28 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. dependent on the condition of the nervous system, and sometimes upon slight external circumstances acting upon it, as the weather, food, or drink, or even social sympathy, or the lack of it. In the person of sanguine temperament the blood currents are rich and strong; the whole nature is therefore well fed; the nervous system, whatever its capacity, is habitually at its best. Such a person has usually a rich color, often red or reddish hair, generally a light eye, and a bounding motion. A surer indication is vigor in action and hopefulness in feeling. To act is a pleasure to the sanguine; idleness is a vice which he cannot understand; weariness a weakness with which he has not easily any sympathy. And as it is a delight to cope with difficulties, they have no terror for him, and he carries into every exigency a hopeful spirit. He scarcely knows the meaning of despair. The reader will find a fuller description of this temperament in Campbell's immortal verse, which may serve a better purpose than a more scientific description would do. The bilious temperament is the reverse of the sanguine, and is, indeed, rather the product of a disease than of the predominant activity of a healthy organ. Physiologists are not agreed among themselves as to the function of the liver or the effect or object of bile, but unquestionably one of the chief functions of the liver is to eliminate from the system the waste, that is, the dead tissues after they have served their purpose, and bile is at least in part an excretion of materials which are decomposing and ready to be removed from the system. When the liver fails to do its work properly, and these materials are not removed, but remain in the blood to circulate again through the system, which they cannot feed any more than the ashes of a burnt coal can feed the fire, the man is said to be bilious; when they exist in the system to a large degree he is poisoned, and if the poison cannot be removed he is certain to die. When as a habit of the body, very apt to be produced by sedentary habits, or excessive or unwise food, the liver thus fails to eliminate from the circulation matter which should be removed, the power of activity of every kind becomes impaired, exertion is difficult, thought is slow, the head is dull and stupid, small difficulties grow serious to the imagination, and the whole mood becomes both inert and melancholy. A person of this temperament is ordinarily of a sallow complexion, of dark hair, sluggish in action, and depressed in spirits. The lymphatics also share in the work of removing the effete tissues from the system. When they fail to fulfill this function, the waste material remains in the system, not, however, in the blood, but in the tissues. These add nothing to the real vigor of the man, because they are an addition of valueless and really dead tissue. Such a man is loaded down like a locomotive which should be compelled to carry in the tender its own ashes. He is likely to be obese, though not necessarily offensively so; he is certain to be sluggish and good-natured; not quick to take offense, because not quick to action of any kind; habitually content; rarely or never giving himself to work spontaneously, but only under the pressure of some motive, and always glad to relax his work and drop into idleness again. In fiction, the fat boy in Dickens's "Pickwick Papers" is a travesty on the lymphatic temperament. Mr. Bain has suggested that to this ancient classification of temperaments should be added the muscular temperament, in which the muscular system predominates, in which physical action is enjoyed for its own sake, which creates a love for field sports and athletics of all kinds, and of which probably the Roman and Grecian gladiator might be regarded as extreme types. I have necessarily spoken of each of these temperaments as distinct from every other; in fact, all temperaments are a combination. In every man something is contributed by the nerves, the blood, the liver, the lymphatics, and the muscles; no two men were ever composed in the same way; the variations are endless. Frequent combinations are the nervous 30 A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. sanguine, the nervous-bilious, the nervous-muscular, the lymphatic-sanguine, the lymphatic-bilious, and the muscularsanguine. As active exercise is the best method of keeping the body free from its own degenerate and wasted tissues, and assuring their elimination from the system, the muscular is rarely found in combination with either the lymphatic or the bilious, and for the same reason the bilious is rarely found in combination with the sanguine, since the life currents can never be vigorous and healthy when the body is choked with its own waste. It is, however, certain that in any estimate of human nature, and in any study of the individual, the student must bear in mind the effect which the predominance of these temperaments or their combination— the nervous, the sanguine, the bilious, the lymphatic, and the muscular-may have upon mental and moral activity. CHAPTER V. ANALYSIS OF HUMAN NATURE. WE are now prepared to enter upon an analysis of human nature. In doing so, however, I must first again remind my readers of the object of this treatise, and of the fundamental principles already laid down. 1. The object of this treatise is not to afford an anatomical chart of the human mind. It is not to explain what are the powers or faculties of which the human soul is composed. Whether the mind is simple or compound is not the question here; for myself, I regard it as simple; not as, in strictness of speech, composed of different faculties at all, but only as acting in different modes, and to a greater or less extent through different organs. The analysis here suggested is not even a description of the constituent parts of the mind. It is not asserted, nor even assumed, that the mind has different parts. It is simply an analysis for the convenience of classifying the various mental phenomena. The same mind hears and sees; but hearing and seeing are not the same. So the same mind reasons, imagines, remembers; but reasoning, imagining, and remembering are not the same. Though for convenience I use the term faculty in this classification, the classification is simply suggested for the better and more orderly arrangement, and more satisfactory study of mental activities as actually seen in real life and living characters. 2. It is not, therefore, necessary for us to consider whether the powers or faculties here mentioned are original and simple powers of the mind or not. They are not suggested as original and simple powers of the mind. In some instances they clearly are not. Mr. Bain has shown, I think, very clearly, that combativeness and destructiveness may be traced to a love of power; that they are mainly, if not wholly, manifestations of a love of power. "The feeling of power essentially implies comparison, and no comparison is so effective and so startling as that between victor and vanquished. The chuckle and glee of satisfaction at discomfiting an opponent, no matter by what weapons, are understood wherever the human race has spread, and are not wanting to the superior animals." This is true. Nevertheless, the manifestations of the love of power are so various, that for purposes of classification it is convenient to put by themselves those which are exhibited in combat and destruction. Something of the same fundamental motives may underlie the constructive work of Stevenson and the destructive work of Von Moltke, but in the study of human nature these different manifestations need to be classified under different titles. again, it may be true, that acquisitiveness is not an original instinct, but is simply the rational endeavor of man to obtain the advantages supposed to be conferred by wealth, and to avoid the evils produced by poverty; though this theory hardly accounts for the blindness of covetousness and the self-imposed wretchedness of the miser. But whether it is true or not, it aids in the study of life to recognize acquisitiveness as though it was an original and simple instinct, and to place under it certain common phenomena of modern commercial life. So 3. For the same reason this classification is not, and no such classification can be, perfect. It is like an index to a book; there must be some cross references. It is like a set of pigeon-holes or envelopes in which the student places his memoranda and his scraps; some of them he is puzzled where to put, for they belong in two or three separate compartments, and might go with about equal propriety in either one. The student, therefore, must not take this classification as though it were a topographical map of the human mind; a |