Character and temperament

Front matter

.Jiiiiii

TJ9

(HaruAl UniufrBtty Ctbrarg

Introduction To The Conduct Of Mind Series

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

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

vii viii INTRODUCTION

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

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

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

Joseph Jasteow,

Preface

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

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

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

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

ix

X PREFACE

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

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

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

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

PREFACE xi

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

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

xii PREFACE

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

The University of Wiseonsm : T„ar,„x^ t . „„

TIT J- T inic Joseph Jastrow.

Madison, June, 1915.

CONTENTS CHAPTER I

PAGE

The ScffiNTiFic Approach 1

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

CHAPTER II The SENSiBttiTiBS 58

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

xiii xiv CONTENTS

PAGE

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

Chapter III

The emotions as sources of human quality — Organic conditioning and variety of expression. Irritability, anger, indignation, lament — Functional service — Inlet, central diffusion, and outlet — Primary situations — Fear as primitive emotion — Emotion as spur to meet urgent situations, as zest of expe;rience, as motive to conduct — Emotions and sensibilities — The motor aspect — Emotional regulation — Sex and food situations— The luxurious sensibilities and esthetic emotion — The intellectual expansion — The primary emotions — The analysis of fear — The expression of the emotions — The facial and related miens — Expression as incipient response — The classification of the emotions — The attitudes, the situa^ tions, the direction, the stages of emotional expression — Illustrations from animal responses — The complexity of human emotion — Refinement of emotion and of its expression — The facial language and its principles — Mien and gesture — The varied sources of facial expression — The specialized expressions— Differentiation and transfer — ^Natural and acquired expression — Manner and restraint — Emotion and its object — The role of instinct — The complication and interplay of the emotions — ^Attention, interest and curiosity — The flexibility of emotion — The evolution of emotion — Presentative and representative stages — From pain to grief — IntellectuaKzation — Special bearings of the principle of transfer — Gregariousness and sociability — Transfer in expression — Emotional congenialty in transfer — The evidence of language — Emotion central in human quality — ^Its sources and their persistence.

CHAPTER IV The Higher Stages of Psychic Control 174

Adequacy of man's original equipment — Its transformation

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

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

CHAPTER V Temperament and Individual Differences .... 248

Temperament as original nature — ^Variation and normality — Temperament a biological emphasis — The stages of growth — The expressions of temperament — The types of temperament— The traditional distinctions — Emotional and intellectual dominance — Mood, temperament, and the organic economy — The temperamental ages of man — Temperament as susceptibility to ranges of emotion — The somatic determination— The sensitive-suitive type and its varieties — The bent or Anlage and the artistic careers — The stress of temperament — Variability, adaptability, and originality — ^What men are and what they do. — Temperamental qualities — The resulting complexes — The analysis of the "miser" complex — Temperamental proficiencies and community of traits — "Individual psychology" and the measure of a man — The auditory equipment as illustrative — Sense capacity and mental capacity— The role of vision and of movement — Sense endowment, skill and the higher expressions — The qualities of mental elaboration— The limitations of the programme — Endowment xvi CONTENTS

PAGE

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

Chapter VI

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

Chapter VII

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

CONTENTS xvii

PAGE

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

CHAPTER VIII Chaeactee and the Bnvieonment 416

Environment as the biological setting — The potency of the physical environment-^-Adjustment in primitive and in civilized conditions — The establishment of control of the environment— Habitat, food-supply, vocation, and the artificial life — Environment as natural, economic, sociological — The environment increasingly psychological — High-grade civilizations equalize environmental conditions — The transformation of animal traits — Survival of original traits in domesticar tion — The original and the transformed ' nature of man — Psychic control — The group-mind as primitive mentality — The mass consciousness responds to the concrete, the dramatic, the effective — Suggestion, contagion, and the lack of initiative — The leaders supply initiative — ^Prestige — The primitive fixation of belief — The cultural products of the primitive mind — Tradition and institutions serve as an environment for the individual — Mores, conscience and the tendency to conform — Fashions, taboo, and the tyranny of conformity— Survivals, folk-ways, and the ingredient of rational sanction — The changing issues the focus of attention — Class and mass — Conservatism and liberalism — The collective spirit xviii CONTENTS

PAGE

or Zeitgeist — The local genius — The assertion of individuality— The dominant regulative systems — The attachment of value — Ideals.

CHAPTEE IX

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

Notes to Chapters 507

Index 591

Chapter I The Scientific Approach

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

The standard survey of psychology, serving as an introduction to the subject, presents an orderly sketch-map of the mental domain, and dwells upon the detailed features of the more important and familiar points of occupation. Its simplified topography is adequate for an understanding of the surface features of the psychological landscape and for a moderate insight into the deeper, "geological" forces to which they are traeeahle. The present construction, hardly less comprehensive in scope, is in the nature of an ohlique section — a view from a different angle. It builds upon the same foundations that underlie the standard surveys, from which it differs mainly in its perspective and purpose.

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

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH S

tions, to guide the thoughtful student to and through accessible and profitable approaches.

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