Temperaments
“Now it is possible for some of the powers of the soul to be stronger in one individual than in another, because of their different bodily temperaments.”
–St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica I-II q. 84, a. 4)
The Temperaments
For thousands of years great thinkers in the Western tradition have used the four classical temperaments to understand an individual’s basic tendencies of mood or state of mind. The Greek doctor, Hippocrates, generally acknowledged as the “Father of Medicine,” first observed these tendencies, associating them with the four “humors,” or fluid substances, in the body: phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood. Both the Roman philosopher, Seneca, and the Roman doctor, Galen, adopted them as the basis of personality and associated them with the four elements of ancient physics: earth, air, fire, and water. Later thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, William Shakespeare, and many others, considered them a significant source for understanding a person’s emotional responses and dispositions, calling the temperaments choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. These basic tendencies are so pervasive, in fact, that respected personality type indicators such as the Myers-Briggs Test use the temperaments as the foundation for their entire account of personality types and differences. The temperaments are by no means the ultimate key to self-knowledge, but they are a helpful starting point. Knowing your own or another’s temperament gives one helpful insight into how someone might respond to certain situations, how to help them master their emotions, and how to motivate them to virtuous action. In addition to Myers-Briggs mentioned above, there are other great resources to help you discover your primary and secondary temperaments.
A Note on Use
We offer four sections on each temperament: a definition and explanation; examples from Western and American history, literature, and art; advice on specific virtues to seek and vices to avoid; and an examination of temperament. The definitions are based on the speed, intensity, and duration of the person’s reaction, and from those three factors the explanation describes common attributes of each temperament. The examples from history, literature, and art include both heroic and tragic figures. Tragic figures were overcome by their unmastered temperaments, whereas the heroic figures were able to master their temperaments. Because each temperament inclines individuals toward certain virtues and away from others, or toward certain vices and away from others, we identify what virtues and vices each temperament inclines toward for your own self-knowledge and plan for personal growth. Lastly, the examination of temperament, also based on the speed, intensity, and duration of the emotional reaction, seeks to increase one’s temperamental self-knowledge, and help one to master one’s temperament.
Quotations on the Nature of the Temperaments
“Health consists in a certain balance of humors ordered to the nature of the animal, which is called healthy” –Thomas Aquinas (On the Cardinal Virtues 3.reply)
"Antony: Forsooth, Cousin, I suppose many of them are in this case. The devil, as I said before, seeketh his occasions; for as Saint Peter saith, Adversarius vester diabolus quasi leo rugiens circuit quaerens quemdevoret (“Your adversary the devil as a roaring lion goeth about, seeking whom he may devour”). He marketh well therefore the state and condition that every man standeth in, not only concerning these outward things—lands, possessions, goods, authority, fame, favor, or hatred of the world—but also men’s complexions within them: health or sickness, good humors or bad, by which they be lighthearted or lumpish, strong-hearted or faint and feeble of spirit, bold and hardy or timorous and fearful of courage. And after, as these things minister him matter of temptation, so useth he himself in the manner of his temptation." –Thomas More (Dialogue of Comfort Book 2, Chapter 16- The Essential Works of Thomas More)
"The Greeks gave choler its name because it ends in the space of a day; hence it is called ‘cholera,’ that is, ‘little bile,’ being an effusion of bile – for the Greeks call bile χολη. 5. Black bile (melancholia) is so called because it is a large amount of bile mixed with the dregs of black blood, for in Greek black is μελαςand bile is χολη. 6. Blood (sanguis) is so called in Latin because it is sweet (suavis); hence people who are dominated by blood are sweet-tempered and pleasant. 7. They gave phlegm its name because it is cold, for the Greeks call coldness φλεϒμονη. Healthy people are governed by these four humors, and feeble people are afflicted as a result of them, for when they increase beyond their natural course they cause sickness." –St. Isidore of Seville (The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Book 4, On Medicine, pp. 109-110)
Definition and Explanation: Action-oriented
- Speed: The choleric temperament is quick to react. If a plan needs to be put into action, the choleric readily rises to the occasion. If someone is in danger or in need, the choleric jumps to his feet immediately. Cholerics are willing to serve and seek high ideals. They are natural leaders.
- Intensity: The choleric has an intense and fiery temperament. The higher the challenge, the more intense is the choleric’s reaction. Ambitious ideals drive the intense choleric to the greatest of deeds or the worst of crimes. Cholerics are go-getters and self-starters.
- Duration: A choleric temperament has reactions that endure long after an event. Cholerics keep up their energy throughout a challenge. On the one hand, they will continue a task or project to the very end. On the other hand, they are prone to hold grudges for a very long time and find forgiveness difficult. Cholerics are the engine to push projects forward, but sometimes they are so focused on the goal that they do not consider whether they have the right goal or whether they are pursuing it in a virtuous way.
Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art
- Tragic
- Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar 4.3
BRUTUS [to CASSIUS]: Go show your slaves how choleric you are, / And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? / Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch /Under your testy humour? ... / I’ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, / When you are waspish.
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- Shakespeare’s King Lear 1.1
GONERIL [to REGAN]: The best and soundest of his [ Lear’s] time hath been but rash; then must we look from his age to receive not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.
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- Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI 1.3
HOTSPUR: An if the Devil come and roar for them, / I will not send them: I will after straight, / And tell him so; for I will else my heart, / Although it be with hazard of my head.
NORTHUMBERLAND: What, drunk with choler? stay, and pause awhile.
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- Shakespeare’s The Life of King Henry V 4.7
FLUELLEN: I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is born. … Alexander, God knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little intoxicates in his brains, did, in his ales and his angers, look you, kill his best friend, Cleitus.
KING HENRY: For I do know Fluellen valiant / And, touch’d with choler, hot as gunpowder, / And quickly will return an injury.
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- Shakespeare's The Second Part of King Henry 6th 5.1
YORK. [Aside]: Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great. / O, I could hew up rocks and fight with flint, / I am so angry at these abject terms; / And now, like Ajax Telamonius, / On sheep or oxen could I spend my fury. / I am far better born than is the King, / More like a king, more kingly in my thoughts; / But I must make fair weather yet awhile, / Till Henry be more weak and I more strong.
Advice for Tempering
- Virtues to seek
- Speed: refinement, sensitivity, prudence
- Intensity: humility, meekness, gentleness, justice, fairness, equanimity, serenity
- Duration: patience
- Vices to avoid
- Speed: anger, insensitivity, lack of respect, fury, hatred
- Intensity: pride, ambition, lack of forgiveness, being domineering or closer minded, vanity, vehemence, unsympathetic, vainglory
- Duration: boastfulness, arrogance, wrath, envy, stubbornness
- Dominant Passions to Bridle
- Hatred
- Anger
- Desire
- Dormant Passions to Spur
- Love
- Calmness
- Joy
Definition and Explanation: People-oriented
- Speed: The sanguine is extremely quick to react. In the face of challenge, they are often the first to offer a solution, although the solution may not be well-thought out. Their speedy reactions make them optimistic and positive, yet they may overlook significant obstacles or lack attention to detail.
- Intensity: This temperament has an intense emotional life. Their intensity gives life and enthusiasm in the face of a challenge, but it may also rush their judgment. Sanguines are the ‘life of the party’ and cheerful despite their challenges, but they can tend to be self-conscious.
- Duration: The sanguine’s reaction is short-lived. While sanguines may start a project with great hope, they may lose interest in a project before the project is actually finished. A sanguine may ‘bite-off more than he can chew.’ Yet, sanguines quickly correct themselves and forgive others easily.
Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art
- Heroic
- Jane Austen’s Persuasion, chapter 5, when the narrator describes Admiral Croft:
[W]ith regard to the gentlemen, there was such an hearty good humor, such an open, trusting liberality on the Admiral’s side, as could not but influence Sir Walter, who had besides been flattered into his very best and most polished behavior by Mr. Shepherd’s assurances of his being known, by report, to the Admiral, as a model of good breeding.
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- Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, chapter 48, when the narrator describes how Sir Thomas Bertram recognizes his failure to educate his daughters to govern their sanguine temperaments:
Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting; that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice.
- Tragic
- Jane Austen’s Emma, chapter 18, when the narrator describes Mrs. Weston’s temperament:
[A] sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.
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- Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet 2.1
MERCUTIO [to BENVOLIO]: Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover! / Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh....
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- Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV 2.4.241-3
HAL [to FALSTAFF]: I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin; this sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh.
Advice for Tempering
- Virtues to seek
- Speed: prudence, consideration, good judgment, foresight, forethought, self-knowledge, presence of mind
- Intensity: sensitivity, calmness, temperance
- Duration: perseverance, fortitude, patience
- Vices to avoid
- Speed: rashness, naivete, gossip, lying, mood swings, exaggeration, flirtation, hypocrisy
- Intensity: vanity, insensitivity, overconfidence, anger, lust, gluttony, self-complacency, selfishness
- Duration: superficiality, negligence, instability, fickleness
- Dominant Passions to Bridle
- Anger
- Hatred
- Desire
- Dormant Passions to Spur
- Love
- Calmness
- Joy
Definition and Explanation: Peace-oriented
- Speed: Phlegmatics do not react quickly. While their slow temperament helps them to plan out projects with patience, their calm and slow planning may never leave the planning stage. Taking action in the face of challenge requires a heroic effort from the phlegmatic.
