And those
centuries when the tide of life ran high for good or evil, furnish
instances in point abounding with interest and instruction, more
easily accessible than what can be gathered from modern characters, in
whom less clearly defined temperaments and more complex conditions of
life have made it harder to distinguish the characteristic features of
the mind. To mention only one or two--St. Francis of Sales and Blessed
Thomas More were great assentors, so were Pico de Mirandola and the
great Popes of the Renaissance, an example of a great Nonconformist is
Savonarola.
The old division of temperaments into phlegmatic or lymphatic,
sanguine, choleric, and nervous or melancholy, is a fairly good
foundation for preliminary observation, especially as each of the four
subdivides itself easily into two types--the hard and soft--reforms
itself easily into some cross-divisions, and refuses to be blended
into others. Thus a very fine type of character is seen when the
characteristics of the sanguine and choleric are blended the qualities
of one correcting the faults of the other, and a very poor one if a
yielding lymphatic temperament has also a strain of melancholy to
increase its tendency towards inaction. It is often easy to discern in
a group of children the leading characteristics of these temperaments,
the phlegmatic or lymphatic, hard or soft, not easily stirred, one
stubborn and the other yielding, both somewhat immobile, generally
straightforward and reliable, law abiding, accessible to reason, not
exposed to great dangers nor likely to reach unusual heights.
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