CHARACTER. To ask what character is, reveals the con fusion of ordinary thought about it. Instincts, habits, impulses, desires, emotions, sentiments all belong to it. But what relation do they bear to one another? What is the part of character that has to be controlled and what is its controlling part? Whence come those things that are called "principles" of conduct, and "ideals," and the multitude of "qualities of character"—courage, steadfastness, sincerity, tolerance, generosity, patience and hon esty and their opposites? We do not know. The first general problem of the psychology of character is therefore to transform the chaos of the ordinary conception of it into one in which the parts of character are seen to bear a clear and intelligible relation to the whole.
There are certain common but useful antitheses "character and intelligence"; "character and circumstances"; "character and conduct." Conduct is the expression of character; only actions that are in some degree under voluntary control are included in conduct. Reflex actions are not included in conduct; instinctive actions are. Character is the driving force ; intelligence guides it to its destination; together they sum up the human mind and are inseparable in it.
Stages of Character.—These may be classed under three heads, which roughly correspond to three levels of mental develop ment: (I) the instinctive; (2) the emotional; (3) the level of sentiment; and again roughly these three are represented in (I) the life of the animal; (2) the life of the child; and (3) the life of the adult human being. The first is the most perfect in organi zation; but also the most rigid, in which intelligence has least formative influence. The second is the most helpless and marks the transition from a lower to a higher form of organization, for which the guidance of the adult mind is indispensable. The third is the most plastic and comprehensive; but its organization is never completed. In it reflection, reason and self-control have their full opportunities ; yet it is the region of folly and error, with which we can hardly charge the animals ; of mistaken valua tions followed by disillusions; of progress and decadence; of con stancy and infidelity. It has never been understood.
The Human Instincts.—Anjmal instincts are inherited dis positions having specific patterns of behaviour for the attainment of their ends. An impulse felt in consciousness precedes their operation; attention accompanies it, and serves to adapt the pattern of behaviour to the actual situation. Human instincts have lost these patterns except in the case of simple instincts, as sucking, shrinking and clinging; in others the child must learn by experience to acquire new means to replace the old. The end for an animal is perceived—a hole or cover; the end for man may be conceived—a secret thought. In this sense, as instinctive impulses defined by their ends, we can enumerate the most important hu man instincts. They are flight and pursuit, concealment and display, domination and submission, attraction and repulsion, destruction and construction, crying for protection and giving protection, curiosity and search, and the food and sex instincts. The ends are only proximate ones, assumed to have been selected first for their biological utility; but in man they are also in dispensable to the ends which he invents—wealth, power, fame, well-being, happiness, perfection.
The instincts sometimes act independently of emotion, finding in their own impulses when unchecked the force to attain their ends; but (I) when their impulses are obstructed they tend to arouse anger or fear; (2) when they attain their ends, joy or satisfaction; (3) when they fail completely, sorrow or despair. The emotions never act independently of instincts, and tend to organize in their systems all that subserve their ends. Hence we find concealment not only in fear, but in the anger of revenge; in shame; in envy; in sorrow; in the joy of children's games. This seems to be the relation between instincts and emotions. Difference Between Instinct and Emotion.—An instinct advancing to its end unchecked does not need to arouse emotion. In itself it is unlike emotion; it is most like habit. Both instinct and habit are orderly and stable, showing so little variability in action that we forecast the course of it. Emotion unrestrained is unstable and disorderly; its actions often surprise us. We follow our strong habits often without recognizing them ; they are calm and unobtrusive; we cannot help recognizing our strong emotions. Hence it is, when emotion and instinct are conjoined, the second as it comes into operation tends to calm the first. It is the mo ments before action, we remark, that are so tense. For the force which emotion brings is for the needs of a certain situation. It should not therefore persist for long, and if it does, it tends to become pathological, as we see in the case of our morbid fears.
Besides these differences between instincts and emotions there are those based on the nature of their systems. Emotion is po tentially more complex. Concealment is only one of many in stincts organized in fear which may choose this instinct or any other better adapted to the actual situation : flight, shrinking or clutching, or shrieks for protection. From the time of Bain it has been recognized that strong emotion is accompanied by a dif fused nervous disturbance; and this may render emotion more adaptable to a changing situation; whereas when an instinct is unchecked, and following out the normal course of its behaviour, the nervous discharge tends to be restricted to those channels which sustain this behaviour. Here the intervention of emotion would be not only superfluous but harmful.
The value of emotion lies in these two points of difference from instinct: (I) the force which it brings to deal with a given situa tion, and (2) its potentially more complex and adaptable system. It is indispensable to the sentiments, and without it there could neither be love nor hate. All great changes of character are initiated by emotion.
The Stage of the Sentiments.—That which has to exercise control must have a wider outlook than that which is to be con trolled; but unless it moves us its warnings are ineffectual. It must move us by some other influence than emotion. Self-control comes from a higher system than emotion, and one that by its comprehensiveness more adequately represents the self. Love and hate, the chief sentiments, have this comprehensiveness. They are that governing part of character to which we have referred; and all the part which has to be governed is beneath them, under their authority. Love obtains its great organizing desires di rected to its unchanging ends of union, happiness and well being of the loved object, reciprocity of love, and the desire to be happy in the love of the object. But in hate these ends are reversed : not preservation and union, but destruction and separa tion ; not happiness and well-being, but misery and the worst possible state of the object, and yet withal, the desire to be happy in the separation, misery and destruction of the object.
In these great desires love and hate find the principles of their self-control—not in their emotions.
Repression.—Repression is an extreme form of the self-control of sentiments. For if some of their emotions have to be regulated as being either too strong or too weak, others which are judged to be harmful in view of their ends have to be repressed. Such repression of things within the mind corresponds most nearly to "destruction" of things without us. We would destroy some things in our character if we could; but we can only repress them, which means to exclude them from consciousness, and prevent as far as possible their return to it.
Conscience.—There is another sentiment distinct from both love and hate, which, like them, often undergoes repressions. The uniqueness of conscience makes it difficult to interpret, for there is a particular conscience belonging to all love of which its ideals are a part. This is partial to the loved object. It is the repository of that part of the moral beliefs of the community in which the individual has been instructed and which he has adopted through authority and suggestion. It is therefore apt to differ from one person to another. But when it is a living force of character, it grows with a man's experience of life, and through the illusions and disappointments of love. These impress certain ideals and duties upon his mind differently from hearsay, how ever often repeated. They become the most vital part of his conscience, being there freed from the partiality to which love at first confined them. And as the ideals of love are much the same in its different varieties, the most general and important duties come to be impressed, sooner or later, on most men. Thus is shown in merest outline how the parts of character are related to one another and the whole—how the instincts, habits, emotions and desires function in the sentiments of man, and there represent the unity of his character. Yet how incompletely they represent it. The potentials of his character transcend for better and worse everything that he has drawn from them to build up his actual loves and hates, and remain a perpetual enigma to him. The word is also applied to symbols of notation; letters of the alphabet, and, more particularly to ideographs ; in such phrases as "the characters of the Chinese language number nearly 50,000." By extension of the philosophical meaning a "character" has almost become synonymous with "reputation." Still further development of this idea is found in the description of a person as "a character" ("an odd or eccentric person").