3 Of the Four Temperaments.

Ill OF THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS
We recall the manner in which these Masters
have compared, in lines at once profound and
beautiful, the autumn of life and the twilight of
the day and the year, to the sadness of the Nervous
type amid the historic decadences; the winter
to the aged Lymphatic approaching life's nighttime; the spring, in its morning, to some Neitzschean
adolescent, choleric and barbaric, and
noon or midsummer to the Sanguine in the enjoyment
of life, careless and forgetful, in his ephemeral
strength, of the weakness of the past and the
future.
The Nervous type suggests to our minds Asia,
lyrical and mystical, subtle, fond of silks, of tea
and coffee, of hasheesh and opium, creator of
paradises, religious and artificial.
His transparent skin, delicate and smooth to
the touch, suggests ivory. We note the large
eyes, the high forehead, the head broad at the
back, the contracted and trembling motions of
his handwriting, hesitant, narrow, angular, full of
flourishes; the hearing developed more than the
other senses (which are often defective). We
hear his voice low and vibrant, serious; his incertitude
of motion extending also to his language,
which is interspersed with hesitant "ahs." We
array him, this man of the eastern plains, in
melancholy greens, in blacks or silken stuffs of
strange design. Neuroses and hallucinations do
not surprise us in this being whose cerebral constitution
is feminine, nor do the mental zigzags so
illogical in appearance, the forgetfulness of the
principal parts of his discourse, the confusion, the
perpetual recommencement. The character, imaginative
above all, has those flashes of intuition
which Goethe attributed to that one of his four principles
which he called the DEMONIAC. Aristocratic,
sensitive, we do not tire of his confidences, of his
incurably LYRIC nature, of his tendency at first to
deny and spurn that which later enraptures him,
nor of his mysticism, so in accord with the elliptic
turn of his mind, suggestive and stimulating. In
short, we admire in him the echo of that which is
most human in the animal nature.
With the Bilious type we turn, on the contrary,
towards the Occident, ambitious, hardy and conquering,
more brutal but keenly logical, forceful
in language, imperious; the veritable muscle of
humanity. We remark the aquiline nose, the
deep-set eyes, commanding and far-sighted, the
salient Napoleonic chin, the ruggedness of visage
which reminds us of roughly sculptured stone. In
the broad forehead we see the spirit of domination,
of headstrong argument. The gestures are precise
and definite, the handwriting clear and firm, with
short well-made strokes; the speech brief and
sententious, hammered out syllable by syllable,
yet sometimes with a pontifical and majestic
quality. We notice how firmly-woven fabrics in
the pronounced and classic colors (reds and bright
blues) cling and hang upon this muscular figure
with its powerful biceps.
Such a temperament, idealistic but dogmatic
and authoritative, aspires above all to establish
and assert itself. Its weakness lies in its mania
for deducing all things from a single principle, with
a logic more or less exact, but relentless even
before the absurdity of the results.
We may observe a rapport between the fickleness
so characteristic of the Sanguine Tempera
ment and that of the Negro race. We find in this
type, in southern lands, a jesting disposition, a
tendency to hasty and exaggerated affirmations,
vivacity, sociability, a love of strong and variegated
colors, of gaudy gold-trimmed uniforms and
plumes, of tinsel decorations, of theatricals and
dramatic scenes; a democratic and turbulent
spirit, practical instincts, a habit of sophistry and
pretense (both to himself and others), easy morals,
scepticism, a proneness to impulsive folly, a
character by turns audacious and cowardly. The
flesh tints are warm, the skin pliant to the touch,
almost oily, the movements vigorous and agile,
whence the handwriting of round open letters,
often illegible, however, because of its rapidity.
The noisy speech is well adapted to sudden flares
of anger, to quarrels, jests and arguments. His
sense of smell is keen, his taste is for highly spiced
food. We clothe him in conspicuous and amusing
costumes. For the rest, we may heartily praise
his initiative, his gaiety, his energy, his practical
habits, his adaptability to all circumstances.
