THE STUDY OF CHARACTER 59^ 



without an anah'tic strain. He sets forth his intentions thus: That 

 although all Greece is of one 



clime and temperature of air, and Grecians in general bred and trained up after 

 one fashion, should notwithstanding, in manners and behavior be so different 

 and unlike. I therefore, O Polyeles, having a long time observed the divers dis- 

 positions of men, having now lived ninety-nine (?) years, having conversed with 

 all sorts of natures good and bad, and comparing them together: I took it my 

 part to set down in this discourse their several fashions and manners of life. 

 For I am of the opinion, my Polyeles, that our children will prove the honester 

 and better citizens, if we shall leave them good precedents of imitation: that of 

 good children they may prove better men. 



The "Characters" of Theophrastus form a group of sketches of 

 human foibles, holding the mirror up to nature, comprising the dissembler, 

 the flatterer, the gossip, the toady, the fop, the miser, the superstitious, 

 the mistrusting, the querulous, the bully, the coward, the stubborn, the 

 pompous, the boor and the bore, the malaprop of either sex, the well- 

 intentioned fool and the public-disregarding autocrat. This gallery of 

 mental and moral shortcomings served as a model for distant ages. A 

 group of delineations of character appeared in England in the seven- 

 teenth century; and the model was still suggestive when George Eliot 

 chose the title for her "Impressions of Theophrastus Such." The 

 modern delineations emphasize circumstance, the vocations and social 

 stations, reflect a more varied, a more specialized, and a more compli- 

 cated world. The "idle gallant," the "meer dull physician," the 

 " upstart country knight," the " pot-poet," the " plodding student," the 

 " down-right scholar," as well as the " self-conceited man," the " vulgar- 

 spirited man," the "too idly reserved man," and men of other disposi- 

 tions are subjected to keen strictures in the " Microcosmography, or a 

 Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters" by John 

 Earle (1628). Such portraitures of human peculiarities, gauged by 

 their moral or social desirability as examples to be followed or avoided, 

 form an attractive compendium for the interpretation of men and 

 their ways. Their consideration, ranging from gossip to philosophy, 

 supplies the common touch of nature that makes the world of every 

 time and clime akin, and presents graphically for our psychological 

 contemplation the outward issues of disposition as shaped by oppor- 

 tunity and circumstance. 



This vein of character-mining failed to yield the native ore of dis- 

 position. The more fundamental problem was early recognized in the 

 venerable doctrine of the temperaments as the alleged determinants of 

 the original yet distinctive natures of men, and in the general notion 

 that outward uncontrollable forces, such as climate, and directive ones, 

 such as breeding and training, were responsible for the types of indi- 

 viduals and races — as duly indicated by Theophrastus. The doctrines 

 of the school of Hippocrates (fifth century B.C.) formulated the Greek 

 point of view. Its philosophical procedure followed that of Em- 



