Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/259

PAULIN MALAPERT, Les filaments du Caractere. 245 and direction from the highly developed intelligence of which an apathetic man is capable. The biologist does not ask whether a respiratory system is accompanied by a circulatory system, but what determinate form of the one is united to a given determinate form of the other. In the same way the psychologist should con- sider what determinate form of activity or intelligence coincides with a given determinate form of feeling." l I think that if M. Malapert had followed out his own excellent advice, he would have substituted for the conception of a quan- titative relation between the inseparable mental constituents the conception of a qualitative relation, and his work would have gained in accuracy and clearness. In the types of ' temperament,' on the other hand, a quantita- tive relation must be assumed. M. Malapert treats them as modes of Feeling (sensibilite), and he includes in the meaning of this term not merely states of pleasure and pain (('tats affectifs), but also what w r e should call conation impulses and desires (tendances affectives). 2 His four types of feeling les apathiques, les sensitifs, les emotifs, les passionnes correspond closely to the characters commonly ascribed to the phlegmatic, sanguine, nervous and bilious temperaments. How then does he interpret the connexion of qualities of each of these types ; what does he regard as the central or primary quality of each ? Let us commence with the apathetic. As the name implies people of this type are capable of little feeling, and we should take this as their central quality. They are commonly contrasted with the emotional. The one, says our author, " resist all stimuli, remain indifferent, im- passible. ... At the opposite extreme are those who feel all emotions with an astonishing intensity." 3 Let us then suppose that the central quality of the apathetic is the absence, that of the emotional the presence, of intense feeling. But another quality is implied and seems to possess an equal importance. We cannot refer to the emotional without suggesting the quickness of their reaction. It seems to be a law, says our author, that " quickness and intensity are united : the nervous instability of the subject being the common cause of these two harmonious results. 4 The cases of hyperaesthesia, where the intensity of feeling is extreme, are those where "it is most sudden and instantaneous". 5 But the apathetic are so slow to feel, that sometimes their emotions affect them only in retrospection.' 5 It is one of the interesting points in our author's method to give salience to these types by instancing their morbid developments. Thus in chorea and in the stupor of epilepsy, we have an extreme example of the apathetic type a general depression of feeling and the tendency to move- ment. These patients are indifferent to everything " persons, dangers, threats and promises "." In other nervous diseases, as 1 P. 127. " P. 26. 3 P. 29. 4 P. 31. 6 Ibid. 8 P. 80. 7 P. 170.