Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/616

612 blending, related emphasis of traits stand as the normal issue; the divergence or failure thereof becomes the abnormal. The abnormal in excess or defect takes its place as an instrument of analysis and an enlargement of data. It is a distinctively modern resource, particularly in the refinement of its application.

It is in such general terms that the line of descent of the present psychological interpretation of human endowment proceeds. The more specific history of the attempts to formulate the resultant positions is brief. The classic chapter (Book VII., Chapter V.) “Of Ethology, or the Science of the Formation of Character,” in John Stuart Mill’s “System of Logic” (1843), though a programme rather than a contribution, still has significance. The project was undertaken by Alexander Bain in a volume bearing the title “On the Study of Character” (1861). Though Bain wrote at a time when psychology had made rapid advances and the vagaries of phrenology had been retired to their proper place, he devoted a considerable portion of his book to a refutation of the phrenological position. He thus conferred an undeserved dignity upon these findings and gave his constructive views an unfortunate setting. The subject was independently pursued by a group of writers (mainly in France and Italy), whose contributions in part belong to the living literature of the subject.

It remains to touch upon the collateral streams of interest which in modern times maintained the study in one or another aspect, thus bridging the gap between the old and the new learning. Among these is the attempt, never wholly absent in practical ages, to guide training, to indicate on the basis of an analysis of character the promise of youth, and the direction of vocation—all in the spirit of a worldly wisdom. As an example of the earlier period, the work of the Spaniard, Huarte (1530-1592) “The Trial of Wits,” may be cited, since it seems to have attained a large circulation, was translated into several languages (the English edition appearing in 1698), and the German so late as 1752 by the great Lessing (1729-1781). There were other writings of similar import both before and after Huarte. It is, however, difficult to estimate their influence in the current of thought destined to be redirected in a more scientific analytic interest. There is no hesitation, however, in recognizing in the works of Kant (1724-1804) a dominant influence in the rehabilitation of the subject. This appears not alone in his recognition of the claims of the practical reason, but notably in his “Anthropology” (1798). Indeed Kant’s use of this term corresponds more closely to a study of the individual differences of men—which the problems of character and temperament consider—than to the content of the science which now bears that name. Special attention should also be directed to his “Observations on the Sense of the Beautiful and Sublime,” in which is given in a modern vein a detailed