The word ‘temperament’ comes to us from popular psychology, which classifies mental phenomena under the headings of intellect, feeling and will, and places individual endowment under the corresponding headings of talent, temperament and character. =Temperament=, so far as the term can be employed in a strictly psychological sense, is thus _a very general term for the innate susceptibility of the individual to emotive situations and for the typical character of his emotive responses_. The doctrine of temperaments was first systematised by the Greek physician Galen in the second century of our era, though the germs of the current fourfold classification—into choleric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic—go back much further in the history of thought. This classification takes account of _the strength and the duration_ of the emotive response: the choleric person responds quickly and strongly, the melancholic slowly and strongly, the sanguine quickly and weakly, the phlegmatic slowly and weakly, to the situation which evokes emotion. Crude to the last degree! we say: and yet it is astonishing to see what a master can do with such crudity. Thackeray, in _The Newcomes_, has drawn almost pure types of temperament; Madame de Florac is melancholic, Fred Bayham is choleric, Mrs. Hobson Newcome is sanguine, and Rosey is phlegmatic; and the minor characters in a great many of our best novels tend in the same way to personify the four temperaments. But has not psychology advanced beyond this fourfold classification? Not appreciably. There are books, written by psychologists, on temperament and character; but the resulting classifications, though more elaborate and more ingenious, are also individually coloured; nothing like finality has been reached. _A good deal might be done, in this field, by the roughest kind of observation, provided it were long enough continued._ If you kept a diary for a couple of years, putting down the nature and occasion of your emotions, and the nature and duration and occasion and course of your moods, you would be gathering material which psychology still lacks, and which might serve as starting-point for detailed analytical study. Questions and Exercises (1) In the passage which heads this chapter, Descartes expresses the opinion that joy, sorrow, love and hate are the primary emotions. Do you agree with him? Why? How would you set to work to discover the primary emotions? (2) Do you think that there is an instinct of imitation? Give reasons for your answer; then consult the books. (3) Write a paragraph, as if for insertion in this chapter, on the psychology of surprise. (4) Give instances of emotive expression, from your own observation, that seem to illustrate Darwin’s three principles. (5) Define, without looking at the book, instinct, emotion, determining tendency, suggestion. [Illustration]