Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/260

246 CBITICAL NOTICES: hysteria and neurasthenia, we have extreme examples of the emotional type a disposition " to feel emotions whose violence, frequency and persistence are out of all proportion to their causes " l This reference to the persistence of feeling introduces us to a new quality of the emotional type which M. Malapert regards as essential to it. And here he but follows the general account in which the persistency of emotion is emphasised quite as much as its intensity. In one place he seems to derive the inten- f / sity from the persistence. The prolongation of feeling he thinks enables it to "excite sympathetically a more or less considerable mass of other states of feeling . . . ". 2 As a result, the feeling " acquires a greater intensity ". 3 It is in respect of its great per- sistency of feeling that the melancholic or emotional type contrasts with the sanguine. The sanguine is always described as super- ficial. In the sanguine too we have a combination of qualities quickness of feeling and instability (sensibilite vive mats assez passagere). From these opposite qualities of the emotional and sanguine types, our author deduces the melancholy of the one and the habitual cheerfulness of the other. The light inconstant nature of the sanguine " protects him against violent grief and prolonged dejection ". 4 He is a " born optimist " : 5 his opposite a born pessimist. Let us now take the qualities of intellect, conation and will which our author deduces from these innate qualities of emo- tional disposition. In respect of the sanguine (les sensitifs) " all degrees of intelligence are possible, but not all forms ". 6 In this type there is always " a giddiness (etourderie) and want of re- flexion ; their multiplicity of sensations, and points of view, their mobility, counteract prolonged thought and sustained applica- tion . . ."." Hence too their will is " unstable and capricious " ; inhibitory or " negative volition is more or less completely ab- sent . 8 What on the other hand are the effects of the disposition to intense and persistent emotion ? It has been remarked by Bain, Wundt and Fere, says our author, that this disposition is accompanied by an " overactive memory ". 9 But the memory is partial ; it is led to neglect all that has not " an emotional value," 10 " logical and properly intellectual relations are at every moment modified by emotion ". On the other hand this disposition tends to produce " a development of imagination ". The images are coloured with emotion and in their turn tend to " maintain and renew emotion ". u And where this disposition is united to a high quality of intelligence it becomes " the intellectual temperament of the artist ". But all emotions are not of the same character. Two varieties are referred to, the stimulating and depressing, and according 1 P. 28. 2 P. 33. 3 Ibid. 4 P. 37. 6 Ibid. 6 P. 140. T Ibid. 8 P. 173. 9 P. 143. w Ibid. "Ibid.