428 



much as an enjoyment: good, generous, feeling, quick, impassionate, de- 

 licate in love, but fickle, disgust in them follows close upon enjoyment: 

 meditating desertion, in the midst of the most intoxicating caresses, they 

 make their escape from beauty, at the very moment she thought to have 

 bound them by indissoluble chains*. In vain he whom nature has endow- 

 ed with a sanguine temperament, will think to renounce the pleasures of 

 the senses, to take fixed and lasting likings, to attain, by profound medi- 

 tation, to the most abstract truths; mastered by physical dispositions, he 

 will be for ever driven back to the pleasures from which he flies, to the 

 inconstancy which is his lot; more fitted to the brilliant productions of 

 ^vit, than the sublime conceptions of geniusf. His blood, which a vast 

 lung impregnates, plentifully, with atmospherical oxygen, flows freely in 

 very dilatable canals, and this facility in the distribution and course of 

 the fluid is, at once the cause and the image of the happy disposition 

 of his mind. 



CCXXXU. If men of this temperament apply themselves, from cir- 

 cumstances, to labours which greatly exert the organs of motion, the 

 muscles, plentifully supplied with nourishment, and disposed to acquire 

 a developement proportioned to that of the sanguineous system, in- 

 creases in bulk: the sanguineous temperament undergoes a great modi- 

 fication; and there results from it, the muscular or athletic temperament, 

 conspicuous by all the Outward signs of vigour and strength. The head 

 is very small, the neck sunk, especially backward, the shoulders broad, 

 the chest large, the haunches solid, the intervals cf the muscles deeply 

 marked. 



The hands, the feet,- the knees, all the articulations not covered by 

 mnscles, seem very small, the tendons are marked through the skin 

 which covers them : the susceptibility is not great : feeling dull and dif- 

 ficult to- rouse, the athletic surmounts all resistance, when he has broken 

 from his habitual tranquillity. The Farnese Hercules exhibits the model 

 of the physical attributes of this particular constitution of body; and 

 what fabulous antiquity relates of the exploits of this demi-god, gives us 

 the idea of the moral dispositions that accompany it. In the history of 

 his twelve labours, without calculation, without reflection, and as by in- 

 stinct, we see him courageous, because he is strong, seeking obstacles 

 to conquer them, certain of overwhelming whatever resists him; but join- 

 ing to such strength so little subtlety, that he is cheated by all the kings 

 he serves, and all the women he loves. It would be difficult to find, in 

 history, the example of a man who has combined, with the physical 



* The history of Henry IV. of Louis XIV. of Regnard, and of Miraberui, proves that, 

 to the extreme love of pleasure, sanguine men join, when circumstances require it, 

 great elevation of thought and character; and can bring into action the highest talents 

 In every department. 



f- 1 have just met, in a gazette, with an assertion, at least singular. All the world 

 knows, says the journalist, that Newton was sanguine, and this proves clearly, he adds, 

 that temperaments have no influence on the intellectual powers. I would ask the jour- 

 nalist, where he has discovered that Newton \va.s sanguine. The few details which bio- 

 graphers have preserved on the physical temperament of this illustrious philosopher, 

 lead us to believe that his temperament was the melancholic, which is very frequently 

 met with in England. I will not dare to pronounce absolutely, on subjects on which we 

 can attain only a certain degree-of probability ; but if Newton had been sanguine, he 

 would not have gone to the grave at the age of fourscore, never having 1 known woman, 

 as it is afhrmed lie did. Author's Note. 



