Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/262

 248 CBITICAL NOTICES : coherent and distinctive account of them. Like the sanguine, he regards them as quick of feeling (sensibility tres vive encore). But he cannot define them by such qualities. He reverts to his distinction between states of feeling (etats affectifs) and ten- dencies of feeling (tendances affectives). The susceptibility to intense emotion, he assures us, " is not necessarily united to the impetuosity of passion . . . ''. l We can therefore distinguish the bilious type by the intensity or passion of its desires. We should have expected that M. Malapert would not have co-ordinated this type with the three with which it is popularly presented, that he would have classed it, not as a type of feeling, but of conation (activite), had he not already included conation in feeling (sensibilite). What intelligible and consistent account can he give of conation as itself a fundamental function deter- mining a generic type of character. But admitting his principles how can he succeed in distinguishing this type by the intensity or passion of its desire from those which have preceded it? Desire depends on feeling and this is his difficulty. As are the feelings of the preceding types, so are their desires. If it is difficult to arouse feeling in the apathetic, it is difficult to stimulate desire. If the sanguine are quick and superficial of feeling, so are their desires lively but inconstant. If the emo- tional have intense and lasting emotions, the same qualities pass into their desires. "It seems indeed," he admits, "that weak- ness of desire is linked and correlated to a kind of torpor of feel- ing. . . . True apathy is then both feebleness of desire and feebleness of feeling. However, it sometimes happens that apathy is combined with intense desire ; which may arise from two principal causes. Sometimes the tendencies though having a certain force are deficient in feeling, I mean they are not readily excited ; their characteristic manner is calm, . . . but if a strong impression is produced, it may persist and after a period of incuba- tion produce fiery and impetuous impulses."' Yes; if intense emotion is at length produced, the desire also will be intense. But under these conditions, the apathetic type is confounded with the passionate, if intense desire is the distinguishing quality of the latter. On the other hand, if we emphasise in the passionate, the quickness of its desires, how are we to distinguish it from the sanguine ? Have not the sanguine quick and explosive desires, intense but unstable ? It is in childhood, we are often told, that the sanguine type is most purely represented and in which these characters are most conspicuous. But our author distinguishes two chief varieties of the passionate, those of unstable, those of persistent desire (passionnes instabies ; passionnes unifies) ; 3 and if the former dissolve in the sanguine, how shall we distinguish the latter from the nervous? Have these troubled natures no desires corresponding to their intense and prolonged emotions ?