590 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE STUDY OF CHARACTER AND 



TEMPERAMENT 



By Professor JOSEPH JASTROW 



UNIVERSITI OF WISCONSIN 



THE strong practical interest in the sources and varieties of human 

 powers and their proper direction and training, may be utilized 

 in behalf of the retrospective aspects of the subject. The antecedents 

 of "character and temperament" concern in the main the story of 

 false and ambitious leads and venturesome solutions of the sources of 

 human nature. However completely discredited, they belong to the 

 irrevocable stages of our intellectual heritage, and show how uncertain 

 has been the occupation of the psychological realm. The historical 

 connection between the antecedents and present-day views is irregular; 

 the succession of opinion is largely by replacement and outgrowth. 

 None the less the points of connection are frequent with the body of 

 knowledge which we draw upon so readily for the satisfaction of our 

 systematized and rationalized inquiries. 



The popular interest in human nature is itself an expression thereof. 

 Actions are largely regulated as well as interpreted by psychological 

 considerations; and these turn attention to the nature of the mind. 

 The feeling of strong impulse, the sense of conflict between emotions 

 as also between desire and sanctioned conduct, the search for motives, 

 as well as the shrewdness of the battle of wits, and the reading of an- 

 other's intentions shape psychological insight. "Know thyself" is 

 an ancient precept — at once a moral injunction and an invitation to 

 psychological study. The early contributions to the field to be sur- 

 veyed came from the learning aptly called "the humanities," and re- 

 flected the insight of experience, directed by an unschooled but worldly- 

 wise analytical temper. Quite as science is glorified common sense, 

 BO is literature elevated common sentiment ; either may fail to rise above 

 a suggestive type of opinion or pleasing conjecture. The delineation of 

 character springs from the impressionistic attitude towards the prod- 

 ucts of nature and the vicissitudes of fortune. It is animated by a 

 fundamental interest in one's kind. It trains men to be practitioners, 

 empirics in large measure, in the arts of human intercourse, and tends 

 to establish man as the proper study of mankind. 



The distinctive service of Greek thought was to launch the perma- 

 nently engaging intellectual problems ; to this rule the problem of char- 

 acter is no exception. It presents the two tendencies — the impression- 

 istic and the analytic — in characteristic form. Theophrastus (370- 

 288 B.C.) is the prototype of the impressionistic delineators, yet is not 



