so be
classed under the head of "character", as honesty, truthfulness,
industry, reliability, and traits that might be classed under
physique, as good appearance and carriage, commanding presence, a
"strong face", and even neatness and good taste in dress. Here we have
an array of traits that are of great importance to the individual's
success in his work, in his social relationships and in his family
life; and it is a proof of how much remains to be accomplished in
psychology that we cannot as yet present anything like a real
scientific analysis of personality, nor show on what elementary
factors it depends.

{553}

Factors in Personality

If we do attempt some sort of analysis, we have first to notice that
personality depends in part on _physique_. In ordinary life, mental
and physical traits are not sharply distinguished, and probably they
cannot be distinguished except in the abstract. The mere size of a
person affects his attitude towards other people and their attitude
towards him--and it is in such social relations that personality most
clearly stands out. His size affects the individual's behavior in
subtle ways, since the big fellow dominates others easily just by
virtue of his size, and so tends to be good-humored, while the little
fellow is apt to be strenuous and self-assertive. Muscular development
and "looks" also have their effect on personality.

Another factor might, by a sort of play on words, be called
_chemique_. This corresponds to what is often called _temperament_, a
very obscure matter psychologically. We speak of one as having an
excitable temperament, a jovial or a sour temperament. "Disposition"
is another word used in connection with such traits. The ancients
attempted to relate the "four temperaments" to the four great "humors"
or fluids of the body. Thus the "sanguine" individual was one with a
surplus of blood, the "choleric" had a surplus of bile, the
"phlegmatic" a surplus of phlegm, and the "melancholic" a surplus of
black bile or spleen; and any individual's temperament resulted from
the balance of these four. Sometimes a fifth temperament, the nervous,
was admitted, dependent on the "nerve fluid".

This particular chemical derivation of temperament is, of course, out
of date, being based on very imperfect knowledge of physiology; but it
still remains possible that chemical substances carried around in the
body fluids have much to do with the sort of trait that we think of
unde