossibly irksome to ordinary people.
Although I have barely had time to do more than touch up>on
the outlines of this method of viewing character, I am obliged
to hasten forward to another method not less important,—to what
I have described as the vertical classification of character. The
fundamental principle of this classification is based upon a com-
parison of the different degrees to which the various elements in a
man's character draw upon the sum-total of his vitality. People,
of coufrse, differ immensely in the quantity of their vitality; but
however wide the range of variation may be, it has with everyone
a limit that cannot he surpassed; and it follows that, the greater the
drain upon their vitality due to one set of occupations, the less
vitality will there remain for other occupations. But I will unfold
this theory in the concrete.
Athletes are not as a rule scholars. If their vital energy
flows to the muscles and to the body as a whole, there is so
much the less available for the hrain. I do not mean to deny
that physical and mental pre-eminence may not co-exist: for
there are some people of remarkahle vitality who, when placed
in a favourable milieu, may develop great power both of body and
brain. Let me say once for all that the manifestations of human
character are not governed by any few or simple principles, but by a
large number of complex laws, each of which contributes to the
resultant behaviour. All I am trying to do now is to state one of
the most fundamental of these laws and to trace its effects in human
conduct. In consequence of the numerous other intercurrent prin-
ciples, there will always be many individual cases to which the
fundamental principle does not seem to api^y; but it suffices for the
main induction that it should be found good when men are con-
sidered en Tnasse: then the minor principles, so evident in single
individuals, become eliminated and no longer obscure the result.
There is then a general opposition between the muscular power
of the athlete and the cerebral power of the scholar: the former
boisterous, energetic, and healthy in colour, owing to the good
supply of blood to the skin; the other shy in sodety, of inert
 THE STUDV OF HUMAN CHARACTER 227

temperament and inclined to be pallid in skin-colour; which is by

no means a sign of anjemia, but merely of a drain upon the blood-
supply by the nervous system. If we could visuaHze the brains of
the two, it would no doubt be that of the athlete which seemed
anaemic.
This contrast between bodily and mental vitality is paralleled
by an exactly similar contrast between the various departments of
the mind. A man of very powerful intellect is cceteris paribus a
man of low emotional endowments and low will-power. The
contrast between intellect and will has often been noted by many
observers. Shakespeare speaks of the " native hue of resolution
sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought "; but, like every other
ethological law, it is subject to numerous exceptions. Sir William
Hamilton and James Mill were immensely active men; and so to a
lesser degree was the younger Mill. A far clearer contrast exists
between emotional and volitional power; and I shall now speak
more immediately of the emotions.
There is, first, a massive contrast between the higher and the
lower emotions which are called sensual; and, to begin at the
beginning, there is the same contrast between the various types of
sensuality. In general, there is an opposition between the
sensuality of food and drink and the sensuality of sex : though here
again, a man of strong vitality quite abandoned to sensualism may
exhibit all shades to an exaggerated degree. But as a rule the
drunkard is not the coureur de femmes: the connoisseur of food
and drink is not the slave of sex; the pleasures of the stomach are
in opposition to the other organic pleasures. The natural evolution
of what the Germans call a Lebemann is from sexual sensuality to
stomachic sensuality. As young men, they are seducers: and as
the powers fail, their sensuality turns them to gourmands and
wine-bibbers. This relation is particularly difficult to unravel,
owing to the fact that sensualists in general are not controlled by
ideas of morality, but have shaken off those checks which bind more
normally constituted persons. They are out for pleasure, wherever
and however they can find it; and superficially, therefore, there
would appear to be an alliance between two modes of senstiality
which are nevertheless in ftmdamental opposition.
As to the relation between sensuality and intellect, Shakespeare
long ago noted the opposition :—
Fat pannches ha.vt kan pates, and daittty bits
Make rich the ribs, but baflknipt quite the wita.
It is by no means clear, however, that there is tlie same opposition
between intellect and sexual sensuality. Brown-Siquard ctefinitely
Tecommended sexual hyperexcitatlon as a means of «voking genius,
and his recommendation is, I believe, Mdorsed b M h i k ^
228 THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVKW

