OR CONSTITUTIONAL PROPENSITIES. 



4SB 



verance ij^ its execution. It is to this temperament we are to refer the 

 men, who, at different periods, have seized the government of the world. 

 Hurried forward by courage, audacity, and activity, they have all signal- 

 ized themselves by great virtues or by great crimes, and have been the 

 terror or the admiration of the universe. Such were Alexander, Julius 

 Caesar, Brutus, AttiJa, 'Jahomet, and Charlemagne, in earher periods ; 

 and such in latter times as Richard III., Tamerlane, Cromwell, Nadir 

 Shah, Charles XIL of Sweden, and the tyrant of our own day, Napoleon 

 Buonaparte. 



This temperament, like the last, which is so closely connected, is cha- 

 racterized by a premature appearance of the moral faculties. The men I 

 have just- named when merely emerging from youth, are well known to 

 have conceived and executed enterprises that would have been worthy of 

 their maturest judgment. Where the lineaments of this character are 

 peculiarly strong, and the susceptibility, as frequently occurs, is very acute, 

 the individuals are highly irascible, and launch into a passion from very 

 trivial causes.^ Homer has ascribed this part of the general temperament 

 to many of his heroes, particularly to Achilles ; and every politician knows 

 that it was a prominent feature in the constitution of Buonaparte, who 

 seems, indeed, in the occasional insults he offered to many of the highest 

 characters at his own court, and in the general presence of his court, to 

 have copied from the Grecian chieftain, who thus addressed Agamemnon, 

 the head of the Grecian princes, the uvei^ uv^^m^ presiding at a general 

 council, in reply to Agamemnon's reprimand : 



O monster ! mix'd of insolence and fear, 

 Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer ! 

 When wert thou known in ambush'd fights t^ dare, 

 Or nobly face the horrid front of war ? 

 'Tis our's the chance of fighting fields to try ; 

 Thine to look on, and bid the valiant die. 

 So much 'tis easier through the camp to go. 

 And rob a subject, than despoil a foe. 

 Scourge of thy people, violent and base ! 

 Sent, in Jove's anger, on a slavish race ; 

 Who, lost to sense of generous freedom past, 

 Are tamed to vrrongs, or this had been thy last . 



In this temperament we discover, as I have already observed, an union 

 of an active exuberant bilious, with an active exuberant sanguineous sys- 

 tem. The temperament called bilious is, therefore, properly speaking, a 

 complex genus, deriving its features from both systems, and from both in 

 a state of energetic operation. • 



III, If we put away this predominant energy of the sanguineous system, 

 or sink it below its level, if we suppose the bilious system alone predo- 

 minant, and then add a deranged action of some abdominal organ, or of 

 the nervous department — the vital functions, from the change we have 

 now taken for granted in the sanguineous system, being carried on in a 

 weak and irregular manner, we shall arrive at the atrabilious, black- 

 bile, OR melancholy temperament. The skin will assume a deeper 

 tinge ; the countenance appear sallow and sad ; the bowels will be'inac- 

 tive, all the excretions tardy, the pulse hard, and habitually contracted. 

 The corporeal sadness exerts an influence over the cast of ideas ; the ima^ 

 ffination becomes gloomy, the temper full of suspicion. The species and 



■* Bicbfrand. iit supra, sect, ccxxxi. p. 449, 



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