TEMPERAMENT, in psychology, means a kind of lasting emotional mood or temper. Some people are habitually cheer ful, others are as habitually melancholy, and so on. The oldest known classification of temperaments is considerably over two thousand years old, and the names associated with that classifica tion are still in daily use. It originated with a Greek medical school known as the Hippocratic school (see HIPPOCRATES), and was based upon a theory about the varying proportions of four juices (or "humours") in bodies (Latin temperare means "to measure"). The four liquids in the body were alleged to be blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. And according as one or other of these f our preponderates in the body of a person, there re sults the sanguine temperament (Latin sanguis, blood), the phlegmatic temperament, the melancholic temperament (Gr. ki,EXa-yxoXtK6s, with black bile), or the choleric temperament.
The sanguine temperament is quick, predisposed to pleasant emo tions, but weak, and inclined to change quickly from one interest to another. The phlegmatic temperament is slow, lacking in vivac ity, but calm and strong. The melancholic temperament is pre disposed to sad emotions, slow and weak. The choleric tempera ment is predisposed to anger, and emotionally quick and strong.
ment, mean-tone intonation and equal temperament. In the case of an instrument tuned in unequal temperament a few keys will be as near as possible to the mathematical ideal of just intonation, but all the other keys will be more or less seriously out of tune. Thus supposing the key of C to be tuned in just intonation, with G tuned in consequence as a really exact fifth, this same G will not be in tune when it is required to serve, not as the fifth to C, but as, say, the third to E flat or the fourth to D. Hence therefore the adoption as a compromise of the system known as equal temperament, whereby these inaccuracies of intonation are equally distributed over all the keys, with the result that no one key is better than another but all are sufficiently in tune for prac tical purposes and can be used with equal freedom.
The mean tone system was an unequal temperament that split the difference between the major tone (8 : 9) and the minor tone (9: 1o). It long had its warm advocates, but finally had to yield to the superior practical advantages of equal temperament.
(See HARMONY ; KEY ; MUSICAL NOTATION.)