The probability is that the psychical contrast between sexuality and

intellect exists; but that in this case the contrast is observed by
the intercurrence of other more powerful organic laws, which may
perhaps establish a connection between the two. The German
psychiatrist Moebius holds that artistic leanings should probably
be considered as secondary sexual characteristics. That the higher
emotions are in opposition to the lower can admit of no question,
although here again there is a new cause for obscurity. For the
moral code of most people contains an ascetic element, requiring
them to suppress and completely extinguish the lower emotions.
The evil organic effects of such a course tell upon the whole nervous
system, and produce a state of general malaise and dissatisfaction
with life, which reacts disastrously upon the capacity for higher
emotions. Nevertheless sensuality and falling in love are mutually
exclusive. The sensualist cannot love, nor can he experience any
of the higher emotions.
But the chief enemy of the emotions is the will: and 1 here use
that word in its technical, not its popular sense. In popular
language, a man is said to have a strong will when he has a habit
of subordinating his immediate inclinations to more remote con-
siderations. But in that sense, the will is really only one type of
emotion. It is a mode of feeling which causes him to lean towards
ultitnate rather than proximate good. I here use the word will
simply as the mental correlate of the process originating muscular
activity; and when I affirm that the chief enemy of the emotions is
the will, I mean only that muscular activity is the most certain
and natural of all methods of dissipating an emotion. Let me turn
once more to concrete examples.
The natural expression of pain is by vigorous muscular move-
ment. The movement begins with the small and easily affected
muscles of the larynx, which when accompanied by contractions of
the chest and diaphragm produce cries. With increasing p>ain,
the cries increase in vigour. At length the other muscles of the
body share in the movement, and the whole frame may be contorted
with violent muscular contractions. This lasts until the pain begins
to paralyze and unconsciousness supervenes. Now these active
movements accompanying pain are not fortuitous: they definitely
give relief. Before the days of chloroform, surgeons used to
encourage their patients to cry out. And it is the case, not only
in this crude instance, but with all emotions of every kind, that the
emotion tends to be dissipated by the performance of suitable
muscular movements. Those emotions remain the deepest which
are supported in silence. As Shakespeare says t—

Give sorrow vmrde : the grief that does tiot Speak

Virhispera the o'erfraUKht heart, and bids it break.
 THE STUDY OF HUMAN CHARACTER 229

Dante, too, wrote the line: " In tears his rage he spent."
The same truth is embodied in numerous proverbs and popular
sayings in many languages. Such, for instance, is the saying:
" Still waters run deep." " Barking dogs don't bite," with its
Italian equivalent. Can che abbaia non morde: since the emotion
of anger is spent and dissipated by the active procedure of barking.
Thus also we may notice that whenever a sudden unpleasant
emotion is raised in the public mind, there is established a desire
to " do something." Since it is often much better to do nothing,
this blind effort of emotion to escape is often productive of ill-
considered action and great consequent evil.
There is one other important method by which an emotion may
be eradicated, and that is by its transformation into some other
emotion of equal intensity. For the present purpose, emotions
may be regarded as pos.sessing a certain intensity and a certain
quality. The quality is that designated by their names—anger,
love, fear, etc. The intensity of an emotion is a joint product of
the strength of the stimulus and the length of time during which it
operates. Now it is in general true, as far as physiology goes, that
any emotion can be transformed into any other emotion of equal
intensity. Take, for instance, the emotion of love. It may be
changed almost in a moment to one of hate, anger, jealousy, or
grief of more or less equivalent intensity; it can also be worked
off by muscular activity, but it cannot otherwise be annihilated.
It is notorious that lovers' quarrels are unusually intense; the
intensity of annoyance is equivalent to the intensity of their love.
So also jealousy is proportioned to love, and the love which cannot
be dissipated may at any moment be altered into jealousy. Grief,
again, at the death of the loved one is psychologically the equivalent
of the antecedent love. " Where joy most revels, grief doth most
lament." We have also here the explanation of the fact that when
two persons who are deeply in love are married and one of them
dies, the survivor very commonly marries again within the year.
By the death, the love of the survivor has undergone a change, not
of intensity, but of kind. It has altered into grief: and the
individual still remains for a long period the prey of a powerful
emotion. The application of a suitable stimulus almost inevitably
reconverts that emotion into love: and a failure to arouse new love
points rather to the old one having been of low intensity, and
quickly evaporated. There may, of course, be a grief so crushing
as comjrfetely to wreck the nervous system and its |ltower to support
emotion, but this is only an example of those numerous intercurrent
^rindf^es which conceal the operation of that whose tStcta we
desire to trace. Again, when lovers' quarrels are noi intenae, their
love is probably not intense: love may change to hatred, or to
fear or to jealousy and badi again to love, not less intense than
230 THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

before. But if it falls to indifference, it will hardly ever recover.

