Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/258

 244 CRITICAL NOTICES : And here it is as well to remark that the popular types of the active man, the man of thought and the man of feeling, have been rather hastily assumed to coincide with a " predominance " of one of the universal constituents or functions. This assumption is not peculiar to M. Malapert ; it is common to most of his prede- cessors. It is assumed by no less an authority than Bain. But what is ordinarily meant by the active man is one who in com- parison with other men discovers an unusual degree of physical activity. There is no statement of the relation of his activity to other constituents in himself. In the second place, psychical activity, as understood by psychologists to mean a universal mental function, is revealed as much in thought, emotion and will as in muscular action ; and supposing that this activity were " predominant " in a given individual, it would not follow that he would be in the popular sense an ' active ' man, or a ' man of action '. As to the use of this term " predominance " in ethology, I have, in previous reviews, referred to its vagueness. No term is more prominent in the French and English works on the theory of character. It is sufficiently intelligible as applied in the popular use to signify the superior force of one emotion or sentiment over other emotions and sentiments in the same individual. But no one has thought it worth while to inquire what just, precise and uniform meaning can be attached to the predominance of one of the universal mental constituents over the rest. These constitu- ents at least have no resemblance to individual units that act externally on one another. And if we take one of the metaphors by which psychologists have endeavoured to express their mutual implication, how can one " aspect " of a mental fact be predominant over its other aspects ? Is there any intelligible meaning to the predominance of thought over activity, when in order to be pre- dominant thought must be itself activity ? But M. Malapert, while he bases his classification ostensibly on this predominance, yet, by the cautious way in which he interprets the principle and his detailed study of concrete types, escapes much of the confusion that would seem to follow from it in practice. Thus in reference to one of his predecessors, M. Fouillee, he pro- tests against treating the subject as pure logicians ; and we may commend his wisdom in inquiring, not as to any general predomi- nance, but " what kind of intelligence or activity coincides with a given character of feeling "- 1 "To say with M. Fouillee that there exist people endowed with much feeling and at the same time with much intelligence and with little will ; others, on the con- trary, with much feeling, little intelligence and with much will ... is to employ words that have little precision of meaning, and even to miss the real question. Without any doubt a man who is very susceptible to emotion may have a highly developed in- telligence, but it will differ unmistakably both in its character 1 P. 126.