ESSAY-REVIEWS 151 



TEMPERAMENTS, by the Editor : on Human Temperaments, Studies 

 in Character, by Chas. Mercier, M.D., F.R.C.P. [Pp. 91.] (The 

 Scientific Press Ltd., 1916. Price is. 3d. net.). 



There are only three witty men in England, and Dr. Charles Mercier is one of 

 them ; but his wit is perhaps broader based on wisdom than is the wit of the 

 others — though they all make the ultimate appeal to philosophy which distinguishes 

 wit from buffoonery. For the display of this faculty, a more admirable subject 

 than human temperaments cannot be imagined. It is a subject capable of 

 classical treatment, and, frankly, we should like to have seen it treated in verse, 

 like the verse of our forefathers now so much disused in an age of daffodils, lambs, 

 and gush — like the verse of Pope whom the author contemns. But after all, 

 nearly the whole of history and literary criticism consists of studies of human 

 temperaments ; and what is an essay on Alexander or Virgil but such ? Dr. 

 Mercier's little book is if anything too small for his theme, and we should have 

 liked to have seen his deft arrows shot into many other types. Perhaps he will 

 undertake further archery later ; but, as it is, he gives us a pretty spectacle ; and 

 the reader, whoever he may be, will feel the sharp but not unpleasant pangs in 

 every page — not unpleasant, because he is sure to receive a healing balm in the 

 next one, since the author is physician as well as wit. 



The first essay is on the artistic temperament. Witty and true as it is, it seems 

 to be wrong in one respect, and that is in its title — for, should it not have been 

 named the vain temperament ? The author distinguishes between the artistic 

 temperament and the temperament of the artist — a much better thing ; but of the 

 former, not the artistry but the vanity is the keynote, and the artistry is pretended 

 only to indulge the vanity. " In the extreme instances of this temperament, even 

 the ordinary obligations of morality are not acknowledged as binding or applicable 

 to themselves, though they are quick to resent any relaxation of these rules by 

 which they may suffer. Such persons will rob, and forge, and swindle without 

 any acknowledgment, without, it seems, any realisation, that they are doing wrong." 

 The most typical case of this is the man who caused the present war, who will go 

 down to history as the Judas of the whole human race, having betrayed the god 

 in all of us to death. Such people are " Facile, plausible, and unblushing liars, 

 and display little shame or embarrassment when their lies are exposed " — vide the 

 German press. True ; but we still say that the burden is placed on the back of 

 the wrong ass, and that the man's vanity but not his aesthetic sense is to blame. 



Cleverness and capability are well contrasted in the next essay. After all, as 

 we may put it briefly, cleverness always implies something bad. " The clever man 

 is fertile in devising new ways of meeting circumstances . . . but he does not 

 go to the heart of the matter ... he makes a brilliant display but he loses his 

 cause ... if he is a man of science, he is fertile in hypotheses which he does not 

 trouble to verify. As a surgeon, he devises new and ingenious operations, which 

 he executes with deftness and dexterity, for diseases that could be cured without 

 operation . . . the clever man has a good verbal memory ; the capable man has 

 a good business memory." All this is true, but nevertheless the clever man often 

 ends by reaching such a wide survey of truth (often from bitter experiences) as 

 the capable man never attains to. Nature is most wonderful in this, that she 

 frequently obtains the best ultimate results by the worst tools, so that vain men 

 have often done much for the world — and the author has remarked this. The 

 essay on the Faddist is live truth. " The negative faddist is anti-alcoholic, 

 anti-carnivorous, anti-tobacconist, anti-vaccinationist, anti-vivisectionist, anti- 