If there is no substitute to maintain the state of emotional tension,
if a state of emotional quiescence supervenes, there is no longer any
material for the rebuilding of the lost emotion; and momentary
flashes in the p>an are the utmost possible.
Egoism is an emotion which reappears under a great variety of
forms, and which is specially interesting to study because it has no
tendency to diminish, but, on the contrary, to increase with age.
Ambition, vanity, jealousy, are the phases it commonly adopts :
and the profound French saying that La vaniti est Vennemi du
bonheur should be extended to this whole group of emotions, for
no selfish man can be a happy man. Jealousy is produced by a
coalescence of egoistic emotion with some other, very often love;
and the intensity of the jealousy is proportional to the intensity of
its comp>onent parts. Thus people are more aprt to be jealous of
the success of those they love than of those to whom they are
indifferent; and this is the explanation of the fact that a prophet is
least honoured in his own land. If someone else has succeeded in
a sphere where we have failed, our jealousy of him is proportional
to the amount of emotion with which we previously regarded him.
If he was a close friend, it will be far greater than if he was a
stranger: or let me say, it may be far greater. For our egoism
may be so reduced that no jealousy at all arises : the whole emotion
of friendship stands firm and untransformed; or p>art of it may be
transformed to jealousy, leaving the other p>art still as friendship;
or the whole emotion of friendship may be transformed; and in this
case the jealousy will exceed anything that is px)ssihle in the ca.se
of a stranger. What sometimes occurs, in cases where both the
egoism and friendship have been deep, is not a fusion between
the two to form a definite degree of jealousy, but rapid transforma-
tions from one to the other: the jealousy reigning supreme for a
period, and then suddenly yielding entirely to the friendship,
producing a curiously unstable state of mind; but, throughout, the
intensity of the emotion experienced undergoes no change : it only
varies in quality.
Is it pKKSsible ever to take scientific action for the reduction of a
noxious emotion of this kind? I have already pointed out that
properly-chosen muscular effort is the hest method of draining off
an emotion. In the case of jealousy, that muscular effort directed
in blows upon your successful friend's body would instantaneously
relieve the tension. Fighting a man immediately and for .some
period relieves one of all hostile feelings with regard to him : and
where people are very different in temperament, they may still
remain very good friends if they have occasional fights not neces-
sarily with fists but with words, in which they tell each other
without restraint in as forcible language as possible exactly what
 THE .STUDV OF HUMAN CHARACTER 231

they think of each other. But if one of them does not retaliate
but remains silent under insults, he is a man to be feared: his
hostility will be enhanced by the observations of the other; and
he may retain a lasting animosity which will escape some day in a
torrential manner. In practical life we usually find that jealousy
and similar feelings of animosity are worked off by talking scandal
about the disliked individual, and generally depreciating him. If
the scandal retailed is sufficiently intensive, it may relieve the
.scandal-monger of all hostile feelings towards his victim and lead
to manifestations of friendship. And in general, when a man who
bears a grudge against you suddenly becomes civil, it is very apt to
be due to his having worked off his hostility by malice behind your
back.
While on this subject of maliciousness, it is worth white to note
that in the minds of a very large proportion of the luxurious and-
idle classes there exists a natural fund of malice against the world
in general. Their remarks are more frequently of the nature of
criticism and hostility to others than of prai.se of others. This is
most especially the case with those who set up for being more
moral and virtuous than other people. The malice which is natural
to them as to others (and for which no social psychologist will
blame them) is exasp)erated and enhanced by the continuous neces-
sity of maintaining a show of love for others; and produces a
fundament of malice which is apt to alienate their friends and
relations. I myself take no interest in politics; but I often think
that one of the most useful services of politicians is that of
furnishing conspicuous public objects of execration, whereby the
public can work off their malicious sentiments on these popular
scapegoats, and be all the kinder and gentler in their private lives.
The popular cry of degeneration is another product of a widespread
emotion. Most people, unfortunately, are more or less disappointed
in their lives : disapp>ointment produces discontent: and discontent
relieves itself by calling the age degenerate. I have in a published
article shown that the cry of degeneracy in this country has main-
tained a pretty level intensity since the 5th century A.D. when
Gildas tried to show that the British nation was physically
deteriorating: that it is carried on by Shakespeare, Goethe, and
nearly all the great writers in recent centuries: so I infer that
pHsople's discontent is not very different now from what it has
always been.
I have notes of innumerable illustrations of the exchange of one
etnotion into another, and of their relief by muscular activity, but
I have still other things to talk about, and will only select one,
namely, the psychological effect of swearing. The occasions on
which people swear are when an emotion is unexpectedly aroused
and demands equally instant relief: as, for instance, when you
232 THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