- Intensity: This humor does not have intense reactions, which helps them to be serene in the face of challenge, but hurts them when battling with the challenge. Because they do not have the sociability of the sanguine, phlegmatics may seem rigid or cold in conversation. Without the intensity of the cholderic or the sanguine, phlegmatics may compare themselves with others more than his good for them, which leads to self-pity and a lack of self-confidence.
- Duration: This temperament does not have long lasting reactions. When insulted or injured, they brush it off without a second thought. Although they are dutiful because emotions tend not to interrupt their thinking process, they may see a problem, make a mental note, and forget about it because the impression does not last long.
Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art
- Heroic
- G. K. Chesterton’s The Dumb Ox: on St. Thomas Aquinas
- “St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the humility of holiness; and abstracted, even apart from his occasional and carefully concealed experiences of trance or ecstasy...St. Thomas was so stolid that the scholars, in the schools which he attended regularly, thought he was a dunce. Indeed, he was the sort of schoolboy, not unknown, who would much rather be thought a dunce than have his own dreams invaded, by more active or animated dunces.... It was the outstanding fact about St. Thomas that he loved books and lived on books; that he lived the very life of the clerk or scholar in The Canterbury Tales, who would rather have a hundred books of Aristotle and his philosophy than any wealth the world could give him. When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, "I have understood every page I ever read."
- Jane Austen’s Persuasion, chapter 14: on Anne's character
- Immediately surrounding Mrs Musgrove were the little Harvilles, whom she was sedulously guarding from the tyranny of the two children from the Cottage, expressly arrived to amuse them. On one side was a table occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper; and on the other were tressels and trays, bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies, where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard, in spite of all the noise of the others. Charles and Mary also came in, of course, during their visit, and Mr Musgrove made a point of paying his respects to Lady Russell, and sat down close to her for ten minutes, talking with a very raised voice, but from the clamour of the children on his knees, generally in vain. It was a fine family-piece. Anne, judging from her own temperament, would have deemed such a domestic hurricane a bad restorative of the nerves, which Louisa's illness must have so greatly shaken.
- Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, chapter XL: on Susan's character
- Her temper was open. She acknowledged her fears, blamed herself for having contended so warmly; and from that hour Fanny, understanding the worth of her disposition and perceiving how fully she was inclined to seek her good opinion and refer to her judgment, began to feel again the blessing of affection, and to entertain the hope of being useful to a mind so much in need of help, and so much deserving it. She gave advice, advice too sound to be resisted by a good understanding, and given so mildly and considerately as not to irritate an imperfect temper, and she had the happiness of observing its good effects not unfrequently. More was not expected by one who, while seeing all the obligation and expediency of submission and forbearance, saw also with sympathetic acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating to a girl like Susan. Her greatest wonder on the subject soon became—not that Susan should have been provoked into disrespect and impatience against her better knowledge—but that so much better knowledge, so many good notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the midst of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper opinions of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Edmund to direct her thoughts or fix her principles.
- G. K. Chesterton’s The Dumb Ox: on St. Thomas Aquinas
- Tragic
- Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor 1.4, when Mistress Quickly
- MISTRESS QUICKLY: I beseech you, be not so phlegmatic. Hear the truth / of it: he came of an errand to me from Parson Hugh.
- Jane Austen’s Persuasion, chapter 17, when Anne recognizes the faults of Mr. Eliot’s phlegmatic character
- Mr Elliot was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped. Mr Elliot was too generally agreeable. Various as were the tempers in her father's house, he pleased them all. He endured too well, stood too well with every body. He had spoken to her with some degree of openness of Mrs Clay; had appeared completely to see what Mrs Clay was about, and to hold her in contempt; and yet Mrs Clay found him as agreeable as any body.
- Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor 1.4, when Mistress Quickly
Advice for Tempering
- Virtues to seek
- Speed: promptness, punctuality, spontaneity, decisiveness, ardor
- Intensity: zeal, fervor, sympathy, confidence, magnanimity, optimism, bravery, generosity, amiability, sociability, affectionate
- Duration: detachment, abandonment, usefulness
- Vices to avoid
- Speed: slowness, indecision, procrastination, sloth, fearful
- Intensity: apathy, languor, lethargy, pusillanimity, complaining, stiffness, rigidity
- Duration: pessimism, second guessing, worrying, presumption, despair
- Dominant Passions to Bridle
- Withdrawal
- Despair
- Fear
- Dormant Passions to Spur
- Desire
- Hope
- Daring
Definition and Explanation: Idea-oriented
- Speed: The melancholic is slow to react. Because their reactions are slow in coming, they prefer quiet thought to enthusiastic conversation. One advantage of this temperament is critical insight into the strengths and weaknesses of a project, but one disadvantage is pessimism in the face of all the foreseen difficulties.
- Intensity: This humor’s immediate reaction has a deep intensity that may not be apparent to others. They may seem indifferent in conversation, but do listen and think over the events of their life. While their love intensity is great, especially for ideas, they may focus too much on the ideas and ideals that they forget about people and friends.
