680 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



tendency to self-preservation ; "it is a type of character of its own, constituted of 

 its emotions, thoughts, and volitions, which its end requires"; the passion for 

 wealth steals into the soul, and, as it becomes more and more organised and 

 fixed, it destroys or restricts all the nobler altruistic sentiments. Mr. Shand 

 concludes that Balzac has added nothing essential to the type of miser as it was 

 drawn by Moliere, but he has made it more complex and human in providing it 

 with a few stunted affections. The miser of Moliere has no love even for his 

 children ; he even suspects his children of robbing him ; but the old miser 

 Grandet of Balzac, although he makes all the members of his household participate 

 in his passion by industry, meanness, and parsimony, including his wife, to whom 

 he shows little or no affection, yet the novelist makes him show a genuine 

 affection for his only child Eugenie. Mr. Shand asks, Do we not discern from 

 this character of Balzac that a part of the system of every great sentiment must 

 be a social effect outside of the individual in which it has developed ? A pretty 

 obvious conclusion. It seems to us hardly necessary to frame the following law, 

 " The qualities that a sentiment requires for its own needs in becoming fixed tend 

 to qualify the character as a whole," for Mr. Shand asserts this is a restatement of 

 the law of habit ; again, it seems unnecessary to make the following law, " The 

 qualities of a man's character, whether innate or acquired, hinder the develop- 

 ment of all sentiments that need opposite qualities, but aid those that need 

 the same." 



It is true, as Mr. Shand says, that " there are some men whose characters are 

 so strangely balanced that they seem to be made up of what are called contradic- 

 tions — extravagance and meanness, courage and timidity, sincerity and dissimu- 

 lation, frankness and reserve." May not this be due to the fact that, in the raw 

 material of character, they have inherited two temperamental tendencies of an 

 opposite nature, and that each has become to a certain degree organised ? In 

 fact, we hardly think the author has considered sufficiently the importance of the 

 matter of inheritance of the raw material of character, and especially in regard 

 to the inborn tendencies in relation to the Mendelian doctrine of inheritance, by 

 which it is conceivable an individual may inherit from the separate temperamental 

 tendencies of two ancestors two opposite tendencies. In chapter xiii. Mr. Shand 

 considers the influence of temperament on character ; he makes the distinction 

 between temper and temperament, and very properly criticises keenly and finds 

 inadequate the traditional four temperaments. He considers the better way is 

 to view a man's temperament in the light of his tempers— that is, the various 

 particular dispositions which each of his emotions tend to assume : thus, in 

 different individuals, the emotion of anger may give rise to irascible, violent, 

 sullen, and peevish tempers. 



On page 169 Mr. Shand, in discussing the influence of the natural tempers on 

 the stability of sentiments, discusses and analyses in an interesting manner the 

 character of Lucy Ashton in Scott's Bride of Lammer?noor, and refers to the 

 existence of three tempers existing in her together. The novelist says: "She, 

 the mother, was mistaken in estimating the feelings of her daughter, who, under 

 a semblance of extreme indifference, nourished the germ of those passions which 

 sometimes spring up in one night— and astonish the observer by their ardour and 

 intensity ; her sentiments seem chilled because nothing had occurred to interest 

 or awaken them." 



On page 172 the author claims that the conception of character gradually 

 unfolded in the first and introductory book furnishes us with some tentative laws 

 for our guidance, and that therein is indicated many lines along which further 