knock your head against a sharp corner. And it is to be noted

that it Is not a matter of indifference what words are used:
swearing gives greater relief if the words used carry heavy
emotional significance- A feeling of anger when raised is best
allayed by inflicting pain, or by insulting somebody : and the relief
is often obtained by depreciating reference to religious personalities,
so that swearing comes almost to be synonymous with blaspheming-
Undoubtedly it affords a real relief from the emotion.
The question whether an emotion may be transformed into
intellection is one which I have studied less. According to Taine,
Pascal escaped the pwiin of his toothache by solving the problem
of the cycloid. It has been constantly said that disease may
operate very favourably in calling out intellectual powers. Many
of the leaders of the French Revolution suffered from complaints
which, it has been alleged, lay at the base of their genius. Marat
suffered from a skin disease, Robespierre from a liver, Couthon
from disfigurement, Najxileon from cancer of the stomach, the
effects of which are said to be traceable in his behaviour after 1802.
Sterne, Keats, J- A. Symonds, J. S. Mill, Chopin, Rachel, Heine,
Leopardi, and R. L. Stevenson were consumptive; Byron was
club-footed; gout and stone have affected many of the greatest of
English and French writers. Syphilitics include Nietzsche, Guy de
Maupassant, Schumann, and possibly Schopenhauer- Epileptics
include many great men of action such as Julius Caesar,
Mohammed, and St. Paul: also writers like Flaubert. In
general, it seems possible that the only emotions which can very
well be drawn upon for intellectual activity, are those which are
painful in tone; and not acute but chronic. Melancholia is very
commonly associated with genius. Whereas emotion tends to be
dissipated by action, and whereas for achievements of every kind a
certain driving force of emotion is a first essential, it follows clearly
that those who are for ever dissipating their emotions in minor
activities, are never likely to carry out any important achievement.
Consequently the silent man very commonly Is possessed of an
unusual fund of power: his emotions remain boxed up without any
drain. Thus Dante in his Inferno describes the phiiosof^ers and
sages as
People with eyes grave and slow
In all whose seemins: dwelt anthority;
Seldom they spckt with voices mild aad low.
Shakespeare over and over again observes this truth, and I may
give a few citations:—
An ovea that is st<^ped, orriverstayed,
Boroeth mon hotly, swdleth with morerage:
So of concMed sorrow may be said :
Fne vtmt of words love'sfiredoth assaage.
—{Vemu and AdonU.)
 THE STUDY OF HUMAN CHARACTER 233

In " The Two Gentlemen of Verona " :

Fire that's closest kept bums most of all.
In " The Merry Wives of Windsor " :
We do not act that often jest aad laugh
Still swine eat all the drafi.
There is also the Latin proverb: Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur.
I hope I have given a sufficient number of instances to illustrate
my main proposition, which is to the effect that there exists in the
human character a sort of correlation of mental forces, more or
less analogous to the correlation which exists among physical
forces.
I now wish to say a word or two as to the influence of time
in the production of an emotion. I have pointed out that the
quality of an emotion may be altered but not its intensity.
Intensity can only be affected by action : and where, as very often
happens, no suitable mode of activity is available, intensity can
only alter by the progress of time. In general, an emotion is the
more powerful the longer the evoking stimulus has been in opera-
tion. For example, light-headed people are very apt to make
bosom friends after two or three days' acquainance, but the emotion
has no real intensity and may be dissipated by the least obstacle.
Indeed the more intense it appears at first to be, the more certain
is it to undergo reaction, for an intense and stable emotion of this
kind can only be built up by gradual and slow degrees: "Violent
delights have violent ends." The reason, if I may speak very
vaguely, is that a stable emotion implies an underlying cerebral
structure: and structure being an affair of growth, is consequently
an affair of time. An emotion artificially cultivated, and without
any real foundation in cerebral structure, is apt to undergo very
extreme reactions: those whose education has been the most con-
fined furnish the best material for future libertinism ;—
The blood of youth bums not with such excess
As gravity's revolt to wantonness.
This truth applies, not only to individuals, but to societies. The
rigid puritanism of the Commonwealth was followed by the riotous
libertinism of the court of Charles II. The opposite may also be
true. Archenholtr, a German writer on England, has drawn
attention to the change which took jrface in the character of Charles
James Fox, with a view to showing that there was a general
deterioration in his moral character, when he abandoned the
excesses of his youth and gave himself up to politics. I cannot go
further into the influence of time on emotions, and conclude only
that the stability and jMobable duration of an emotion is a function
of the time which it has taken to develop.
234 THE SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