The Lymphatic, lastly, we discover near the
Poles (or at least near that one toward which
humanity withdrew before the great sea which
anciently advanced upon it from the south). It
is under the snowy skies of the north that we find
dispassionate, patient souls, deep thoughts (sometimes
vague and misty on contact with others),
didactics, the scientific spirit, the memory well
developed but encumbered with documentary
facts; utilitarianism, slow speech, heavy gestures,
interminable sentences, and a disposition to long
and sometimes dreamy discourses. The handwriting
is negligently traced, without firmness, the
letters rather broad than high ; the style is descriptive.
The weak point of such a type is its dullness.
Regularity of life, realism in philosophy, a utilitarian
indifference in politics, an inclination to endless
study, a strongly developed sense of taste, a liking
for soft clothing and soft colors such as rose and
grey-blue, pallid flesh, cold and soft to the touch,
these characterize this northern or mountain type,
which may be compared to the fish or the reptile
in the animal world or to the humid sea-wrack in
the vegetable world.
Our analysis even forms a sort of Crystallography
of Human Traits, which furnishes the
artist with elements analogous to those just
evolved for the student of human souls. Thus
will be understood the four following schemes or
caricatures. (Page 74.)
As we see, the profile is divided into four regions :
occiput, sinciput, nose, jaw. I have apportioned,
theoretically, the upper half of each of these parts
to the signs of the Bilious and the Lymphatic (B
and L), and the lower half to the lines of the
Nervous and the Sanguine (N and S). These
lines consist, for the Bilious and Nervous, in
CONVEXITIES; for the Lymphatic and the Sanguine
in CONCAVITIES. It will be remarked, not without
surprise, that this plan, so simple, gives also the
four characteristic physiognomies of the four
traditional Temperaments.
We have now but to continue over the entire
body. The anatomists and draughtsmen have
long pointed out certain correspondences of form,
not absolute, but frequent, between the three
elements of the TRIADS into which the whole
human body is divided and then subdivided.
Thus, first the Head, the Thorax and the Abdomen
respectively supporting, 1st: the two crooked bones
which by their joining in front form the lower
jaw; 2nd: the arms, and 3rd: the legs. Each of
these pairs of members divides itself again into
THREE: the thigh, the leg and the foot; the arm,
the forearm and the hand; the perpendicular part
of the lower jaw, the horizontal part and the part
in which the teeth are set. The teeth correspond
also to the phalanges of the fingers and the toes.
We know that each finger in turn has THREE phalanges,
etc.
Now, we usually find a correspondence of conformation,
in an individual, between the parts of
his various members (knees and elbows, wrists
and ankles, etc.) and between the extremities or
the central regions of his diverse parts: it is this
which gives so special an aspect, for example, to
the hand of a hunchback. We may then sketch
also, from head to feet, four human beings in
whom the two concavities and the two convexities,
upper and lower (by which we have already
characterized in occiput, sinciput, nose and
jaw our Lymphatic, Sanguine, Bilious and Nervous)
will continue to show themselves in the
outlines of the shoulder-blades, the chest, the
pelvis and the abdomen ; then of the two posterior
and the two anterior halves of the thighs ; the arms,
forearms, legs; even of each phalange; in a word,
in every one of the parts into which we have just
divided the human silhouette.
Finally, each of these parts, as we have seen,
is divided into four regions: lower posterior, upper
posterior; lower anterior, upper anterior. These
respectively appertain, in a greater or less degree,
to the signs of the Lymphatic, the Nervous, the
Bilious and the Sanguine.
Let it be said once more, it is not a question of
exact and inevitable concordance, but of establishing
FOUR FUNDAMENTAL TYPES, which will extend
the human Proportions, theoretically and ideally,
and will be a point of departure for the variations
which may be executed within the limits of these
proportions. Still less is it a question of an
infallible process for the divination of character
by facial traits, since, we repeat, the "character"
is but a habit or group of habits fixed upon a
human being, and not the being himself, who in
spite of it remains complete, and capable of taking,
with greater or less pliancy, other habits and other
attitudes. The physiognomy is but the envelope
or cover, so to speak, formed by habit (especially
hereditary), and less quickly modified than the
habit itself, although infinitely more so than we
think, and than the too uniform life of our civilization
lets appear.