- Duration: Melancholic reactions endure long after the event. They remember insults; they hold onto grudges; they have an enormous capacity for rigorous study. Although the long reactions help melancholics to contemplate, they need to learn when to take action.
Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art
- Heroic
- Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors 1.2
- ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: A trusty villain, sir, that very oft, / When I am dull with care and melancholy, / Lightens my humour with his merry jests.
- Shakespeare's Love’s Labour Lost 1.1
- FIRDINAND: Besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk.
- Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors 1.2
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- Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1.1
- THESEUS: Go, Philostrate, / Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; / Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; / Turn melancholy forth to funerals; / The pale companion is not for our pomp.
- Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1.1
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- Shakespeare's The Winter’s Tale 4.4
- AUTOLYCUS: The king is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new ship to purge melancholy and air himself: for, if thou beest capable of things serious, thou must know the king is full of grief.
- Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing 2.1
- LEONATO: There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is / never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then, for I have heard / my daughter say, she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked / herself with laughing.
- Shakespeare's The Winter’s Tale 4.4
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- Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, chapter XLVI, when the narrator comments on Fanny's melancholy
- There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy, and her [Fanny Price’s] occupations were hopeful.
- Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, chapter XLVI, when the narrator comments on Fanny's melancholy
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- Jane Austen's Emma, chapter XI
- Isabel: "Papa, if you speak in that melancholy way, you will be giving Isabella a false idea of us all."
- Jane Austen's Emma, chapter XI
- Tragic
- Shakespeares’ "Sonnet 45"
- The other two, slight air, and purging fire, / Are both with thee, wherever I abide, / The first my thought, the other my desire, / These present-absent with swift motion slide. / For when these quicker elements are gone / In tender embassy of love to thee, / My life being made of four, with two alone, / Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy. / Until life’s composition be recured, / By those swift messengers returned from thee, / Who even but now come back again assured, / Of thy fair health, recounting it to me. / This told, I joy, but then no longer glad, / I send them back again and straight grow sad.
- Shakespeares’ "Sonnet 45"
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- Shakespeare's As You Like It 4.1
- JAQUES: I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with / thee.
- ROSALIND: They say you are a melancholy fellow.
- JAQUES: I am so; I do love it better than laughing.
- ROSALIND: Those that are in extremity of either are abominable / fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than / drunkards.
- JAQUES: Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing.
- ROSALIND: Why then, 'tis good to be a post.
- JAQUES: I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is / emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the / courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is / ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, / which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these; but it is a / melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted / from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my / travels; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous /Sadness.
- Shakespeare's As You Like It 4.1
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- Shakespeare's Hamlet 3.1
- THE KING: Love? His affections do not that way tend, / Nor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little, / Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul / O’er which his melancholy sits on brood, / And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose / Will be some danger, which for to prevent, / I have in quick determination / Thus set it down.
- Shakespeare's Hamlet 3.1
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- Shakespeare's Pericles 1.2
- PERICLES [To Lords without.]: Let none disturb us. — Why should this change of thoughts, / The sad companion, dull-eyed melancholy, / Be my so used a guest as not an hour / In the day’s glorious walk or peaceful night, / The tomb where grief should sleep, can breed me quiet?
- Shakespeare's Pericles 1.2
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- Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet 4.5
- CAPULET: All things that we ordained festival / Turn from their office to black funeral: / Our instruments to melancholy bells, / Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; / Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; / Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse, / And all things change them to the contrary.
- Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet 4.5
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- Fanny Price in Mansfeild Park, chapter XLVI
- She was deep in other musing. The remembrance of her first evening in that room, of her father and his newspaper, came across her. No candle was now wanted. The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon. She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun's rays falling strongly into the parlor, instead of cheering, made her still more melancholy, for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only a glare: a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in sunshine in a town. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father's head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca's hands had first produced it. Her father read his newspaper, and her mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual, while the tea was in preparation, and wished Rebecca would mend it; and Fanny was first roused by his calling out to her, after humphing and considering over a particular paragraph
- Fanny Price in Mansfeild Park, chapter XLVI
Advice for Tempering
- Virtues to seek
- Speed: promptness, quickness, zeal, liveliness, openness
- Intensity: cheerfulness, positivity, joy, audacity, strength, generosity, friendliness, amiability
- Duration: forgiving, understanding, ambition
- Vices to avoid
- Speed: inaction, standoffish, irresolute, despondent, slow, awkwardness
- Intensity: complaining, critical, sadness, grief, pride, depression, harshness, mood swings, passivity, disagreeable, ill humored, peevish, downcast, moody
- Duration: envy, rumination, fantasy, feeble, resentment, despair
- Dominant Passion to Bridle
- Fear
- Sadness
- Hatred
- Dormant Passion to Spur
- Daring
- Joy
- Love