I may say a few words in conclusion on the subject of social

therapeutics. The subject has already been dealt with in an
interesting manner by Mr. Stanley Bligh; and there are only two
points which I wish to mention, as being specially connected with
the principles above laid down, and as being very little noticed at
the present time. The first is the general advantage of avoiding
monotony in every sphere of life. Unstable and rapidly-transform-
ing emotions commonly affect those whose lives are the most
monotonous : great mental and emotional stability very commonly
goes with a life of varied interests. Let me illustrate this, in the
first place, with reference to food. If you invariably feed a dog
on one food only, and it has no access to any other food, it dies
of starvation. If you feed a child always on the same food,
although consisting of exactly the right proportions of protein,
carbohydrate, fat and salts, that child quickly pines away. The
same truth has latterly been established with regard to ventilation,
the fundamental principle of which is not to attain chemical purity
(which is said to be a matter of comparative indifference), but to
secure constant motion of the air and variety of temperature. The
best diet is not attained by constant ingestion of chemically perfect
food, any more than the best ventilation is attained by the constant
breathing of chemically perfect air: the best is only attained by
introducing a large and constant variety, and lapses from perfection
are good in so far as the system reacts to them. The desire for
uniform perfection has produced a disease in America, of which 1
only know the French name bradyphagie, which comes from eating
too slowly, and which is cured by eating fast of substances not too
easily digestible.
In short, all kinds of uniformity are deleterious, whether
of food, drink, air, habitation, occupation and so on; and
this is probably just the one slender basis of truth underlying
the various modern hygienic fads. They all invite to a change;
and that change, so long as it is only a change, is beneficial. The
experience of a novel emotion has similarly a powerfully tonic
mental effect. I need only refer to the marked improvement which
marriage often works in young women. Zola, in Lourdes,
mentions the enormous appetites which were displayed by those
who came from a state of extreme religious exaltation; and there is
no doubt that the evocation of a powerful emotion of religious,
sexual, or any other character may possess so immensely invigorating
an effect as to cure certain kinds of ailments. The pleasure felt in
witnessing a tragedy is doubtless traceable in part to the stimulus
of new emotion. The same holds with regard to funerals, which,
as is well known, often have a beneficial mental effect on those
who attend them. Among the Scotch and Irish, this is so much
the case that a funeral is followed by a period of unusual gaiety
 THE STUDV OF HUMAN CHARACTER 235

and social good spirits. Civilized life differs greatly from savage
life in the pxaucity of material for emotion, for the savage is
constantly under the influence of fear, pain, or other disagreeable
emotion, which we have to a great extent banished, without
substituting any kind of agreeable emotion of equivalent perman-
ency or intensity. The emotional life tends to fall to an unwhole-
some dead-level of uniformity. The emotions are from another
side constantly being sapped by intellectual effort, and it is probable
that most of the .ills specially associated with civilization are trace-
able to this cause.
The second therapeutic principle which I have to mention
concerns the necessity for mental freedom and avoidance of a
multiplicity of restrictions. Emotion is naturally relieved by
action; and it is a very unwhcJesome state of mind in which
emotions are p>ermitted to sway backwards and forwards without
any natural outlet. William James has indicated this evil in one
of his works, and the chief cause is the artificiality and conventions
of common life, which limit to a most unreasonable extent the
power of the individual to do and say as nature promprts him. His
outward life is not an accurate image of his inner emotional life:
he is to that extent a liar and a pathological sp)ecimen. This
demand for increased freedom has been the basis of all the most
successful educational systems, those of Rousseau, Pestalozzi,
Froebel, Herbert Spencer, Montessori. But unfortunately the
doctrine of freedom is confused by most with the doctrine of
licence: they cannot understand complete freedom for emotional
outlet; since their own environment is so unnatural that their
emotions are distorted and false, unable to stand the glare of
daylight, and quite unpresentable in public. There are some
who teach that emotions should be suppressed, and seem
to imagine naively enough that all one has got to do is to
take a resolution not to " emote " any more in the various ways
considered to be evil. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more
ineffective way of trying to eradicate a bad habit of emotion. To
suppress its outward manifestations is exactly the way to strengthen
it the most, whilst driving it into other channels probably far more
dangerous. Give it, on the contrary, free play: weaken its
intensity by letting it talk and act so far as may b e : get it off
the chest: and meanwhile supply the stimulus to the new habit
of emotion which you intend shall take its place.
HUGH S . ELLIOT.