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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



attempted in his creations. Richter, in "Hesperus," gives some very- 

 perfect studies of temperament ; but the court physician in that novel 

 is represented of his own type. George Eliot never violates Nature 

 in her female characters, who are generally described as bilious or 

 sano-uine; but the least said about her heroes the better. Deronda 

 is surely a mistake. He is first described as a good specimen of the 

 sturdy, bilious man, and is transformed toward the close of the book 

 into the extreme of the sanguine. 



To the scientific mind there is always something assuring when we 

 can leave the field of speculation and enter that of fact. Here chemi- 

 cal analysis brings to our aid positive reasons for a classification of 

 men and women according to temperaments. Mr. Rees, 1 quoting from 

 the researches of M. Lecanu, gives us the material for constructing 

 the following table. The figures are ratios to 1,000 parts of blood : 



TABLE I. Ratio of Water, Albumen, and Red Blood-Globcles in tiie Blood of 



Different Temperaments. 



This proves conclusively that temperaments have their origin deep 

 and unchangeably fixed in the organic life. Can w r e, in view of this, 

 look doubtingly upon their potent influence on the current of thought 

 and emotions ? Water, plasmic material, and the red blood-globules 

 the oxygen-carriers of living bodies rush to the brain in proportions 

 fixed by the law of temperaments ; to one brain more, to another less, 

 but with differences sufficient to give vigor, vivacity, tenacity, and 

 mental breadth to the action of one ; while th ; e other moves more 

 slowly, its mental life obscured by the smaller proportion of mind-food. 



There is one point about which the reader needs to have a clear 

 understanding. This is the difference between temperament and 

 idiosyncrasy. " Temperament is built in a man, as bricks compose a 

 well," says Dr. Southey ; " his idiosyncrasy is developed according to the 

 soil in which he is planted, the conditions under which he grows, and 

 the tendency in him to vary." 2 A man has his temperament as a birth- 



1 " On the Analysis of the Blood and Urine in Health and Disease," London, 1836. 



2 London Lancet, American edition, May, 1876. 



